Race, Culture, and Perception

[person0]

2 minutes ago, Mike said:

Yes, and consider the "Caucasian race".

With all the love that Muslims get from liberals these days, Arabs are still classified as 'Caucasian'.  I want my social justice reward for being half Arab!  I don't even count as a minority, how terrible is that!  And in my experience, Asians and Indians (from India) are not equally treated as minorities in the US either.  Sucks for @Carborendum too!  This guy was Indian, but pretended to be black just to get accepted to med school, and it worked!  I know this isn't the point of this thread but you reminded me.  Social justice seeking liberal politics is a farce, and Affirmative Action laws are institutionalized racism!

[Guest]

5 hours ago, zil said:

Really, of the names on that page, you pick Kevin Bacon?

Hey, six degrees, lady.  Six degrees.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, prisonchaplain said:

I'm just not certain I've seen any group characteristic that is not more a matter of culture and environment, rather than "race." One idea is it may be helpful to look more at whether certain traits are more inherited than conditioned (nature vs. nurture). 

Part of what got me to thinking down this pattern is that to me it is NOT nature VS nurture.  It is nature AND nurture.  They both contribute.

[Mike]

39 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Part of what got me to thinking down this pattern is that to me it is NOT nature VS nurture.  It is nature AND nurture.  They both contribute.

Yes, both contribute and not always equally to a great many facets of ourselves such as personality, predilection, disposition, etc, etc.  At the moment I find myself more comfortable in the camp of "non-believers" regarding nature in terms of race impacting culture. However I'm very interested in what you might feel is the number one piece of evidence you perceive to support the claim. 

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, Mike said:

However I'm very interested in what you might feel is the number one piece of evidence you perceive to support the claim. 

Well, it's not evidence.  And I know TFP is going to slam me with a semantics accusation.  But it is what it is.  I just see the following observations and some logic.

We know we inherit many things from our parents genetically.  And such are things that are part physical and part intellectual/spiritual, etc. Musical talent comes to mind.

We also know that we inherit many traits from our parents that are purely physical.  But such purely physical traits then have an impact on other more emotional/spriritual facets of our being.  Firey temper comes to mind.  Yes, I do believe this can be nature just as often as nurture.  I know it was the case with me.  I just know because I remember how I was even at a very young age.

So, these are inherited traits.  What's the difference between inherited traits in a family vs inherited traits in a race?  With more people, you may have more variation.  But some traits will be more common in the gene pool of that race vs others.

Those who are 100% (or close to it) of a single race will have many traits much more commonly than others.  One problem with trying to "prove" my postulate here is that in our modern world, especially in the US, it is very difficult to find many people of a single genetic profile.  In fact, it is rare that you find anyone of more than 90% of a single racial profile. So, how could there be any proof nowadays?

The other thing is how the Lord has worked with a single people.  I'm having a hard time buying TFP's idea that "well, it had to be someone.  Why not them?"  Well, the problem is that it requires mixing philosophies in an inconsistent manner.  Today's philosophy would say that God wouldn't work like that for that reason.  But if we abandon today's mentality on that topic, then we're stuck with believing that race IS an issue spiritually (which was the philosophy of ancient peoples).  I don't see how we can have it both ways.

What I'm left to conclude then is that they are both partially true.

Edited July 20, 2017 by Guest

[Sunday21]

@Carborendum. Why not think of a regression equation type question. What is it you would like to predict? Crime statistics? Drug use? Religiosity? For each subject, there is a literature and you read that literature. This is a book that you might like

http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/freakonomics-rogue-economist-explores-hidden-side-everything

Edited July 20, 2017 by Sunday21

[zil]

9 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Hey, six degrees, lady.  Six degrees.

Oh, right.  Movie references go right over my head - I haven't watched a movie in a theater in over a decade, and before that, the frequency was not much greater...

[Mike]

@Carborendum Maybe I grossly misunderstood your original question 

Quote

How much of a part does race play in culture?

Did the question really ask which (race or culture) plays a more impactful role on us individually? I might have been barking up the wrong tree. 

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, zil said:

Oh, right.  Movie references go right over my head - I haven't watched a movie in a theater in over a decade, and before that, the frequency was not much greater...

No.  Don't tell me you're unfamiliar with the six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

What is it you would like to predict? Crime statistics? Drug use? Religiosity? 

