Why is any criticism of a culture considered racist?

Setanta, it could not have been said better:
"Additionally, i am not identifying pattern recognition as racism, i am pointing out that it is false to ascribe adherence to a perceived pattern as arising from putative "race." I am pointing out that as Shapeless said, to assume that a person will inevitably behave in a certain manner based upon superficial identification can constitute racism--such as saying that anyone with dark brown skin ("blacks") will necessarily be criminal. It is more accurate to identifying criminality is arising most commonly from poverty, and even then, one cannot reasonably assume that all poor people will be criminal. Such "pattern recognition" would be a flawed process indeed, and would not necessarily contribute to successful function."
Anthropologists have rejected the notion of "race" as unscientific. Obviously, genes exist, but they do not organize into discrete genetic populations (i.e., races). Moreover, the notion of race, even though no longer a scientific concept, has been retained--by "racists"--as a (pseudo) basis for treating different populations as "essentially" different, with "inborn" tendencies to certain kinds of behavior, forgetting that it is cultural conditioning rather than biology that shape patterns of behavior. This "pseudo basis" is referred to as "social race"--in contrast to biological race.The concept of "social race" is of interest to sociologists and social anthropologists but not to human biologists (i.e., physical anthropologists). If we compare distinct populations genetically, we must, as you suggest, look beyond the "superficial" traits of complexion, hair texture, etc. and consider the entire structure of genetic traits (e.g., susceptibility to disease, blood type frequencies, tooth structures, etc., etc.), traits that are not superficially visible. And I read that usually the "typical" person of a population may have more in common with the typical person of another population than he will with many members of his own biological community. Distributive biology is complex; racism is simplex.

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Stuh 505- You are debating with a blowhard named Setanta who thinks he knows everything. In reality, he twists and perverts definitions to suit his own desires.

Let's cut to the chase.

Critiques of other cultures is not racism---

Racism, is "A belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others"

Very few people in the USA now think that a "race" of people, be they Black, Mongoloid or Caucasian.

One can, if one has any morality or feeling for their fellow humans, criticize other cultures. In the political correct climate in the USA currently it is forbidden to criticize some of the cultural aspects presented by African-Americans but it is considered appropriate to criticize, in the strongest possible terms, the cultural aspects of those who would be identified as fundamentalist Christians.

People like Setanta do not appear to realize that the mere fact that different peoples and cultures have evolved in radically geographical settings is alone enough to make simililarity of skills virtually impossible.

This, of course, does not mean that cultures cannot change and adapt. When Commodore Perry gave the Japanese a scale model train, the Japanese were astonished, yet, a century later the Japanese "bullet train' would be one of the technological marvels of the world.

However, we can criticize other cultures without being labelled racists. Indeed, we would be morally delinquent if we did not strongly excoriate the barbaric African custom of Clitoridectomy just as the British railed against the Indian barbarism involved in Suttee.

Like so many radical liberals, it appears that Setanta is dreadfully afraid of facts. He states that the major reason that African-Americans do not improve themselves as one might expect to poverty( read racism) but he is apparently unaware that even African-Americans who have a much higher Socio-Economic Status that some Asians do not score as high as those Asians do on the standardized tests.

This is not a failure based on poverty. It is a failure based on culture. The culture which has permeated the lower class African-American family and has been encouraged by the race carders. The Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons can only retain their power by insisting that the US culture is a racist culture and that the US leaders have a policy to keep African-Americans in poverty. These race carders teach the African-American lower class that they are victims in a racist society and that their failures are not due to their personal habits and culture but rather stem from racism in the government.

People like Setanta should know better. They don't.

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JL Nobody- whoever taught you to write failed. What does your incomprehensible paragraph have to do with the question of this thread-

It is, I will remind you--concerned with the ability to criticize a culture without being labelled a racist. Address the topic!

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Marion, I'm sorry to have not lived up to your writing standards. At least I did not use an incomplete sentence as you did: "Very few people in the USA now think that a "race" of people, be they Black, Mongoloid or Caucasian."

By the way, I do think the information I gave regarding the concept of "race" is relevant. Reconsider please.

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JLN, Setanta's post is completely off topic. The arguments, although they are supposedly against me, completely ignore the points that I made. It is annoying to hear you echo them, although I would not speak to you so harshly as Marion did. But thank you MarionT, for not buying into Setanta's slanderous insinuations. Your post was much more insightful, and I find nothing to disagree with there.

