Foo - What is your race?

And before that: If you were a deer, you were food; if you were a human you were the same.; If you were a martian in a flying machine, you were the basis of human religion.
exactly.

:roflmao: English is spoke in Scotland, oh man thats rich.

You ever been to Scotland? They don't normally speak English, they speak Scotch, and some celtic here and there. ;)

Ah hem. That would be Scots (if there was such a language). Scottish Gaelic is spoken here and there.

They speak English alright, it's just that you can't understand what they're saying Jimmy.

Ah hem. That would be Scots (if there was such a language). Scottish Gaelic is spoken here and there.

They speak English alright, it's just that you can't understand what they're saying Jimmy.
Scotch, actually is a perfectly valid term for something Scottish; scotch whisky, scotch broom(a weed), scotch broth, scotch ale, scotch oats, etc.

If you can't understand it, it's not the same language.

If you can't understand it, it's not the same language.
that's not entirely true. dialects are linguistic variations -- mostly in pronunciation and spelling -- that use the same syntax, grammar and most of the same vocabulary, though not always the same parts of the vocabulary. [burns, in scots: "Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord, Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that"; in somewhat standard english "you see yonder gentleman, called a lord, who struts and stares and all that..."].

consequently, they are the same language, but not necessarily mutually intelligible. however, all dialects of a given language are variants of a standard language and consequently, all speakers of a given dialect can understand the standard. a scot a, a cockney and a mississippian [sounds like the start of a joke, doesn't it?] might nnot be able to understand each other but, assuming they can read [;)], they can all read the standard bible and understand the bbc foreign service.

Yes but a scot a, a cockney and a mississippian do not share the same culture now do they?
And obviously the original joke whooshed right on past the lot of you.

But in response to the seriousness, english is similer to middle english is similer to old english which came from old german which spawned new german and we all seem to use the same alphabet, so we are all one big happy family of dialects. No, if you cant easily understand it, it may as well be a different language, from a cultural perspective.

This thread is skookum but, it weakens, how long untill?

The visual cues that define a "Race" make up less than 1% of one genes. How is that a "race"? Skin color is one of the fastest evelutionary changes that humans make, taking only about 20,000 years to make a full, black to white or white to black, shift. We all have the same number of melatonen glands, just some peoples' are turned on more than others, one gene turns the dimmer switch out of the 3 million in our genome.

Why so fast? Because melatonen is the dark substance and it block UV rays. To much UV and the vitamen thiamen is destroyed leading to many severe birth defects in one's offspring, to little UV and the body won't make enough vitamen D which would lead to fragile bones and teeth due to a lack of calcium(which, to be absorbed, needs D). Either way, those not adapted to the local UV level quickly fall by the wayside.

It seems the normal skin colour for humans is dark, but when people moved to areas with less sunshine, they needed to get a lighter skin to cope with the vitamin D requirements.

yet moslems and jews -- who were not ethnically european -- were typically accepted as european if they converted to christianity. what defined them was religious faith, not hereditary physical chracteristics.

i'm sure a farmer's daughter in 9th century ireland noticed that the vikings who had sacked her village noticed that they were a foot taller and blond or red-haired rather than dark haired, but it wasn't their appearance that defined them as heathens [barbarians]. when the vikings' descendents converted to christianity in the 11th century and stopped sacking and pillaging, they were accepted as just another christian peoples.

it's interesting that the english chronicles don't refer to harald hardrada or william the conqueror as heathens or even norsemen.

the word "race" has been around for quite a while, but the meaning it has today -- of a taxonomic group representing an inbreeding population -- is relatively vrecent in western history. in the past "race" meant anything from a family to a different community in the next valley.

not to open the subject of historical semiotics, but even though we use the same words, it's important not to anachronisitcall apply modern meanings to the past.

Your examples aren't really valid.
Most of northern Europe belonged to a relatively homogenous culture (in a broad sense of the word), where trade between different groups of people had been common for hundreds of years.
A person in Ireland and someone from Denmark (using modern place names) back then, were not very different from each other.
(You're also forgetting, or ignoring, the fact that people from what today is Scandinavia, pretty much founded the major cities in Ireland. Dublin and Cork, the two largest in the republic, were founded as Norse settlements. The pillaging and looting was a small part of it all. Scandinavian-Irish interaction at the time was dominated by ordinary trade.)

What I'm talking about is people looking substantially different, like arabs or mongols or dark-skinned africans. They would NOT have been accepted as "equals" in those days. For sure, they wouldn't have been killed on sight either, but it would have been an uneasy contact in most cases.

