A number of people are attempting to change their race by watching certain videos, hoping to manifest physical change. “They have convinced themselves it works because there’s other people who have convinced themselves, as well,” says a media professor.

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[–]Q-Continuum-kin 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (12 children)

Experts agree race is not genetic. But they contend that even though race is a cultural construct, it is impossible to change your race because of the systemic inequalities inherent to being born into a certain race.

They are trying so hard to not arrive at the logical conclusion of "race is not genetic".

Tiq Milan, a Black transgender activist and writer, said it is a disservice to transgender people to compare the two. Race historically emerged as a social construct to establish a racial hierarchy with the white race at the top, whereas variances in gender identity have existed for thousands of years, he said.

You can literally determine a person's sex thousands of years after they die by looking at their skeleton.

[–]LtGreenCo 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

But they contend that even though race is a cultural construct ... "race is not genetic"

Yet another example of political correctness obstructing truth.

Race, or at least what humans call race, certainly has a strong genetic element, even if parts of it are socially constructed.

East Asians (previously 'Orientals') for example, generally have flatter faces, slanted eyes, smaller frames, black straight hair, etc., and that shit is encoded in their genes and passed down through generations. To say race isn't genetic is to flat out deny the overwhelming abundance of evidence to the contrary.

The non-physical stereotypes e.g. they know Karate and love math and have names that sound like metal cookware falling down stairs, yeah, that's socially constructed. But it's fucking irresponsible and stupid to leverage those examples in order to discredit the clearly genetic aspects of race.

[–]Q-Continuum-kin 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Their dumb sociology theories say that race is a social construct and sex is a social construct. They really lay into that with the transgenders but as soon as Rachel Dolezal enters the room they start tying themselves into knots to say yes but also no. I just found it really funny how this article put that on full display.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thing is race and sex are completely different. Race being a social construct is a lot more solid an argument than sex being a social construct.

See the thing with race is that is is a lot more like a "spectrum" though I hate that word for this. It's just that race isn't one thing or the other. It isn't bolian. Unless you go into stupid American race theory where it is all White or Not White or Black or not Black where convenient and lumping the vast majority of the world's population into the weird ass brown category, which they don't fit into cleanly anyway.

So like race, yeah personal appearance and shared genetic markers through relatives is a genetic thing that isn't "socially derived" and I guess if you want to boil race down entirely to appearance that's fine. But here is where I think it is completely different, how do you define the racial categories? Can you come up with some objective, non-culturally influenced criteria upon which you can classify the races and come to anything resembling what we know to be the racial categories as popularly believed? It's not as simple as ovum and sperm production.

Wanna do skin color? That's fine, what shade do you draw the line at? How about Mexicans and Arabs basically having the same skin color but not being the same race? Race or at the very least how we choose to categorize it is basically a kind of social construct and the races aren't exactly fixed either since, if you put two races together in the same island, lo and behold they will end up mixing and creating a new race out of the old races that don't really exist anymore.

So unlike sex, race sort of is fluid, sort of is a spectrum, and sort of is socially defined. It's just that the same idiocy that says you can get pregnant you just gotta believe is the same sort of idiocy that makes you think you can change your genetic heritage just by acting like a stereotype and making a funny face with plastic surgery.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Race, or at least what humans call race

What human beings call "race" is an incoherent, undefinable mess that covers arbitrary physical features, ethnic and cultural groupings, tribalism, and only occasionally, by accident, correlates to actual genetic groupings. And even then, those groups don't make any sort of consistent family tree.

Try defining the word "race" in a meaningful way. You can't. You can't even decide how many races there are.

Please don't embarrass yourself by including "Whites" and "Blacks" as two races, that's the sort of nonsense that leads Americans to call Australian Aboriginals visiting the States "African-Americans" because they have black skin. Australian Aboriginals have been genetically separated from Africans for longer than so-called "Whites" or Europeans have even existed.

The so-called "Black Race", Africans, contains more distinct ethnic groups, with more genetic diversity, than the rest of the world combined.

During the height of the Victorian Era "scientific racism" period, when biologists last took the concept of human races seriously, anatomists got to the point of dividing people into as many as sixty fundamental races, at which point they realised the absurdity and gave it up as a bad idea. And that was before they discovered genetics, which makes the concept of human races even less viable. All the so-called "races" have been madly fucking every other race in sight, spreading their DNA all over the place, for tens of thousands of years. We're all mongrels and the idea of "pure races" is 100% unadulterated bullshit of the first degree.

East Asians (previously 'Orientals')

East Asians (the peoples of China, Japan, Korean, Taiwan) are incredibly diverse. The idea that there is one "Oriental" or "East Asian" so-called race is pure pseudo-scientific nonsense. Here are just a handful of "East Asians" or "Orientals". Notice that these Asians run the full gamut from extremely pale white skin to dark brown. They vary from having full facial hair to very little tendency to grow beards, and even the presence of epicanthic folds (slanted eyes) varies greatly.

