Is race a bio category or a social construct?

[RainbowUnicorn]

from my brief read into history the middle eastern scholars around 2000 years ago looked upon white people as primitive animals barely capable of comprehending culture as a paradigm.

That's just it, though. There seems to be no formal conception of "white people" before the early 17th century, and as the manufacturing of a race till even later (whether superior or inferior). "Middle East" as far as Islamic scholars go didn't arise till some centuries after the [supposed] birth of Christ. (Not that you're necessarily referring to them -- there's just the happenstance(?) abutment with "crusades" afterwards).

Nell Irvin Painter: People with light skin certainly existed well before our own times. But did anyone think they were “white” or that their character related to their color? No, for neither the idea of race nor the idea of “white” people had been invented, and people’s skin color did not carry useful meaning. What mattered was where they lived; were their lands damp or dry; were they virile or prone to impotence, hard or soft; could they be seduced by the luxuries of civilized society or were they warriors through and through? What were their habits of life? Rather than as “white” people, northern Europeans were known by vague tribal names: Scythians and Celts, then Gauls and Germani. --The History of White People . . . Chapter One

Who’s White?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/books/...don-t.html

even as early back as the crusades, the western white skins were bent on genocidal behaviour raping women and children before butchering them. entire towns and villages in one go.

this butchery of women and children by europeans was considered completely barbarian. much as they were called barbarians.

thus, do not let others dictate your narative of intellect.

genetically, darker the skin the less properous was the land... (probably)
thousands of years of culture bending toward survival of the fittest at all costs bares no real time for metropolitan concepts of ideological culture metaphors.

Again, the ethnocentric perspective of these various civilizations often deemed some "Other" to be the barbarians (when not a wholesale sweep of everybody else). The fact that their very own military forces would likewise either occasionally or routinely engage in acts of savagery when invading a territory themselves is a repeated horror throughout history and to this day.

In the past, many so-called population groups have had related factions that might qualify as legitimate, migratory "barbarians". Potentially co-existing at the same time with their geographically separated, supposedly refined and developed counterparts.

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modern(last 500 years or soo) middle eastern culture and modern asian culture have clear cultural preferance to lighter skin as a higher quality of social status and breeding status.
i find that quite interesting.
choosing slaves.. i wonder if people chose slaves based on skin colour

meanwhile...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi#..._and_shoes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi#...c_analysis

Multiplex assay study was able to confirm that the Iceman's mtDNA belongs to a previously unknown European mtDNA clade with a very limited distribution among modern data sets.[45]

By autosomal DNA, Ötzi is most closely related to southern Europeans, especially to geographically isolated populations like Corsicans and Sardinians.[46][47][48][49]

[C C]

modern(last 500 years or soo) middle eastern culture and modern asian culture have clear cultural preferance to lighter skin as a higher quality of social status and breeding status. i find that quite interesting.

(Flirting on the periphery of that, with respect to East Asia): Because indoor lighting was once limited to what candles produced, Chinese courtesans took to wearing white makeup because it reflected their features better for noble guests, in the dimmer environment. Geishas of Japan in turn adopted the practice from them, with the additional intent of trying to produce a porcelain-like appearance. When such filtered through the rest of a population that had far less intimate contact with the exalted classes, conventional or poorer girls and women would use only a little makeup to lighten the tone of their faces.

Intermittently I hear or read anecdotes and rumors about a Japanese tradition of racism that still has moments today (something quite other than that usual Gaijin stuff ... Zzzzzzzz). It also didn't help that I failed to realize upon first encountering him that Satoshi Kanazawa was born in America. But this blog account paints quite an opposite picture (i.e., positive):

What's it like to be black in Japan?
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-34550264

The irony below is that some African Americans like John Roland Redd (AKA Korla Pandit) pretended to be Indian back in the Jim Crow days to get better job opportunities and access to stores, hotels, etc:

China and India have a huge problem with racism toward black people
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worl...ck-people/

Cynicism in its finest investigative mode? Negatively spin-doctoring a rival political orientation would seem a dubious motive since both "liberals and conservatives" are thrown under the bus:

The real reasons the U.S. became less racist toward Asian Americans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk...sing-them/

EXCERPT: . . . By the 1960s, anxieties about the civil right movement caused white Americans to further invest in positive portrayals of Asian Americans. The image of the hard-working Asian became an extremely convenient way to deny the demands of African Americans. As Wu describes in her book, both liberal and conservative politicians pumped up the image of Asian Americans as a way to shift the blame for black poverty. If Asians could find success within the system, politicians asked, why couldn’t African Americans?

choosing slaves.. i wonder if people chose slaves based on skin colour

Another dose of cynicism, this time concerning the self-celebrated sainthood of the North (i.e., "Which group rots in hell: The vile but honest-spoken sphincters, the deceptive scheming hypocrites, or both?"):

Prior to the American civil war breaking out, much of the North's agitation over slavery actually stemmed from distress over escaping slaves being captured and sent back who looked white in appearance (i.e., they were quadroons, octoroons, hexadecaroons, and beyond rather than just the "mundane" mulatto).