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Stuh, if Marion had come to my rescue with the kind of thinking he or she displays, I would feel persecuted.

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To begin, let me observe that your tone seems to be hostile. It is difficult to know what you intend in the way of your tone of voice, because i cannot hear you. But if that is the case, please note that i've made no slighting personal observations about you, i have simply disagreed with you. While that may be unpleasant to you, it does not constitute insult, and would not warrant hostility on your part. I am willing to accept, of course, a statement on your part that the intent of your response is not hostile, as i am willing to assume that you will reply honestly.

Therfore, let us begin at the end of your post, with the remark which seems to me to show hostility:

stuh505 wrote:

Do you have any criticisms that are not based on mangled misinterpretations of my point?

I have not criticized what you have said based upon any "mangled misinterpretations" of your "point." In your post #2315201, you wrote:

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Shapeless wrote:
What you're artfully glossing over is the basis on which you assume that the character traits of one person are inherent in another person. If your basis is race, then that's racism.

Oh, you don't think that's the case??

Just how would you expect someone to interpret such a response, other than that you assert that one can assert that the character traits of one person are inherent in another person who is of the same "race?" That is how i have interpreted your response here, and your other responses which have followed--that you assert that it is reasonable and not racist to attribute to all members of any particular "race" the characteristics which you have observed in others of that same "race." If you did not mean that, then your responses have certainly not been clear on that point.

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This is a basically meaningless statement. "Race," as determined by physical characteristics, is observable. Characteristics which annoy one, or which one condemns, are observable.

In this case, the perspective for which the trait is observable has not been defined. While it is true that there exists a perspective from which any trait can be observed, that is not the point. The point is that, when in a perspective where only a limited subset of characteristics can be directly observed, using pattern recognition on those observable characteristics can yeild statistical evidence about the potential states of unobserved characteristics.

For instance, if a person has encountered 1000 people having characteristic A, and all of those people also had characteristic B, and this person in the future observes a person with characteristic A but is unable to directly observe the presence of characteristic B, it is certainly admissable to assume that characteristic B is also present, although it cannot be known for sure.

The claim you make about statistical evidence based upon an individual's observations is not valid. Statistical evidence can only reliably be derived from representative samples, and there is no good reason to assume that the observations of an individual are based upon representative samples. For example, someone who drove to work each day through the northside neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., who observed that each car pulled over by the police was occupied by black people might assume that black people are prone to driving in an illegal or unsafe manner. This, however, would ignore that the observations were not of a representative sample of the behavior of all blacks, nor a representative sample of the behavior of all drivers. As an assumed representative sample of all blacks, it would entail the statistical fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances. It would be a case of taking note of black drivers pulled over by the police, and ignoring all of the black drivers who have not been pulled over the police, and would not have established by observation what proportion of black drivers pulled over by the police constituted of the entire population of black drivers. It would only observe that the police had pulled over black drivers. Furthermore, it would not take into consideration what proportion of all drivers pulled over by the police those black drivers represented--the sample is not being realistically compared to all drivers. Finally, it would ignore that the residents of the northside neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. are overwhelmingly black, and that the probability of the police pulling over white drivers in that neighborhood would be very low. That's one of the main objections to anecdotal evidence (which is, after all, the basis of the "statistical evidence" for which you are arguing), that there is no possibility of correlation of the observations to representative samples.

Your example of A and B characteristics further ignores that such observations only produce valid functional information if correlation is established between A and B. You are assuming causation without establishing correlation. You are using an inductive generalization, but committing the statistical fallacy of an insufficient sample. If you have observed that one thousand examples of people exhibiting characteristic A also exhibit characteristic B, and therefore assume that any person you observe exhibiting A will also possess characteristic B, but you have not established what proportion of the entire population of those exhibiting characteristic A those one thousand persons constitute, you may have reacted understandably, but you still have indulged a statistical fallacy. If the entire population of persons who will exhibit characteristic A is ten million, then the one thousand persons you observed represent one one-hundreth of one percent of that population--and that is statistically insignificant.

Pattern recognition can be useful in many situations--it is hardly reliable in determining the likely characteristics of people out of a total population in excess of six billion.

