Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@social.cleverlibre.org

@mediocreape @freemo @JonKramer To an extent, but that's far from the whole story.

It has more to do with the way our brains are instinctively hard-wired to process human faces faster than damn near anything else and detect minute differences. It has to do with how that effect is stronger within one's own race (i.e. leading to the common stereotype of "all people of [x] race look alike"). Humans have an endless need to categorize and classify everything, so the fact that we can all detect more minute differences in humans over animals means that we develop more and more specific methods of classification (i.e. see modern video game character creator sliders) for the different categories of humans. Race was just a particularly early category added to that list because our brains are hard-wired to detect it quickly, because we have residual instinct to give in to tribalism and distrust those who don't look like us.

So, I guess what this boils down to is that I believe that implicit racial bias is baked instinctually into our brains. So, it's incumbent on each of us to be aware of that bias to consciously negate it. And to be aware of it, we have to be able to give a name to it.
And none of that applies to animals, only humans.

(Except maybe dogs. I do have an irrational distrust of terriers, and an irrational trust in Labradors)

@JonKramer @freemo And I feel that's an awfully good way to doom yourself to repeat them.

@JonKramer @freemo If you let "invented by a bad person" stop you, then you'd have to give up half of the comforts of the modern era.

That's why I'd rather reclaim them for something better and more optimistic.

@mediocreape @freemo @JonKramer For roughly the same reasons behind the phenomenon of human beings being the only animals we can recognize by face.

@freemo In some ways, yes. But I think there's a big difference in that Christianity is much more aggressive about converting people of different ethnicities than Judaism is.

So, while the Jewish people do have subsets (like the Ashkenazi), it's nowhere near as diverse in culture as Christianity is (mostly because of just how far Christian missionaries will go to convert very foreign people).

For example, pretty much everyone who celebrates Hanukkah does so with roughly the same rituals, right?

Contrast that against this page on Wikipedia with how differently people celebrate Christianity's prime holiday by country:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observance_of_Christmas_by_country

@freemo @JonKramer Right, of course. And, as I know from *M*A*S*H* (lol), primaquine can have negative effects on people of African or Mediterranean descent.

@freemo I haven't been to Israel, so I certainly can't speak to that, but over here, it's more of an identity than a religion. It can almost be boiled down to "which holiday do you celebrate in December?"

I.e. Even as a full-on atheist, I still celebrate some of the Christian holidays because of culture rather than religion. And many of the non-practicing Jewish folks I know are the same way. They don't ever go to temple, but they still go to mitzvahs and weddings.

@JonKramer @freemo See, I have to disagree with that. Just because race doesn't have anything to do with science doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Race is like money. It only matters because it matters to people.

But, so long as it does matter to people, it needs to be acknowledged and addressed, not ignored.

In other words, I'd prefer a world where we're not "one race", but rather we celebrate the many races that comprise the greater whole of humanity.

@freemo @JonKramer Right, but those variations of "german" are all still considered different words, hence your difference in capitalization.

As I understand it, though, the term "Jewish" refers to *both* those who are of the culture *and* those who are of the faith simultaneously. Hence, "ethno-religious" group.

@JonKramer @freemo My guess (and I could be very wrong about this) is that the ambiguity stems from racists using "ethnicity" as a dog whistle / proximal term for "race" for so long that it eventually just evolved meanings in common English.

Kind of like how "ignorant" has come to mean something closer to "indignant" in common usage.

Or like how "groomer" used to refer exclusively to predatory pedophiles, but now it's nearly equivalent to "faggot".

For how much bigots tend to claim to be "conservative", they sure do a lot of damage to the English language.