NYC Riots: ". . . Initially intended to express anger at the draft, the protests turned into a race riot, with white rioters [...] attacking black people throughout the city. The official death toll was listed at either 119 or 120 individuals. [...] The military did not reach the city until the second day of rioting, by which time the mobs had ransacked or destroyed [...] many black homes, and the Colored Orphan Asylum at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue, which was burned to the ground. The area's demographics changed as a result of the riot. Many black residents left Manhattan permanently (many moving to Brooklyn). By 1865, the black population fell below 11,000 for the first time since 1820."

Abraham Lincoln, Racist: ". . . More problematic were Lincoln’s views on race. He held opinions not very different from those of the majority of his racist countrymen. Even if slavery was wrong, “there is a physical difference between the white and black races that will for ever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality.” His solution was a form of ethnic cleansing: shipping blacks off to Liberia, or Haiti, or Central America — anywhere as long as it wasn’t the United States.

Lincoln’s views may have started to change once he saw how bravely black troops fought for the Union cause, but even at the time of his death, he was willing to leave the fate of emancipated slaves in the hands of bigoted state legislators. “Whether Lincoln ever went beyond being an anti-slavery white supremacist,” Fredrickson writes, “is a question that is difficult to resolve.”

- - -

Arab slave trade: "Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900. The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year."

History of slavery in the Muslim world: "Slavery was widely practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia, as well as in the rest of the ancient and early medieval world. The minority were European and Caucasus slaves of foreign extraction, likely brought in by Arab caravaners (or the product of Bedouin captures) stretching back to biblical times."

- - -

[RainbowUnicorn]

modern(last 500 years or soo) middle eastern culture and modern asian culture have clear cultural preferance to lighter skin as a higher quality of social status and breeding status. i find that quite interesting.

(Flirting on the periphery of that, with respect to East Asia): Because indoor lighting was once limited to what candles produced, Chinese courtesans took to wearing white makeup because it reflected their features better for noble guests, in the dimmer environment. Geishas of Japan in turn adopted the practice from them, with the additional intent of trying to produce a porcelain-like appearance. When such filtered through the rest of a population that had far less intimate contact with the exalted classes, conventional or poorer girls and women would use only a little makeup to lighten the tone of their faces.

Intermittently I hear or read anecdotes and rumors about a Japanese tradition of racism that still has moments today (something quite other than that usual Gaijin stuff ... Zzzzzzzz). It also didn't help that I failed to realize upon first encountering him that Satoshi Kanazawa was born in America. But this blog account paints quite an opposite picture (i.e., positive):  

What's it like to be black in Japan?
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-34550264

The irony below is that some African Americans like John Roland Redd (AKA Korla Pandit) pretended to be Indian back in the Jim Crow days to get better job opportunities and access to stores, hotels, etc:

China and India have a huge problem with racism toward black people
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worl...ck-people/

Cynicism in its finest investigative mode? Negatively spin-doctoring a rival political orientation would seem a dubious motive since both "liberals and conservatives" are thrown under the bus:

The real reasons the U.S. became less racist toward Asian Americans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk...sing-them/

EXCERPT: . . . By the 1960s, anxieties about the civil right movement caused white Americans to further invest in positive portrayals of Asian Americans. The image of the hard-working Asian became an extremely convenient way to deny the demands of African Americans. As Wu describes in her book, both liberal and conservative politicians pumped up the image of Asian Americans as a way to shift the blame for black poverty. If Asians could find success within the system, politicians asked, why couldn’t African Americans?

choosing slaves.. i wonder if people chose slaves based on skin colour

Another dose of cynicism, this time concerning the self-celebrated sainthood of the North (i.e., "Which group rots in hell: The vile but honest-spoken sphincters, the deceptive scheming hypocrites, or both?"):

Prior to the American civil war breaking out, much of the North's agitation over slavery actually stemmed from distress over escaping slaves being captured and sent back who looked white in appearance (i.e., they were quadroons, octoroons, hexadecaroons, and beyond rather than just the "mundane" mulatto).