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i simply pointed out that not all pattern recognition leads to valid assumptions about the nature of the world.

I certainly agree with the truth of that statement, but that's not what you said. I'm not ignoring your use of the word axiomatic, but perhaps you are not understanding the meaning of the word correctly.

"it is not axiomatic that the ability to distinguish patterns is a component of successful human function"

axiomatic ~ pertaining to or of the nature of an axiom; self-evident; obvious.

Therefore your statement is virtually identical to:

"it is not obvious that being able to distinguish patterns is important for human function"

which is certainly very different from your most recent rephrasing...

You have a convenient definition of axiomatic. The definition at Answers-dot-com, which is taken from the American Heritage Dictionary reads:

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ax·i·o·mat·ic, also ax·i·o·mat·i·cal adj.

Of, relating to, or resembling an axiom; self-evident: "It's axiomatic in politics that voters won't throw out a presidential incumbent unless they think his challenger will clean house" (Peter Grier).

Just below that defintion, under the rubric "Antonyms," it reads:

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Definition: understood; aphoristic[

Therefore, i have used axiomatic in the sense of something being understood, something being self-evident. It is not self-evident that pattern recognition is always important for human function--because it makes no distinction between valid pattern recognition and false pattern recognition. As i had made the point about false pattern recognition, i wouldn't have thought it necessary to have explained this to you.

I used axiomatic correctly--you choose to define it as obvious, but that is only convenient to your argument. I have not produced a "mangled misinterpretation" of your "point," based upon your response to Shapeless, whose original statement i continue to agree with, which is that assuming the character traits of one person will be inherent in any other person who can be seen to be of the same "race" is a racist assumption.

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stuh505 wrote:

JLN, Setanta's post is completely off topic. The arguments, although they are supposedly against me, completely ignore the points that I made. It is annoying to hear you echo them, although I would not speak to you so harshly as Marion did. But thank you MarionT, for not buying into Setanta's slanderous insinuations. Your post was much more insightful, and I find nothing to disagree with there.

Just what "slanderous insinuations" are you referring to? I have not slandered you. I have simply pointed out that to assume that because one has observed characteristics in some members of a particular "race," one is then justified in assuming that characteristic will be inherent in any other members of that race is a racist point of view. I haven't said that you are a racist. I continue to state that i consider an assertion of that nature to be racist.

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By the way Stuh, MarionT should accurately be descibed as:

Italgato/Massagato/Chiczaria/Mortkat/BernardR/MartionT. In all of his other incarnations at this site, he has eventually crossed the line of the terms of service, and has been eventually banned as a result. He always comes back, and he always sooner or later (and usually sooner rather than later) tips his hand, looses his temper, and gets banned again.

You're in wonderful company. Today, he has gone to almost every thread in which i have posted to leave off scurrilous insults. In one thread, he commented that like all people from the old sod (by which one assumes he means "The Ould Sod"--it's hard to be sure, as he is so consistently inaccurate) are "potty." As the term was once used by Irish-Americans who were native to Ireland, in his attempt to insult me, he has slandered all Irish-Americans, and possibly intended to slander all of the Irish. As usual, though, he is wrong significantly--i'm a native of the city of New York, not a native of Ireland. Read his posts here again. He is eager to heap insult on me and to call me names, but he has not actually disagreed with what i have said. Since early in this thread, i have taken the position that criticism of particular aspects of a culture is not necessarily racist, and i have been at pains recently to point out that it is a racist point of view to assume that the characteristics observed in some members of a "race" can be assumed to be inherent in other members of that race.

A propos of which, i have not called you a racist. I do consider, however, that the contention that characteristics can be ascribed to all members of any putative race is a racist idea, and if that is an idea to which you subscribe, you subscribe to a racist notion in my opinion, which is not the same as saying that you are a racist.

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A good example of the fallacy of insufficient sample with regard to cultural characteristics can be found by looking at Serbs and Croats. They both speak what is very nearly the same language--distinctions in their languages are insignificant. Croats write that language using the roman alphabet, and practice Catholicism. Serbs write the language using the cyrillic alphabet and practice the Orthodox relgion. People who had only ever met Croats, and who had learned the language might encounter Serbs, and assume that they write in the roman alphabet and practice Catholicism. Not only would they have succumbed to the fallacy of an insufficient sample, but as recently as ten years ago, such an assumption might have cost them their lives.

