01-29-2018, 05:47 PM
(01-29-2018, 05:21 PM)Dill Wrote: "Ethnicity" is not somehow the correct substitute for "race." Ethnicity, in Western sociology and anthropology, has always been constructed with reference to a number of features, including language, religion, and various cultural practices, as well as (sometimes) anatomical variations within the species. The genetics of one Indian from Maharashtra could be traced back to Mughals, Mongols and other central or East Asian groups. His neighbor, living across the street, might trace his genetics predominately to Dravidian Southern India. Yet both could be identified by their government--or any casual American observer--as ethnically "Hindu." One American Hispanic's genetics might track back to Spain, another's back to indigenous peoples in Yucatan. One could expect similar divergences studying the ethnic heritage of an Egyptian from Alexandria and another from Thebes. Many people in the UK are ethnically "English," not Norwegian or Danish. Yet their DNA will be indistinguishable from Norwegians and Danes.
As there is only one race, ***** Sapiens, then using it to describe genetic differences in humans is, absolutely, incorrect.
Quote:One of the most substantial objections to racist 19th century anthropology is exactly this constant misalignment of race/genetics with claimed or perceived ethnicity. And it is why "ethnicity" is not an especially useful guide to genetic heritage.
It would depend on how said ethnicity was derived. A Mexican national, whose family had resided in Mexico since the countries creation, could absolutely have 100% DNA derived from the European continent.
Quote:Bpat is quite right about the uniquely European/Western origins of race as an anthropological/pseudo-social scientific category.
Ahh, now you're changing the rules of the game midstream. I argued that the idea of "races" is not a uniquely western construct. You have now changed the terms of the debate to state that you both meant that the use of "science" to create racial distinctions is uniquely western. When you've figured out what argument you're trying to have let me know.
Quote:To claim that Europeans constructed notions of "ethnicity" to explain groupings of human differences is not to claim that people in non-European cultures do/did not also discriminate against outside groups based on anatomical or cultural differences. But when they did that (or still do), they are either deploying some non-Western system/standard of cultural hierarchy or they have adopted Western anthropology, as the Japanese did during their Imperial era to construct Japanese citizens as a master race, German style.
Yes, when the Japanese considered the Chinese and Koreans inferior "races" for hundreds of years before European contact, they were subtly influenced through the gestalt world hive mend shared by all human beings. I suppose the ancient Egyptians, who justified their enslavement of others along similar lines to the Greeks, as you describe below, because they weren't Egyptian and therefore fit for enslavement, that must be part of the magic you describe in your next paragraph.
Quote:Even if non-Europeans were somehow magically deploying a concept invented in Europe without European influence, that still would not mean that Europeans did not construct the notion of ethnic difference to justify treating other humans as less than human. They did exactly that.
What race based concept are you referring to now? The one in which I stated that using obvious genetic differences between different people to justify poor treatment of the other "race" was not uniquely a European construct, or your new claim that the use of science to do so is uniquely European? See when you change the argument mid-stream the whole thing gets very muddled.
Quote:Greeks like Aristotle, for example, felt it perfectly ok to enslave non-Greeks--Greeks being an ETHNOS constructed by language and culture--precisely because they were not ethnically Greeks. E thnic nationalism of the 19th century tended to amalgamate whole national ethnic groups out of an existing diversity, and then link this cultural construct and its traits to "race" from which behaviors wholly cultural in origin were supposed to originate.
So your assertion is that ancient Greece was unique amongst ancient cultures in this regard? I'd have to say I'd find that extraordinarily hard to believe.
Quote:I might add that the concept of the "human" and of a universal humanity, was never something just given, but developed in Greek and Roman antiquity. It was the Romans who detached the concept of citizenship and political rights from ethnic attributes such as language, culture, or skin color. The critique of ethnicity as a basis for ascribing "humanity" or rights, then, also emerges in European culture.
Are you saying that in no other ancient civilization were the subjugated peoples of varies region treated as lesser citizens than that of the conquering empire? That would also be very hard for me to believe, probably because it isn't true.
