part of what has made "race" -- and "gender" for that matter -- so confused,
etc. is that it regards the *social* assignment of meaning to traits that
are biologically inherited-- so people say "what are talking about, of
course gender is biological" because we see anatomical differences, but the
meaning of those differences is what is socially constructed. people have
had a hard time making these distinctions. so we either get the pure social
constructionist position, and some people feel uneasy about that because
they see anatomical differences, or we get the other extreme and people know
that isn't right. racism takes physiognomic differences and assigns social
meaning to them. the meaning is arbitrary and socially constructed and has
no basis in anatomy or biology, etc. but there are biological reasons for
having whatever color hair you have, etc. of course, now it is possible to
change one's biological features, too, so sex changes, and lightening skin
color, and etc., and this has to be dealt with and factored in. but
constructing discrete categories out of what is essentially a continuum
(skin shades) is pure social construction, but a social construction that is
mediated by physiognamy? I still think Harry Chang in the special issue of
Review of Radical Political Economics had this right how many years ago now,
but we are still going around in circles some of us some of the time on all
this. Of course, Chang wasn't the only one or the first or anything. the
discussion below is still sloppy in these regards, because, e.g., the
sentence that includes the categories "Black people" and "whites"
uncritically assumes that these term themselves are unproblematic with
regard to the very issues the sentence is discussing. which individuals end
up in the "Black" category and the "white" category depends. so it is true
that the shade of one's skin is biological but the categories that are
mediated by this are not, and either is the social meaning assigned to them.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sunday, April 09, 2000 10:46 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:17872] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: genome news (fwd)
>In a message dated 00-04-09 00:04:25 EDT, you write:
>
><< the socio-biological claim that
> people differ because they differ genetically is called RACISM, >>
>
>No it's not. It would be racist (and genetically illiterate, for the most
>part) to say that some groups of people are inferior to another because of
>their genes, but it is not racist to say, for example, that Black people
are
>different in the color of their skin from whites in large part because of
>their genes. That is just true. Genes are causally efficaous; they do
>account for some of the variation in differences between groups and
>individuals, and anyone who denies that has no idea what he is talking
about.
>
>--jks