This is exactly the reason why people are so resistant to the idea I'm postulating.  Always when talking about race being a basis for anything people always jump to the most sensational ideas and end up going to the darkest corners of hatred and bigotry.

Does everything along this vein have to be good or evil? Divine or diabolic?

BTW, I will eventually get to reading those books you mentioned.  It will just be a while.  I decided to start Dickens' most popular works.  I'm finding them to be a lot more boring than what Hollywood makes them out to be.  I once saw Tale of Two Cities on a PBS version that they said was true to the book.  But I am finding this book to be a painful boring read.

[zil]

2 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

No.  Don't tell me you're unfamiliar with the six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

I know there was a movie called Six Degrees of Separation. (Wasn't there?)  Beyond that, I know nothing.  (When it comes to things learned from popular culture, I'm very ignorant.)

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, Mike said:

@Carborendum Maybe I grossly misunderstood your original question 

Did the question really ask which (race or culture) plays a more impactful role on us individually? I might have been barking up the wrong tree. 

I am slowly coming to realize that whenever I go way outside the box, most people don't even understand what I'm saying.  So, how can they ever come to agree with it, much less answer a question about it.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, zil said:

I know there was a movie called Six Degrees of Separation. (Wasn't there?)  Beyond that, I know nothing.  (When it comes to things learned from popular culture, I'm very ignorant.)

Six Degrees of Separation was a Will Smith movie.  And it was about exactly what you think it is about.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a college game that began many many years ago when people realized that you could pick any actor in any movie and find other stars in the same film that were in another film... who was in a film with Kevin Bacon.  Thus the saying went abroad in the land "All roads lead to Kevin Bacon."

Bacon was actually kind of annoyed at the existence of this game.  He thought it was a minimizing of his body of work that he was very proud of.  When Bacon turned 40, he decided that he wanted to leave a meaningful impact on the world beyond his acting and celebrity.  He tried to see where his celebrity could be most useful to do the most good.  Everywhere he looked, he kept coming across this game.  It seemed some cosmic joke at his expense.

He finally thought,"Ok.  How can I turn this into a positive?"  He came up with sixdegrees.org

I was first intended to be something like the United Way.  But then it changed:

 

[zil]

3 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Six Degrees of Separation was a Will Smith movie.  And it was about exactly what you think it is about.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a college game that began many many years ago when people realized that you could pick any actor in any movie and find other stars in the same film that were in another film... who was in a film with Kevin Bacon.  Thus the saying went abroad in the land "All roads lead to Kevin Bacon."

Bacon was actually kind of annoyed at the existence of this game.  He thought it was a minimizing of his body of work that he was very proud of.  When Bacon turned 40, he decided that he wanted to leave a meaningful impact on the world beyond his acting and celebrity.  He tried to see where his celebrity could be most useful to do the most good.  Everywhere he looked, he kept coming across this game.  It seemed some cosmic joke at his expense.

He finally thought,"Ok.  How can I turn this into a positive?"  He came up with sixdegrees.org

I was first intended to be something like the United Way.  But then it changed:

Huh.  OK.  I'll watch later.

[The Folk Prophet]

9 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Well, it's not evidence.  And I know TFP is going to slam me with a semantics accusation.  But it is what it is.  I just see the following observations and some logic.

We know we inherit many things from our parents genetically.  And such are things that are part physical and part intellectual/spiritual, etc. Musical talent comes to mind.

We also know that we inherit many traits from our parents that are purely physical.  But such purely physical traits then have an impact on other more emotional/spriritual facets of our being.  Firey temper comes to mind.  Yes, I do believe this can be nature just as often as nurture.  I know it was the case with me.  I just know because I remember how I was even at a very young age.

So, these are inherited traits.  What's the difference between inherited traits in a family vs inherited traits in a race?  With more people, you may have more variation.  But some traits will be more common in the gene pool of that race vs others.

Those who are 100% (or close to it) of a single race will have many traits much more commonly than others.  One problem with trying to "prove" my postulate here is that in our modern world, especially in the US, it is very difficult to find many people of a single genetic profile.  In fact, it is rare that you find anyone of more than 90% of a single racial profile. So, how could there be any proof nowadays?.