Your examples aren't really valid.
Most of northern Europe belonged to a relatively homogenous culture (in a broad sense of the word), where trade between different groups of people had been common for hundreds of years.
A person in Ireland and someone from Denmark (using modern place names) back then, were not very different from each other.
(You're also forgetting, or ignoring, the fact that people from what today is Scandinavia, pretty much founded the major cities in Ireland. Dublin and Cork, the two largest in the republic, were founded as Norse settlements. The pillaging and looting was a small part of it all. Scandinavian-Irish interaction at the time was dominated by ordinary trade.)

What I'm talking about is people looking substantially different, like arabs or mongols or dark-skinned africans. They would NOT have been accepted as "equals" in those days. For sure, they wouldn't have been killed on sight either, but it would have been an uneasy contact in most cases.
I defer to velocipedo. Yes, it would have been an "uneasy contact," but more due to discrepancies of language and religion than to dissimilarities of appearance. Like in the Kevin Costner movie "Robin Hood." Nobody mentioned that the dude, Robin's friend from the Crusades, was black, but they sure were uptight about him being a Muslim! (I know, I know. The flick was not historically accurate, but it's still a pretty good example.)

yet moslems and jews -- who were not ethnically european -- were typically accepted as european if they converted to christianity. what defined them was religious faith, not hereditary physical chracteristics.

i'm sure a farmer's daughter in 9th century ireland noticed that the vikings who had sacked her village noticed that they were a foot taller and blond or red-haired rather than dark haired, but it wasn't their appearance that defined them as heathens [barbarians]. when the vikings' descendents converted to christianity in the 11th century and stopped sacking and pillaging, they were accepted as just another christian peoples.

it's interesting that the english chronicles don't refer to harald hardrada or william the conqueror as heathens or even norsemen.

Yes but a viking and a 9th century Irishmen still look relatively similar. It'd have been a much larger shock to see a 2m tall African pillaging their village, or Innuits, or Aztecs.. A viking and an irishman would be able to hybridise far more easily.

My point is that races seem to roughly correspond with culture. You refer to the middle ages....a european would have been able to (for the most part) safely assume that an Arab was a muslim, and vice versa. It's an indication.

Scotch, actually is a perfectly valid term for something Scottish; scotch whisky, scotch broom(a weed), scotch broth, scotch ale, scotch oats, etc.


Try telling that to the Scots.



If you can't understand it, it's not the same language.

No, there is such a thing as dialects and regional accents. I think Americans would have a hard time understanding Jimmy Nail, but most people in Britain would be able to understand him just fine.

Edit: I just read Velo's reply and I think he basically says the same thing.

to be honest, this is all quite interesting. i think it's worth discussing what "race" means today and how cultures and peoples interacted with each other in the past.

first, let me deal with the irish and europe in the middle ages. it's important to keep in mind that the period spans an immense amount of time, roughly a thousand years from the "fall" of the western roman empire in the middle of the fifth century to the start of the renaissance and the reformation in the fifteenth century. western europe [eventtually, christendom, excluding byzantium] also covered a massive land area, from greenland, iceland and ireland to poland.

the "major cities" of ireland were mostly villages until the 17th century, in as much as they were sites of norse occupation, yes they were important. to the extent that the irish economy was almost totally agrarian, without any commerce to speak of, they were relatively unimportant to the irish.

what is significant is that the irish [scotti, if anyone is interested] were considered a "race apart" by the rest of chistendom until the end of the seventh century. i think it's significant that official europe was more inclined to think of the newly-converted and formerly-pagan anglo-saxons as part of the european fold than the irish, who had been christian since the middle of the sixth century.

the sticking point, and what made the irish seem so different was not their appearance, but the peculiaryity of their christianity, which was quite different from mainstream european christianity. things came to a head in 663, when the leading irish bishops were called to the synod of whitby, where they were forced to adopt catholic practices. even as late as einhard, a carolingian historian writing in the 9th century, the former peciliarity of irish religious practices of the seventh century [the date of easter, the monastic structure of the irish church and the monastic tonsure] were woth mentioning. he described the irish as strange, holy people, and ireland a land of "episcopi vagantes" [wandering bishops].

the thing that defines the transition from late-antique to medieval europe, more than anything, is the change in cultural self-definition from erstwhile "barbarian" kinship groups [families, clans and tribes] to a social organization based on the ecclesiatical infrastructure. i can't remember exactly which historian who crystalized it , but one of the key events in the development of a "european" culture was when charlemagne became the emperor of rome under the aegis of the church rather than just the king of the franks. at that point, europeans became a people, rather than an assemblage of peoples.