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Stuh, if Marion had come to my rescue with the kind of thinking he or she displays, I would feel persecuted.

I need no rescuing. I am not familiar with Marion, so I cannot speak of him in general, but his post here seemed to be a rational contribution, at least before the insulting remarks and the shameless double post.

Setanta wrote:

To begin, let me observe that your tone seems to be hostile. It is difficult to know what you intend in the way of your tone of voice, because i cannot hear you.

When the argument/discussion turns to semantics, I quickly fall back to a matter of fact tone in an attempt to be more clear. What you sense is probably a combination of this with a hint of annoyance, for which I apologize, but which was part of my response to your comments which seemed to be on the offensive.

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Just how would you expect someone to interpret such a response, other than that you assert that one can assert that the character traits of one person are inherent in another person who is of the same "race?"

No, that is indeed what I meant. Physical characteristics are character traits which are associated with high probability to ethnicity. There are also many social characteristics with strong associations. I do not claim that anything can be assumed with 100% certainty, merely that it is only rational to make assumptions based on statistcal probability, and that there is no metric I am aware of which can be used to judge the rationality of disliking a person based on a particular character trait. Therefore I assume that all traits, be they physical or personal or otherwise, have equal rational grounds for being the cause of dislike. Given that any characteristic can, it seems, be a rational cause for dislike, and that certain characteristics can be strongly correlated to certain groups, it seems that racism can be explained without any higher order desription than personal dislike.

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The claim you make about statistical evidence based upon an individual's observations is not valid. Statistical evidence can only reliably be derived from representative samples,

I do not suggest that the assumptions derived by such experience are in general correct. Rarely will the evidence be uniformly representative or unbiased, and that is why personal opinions are given less credit than evidence collected from proper surveys and experiments. Nonetheless, making the assumptions will still be beneficial to the observer, especially if they only apply those assumptions under the same circumstances as the evidence which was used to derive the assumption. For instance, for someone who spends their entire life in Washington DC, the status of people outside of their area is quite irrelevant to their assumptions.

Furthermore, making assumptions based on observed evidence is not at all integral to my point -- that was merely the first example that I gave. You could also consider someone who is privy to a large set of unbiased empirical data at their disposal. This data may suggest that 99.9% of people from class C are bad people. Based on this data, this person would be wise to consider a new person from class C to be, probably, bad.

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You are assuming causation without establishing correlation. You are using an inductive generalization, but committing the statistical fallacy of an insufficient sample.

So what if I am? The requirements for making assumptions in day to day life are much less rigorous than for scientific publication. It is within our own personal discretion to assign a confidence to our opinions.

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Pattern recognition can be useful in many situations--it is hardly reliable in determining the likely characteristics of people out of a total population in excess of six billion.

But you ignore the level of randomness involved in the creation of people. If there is zero randomness in the generation than the population size is irrelevant and a single case is all that is needed to make accurate assumptions about all the others. I do not propose that randomness of humans is zero, but it is certainly low enough that many physical, social, and cultural assumptions can be made reliably.

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As i had made the point about false pattern recognition, i wouldn't have thought it necessary to have explained this to you.

Hardly necessary to repaste the definition since we used the same source. Anyway, your statement was not inclusive of "false pattern recognition," because your statement was about the "ability to recognize patterns" which does not imply inclusion of the lack thereof.

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I have not slandered you.

Ok, on closer inspection, that was out of line on my part.

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I have simply pointed out that to assume that because one has observed characteristics in some members of a particular "race," one is then justified in assuming that characteristic will be inherent in any other members of that race is a racist point of view. I haven't said that you are a racist. I continue to state that i consider an assertion of that nature to be racist.

Then we have a very different idea of what racism is. By your definition of racism, I would say that everyone is probably racist -- and if not, then they should be. I certainly expect people to make assumptions about me based on my race, age, sex, attire, and every other descriptor of myself.

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assuming the character traits of one person will be inherent in any other person who can be seen to be of the same "race" is a racist assumption.

So when a person tells you that they are caucasian or negro, you make no assumptions about the color of their skin? It seems that this is all that is necessary to classify someone as a racist according to you. If not, please explain the subtleties of your definition, because they are not apparent to me.

