> I have lived in multiple countries across different continents. Even if race was not as big of a hot topic issue, eceryone could tell if a person of a different race is standing in front of them.
Really? I'm of predominantly Irish-British descent – are Spaniards, Italians, Greeks a "different race" from me? How about Turks, Syrians, Lebanese, Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Persians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Indians? You can travel from one end of Eurasia to the other, and people in Western Europe look rather different from people in South or East or Southeast Asia (who in turn look rather different from each other), and yet they are just different extreme points of a smooth continuum – where on that continuum do you draw the line and say that people on this side are one race and people on the other are another? I can't do it, and I don't believe you can actually do it either.
The United States government pigeon holes all human beings into five racial categories[0]. All of Eurasia is White, including the Middle East and India. I imagine this is policy driven but haven’t speculated much. It’s an oddity that seems to percolate culturally as well.
For what it's worth, my aim was to disavow anyone from claiming that they are "color-blind" even when they have good intentions. I should demand of myself to grant the same level of respect and courtesy to anyone else regardless of their race.
The reasoning there is due to the fact that, in the US at least, race is often tied to identity, in terms of background, culture, and even experience in daily life.
Ultimately, as I eluded to, we should all try to be better people first and foremost. I'm not saying that calling out and standing up to injustice is not important. But we each have the potential to control our own actions much more so than to control anyone else's.
For what it's worth, my aim was to disavow anyone from claiming that they are "color-blind" even when they have good intentions. I should demand of myself to grant the same level of respect and courtesy to anyone else regardless of their race.
Then what is your definition of color-blindness? What you demand of yourself in that second sentence is pretty much the definition of color-blindness that I was taught, so to me your first and second sentence are in direct opposition: you disavow it in your first sentence, then claim to strive for it in your second.
Oh yes, I'm familiar with the US Census Bureau's definition of "races". They themselves admit that it is a US-specific cultural construct: "The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups." [0]
And yet many Americans seem to treat it, not as a cultural construct specific to their own country, but rather as some sort of objective universal fact. The idea of "race" in itself is not specific to the US, of course – but the US seems to be one of the few countries in which it has been elevated into a government-mandated formal categorisation scheme, as opposed to a vague and ambiguous informal concept.
> All of Eurasia is White, including the Middle East and India
Not India. People from "the Indian subcontinent" are classified as "Asian" not "White", with India and Pakistan explicitly called out as "Asian". I believe, that as far as the US government is concerned, the boundary between "White" and "Asian" runs along the Iran-Pakistan and Afghanistan-Pakistan border. So, a Pashtun is "White" if they come from Afghanistan, but "Asian" if they come from Pakistan? It seems utterly ludicrous – and yet, so many Americans seem unable to see just how ludicrous it is.
> I imagine this is policy driven but haven’t speculated much. It’s an oddity that seems to percolate culturally as well.
I don't think it can be explained simply as "policy-driven" or "culture-driven", I think there is a circular feedback loop "culture -> politics -> policy -> culture".
So, what's the argument here exactly? Many of those countries were created by colonial powers without regard for culture or any other variation among the people. Perhaps I wasn't lucky enough to benefit from the enlightenment that the British Empire has bestowed upon you.
On the other hand, is your idea of "different" just another way to dismiss or categorize people? I don't know. What I do know is that, while certain variations in physical characteristics exist (and the predominance of those may vary geographically), I am able to tell the difference between a person from Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and North Africa. China and Europe and India.
I do get the underlying idea, though. I just think it's naive.
Many Americans take US-specific cultural concepts about topics such as race, and try to apply them globally, without realising that those concepts fall apart when you try to apply them outside of the specific historical/cultural context in which they evolved. And even in their country of origin, their existence is sustained (in part) by ignoring the existence of people who don't fit into them – so long as those people remain a small enough minority, they can be ignored. If they start to get too numerous and loud, political pressure will result in changes to the scheme to try to accomodate them, through the addition of yet further categories – but failing to address the fundamental problem that trying to reduce the immense biological and cultural diversity of humanity to a small number of coarse categories is a fool's errand.
> I am able to tell the difference between a person from Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and North Africa.
If you look at the transition zone between the two – places like southern Egypt and northern Sudan – you will find many people whose physical appearance is somewhere in-between the two. You seem to be ignoring the existence of those people.
> China and Europe and India.
Europeans and northern Indians are historically related peoples – they both speak Indo-European languages, Hindi and English are distant relatives of each other. They are both cultural/linguistic descendants of the ancient Aryans, and also have some common biological/genetic ancestry. So what makes them "different races"? Some Pakistanis look rather European – seen most strongly in groups such as the Kalash and Nurstanis – are they a "different race" from Europeans? Why?