the thing that defined EUROPE, rather than "the land mass once occupied by the roman empire and now occupied by franks, goths and lombards" was the shared religious and ecclesiatical infrastructure. ethnically, europe remained quite a mix of peoples for quite a while -- far less homogeneous in those terms than one might think. most of this was probably due to the nature of the subsistence economy and the fact that the vast majority of people simply didn't move around very much. [even if peasants, who made up the major proportion of the population could legally travel, there were very few decent roads upon which they could travel, and river transportation was both dangerous and expensive.]

aside from a few coastal towns, there was virtually no trade between valleys, let alone between different countries, throughout most of the middle ages in northwestern europe. there was a slight re-birth of trade during the 12th century, when a warming climate and advances in agricultural technology created an agricultural surplus and significant population growth for the first time since the fifth century, but that ended rather abruptly [and would stay ended for two centuries] with the black death.

significantly, the people most likely to do trade of any kind [apart from norsemen in rus] were southern europeans who traded mostly with arabs and byzantium in the mediterranean. trade was not a northern european thing.

as for the consciousness of race as a category of speciation [the term could mean anything from "family" to generational cohort to an economic occupation group, like "a race of artists"] goes, it's worth noting the treatment of jews and arabs in spain during the reconquista of the 15th century. the christian spaniards were perfectly willing to extend to them the same rights and obligations of christian spaniards [I]if only they would convert to christianity. once a jew or arab converted, he/she was considered as spanish as anyone else. the important thing was religion.

all of this is to say that ideas like race and ethnicity and our definitions of "the other" are infinitely variable and mutable throughout history, people believe different things at different times, and identify themselves in different ways. this whole conversation would have been utterly meaningless to a peasant working the fields of enguerrand de coucy's estates in the 14th century. he would not have been able to conceive of race in the way that we do now... and we cannot conceive of how he identified himself and "the other" at that time.

"race" is a construct very much dependent on our historical context. it has no absolute meaning.

What I'm talking about is people looking substantially different, like arabs or mongols or dark-skinned africans. They would NOT have been accepted as "equals" in those days. For sure, they wouldn't have been killed on sight either, but it would have been an uneasy contact in most cases.
i just wanted to deal with this directly.

europe was an extremely stratified society throughout the middle ages. everyone knew their place and, in most cases, people stayed in those places. people at the varfious levels of manorial society would not have seen other people at other levels as "equals" at all. this was actually quantified in the germanic system of "wergelt," where the lives of people of different stations were specifically valued. if you killed or injured a serf, you paid his family and lord a fine of a goat and a chicken [or whatever], and if you killed or injured a freeman, you paid his family a fine of three sheep, two pigs and ten goats [or whatever].

i frankly doubt whether a serf thought of anyone but another serf as an equal, and he was probably quite clear about the fact that anyone who was not a serf was probably his "better." he was probably just scarerd to death of mongols, though not because of what they looked like, so much as because of what they were likely to do. and he probably thought he was spiritually better-off than an arab, since the latter was a heathen with a one-way ticket to the torments of hell. he would have had the same opinion of the jews, but might have considered them his social superiors, since they were under the protection of the local lord.

i won't even speculate on what they thought about dark-skinned africans, since few people would ever have met one. i suspect that, in the very rare event that they did, they would be curious and fascinated, more than anything else.

the whole idea of social equality is completely anachronistic. medieval society was based on a very clear absence of equality and, from what we can tell [peasants did not write, so we don't know what they were thinking], most people by-and-large accepted that fact.

I think that race as we mean it probably began in the 17th century. The very first slaves in America were English indentured servants. The English soon discovered the slave trade that existed in Africa and tapped into it because they realized that their American colonies needed cheap labor quickly. The original justification for chattel slavery of Africans was religious not racial, in line with velocipedios' posts. In other words, it was OK to enslave Africans because they were heathens, not because they were black. Of course, in time the Africans in America converted to Christianity, and the Euro-americans had to devise new rationalizations for keeping them in bondage. So the slaveholders determined that slavery was still justified because Africans were inferior in intelligence and virtue due to the color of their skin. Race and racism as concepts were born simultaneously, and the new racial theory helped so-called Christian, democratic slaveholders (who were hypocritically espousing brand new theories of equality) to make it through the night without being wracked with guilt. And there gradually evolved modern theories of race, and everybody lived unhappily forever after.

Velocipedio and others--I'm sure this theory is grossly oversimplified, but does it have any validity at all?