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Italgato/Massagato/Chiczaria/Mortkat/BernardR/MartionT. In all of his other incarnations at this site, he has eventually crossed the line of the terms of service, and has been eventually banned as a result. He always comes back, and he always sooner or later (and usually sooner rather than later) tips his hand, looses his temper, and gets banned again.

Hm, interesting. How do you keep the names straight?

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If one is making assumptions about whether or not to trust someone based upon their immediate discernable behavior, that indeed is reasonable. But to assume that because someone is a member of a particular putative race, that that person will have identical characteristics with all other members of that putative race is the very essence of racism. First because there are in fact no races, just the human race. Second because this ignores that other factors are far more important in determining behavior, such as poverty and cultural milieu. If you were to assert that it is reasonable to assume what the likely behavior of someone will be based upon their cultural characteristics, and you can show that you have a reliable means of determining their "culture of origin," such as, for example, urban poor--then i'd not necessarily consider that racist, as i've already pointed out. The problem you run into is that race is a meaningless reference to superficial appearance. I've already pointed out that i knew someone who was an African who lived among Americans of African ancestry, and who despised them and was despised by them. Obviously, their putative race gave them no commonality, and in fact, the divergence of their cultural origins was the cause of the antipathy. One thing which was hilarious to me was that my friend had learned English from Irish missionaries, and spoke with a thick Irish accent, which often made him incomprehensible to the urban blacks around him.

I had a roommate from Rhodesia when i was at university (that's modern day Zimbabwe, if you didn't know, which i'm not assuming). One evening, when i came home, a "Black Panther" from campus was attempting to "recruit" him to the greater cause of brotherhood in the struggle against the white devils. He said several times to Majalafa "You're my main man"--to which Majalafa eventually replied with some asperity, "No, i am nobody's man, i am a free man." The cultural divide between them proved too great to bridge, which was the more ironic as Majalafa had told me that his ambition in life was to kill Ian Smith, the leader of the white supremecist regime in Rhodesia. I learned to speak French fluently many years after i had taught myself to read the language (i never did well in learning to speak French in high school and university classes). These were men and women from west Africa, and i also have their anecdotal evidence that there was a huge cultural divide between them and Americans of African ancestry. Even if one only considers the example of Majalafa, it ought to be obvious that he had nothing in common with the black Americans around him was derived from the simple fact that they shared membership in a putative race.

I think that your assumptions are only useful if based upon cultural considerations, and only if it can be shown that one can determine one's cultural antecedants by a simple visual inspection. I not only do not deny that that is possible, but have had the experience of being identified in Europe as an American simply based on my experience--i consider that reasonable.

While i agree that people cannot apply scientific statistical analysis methods in their daily judgments--and judge we all do every day, many times a day--i do consider it unhelpful for people to assume to much about what they "know" about others based soley upon superficial appearance. It could easily lead one astray, and can give rise to unwarranted prejudice. When one approaches situations or people with assumptions already made, the probability of interpreting the situation in a manner which confirms one's preconceptions would be, in my opinion, very high. Pattern recognition in relatively "static" situations, such as the behavior of game animals in the wild, or the relative appearance of ripeness in fruits one wished to gather and eat are reasonable and helpful, but even those patterns cannot necessarily be assumed to be 100% reliable. Attempting to apply pattern recognition to human behavior is a far more dubious proposition, given that so much of our perceptions of ourselves and those around us is speculative, and can entail illusions of which we are unaware, or unwilling to acknowledge.

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On the matter of Italgato/Massagato/Chiczaria/Morkat/BernardR/MarionT--it is not hard for me to remember all of his aliases, as he has habitually attacked me under every guise. In fact, his writing "style" and his modus operandi have become sufficiently recognizable (and not just from this site, but from another site with which you may be familiar, although it is now defunct--Abuzz) that within a day or two of his arrival here under a new guise, i and many others spot him.

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Anthropologists like JLN will say there is no such thing as race. (Er, I'm sure I saw him say that recently.) Certainly I've read data that we are all quite a mixed bunch genetically, however we may tend to have grouped over time.
Well, let me not expound on this since it isn't my field.