NYC Riots: ". . . Initially intended to express anger at the draft, the protests turned into a race riot, with white rioters [...] attacking black people throughout the city. The official death toll was listed at either 119 or 120 individuals. [...] The military did not reach the city until the second day of rioting, by which time the mobs had ransacked or destroyed [...] many black homes, and the Colored Orphan Asylum at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue, which was burned to the ground. The area's demographics changed as a result of the riot. Many black residents left Manhattan permanently (many moving to Brooklyn). By 1865, the black population fell below 11,000 for the first time since 1820."

Abraham Lincoln, Racist: ". . . More problematic were Lincoln’s views on race. He held opinions not very different from those of the majority of his racist countrymen. Even if slavery was wrong, “there is a physical difference between the white and black races that will for ever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality.” His solution was a form of ethnic cleansing: shipping blacks off to Liberia, or Haiti, or Central America — anywhere as long as it wasn’t the United States.

Lincoln’s views may have started to change once he saw how bravely black troops fought for the Union cause, but even at the time of his death, he was willing to leave the fate of emancipated slaves in the hands of bigoted state legislators. “Whether Lincoln ever went beyond being an anti-slavery white supremacist,” Fredrickson writes, “is a question that is difficult to resolve.”

- - -

Arab slave trade: "Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900. The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year."

History of slavery in the Muslim world: "Slavery was widely practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia, as well as in the rest of the ancient and early medieval world. The minority were European and Caucasus slaves of foreign extraction, likely brought in by Arab caravaners (or the product of Bedouin captures) stretching back to biblical times."

- - -

Arab slave trade:
interesting that we hear nothing of it in the western media. maybe because it suites the purposes of those leveraging concepts of duopoly partisanship in social metaphors to control outcomesof social inertia.

i have on occasion pondered the inpact of vast immigration work forces into the middle eastern countrys, pondering to what extent they are leaving themselves open to international critique along racial lines.
i gues the capitalist machine paths all roads with gold.
the liberal context of allowing 3rd world people to work in vastly sub-standard 1st world working conditions is quite a thing in western cultural morality in a socio-political frame.


psydo thought
more sun = less oxygen in the blood
less oxygen in the brain
higher mental function is shut down first with over exposure to sunlight.

is there any part of genetic knowledge that would define overt sun exposure to undesirability for breeding ?
why is there a massive social trend and culture to assimilate to a very specific tone of brown skin ?

Refering to this type of thing (genericaly speaking) thus additionally could there be a genetic knowledge of ideal sun exposure rates to allow best possible breeding/cultivation/survival ?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24971616

Current versus ideal skin tones and tanning behaviors in Caucasian college women.
Hemrich A1, Pawlow L, Pomerantz A, Segrist D.
Author information
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
To explore tanning behaviors and whether a discrepancy between current and ideal skin tones exists.
PARTICIPANTS:
The sample included 78 Caucasian women from a mid-sized midwestern university.
METHODS:
Data were collected in spring 2012 via a paper questionnaire.
RESULTS:
Sixty-two percent of the sample regularly engaged in salon tanning at least once per week, with an average frequency of 2.5 visits per week. Thirteen percent endorsed regularly tanning 4 or more times per week, and 26% reported visiting a tanning bed more than once in a 24-hour period. Ninety-four percent wished their current skin tone was darker, and ideal tone was significantly darker than current tone.
CONCLUSIONS:
The data suggest that the young Caucasian women in this sample tend to be dissatisfied with their current skin tone to an extent that leads the majority of them to engage in risky, potentially cancer-causing behavior by either salon tanning or considering tanning in the future as time and finances become available.
KEYWORDS:
current skin tone; ideal skin tone; salon tanning; tanning; tanning bed
PMID:24971616DOI:10.1080/07448481.2014.936440
[Indexed for MEDLINE]

Generic Euro-centric people seeking to normalise to social expectation, a tone of brown that is simply outside their natural skin colour and one requiring a certain amount of sun exposure.

the idea of africanpeople having innnate appeal to virginity concepts toward light skinned women is complete tosh(as i started to read something on another page)

white as a base colour on the floor and walls makes it easy to see dangers...
regardles of actual culture or skin colour, i ponder if there is a female drive to luminate things around home and babys to help protect against disease and predators, rats, mice insects etc...
(just musing)