AA Board: Good or Bad?

[Do you think an entire board devoted to AA is a good idea or a bad idea?]

Do you think an entire board devoted to AA is a good idea or a bad idea?

Good idea

Bad idea

Neutral

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

1.  it is amazing how intelligent and semi-intelligent law school potentials still are caught up in using race as a category to label people...

race is an archaic and vague term and in many cases is used to support arguments which fall under demand for specifics or examples.

...race is a cognitive delusion of our era...

2.  give up the aa arguments...it is here...get used to it.

This isn't flame.  FWIW the only thing more simplistic than asserting that race does exist is asserting it does not.

as a label to categorize or box people it is a cognitive delusion...give me a definition of race with examples please to explain if possible...aye find it implausible in the modern age.

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

"Indeed, a 2002 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Stanford showed that if a sample of people from around the world are sorted by computer into five groups on the basis of genetic similarity, the groups that emerge are native to Europe, East Asia, Africa, America and Australasia—more or less the major races of traditional anthropology.

One of the minor pleasures of this discovery is a new kind of genealogy. Today it is easy to find out where your ancestors came from—or even when they came, as with so many of us, from several different places. If you want to know what fraction of your genes are African, European or East Asian, all it takes is a mouth swab, a postage stamp and $400—though prices will certainly fall.

Yet there is nothing very fundamental about the concept of the major continental races; they're just the easiest way to divide things up. Study enough genes in enough people and one could sort the world's population into 10, 100, perhaps 1,000 groups, each located somewhere on the map. This has not yet been done with any precision, but it will be. Soon it may be possible to identify your ancestors not merely as African or European, but Ibo or Yoruba, perhaps even Celt or Castilian, or all of the above.

The identification of racial origins is not a search for purity. The human species is irredeemably promiscuous. We have always seduced or coerced our neighbors even when they have a foreign look about them and we don't understand a word. If Hispanics, for example, are composed of a recent and evolving blend of European, American Indian and African genes, then the Uighurs of Central Asia can be seen as a 3,000-year-old mix of West European and East Asian genes. Even homogenous groups like native Swedes bear the genetic imprint of successive nameless migrations.

Some critics believe that these ambiguities render the very notion of race worthless."

not worthless...but still a cognitive delusion of our era...

so there are five races or are there are 1000 races...because of ambiguity it seems like a lousy tool for measuring anything...how can it be used to support an argument?  the author nails down 5, 100, 1000 and "the negrito racial stock" but not before he mentions tribes of "the Onge, Jarawa, Great Andamanese and Sentinelese—"
 
it is most obvious that the author does not like the word "ethnicity"...

by the way...that tsunami erased individuals from the face of the earth...from quite a few different cultures...

and as for the tsunami, horrific tragedy that it was, aye am absolutely not sure how many different races were involved let alone wiped out.


thanx for the article but there are jewels of differences in people to difficult to describe or measure by such a crude tool as race...race seems too like an ambiguous label.  good attempt however, although this article stretches aye have heard similar...it is still unconvincing.


xx. there is an obsolete definition of race: inherited temperament or disposition...obsolete is a succinct descriptive word for that definition.

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

Agreed. 

good thing you backed off...glad you see my point.

[BrerAnansi]

Grow a brain dipshit!

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

Grow a brain dipshit!

This isn't flame.  FWIW the only thing more simplistic than asserting that race does exist is asserting it does not.

you deleted your own post...not me...

guess you got to steppin'...

[redemption]

I'm a newbie here and I'm nervous about posting after some of the really mean things I've read. My opinion is that the board is not so much good as it is useful, but not for the reasons most likely behind it's existence. I think the board reveals some posters' true colors and provides some insight into prevalent states of mind that most people wouldn't otherwise publicly admit for fear of being ostracized. I think it's good to remember that behind the masks people wear for the sake of being socially acceptable lies a great deal of bigotry, resentment, and outright hatred. This board is a good wake up call for me even if it is very demoralizing

Well, I agree with this. It's why I've changed my mind. I didn't think that such true racists existed outside the ranks of the isolated and uneducated. Now I know different.

[redemption]

Well, I agree with this. It's why I've changed my mind. I didn't think that such true racists existed outside the ranks of the isolated and uneducated. Now I know different.

it's nice to see people for the flawed, ugly, hateful creatures that they truly are, isn't it? 

It makes me sad, and then I get irritated at feeling sad, and then I just get annoyed.

[redemption]

Yes, I'm going through my stages.

[H4CS]

Yes, I'm going through my stages.

Screw that, drunken belligerence is the only stage worth visiting.  Why leave?

[H4CS]

Sit on it.