I totally get Chai Tea and her experience with her friend. My group of girl pals for almost four decades, still in touch, call ourselves SAG, an acronym which has recently taken on new import, but originally stood for Smart Ass Group, after some folks called us that. Between ourselves we were the salts and the peppers, re both ethnicity and culture - and many happily snide remarks flew back and forth, smart asses that we were/are - forming a sort of glue...

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I've reported more than once on the non-existence of "race". I make no claim to expertise in anthropology. My graduate degree is in penmanship. But I do know that the American Anthropological Association petitioned the government a number of years ago to forgo all references to race in the national census precisely because of its mythical nature.

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Setanta,

All of that sounds perfectly reasonable, and I see no clash between anything that I said. In fact, I think that the main cause for contention between us on this thread in previous posts has been the way that you first refute what I say, but provide an explanation which appears to me to be entirely in accordance with what I said.

This was basically what I was referring to earlier when I said "slander," because to somebody reading only your reply, they might see your statement disagreeing with me followed by a perfectly rational explanation, and assume that I must have said something contradictory to that.

Anyway, to clarify, I do believe that I tried to make myself very clear that I was not implying that one person "will have identical characteristics with all other members," and I also did say that nothing can be "assumed to be 100% reliable."

Rather, it was more on the lines of "making assumptions about whether or not to trust someone based upon their immediate discernable behavior," although I made no mention of limiting the verb to "trust," because it could be "like," "dislike," "be annoyed by," or anything else.

I have also attempted to make a point of not directly addressing the question of using ethnicity as a characteristic, except by example. I consider all characteristics of a person, including ethnicity, to all be in the category of characteristics...and therefore all valid means for distinguishment and pattern analysis.

I do not think that any ethnicities are fundamentally inferior to any other, and would never dislike a person for their ethnicity. However, there is a subtle note here, because I very well do make assumptions about whether or not I will like somebody based on their ethnicity. I have found that I do not tend to get along with people from certain ethnicities due to common character traits which get on my nerves. This makes it very easy to make general statements like, "I don't like people of X," which does sound very racist...but is really just an incorrect generalization of the more correct statement, "I do not like people who do Y, and most of the people of X I have met do Y." I really don't think that's racism, and it doesn't mean I can't like and respect people of X.

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I've reported more than once on the non-existence of "race"

Yes, and I've been careful since I noticed that to always use the word "ethnicity" in it's place. Is that a satisfactory substitution?

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My graduate degree is in penmanship.

Wow, is it? I never knew there was such a thing. Does this degree still exist or has it been phased out?

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Stuh, yes. I think "ethnicity" is widely accepted as the term not so much for identifying populations objectively (e.g., in terms of physical traits), but for identifying groups in terms of self-identification (e.g., WE are Chicanos) or other-identification (e.g., THEY are Mexican-Americans), and the like. It has to do with boundary markers (as Set noted the other day), their creation and maintenance. Ethnicity can be based on putative "racial" traits, common ancestry, common origin, common language, religion, or combinations of them. It's much like "tribalism"--both usually serve political functions.

I think penmanship would be called calligraphy today.

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Stuh, i think you are missing a good deal of the points i was making. The first, of course, is that race does not in fact exist, but is only a description of superficial appearance. I am in agreement with Shapeless that it is "racist" to assume that any characteristic can be considered inherent in an individual on such a basis.

I am also making (or was attempting to make) the point that judging on the basis of any superficial appearance, and an assumption of the cultural antecedants of an individual is a bad idea, because our personal experience will not in most cases have given us a representative sample from which to reasonably judge. To say that i understand that people judge based on superficial appearances, that it is plausible so say that peole do that, is not the same as saying that i think it is justified--i don't, and have said so.

Even switching terms to "ethnicity" is a red herring. Are all Irishmen drunks? Are all Jews crafty money-grubbers? Are all Arabs murderous fanatics? Are all Malays habitual pirates? Can you reasonable assume that you know someone is a member of any particular ethnic group based on appearance. Can you tell if someone is Chinese, or Korean, or Japanese simply by appearance? I think the answer to all of those question is or ought to be no.

