Race Versus Ethnicity

Nazism cobbled together social darwinism, eugenics, folk beliefs from the Bible about "sons of Noah", and the emerging science of genetics (no DNA known), to further the white man pseudo-science of "races".

I say "white man" to capture an ethnicity, not a race. Anglo-Euros with empires and slavery to justify, and control over the curriculum namespaces.

There's no "race gene" that divides 1/2, 1/4, 1/8... such that "by blood, I'm 1/32nd Black" -- that's utter nonsense, dumbed down to fit the arithmetic of an elementary school teacher. To this day, Anglo-Euros strut about talking about "race" as if it meant something, failing to see "ethnicity" as what they're really talking about. They don't get a decent semantics in school, and flounder and drown (figuratively) in their own poorly designed concepts. A racist is someone who believes in races.

A big diff between "race" and "ethnicity" is the former is imposed on you by authorities, who may insist you go by "mixed" whether or not you believe in their faux taxonomy. They won't let you "pass" as white if you're 1/32nd "black" or whatever ethnic nazi apartheid garbage they go by.

"Ethnicity" on the other hand is something I have more control over, even more than over gender it would seem to me (I can't change my XY to the XX of the stronger sex). I may be born into one ethnicity, yet die in another. Indeed, I'm able to tell people (versus be told) what my ethnicity is, and the vocabulary there is always changing.

Unsubstantiated Innuendo

Remember, there was already a SARS outbreak before this, traced by virologists, including the Wuhan Lab, to bat colonies. Bat-derived coronaviruses is today and was before a focus of the Wahan virologists, of course. We were warned years ago that another SARS-like outbreak was very possible. 

As Nassim Taleb puts it, this was no "black swan" event -- twaz foreseen and foreseeable.

So yes, Wuhan was studying coronaviruses, we knew that from the beginning. That's their job. They had joint projects with NSF funded scientists which Trump made a big show of cutting, in a moronic display of awkwardness.

So if there was a release of coronavirus by a contagious human, contaminated in the lab, that is not proof of weaponization or gain of function research.

Looking over the credentials of the WHO adviser, I am not impressed. Tell me exactly what look like genetic alterations to a naturally occuring bat-borne virus. 

Let it cross your mind that humans don't yet know enough about viruses to purposely modify their lethality, let alone synthesize them from scratch.

The Buzz

I'm hearing they just wanted "a few more days" to get to the bottom of these allegations, a rerun of Pizzagate in 2016 in a lot of ways. 

Giuliani and Sydney Powell were always making it seem like the big revelation was coming tomorrow. 

Just like 2016: stay tuned, and we'll have proof Hillary is Spawn of Satan. 

This kind of short term myopic "tomorrow is the apocalypse" science fiction, is worth mocking I think.

More Remarks on Race, Revised & Extended

The white African pictured above [Facebook] is of course Yolandi Visser. My parents moved to Lesotho sometime after Bhutan (from one mountain kingdom to another), which is surrounded by RSA (Republic of South Africa). 

Over the years, through many adventures, I've come to feel at home in that part of Africa. The idea of "white Africans" is nothing jarring or new. White refers to skin color yes, not race really. 

There's no "race" gene and conflating the world to "white brown yellow red black" is just comic book cartoonery. Fits on a brochure. Keep it simple, and stupid (KISS of death).

Re: My Parents' Perspective | 親からの観点 (movie review)

Tiffany doesn't identify as 3rd culture because she associates that with international schools, which she didn't go to. Fair enough. 

Her dad tells the story of how, when Tiffany was growing up in Japan, she'd talk about skin color very literally, as in RGB values. A person might be light pink, or tan, or... given her own dark skin, she'd of course know the difference. But it wasn't about race, yet. Then, after some time back in the states, Tiffany came home and talked about a "black" person, where you could tell the meaning had shifted, and literal color was no longer the meaning. That day was sweetly sad, a loss of innocence. 

The racist meme virus had claimed another victim in a way.

If hair, eye and/or skin color were a reliable indicator of ethnicity and personality then I could see where racism could keep a toehold. "White skin means you think as I do" -- that could work in some isolated setting, but fewer and fewer settings are that isolated.

The problem is, as Somalis repatriate in Tennessee, for example, you get ethnic tensions and rebalancings that belie the simplicity of "skin color" as the key parameter. People want to hate each other first, and look for distinguishing physical characteristics second.

In the language of the data scientist, skin color, eye shape, body type etc. have become less and less principal components in our model of the human persona.

Like, I am often seeking out ethnicity when I meet a person (say it's a date), which means everything from what magazines do they read (do they read), what profession and so on.

If, like an idiot, I conclude from skin color that I'm free to talk down or be rude somehow, as if I'm superior, then I stereotype myself more and more as a typical jerk. My reflexes are seeming more and more awkward as I'm surprised again and again by how sad and clownish I've become. Racism leads to awkward embarrassment, which is what is ultimately going to extinguish it, more than ratiocination, I'd hazard.

Case in point, my family, Quaker, once stayed at the home of then deputy defense minister of the RSA, formerly with African National Congress and now married into the Routledge family and a Friend.

That RSA would appoint a pacifist to the defense ministry was creative. On trips to weapons bazaars, where they'd wanna sell you every type of fighter jet this and bazooka that, the booth people would inevitably swarm around the little guy, assuming Nozizwe was the personal assistant. Imagine their surprise. 😀

Per my angle, "race" is hokum and a racist is someone who believes in races. That's OK though. Nationalists believe in nations, likewise social constructs and not unrelated. I don't expect either racists or nationalists to die out anytime soon, even if my own ethnicity takes neither too seriously.

My mission is to not force "true beliefs" on people, let them believe whatever crap they like and feed them anyway, don't hold their bodies hostage to meme viruses. Give everyone a fun life if possible. Waste less and we'll get there.

I do like "ethnicity" (over "race") for being plastic. Steve Martin raised black in the south in The Jerk comes to mind.

Given my high school in the Philippines and subsequent immersion in Asian cultures, plus my own studies and who knows what else, I have no worries identifying as Asian if people ask. Of course I know it's not my ethnicity they usually care about. The little check boxes are about my "race". I dutifully check "white" and inwardly sneer at my stupid ancestors and their superstitions.

Thinking of myself as Asian puts some distance between me and these other domestics around me, the ones who never left and don't share my 3rd culture expat upbringing. Feels right (to put some distance).

As to gender, I get from theater that we are able to play characters in movies, and it might get to where your "home character" is like a female even if your body is XY. A whole city, like Portland, might agree to go with that convention, that regardless of your body's XX or XY, you have a right to define a home base character of any gender.

But that's like a fleeting and fragile overlay in a subculture, like Vienna being sensitive to a special music. Outsiders are just gonna see it as weird, take offense, and think Portland is trying to export its idea of "life as theater" to the world (whereas in fact Portland is inward-turned and sometimes forgets there's "a world" out there).