The semantics you get "slammed" with here is "inheritance". If you define it broadly enough, we all inherit everything we experience. And that's true. If my parents teach me the gospel that is part of my inheritance from them. Another word might be "legacy".

The difference between things you inherit via learning vs. race is that you inherit your race whether you learn anything from them or not.

9 hours ago, Carborendum said:

The other thing is how the Lord has worked with a single people.  I'm having a hard time buying TFP's idea that "well, it had to be someone.  Why not them?"  

Not quite what I said, or at least not what I meant. I do not believe we are born into our life's circumstances randomly. Or that who God calls as a prophet is a coin toss.

9 hours ago, Carborendum said:

But if we abandon today's mentality on that topic, then we're stuck with believing that race IS an issue spiritually (which was the philosophy of ancient peoples).  I don't see how we can have it both ways.

Why can't it be both ways? Race meant something more in yesteryear than it does now. So many other things have changed related to technology and understanding that it is entirely reasonable that God works with us a bit differently in accommodation of those things.

Edited July 20, 2017 by The Folk Prophet

[Mike]

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

I am slowly coming to realize that whenever I go way outside the box, most people don't even understand what I'm saying.  So, how can they ever come to agree with it, much less answer a question about it.

Hmmm, I think it has less to do with the box and more to do with what different words mean to different people. For me the operative word was culture. I have also come to observe that the more we say at one time (especially digitally) the greater the risk that someone else will go in a different direction. 

 

[anatess2]

15 hours ago, prisonchaplain said:

Japanese tend to be discreet and subtle in communicating--especially about conflict. Koreans are sometimes called "the Irish of Asia." Japanese food is mild, whereas Korean food tends to be spicy. Koreans tend to be pleased and encouraging when foreigners attempt to speak/learn their language, Japanese will often say it is unnecessary and that foreigners are not expected to know their language. Korea is 35% Christian, Japan is 0.5%.  . . .

I'm not sure what the overall point is on race.  I'm trying to understand it.  Japanese, Chinese, Korean may all be Mongoloid but they are distinct ethnicities so much so that you can tell their differences through the way they look.  Differences in cuisine, conflict-resolution, etc. etc. are all differences along ethnic divides.  I posit that these differences are passed down through centuries of genetic "engineering" adopted by a millenia of shared experiences in the same manner as their "look".  In the modern era - basically brought on by the progression in ease of travel throughout the entire human experience - these genetic markers become less and less pronounced as ethnicities mix together.  Filipinos, for example, have so many migrants in their ancestry that they can't claim a single ethnicity.  We can't even claim a single race - even indigenous Filipinos are a mixture of mongol and austronesian.  The Filipino identity is not based on ethnicity but by nationality.   But the Chinese culture is still, even today, very much invested in ethnic "purity".  It is still a prevalent Chinese notion that all Chinese males have to marry Chinese.  Japanese and Korean are not as closed-in.  But both still do value ethnicity to a very high level.

But bringing this back to race.  Race is too broad a distinction for the OP's ideas.  There is no gospel indication that the Abrahamic covenant was given to a race.  What is race anyway?  Caucasian, Negroid, Mongol, Austronesian.  Those are races.  Hispanic is not a race.  That's an ethnicity.   Native American is like Filipnos - a mutt - and with the Book of Mormon, may even be tied to whatever race you would appoint to Israelites.  So many times we say Race when what we mean is Ethnicity.  Ethnicity is more relevant to genetic markers and the gospel than race is - as is evident in Chinese versus Japanese discussions.  Yes, common genetic markers is found within an ethnic group so much so that you can use ethnicity for predictive biomedicine.  Genetic markers on a racial divide is useless because an African negroid don't have the same markers as an islander negroid - or yes, Japanese don't have the same markers as Chinese.

That said - there's a reason the NBA and the NFL is majority black.  There's also a reason NHL is majority white.   And MLB has lots of hispanics.  Culture is, of course,  a reason - but I also think there's something about their physical make-up that gives them some advantages in the sport.  But I'm not too much a sports fan to bother with trying to figure it out.

[anatess2]

13 hours ago, person0 said:

With all the love that Muslims get from liberals these days, Arabs are still classified as 'Caucasian'.  I want my social justice reward for being half Arab!  I don't even count as a minority, how terrible is that!  And in my experience, Asians and Indians (from India) are not equally treated as minorities in the US either.  Sucks for @Carborendum too!  This guy was Indian, but pretended to be black just to get accepted to med school, and it worked!  I know this isn't the point of this thread but you reminded me.  Social justice seeking liberal politics is a farce, and Affirmative Action laws are institutionalized racism!