You seem to be really anal about religion.
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't that much of a factor in those days.

And Roody, I know racism (the way we think about it) existed in the late middle ages, so it's not a 17th century "invention".

You seem to be really anal about religion.
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't that much of a factor in those days.

And Roody, I know racism (the way we think about it) existed in the late middle ages, so it's not a 17th century "invention".Don't leave us hanging......

cdcf, i would really like to know your source for "And Roody, I know racism (the way we think about it) existed in the late middle ages, so it's not a 17th century "invention"."

a couple of comments... the first is that every etymologiocal source i've consulted today, inclusing my own etymological dictionary, says that the definition of race as "one of the great divisions of mankind based on physical peculiarities" first appeared in english in goldsmith's natural history in 1774. the scientistic theory of "race" as biological speciation, manifested as distinct social and cultural behaviour and characteristics essentially began with j.f. blumenbach's de generis humani varietate nativa in 1775, which gained a considerable amount of fame in the early 19th century.

prior to the end of the 18th century, race meant just about anything aside from what it means today. it referred to a family, to a tribe, even to an occupation [christopher wren was said to have assembled "a race of master builders" to build st. paul's cathedral in 1675.

for the last forty years or so, every serious anthropologist has considered what you call race to be clinal variation rather than distinct genetic divisions. populations manifest more or less this characteristic or that and tend to blend continuously into other populations. consequently one can talk about as many or as few races as one likes, since distinct groupings are constructed patterns on top of infinite indistinct clinal variations.

i nearly asphyxiated laughing at this comment:


You seem to be really anal about religion.
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't that much of a factor in those days.

until the 19th century, religion was just "much of a factor," it was the only factor.

a hundred throusand protestant frenchmen were slaughtered in one week in the summer of 1572 [the st. bartholomew's day massacre] simply because they were protestants. the bloodiest wars in europe before the 20th century -- the wars of the reformation -- were faught over religion. in elizabethan england, catholics were forbidden from living withing a certain distance of major cities [i can't remember the exact distance now] and were not allowed to hold public, naval or military office. this only changed with the catholic emancipation act of 1829.

i won't even mention the crusades.

for most of the middle ages, temporal power was wielded by the church, pure and simple. the emperor of rome [later, the holy roman emperor], for example, was explicitly the vassal of the pope. part of the reason for this was that, with the collapse of roman civil administration in europe in the 5th century, the only organization capable of maintaining any kind of order and unity in europe was the church. religion was a big deal.

roody... i think your theory makes a lot of sense, actually. christians were prohibited from holding other christians as slaves from the earliest years of christianity. [they couldn't lend money at interest to other christians, either.] it was a great sin. certainly, other institutions evolved -- like indentured servitude -- that served much the same purpose, but with the secularization of europe in the 18th century, and the fact that erstwhile heathen slaves were christianized, slaveholding societies like the colonies had to find another justification for slavery, and race, as eventually formulated by blumenbach, provided it. without research it's a hypothesis, but it's a consistent one.

"We must secure the existance of our people and a future for Black children"

"Wow, cool!! What a neat saying! Right on!!"

"We must secure the existance of our people and a future for Hispanic children"

"Whoohoo!! Yeah! Viva la Raza! Way to go!"

"We must secure the existance of our people and a future for Asian children"

"Cool! Gong hee fat choy! Yayyyy!!!!"

"We must secure the existance of our people and a future for white children"

"WTF!!!!!! You sumb*tch you'd better run fast or we'll string you up! (sound of utterer of said words and his children being beaten to a bloody pulp with sticks, metal pipes, anything at hand).

------

The saying itself is really innocuous. An existance for people and a future for children. Whee. If any other group had come up with it, Mervyn's would be putting it on T-shirts and selling tons of them (just like they sell t-shirts right now with the colors/numbers/sayings of gangs, go look it up) but since THOSE people, white people, or rather one white person, came up with this calm, collected, inoffensive, saying but said it in such a way as to dare suppose that whites might look out for their own existance, the PC crowd and their puppeteers are ready to string the guy up and anyone who even THINKS that saying once they come up with the technology.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

The saying itself is really innocuous. An existance for people and a future for children. Whee. If any other group had come up with it, Mervyn's would be putting it on T-shirts and selling tons of them (just like they sell t-shirts right now with the colors/numbers/sayings of gangs, go look it up) but since THOSE people, white people, or rather one white person, came up with this calm, collected, inoffensive, saying but said it in such a way as to dare suppose that whites might look out for their own existance, the PC crowd and their puppeteers are ready to string the guy up and anyone who even THINKS that saying once they come up with the technology.
i disagree. the problem with the fourteen words is that it seeks to create and separate a "people" that does nolt exist. "white" is not a "people," it's a skin colour. it's a clinal variation of physical characteristrics. i would feel pretty much the same way about any of the variations of the fourteen words that you've posted.

race, racists and racialists try to create something that is not there, in order to divide.