That is just the tip of the iceberg of genetic diversity in just one so-called "race". China alone is home to at least 55 ethnic groups.

Japan, which prides itself on being a single ethnic state, is delusional: not only are the Ainu and Ryukyuan peoples genetically distinct from the Yamato ("Japanese-Japanese"), but there has been plenty of genetic intermingling between them too.

smaller frames

Body size is significantly determined by environment. The height of Japanese people increased by an average of an inch per decade after WW2.

[–]LtGreenCo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think you're a little too far into the weeds.

Race is not a scientifically accurate category by any means, but it doesn't need to be. That's not really what we use it for.

Humans are pattern-matching machines and we've evolved to group people by inherited commonalities. With one look we have learned to deduce (with some wildly varying margin of error) the rough ethnicity and geographic ancestry of a person and we've found it to be a useful attribute for narrowing down identity. That's really all it is.

But just because it's not science doesn't mean there isn't a strong correlation between genetic traits and certain racial markers. So to say that race isn't genetic is, at best, disingenuous, and at worst, purposely deceitful. The people who say that are typically just trying to dismiss valid arguments out of hand.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The concept of race gets far less narrow as well as you move away from the culture that is defining it and their neighbors. Wanna lump in all the white people together as one race? That's fine for a Chinese person, but they will be able to see the racial differences between them and their neighbors, same as an Italian and a German tend to look a bit different.

None of it is an exact science of course.

[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

They are trying so hard to not arrive at the logical conclusion of "race is not genetic".

These twins, Lucy and Maria Alymer, are born from the same mother and father.

[–]OuroborosTheory 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

oh NO: wanna bet that after this (circa 2027) we'll be getting militant twin politics? twins demand only twin actors portray twins, others complain about twin actors who playing twins or the same person, everyone throws accusations of "internalized geminophobia," twin-studies professors encourage "political twinhood" among their students ...

[–]M1GarandDad 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Maybe they'll demand that non-twins be called "singletons" at all times.

[–]OuroborosTheory 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I did make that joke once; also "northpaws" for the next set of militants; and "big people" once the recent Seven Dwarves controversy blows over

[–]NastyWetSmear 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (6 children)

If there a video that makes me handsome, young and rich? I don't want to do anything, I just want to watch it, so nothing that involves working out, getting a job or drinking the blood of virgins.

[–]xoenix[S] 2 insightful - 4 fun2 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 4 fun -  (3 children)

FaceApp. Select your favourite private yacht as a background.

[–]NastyWetSmear 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I want to Be rich and handsome and young, not seem rich and handsome and young. Surely these magical videos will make my dreams come true, right??

[–]xoenix[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

You are suffering from internalized bigotry. Society needs to affirm your beauty and wealth.

[–]NastyWetSmear 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ah! My mistake... Or, their mistake.

[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

If there a video that makes me handsome, young and rich?

Not a video, but a painting.

[–]NastyWetSmear 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

That's the second time in the past month someone has made a Picture Of Dorian Grey reference to me. Either I look great and they think there's a picture of me in my attic getting older and fatter, or I look like I'm wearing the sins of another person all over my face.

[–]xoenix[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Does this remind anyone of old, skeptical MSM articles about transgenderism?

[–]QueenBread 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Race is NOT a cultural construct, it's a real thing that exists. There are genuine physical differences between races. Unfortunately, it's forbidden to say that, because morons think "different" means "inferior".

[–]ID10T 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

“When it comes to who we are as racialized people, it is how we present to the world, but it’s also how people treat you,” Milan said. “It’s not just putting on the hair and the makeup and talking and walking [in] a kind of way. That is fetishizing, and it’s objectifying, and it reduces the beautiful and complicated cultures of people of color.” Ohhh you're so close to self realization! So close

[–]IMissPorn 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

WTF. Well that's a new one at least.

[–]reverse-alchemy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is like “these people are poisoning themselves “ while demonstrating that the author has been poisoning themselves as well.

[–]LyingSpirit472 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

These things are complete bullshit. I mean, I tried the subliminals in order to become Black so my life would matter. I mean, now it activated the low melanin in my skin so I can start changing sunlight into magic, but it didn't make my dick grow bigger so what's the point?

[–]OuroborosTheory 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

this'll link up with the "foundational Americans" cultists who believe Native Americans are later invaders and Blacks weren't imported to the US South and Caribbean but originated there ...

[–]cant_even 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"...media professor"

OK; here we have "Revenge of the Theater Kids". A 'profession' and academic disclipine™ based on "let's pretend" starts believing its own shtick.