Arab is actually a mixture of Caucasian and Mongoloid.  And Indians (from India) are Asians.  We call them sand ninjas.

 

Edited July 20, 2017 by anatess2

[prisonchaplain]

@anatess2 You seem to be agreeing with me that "race" is not much of a factor, given that ethnicities and culture within racial groupings produce such distinct ethnicities (for a variety of reasons, as you mentioned). So...thumbs up!

[anatess2]

1 minute ago, prisonchaplain said:

@anatess2 You seem to be agreeing with me that "race" is not much of a factor, given that ethnicities and culture within racial groupings produce such distinct ethnicities (for a variety of reasons, as you mentioned). So...thumbs up!

Oh, so that's what you were saying. 

 

[Guest]

Irish-American here.  I have always been amused that I would not be considered white 100 years ago.

[prisonchaplain]

@DoctorLemon I had a full-blooded Irish boss who once asked me, on St. Patrick's Day, if I was part Irish.  I answered, "Just enough to keep me humble."  You know, he didn't think that was funny. Not even a little. :-)   On the bright side, I recently saw a documentary about curing world poverty, and Ireland was held up as a model. There was mention that up to the 1960s parts of Ireland were similar in conditions to Ghana and Nicaragua. Today, thanks largely to pro-business, pro-free-market innovations, Ireland is quite wealthy. 

[Sunday21]

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

This is exactly the reason why people are so resistant to the idea I'm postulating.  Always when talking about race being a basis for anything people always jump to the most sensational ideas and end up going to the darkest corners of hatred and bigotry.

Does everything along this vein have to be good or evil? Divine or diabolic?

BTW, I will eventually get to reading those books you mentioned.  It will just be a while.  I decided to start Dickens' most popular works.  I'm finding them to be a lot more boring than what Hollywood makes them out to be.  I once saw Tale of Two Cities on a PBS version that they said was true to the book.  But I am finding this book to be a painful boring read.

Dear @Carborendum

I am happy to discuss something not so controversial. Rates of absenteeism at work.

What predicts this? In Canada, some important variables are 

- gender. Women have more absences than men. In C, women take all their sick days as part of maternity leave.

- gender and marital status. Single men more than married men

- occupational grouping. Accountants are low.

I conduct this type of study frequently. In C, we don't tend to measure race because it doesn't predict anything. In the states, they measure to demonstrate that they have a representative sample. Seriously if you want to predict someone's behavior, most of the time, race is not very useful. Gender, occupation, age, marital status most of the time are the stuff you need to know. By the way, I went to a university that had a prof who was convinced that race was a big explainer. After his death people looked at this work and yeah...lots of "errors".

I could only handle dickens on audiotape. Except for my favorite a Christmas Carol.

[Sunday21]

1 minute ago, prisonchaplain said:

@DoctorLemon I had a full-blooded Irish boss who once asked me, on St. Patrick's Day, if I was part Irish.  I answered, "Just enough to keep me humble."  You know, he didn't think that was funny. Not even a little. :-)   On the bright side, I recently saw a documentary about curing world poverty, and Ireland was held up as a model. There was mention that up to the 1960s parts of Ireland were similar in conditions to Ghana and Nicaragua. Today, thanks largely to pro-business, pro-free-market innovations, Ireland is quite wealthy. 

I love the Irish miracle. Forget the ideology. Look at results!

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, prisonchaplain said:

@DoctorLemon I had a full-blooded Irish boss who once asked me, on St. Patrick's Day, if I was part Irish.  I answered, "Just enough to keep me humble."  You know, he didn't think that was funny. Not even a little. :-)   On the bright side, I recently saw a documentary about curing world poverty, and Ireland was held up as a model. There was mention that up to the 1960s parts of Ireland were similar in conditions to Ghana and Nicaragua. Today, thanks largely to pro-business, pro-free-market innovations, Ireland is quite wealthy. 

I have to agree with Sunday21.  It wasn't becaue of pro-business or pro-free-market innovations.  It was because they were IRISH, laddie!