Your references to pattern recognition are fatally flawed when applied to the judgment of other human beings. They are predicated on the assumptions that you can tell to which particular cultural group someone belongs simply looking at them, and that all members of any particular cultural group will reliably behave in a certain way. What are called "cultural norms" may imply a tendancy to espouse certain values on the part of members of a particular cultural group--but even that is no guarantee that any given individual will behave in a certain manner. I think your basic thesis is flawed, and that the statistical basis for judgment which you allege is chimerical. I have only acknowledged that certain generalizations are possible, and that reactions based on those generalizations are understandable--i have consistently stated that i don't consider such judgments to be based in reality. Those judgments involve far too many assumptions, and far to little reliable knowledge of the subject--the person being judged on superficial description.

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Stuh, i think you are missing a good deal of the points i was making. The first, of course, is that race does not in fact exist, but is only a description of superficial appearance.

Missing it? How could I possibly miss it when you all keep repeating it over and over. I don't know what could possibly give you the idea that I am missing the point, because I have been using the general term "characteristics" and not basing my argument about "race" or "ethnicity." You also act as if "superficial characteristics" don't provide any information!!

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your references to pattern recognition are fatally flawed when applied to the judgment of other human beings. They are predicated on the assumptions that you can tell to which particular cultural group someone belongs simply looking at them,

I did not say the group was defined by ethnicity. The groups can be defined by physical appearance; eg, the group of people with long black hair. So yes, you absolutely can group people by looking at them. But I also never said they had to be grouped by looking at them. However you choose to group somebody, based on any information, is completely independent from my point.

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and that all members of any particular cultural group will reliably behave in a certain way.

Please tell me which statement I said gave you the idea that I thought ALL members of a group behaved a certain way, because I don't believe the implication was there, and I'm tired of having to denying that opinion:

a) "tend to look and act in similar ways"

b) "certain groups of people have commonalities"

c) Setanta wrote:
If, to use your example, "upspeak" (ending every utterances as though asking a questions, ya know?) is annoying to you, then anyone from a culture in which "upspeak" is common would annoy you.

Re: "No, that's not true, but depending on the statistics it might be a good idea to assume that it is true. "

d) "I never assumed that race determines individual behavior. I merely implied that there may be statistical correlations"

e) "admissable to assume that characteristic B is also present, although it cannot be known for sure. "

f) "Physical characteristics are character traits which are associated with high probability"

g) "I do not claim that anything can be assumed with 100% certainty, merely that it is only rational to make assumptions based on statistcal probability"

h) "I do not suggest that the assumptions derived by such experience are in general correct. Rarely will the evidence be uniformly representative or unbiased,"

i) "... [i do not say that] randomness of humans is zero, but it is certainly low enough that many physical, social, and cultural assumptions can be made reliably."

j) "So when a person tells you that they are caucasian or negro, you make no assumptions about the color of their skin? "

k) "I tried to make myself very clear that I was not implying that one person "will have identical characteristics with all other members,""

l) "I also did say that nothing can be "assumed to be 100% reliable." "

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stuh505 wrote:

You also act as if "superficial characteristics" don't provide any information!!

I don't "act" as though that were true, i assert that it is true. The only information provided by superficial appearance is the fact of that appearance itself--it cannot be stated with certainty that superficial appearance tells us anything which will be usefully predictive with regard to the future behavior of the person bearing that appearance. Therefore, superficial appearance (which i have tied consistently to contentions about race) is not a valid basis for judging character.

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your references to pattern recognition are fatally flawed when applied to the judgment of other human beings. They are predicated on the assumptions that you can tell to which particular cultural group someone belongs simply looking at them,

I did not say the group was defined by ethnicity. The groups can be defined by physical appearance; eg, the group of people with long black hair. So yes, you absolutely can group people by looking at them. But I also never said they had to be grouped by looking at them. However you choose to group somebody, based on any information, is completely independent from my point.

My point all along is that it is not valid to proceed from A to B, as in "this group has appearance A, and my experience of people with appearance A is that they have characteristic B, and therefore anyone whom i encounter with appearance A will exhibit characteristic B." That is the generalized inductive fallacy writ large. Just because a characteristic is prevelant within a culture does not assure us that every member of that culture will display that characteristic, and even less so that someone who simply appears bo be from that culture will exhibit said characteristic. So far, this says nothing other than that one can create artificial categories based on family resemblance. That tells us nothing about whether or not there will be a correlation between appearance and characteristics.

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and that all members of any particular cultural group will reliably behave in a certain way.

