[FORUM] How have definitions of race changed, and are changing, in your community?

Will Baird made the point that "race" is a category of constantly expanding membership.

"Operation Jane Walk" (Watch on Vimeo)

Keep in mind that Benjamin Franklin's writings, he railed against the nonwhite immigrants moving into the US and corrupting its culture. Those immigrants? Germans. Yep. Germans. He considered the English, certain Germans (Saxons, iirc), Dutch and perhaps the Scots to be white. No one else was. 100 years ago, Italians and Irish were not "white" by general American social standards. They are definitely considered such today. What is 'white' and what is not is a moving standard. Dr Lee points that out in an interesting manner.

It appears that the definite of 'white' is moving to encompass asians and latinos. By 2035 or 2040, it may well be that being Mexican is no different than Italian. Or Irish. The differences would absorbed and some kept by society as a whole and some not, just like any other immigrant group in the past once the flow from the point of origin has slowed to a trickle. Had we still be getting waves of Italians from the late 19th century all the way to the present, our societal uneasiness might still be present.

Unfortunately, developments make it look like, as Dr Lee points out again, that white is going to be excluding black in the life trajectories of those within their categories. Listen to the short above. Its a bit depressing. Black is the underclass. Sad and depressing that.

"Blackness"--an antithesis--is key. Proof of this can be found in the "negrescence" that late Victorian ethnologist John Beddoe claimed to find in the Irish in his 1885 The races of Britain. Oh, and among other Celts, too.

In The Races of Britain Beddoe first introduced his main method of analysis of pigmentation data, his ‘Index of Nigrescence.’[74] To Beddoe, hair colour was far more important than eye colour. Stepan describes his method as “a curious mathematical formula” and a “quasi-algebraic equation ostensibly measuring precisely the darkness of the skin.” In the present context, however, it is the translation of his formula’s deliverance’s into cartographic form—an aspect that Stepan ignores—which attracts our attention. The procedure involved adding twice the percentage of niger to the percentage of dark hair, and then subtracting the values of fair hair and red hair. This was expressed as (2N+D−F−R), where N=Niger (jet black), D=Dark Brown, F= Fair and R=Red. The simple fact that Beddoe considered constructing an index of darkness at all seems to have strongly racist overtones. Even the use of the word nigrescence has racialist resonance with fears of civilization reverting to savagery, through increasing darkness of skin. The nigrescence index incorporates ideas of a progessionist ladder with blacks on a lower rung than whites. However, Beddoe was not the only one to adopt this approach. The Racial Committee of the BAAS, for instance, attempted to define racial categories, by calculation of ‘degree of nigrescence’ for different sectors of the population. “Criminals, for example, were shown to have an excess of dark eyes combined with dark hair . . . over the general population.”

[. . .]

Beddoe often emphasized the predominance of dark types in Ireland and Wales, which could also be extended to include the ‘Celtic’ types of Scotland. These ‘types’ were seen to be a degrading element of the population and Beddoe suggested that “[t]he combinations of dark brown or black hair with blue, light grey or dark grey eyes are remarkably prevalent in all Gaelic countries, belonging perhaps to the ancient race of Cro-Magnon, but certainly to a stock long ago thoroughly incorporated with the Gaels.” Beddoe also associated racial types with social issues, and remarked that “[d]ark hair and eyes are as prevalent in Wales as Radicalism and Non-Conformity.”

This is ridiculous to me and--I suspect--to all of my contemporary. The definition of "white" does seem to have expanded from "nominally or supposedly Germanic peoples of northern and northwestern Europe" to "everyone from Europe and its settler offshoots". Any number of things, including the decline of cross-border migration in Europe but also things like the discrediting of racialized politics by the Second World War and the integration of Europe in the Cold War and so on, has contributed to this. "White" does seem to be open to any group that has enjoyed, or is perceived to have enjoyed, enough upwards social and economic mobility to compensate for whatever prejudices exist. Perhaps the Maghreb, the wider Middle East even, as the former region at least makes the transition from a labour-exporting region to a labour-importing one, will join in. "White" and "non-white" may become substantially, as one observers suggests in the American Prospect, a division between groups perceived as successful and groups that haven't succeeded enough.

That's one theory. Does this reflect your society's experience? Do you think that this reflects North America's experience? What groups have been excluded, which groups have gotten in, and where is this all heading?

Discuss.

[FORUM] Are humans and animals on a shared continuum of intelligence?

"Deep Space Nine Lives" a photo by randyfmcdonald on Flickr.

The 7 February 2011 installment of American cartoonist Hilary Price's strip Rhymes With Orange was good--thanks, gmul295!--combining humour with intelligence.

"Deep Space Nine Lives" compared the cat carrier to the Bajoran wormhole of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, both places where ordinary beings can find themselves mysteriously trapped in only to be released in a far-removed area of the universe. Humans (and comparable entities) in the Star Trek continuity can only begin to understand the Bajoran wormhole in terms of advanced physics and a verifiable theology (sometimes at the same time, often not). Is that so far removed from the way that a cat might understand a cat carrier, as an enclosed space that one is put into, that is transported at a certain speed for an extended period of time, only to be deposited elsewhere? I'd ask Shakespeare, but as he's not a language-user the effort would be--among other things--foolish.

What extent of congruity between human and non-human mental processes do you assume exist? Does it exist? Is there or is there not a continuum of intelligence in the animal kingdom connecting humans with different species of animals to varying degrees, or do you think--as Justin E.H. Smith seems to suspect--that there are fundamental discontinuities? In other words, does this installment of Rhymes With Orange make any sense in reality or can it be nothing but conceit?

Discuss.