The majority of Indians are by ancestry a mixture of Aryan and Dravidian, with greater Aryan ancestry in the north and greater Dravidian ancestry in the south. Does that mean Indians are actually two different races? But the reality is the majority of Indians have ancestry from both–few Indians are purely descended from one or the other–so the idea of classifying Indian people into separate Aryan and Dravidian "races" doesn't work. And don't forget North East India – the majority of people from there have more linguistically and genetically in common with the peoples of China and Tibet and Southeast Asia than with people in the rest of India. What race are they?
> I do get the underlying idea, though. I just think it's naive.
We are having at least 2 different discussions here. From a biological perspective, again, we are human beings. I can easily agree with you here, and with any of your arguments in fact. But in real life, skin pigmentation and other differences that have been attributed to the term "race" have an impact on a person's perception, whether or not they admit/realize it.
My argument may be misguided or even wrong in any sense of that term, but I do not think it is naive. Whereas your views may be right, but I still think they are naive.
> But in real life, skin pigmentation and other differences that have been attributed to the term "race" have an impact on a person's perception, whether or not they admit/realize it.
I think, in the US, skin pigmentation has historically acted as a metonym for the social divide between European-Americans and African-Americans. But, it would be a mistake to take the metonym too literally – and people who are neither have always been somewhat out-of-place, and as the US becomes more diverse the number of people who don't belong to either side continues to grow. Some Indians have darker skin than some African-Americans do – would you expect therefore, that when those Indians immigrate to the US, they'll encounter worse treatment than lighter-skinned African-Americans? I don't think anyone believes that is what actually happens. That's not to say that they don't sometimes experience discrimination to a degree which lighter-skinned Indians do not (whether in India or in the US), but it is an overly simplistic model of how US society actually works to suggest that there is such a simple correlation between one's skin tone and one's societal privilege.
Also, "white" people aren't all one skin tone. My wife and I are both of predominantly northern/western European descent, yet my skin tone is somewhat more "olive", hers is quite pale. In many Irish families with slightly darker skin, the darker skin tone is explained through the legend of Spanish ancestry (ship-wrecked sailors from the Spanish Armada) – I've heard that legend with respect to both my parents' families. Am I, as a slightly-more-olive person of European descent, discriminated against compared to paler-skinned people of European descent? Not as far as I am aware. But, that once again shows that there is no simple and historically universal correlation between skin tone and privilege.
> My argument may be misguided or even wrong in any sense of that term, but I do not think it is naive.
You are American? You seem to keep on making the assumption that ideas derived from American culture are universally applicable, even when more than one non-American tells you that they are not. How is that not naïve?
I grew up in Germany, born elsewhere, without giving too much personal information about myself. I now live in the US. The fact that the US has become more diversified and generally affords individuals more opportunities; community ties are not as strong or important as elsewhere; sprawling geography and population; all of these things create a different set of costs and benefits socially.
When people in other countries get more defensive or sensitive to an influx of foreigners is not an indication that racism doesn't exist or race doesn't play a part at all in how they view others. It is a different side of the same coin. Yet, look at how the plight of a white population in Ukraine is seen vs. that in Syria or Yemen or even Rwanda before that.
> When people in other countries get more defensive or sensitive to an influx of foreigners is not an indication that racism doesn't exist or race doesn't play a part at all in how they view others
People can treat foreigners in a prejudiced way without believing that they belong to a "different race". That's still "racism" provided you define "racism" in broad terms to include prejudice and discrimination based on ethnicity/nationality/language/culture/etc – but once you've done that, the concept of "race" is no longer essential to the concept of "racism".
> Yet, look at how the plight of a white population in Ukraine is seen vs. that in Syria or Yemen or even Rwanda before that.
The US government officially considers Syrians to be "white". Syria's President has pale skin and blue eyes, and many other Syrians look like he does–other Syrians have darker eyes and skin, but then so do many Europeans (southern Europeans especially). If you had seen Bashar al-Assad walking the streets of London – he lived there from 1988 to 1994 – and you didn't know who he was, could you have known he wasn't European just by looking at him? I couldn't have. So your idea that Ukrainians are "white" but Syrians are "not white" seems to me rather questionable.
I think most uncompassionate responses to the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, were not primarily motivated by the physical appearance of Syrians, but rather by their predominant religion. The same point applies to the Bosnian genocide, whose victims were Muslims of Slavic ancestry and language, physically largely indistinguishable from their Christian Serb murderers.
What is race? The problem with the term race is that implies genetic differences where there are none.
Regarding being able to tell apart races by looking at them, I highly doubt you could I mean are a black US American and a Nigerian the same race? How about a Namibian? In the US the Nigerian would be classified as African American which says a lot about the ridiculousness.
Really? I'm of predominantly Irish-British descent – are Spaniards, Italians, Greeks a "different race" from me? How about Turks, Syrians, Lebanese, Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Persians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Indians? You can travel from one end of Eurasia to the other, and people in Western Europe look rather different from people in South or East or Southeast Asia (who in turn look rather different from each other), and yet they are just different extreme points of a smooth continuum – where on that continuum do you draw the line and say that people on this side are one race and people on the other are another? I can't do it, and I don't believe you can actually do it either.