Please tell me which statement I said gave you the idea that I thought ALL members of a group behaved a certain way, because I don't believe the implication was there, and I'm tired of having to denying that opinion:

a) "tend to look and act in similar ways"

b) "certain groups of people have commonalities"

c) Setanta wrote:
If, to use your example, "upspeak" (ending every utterances as though asking a questions, ya know?) is annoying to you, then anyone from a culture in which "upspeak" is common would annoy you.

Re: "No, that's not true, but depending on the statistics it might be a good idea to assume that it is true. "

d) "I never assumed that race determines individual behavior. I merely implied that there may be statistical correlations"

e) "admissable to assume that characteristic B is also present, although it cannot be known for sure. "

f) "Physical characteristics are character traits which are associated with high probability"

g) "I do not claim that anything can be assumed with 100% certainty, merely that it is only rational to make assumptions based on statistcal probability"

h) "I do not suggest that the assumptions derived by such experience are in general correct. Rarely will the evidence be uniformly representative or unbiased,"

i) "... [i do not say that] randomness of humans is zero, but it is certainly low enough that many physical, social, and cultural assumptions can be made reliably."

j) "So when a person tells you that they are caucasian or negro, you make no assumptions about the color of their skin? "

k) "I tried to make myself very clear that I was not implying that one person "will have identical characteristics with all other members,""

l) "I also did say that nothing can be "assumed to be 100% reliable." "[/quote]

"d" and "i" are the culprits here, as far as i am concerned. As well, "f" is a suspect statement--associated with high probabilty of what? That certain character traits will go with certain appearances, that, for example, all redheads will be quick to anger and display bad temper?

As for "d", "I never assumed that race determines individual behavior. I merely implied that there may be statistical correlations"--your implication is flawed. That is the statistical fallacy of generalized inductive reasoning--if population A displays a prevelant characteristic X, then one can assume that any member one encounters from population A will display characteristic X. You have been saying that "pattern recognition" is an important tool in human success. I don't deny that, i simply deny that it can reasonably be applied to the relations between people. It ignores so much. If, for example, you are suspicious of a member of population A because you suspect that he will display characteristic X, your suspicion may condition the individual's response to you, and you may have indulged a self-fulfilling prophecy. "I don't trust him--hmmm, he's acting suspiciosly--you see, i was right, he's not trustworthy." As race does not exist, there can be no statistical correlations. Race can only be determined by superficial appearance (which is why i've leaned on that term), and therefore, to assume that there were statistical correlations between race and individual behavior is to indulge the generalized inductive fallacy based soley upon superficial appearance. The reason i've consistently referred to culture is that it is far more important in determining individual behavior, and even then, one indulges the generalized inductive fallacy in assuming that all members of a culture will behave predictably based soley on their participation in the culture.

As for "i"--[i do not say that] randomness of humans is zero, but it is certainly low enough that many physical, social, and cultural assumptions can be made reliably."--you have not established by any reasoning or valid appeal to evidence that it is true that randomness of (whatever--you don't specify) in humans is low enough that the assumptions to which you refer can reliably be made. Once again, you are proceeding from the general to the specific in alleging that valid preditions can be made about individual behavior based on appearance, or cultural participation. There is nothing wrong with generalizing per se, and it is in fact necessary to consider entire populations or any large group within a population. It breaks down, however, as a useful indicator when one moves to the consideration of the individual. Any individual you encounter could be an exception to the rule you have established, without even considering that the rule you establish may be flawed based upon incorect perceptive assumptions, or one's own prejudices.

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Has anyone yet criticized the premise of this thread? The question it raises is why criticism of a culture is considered racism. Who says that?
I am always criticizing aspects of cultural systems, but this is not racism because I do not consider those practices, ideals or institutions within a society's culture to have any necesssary connection with the physical nature of the members of the society. Indeed, most societies today are pluralistic, i.e., they have members from many geographical areas (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, etc.), all practicing the same culture (to a large extent). Raise a Chinese baby in a Norwegian household and he will grow up to think and behave like his native Norwegian neighbors. Raise a Norwegian baby in a rural Chinese household and he will grow up to think and behave like his Chinese neighbors. Their biological chararistics will be seen to be irrelevant. To assume that biology determines behavior is racist.

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Why is any criticism of a culture considered racist?

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