"We must secure the existance of our people and a future for White children"


------

The saying itself is really innocuous. An existance for people and a future for children...As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Knowing what words REALLY mean depend on who is saying those words, knowing the history of those using the words, and the real intentions and goals of people using those words.

Look at the words "A final solution to the Jewish Problem". If those words had been spoken by a Jewish leader in the 1930's who was seeking to rescue Jews in Europe, those words could be understood as "immigration" to a safer nation. But, when those words were spoken by Hitler, they meant the mass murder of millions of men, women and children. It is what is in the heart of the speaker that determines the true meaning of "mere words".

There are many groups around America that sponsor Polish festivals, Greek festivals, German festivals, Italian festivals. When they talk about celebrating and preserving their history and culture, THEY are telling the truth about being FOR something. Such festivals are always fun, positive events, where folks from every background feel welcome, and enjoy participating.

When someone is promoting an event to "celebrate the White race and its culture", they are talking about a KKK rally, a rally for Pat Buchanan or Tom DeLay, or a lynching of a member of an ethnic minority. "Preserving the White race" are the "code words" used by those who propagate hate against minorities in America.

Racism is a form of mental illness. The fact that many young white males in America see Pat Buchanan and Tom Delay as their role models and parrot the sickening "thoughts" of those dangerous and demented "leaders" proves how "mere words" are the bacteria that spreads racism throughout a nation.

thanks, alan. good post.

just to add... there is no such thing as "white culture."

Well, velocipedio, we'll just have to agree to disagree. You believe what you want to believe, and I'll do the same.

And by the way, I never said that the TERM racism existed in the late middle ages, just that racism itself did. No need to dig up the etymology...

Haven't read all the posts so perhaps I'm repeating something.

There's only known race of the human specie still alive today is the Homo Sapiens. Another race died a long time ago, that was the Neanderthal.

Okay, I'm just going to ignore all the other crap and put in my selection: Pacific Islander...which isn't listed. From the island of Guam in the Marianas. Year-long tan... you're jealous. I like sunsets and long walks on the beach. Press # 162 now to choose Michael.

thanks, alan. good post.

just to add... there is no such thing as "white culture."

there's no such thing as white culture? are you saying that whites in the united states (for example) don't have a culture distinct from african-americans?

It seems the normal skin colour for humans is dark, but when people moved to areas with less sunshine, they needed to get a lighter skin to cope with the vitamin D requirements.

But if you are too light for your lattitude you destroy Folic acid in the blood as it goes just under the skin. Low levels of Folic acid in the skin of a pregnant female lead to, I think, spinal bifida. So it is a trade off.

a

Well, velocipedio, we'll just have to agree to disagree. You believe what you want to believe, and I'll do the same.

And by the way, I never said that the TERM racism existed in the late middle ages, just that racism itself did. No need to dig up the etymology...
no. because you failed to provide an example, i'd have to say you're mistaken, or making it up. just saying something does not make it so.

the problem is that the conception of race did not exist in the late middle ages and thus racism could not have existed in the late middle ages.

quite simple, really.

I can't provide you with an example, because I do not buy or collect every book I read throughout my life.

I know what I know. If you don't believe me, that's fine. I still know what I know.

Oh, and I should also point out that the view that there was no conception of (what we today call) race in those days, is absolutely ridiculous. That's pretty much saying that people then were either stupid or blind, or both.

I can't provide you with an example, because I do not buy or collect every book I read throughout my life.

I know what I know. If you don't believe me, that's fine. I still know what I know.
that's disappointing. you can't point to anything more specific than "i know what i know." forgive me, but that means "i believe without foundation." i can't argue against faith. if you were one of my students, i'd fail you for this.


Oh, and I should also point out that the view that there was no conception of (what we today call) race in those days, is absolutely ridiculous. That's pretty much saying that people then were either stupid or blind, or both.
i'm not saying that people never noticed physical differences. the point is that these differences werre never attributed to "race," as we understand the word today, until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. ideas change, and race is one of those ideas.

iof you read about the reconquista of fifteenth century spain, you'll find that the moors were only considered moors until they converted to christianity. the fact that they were north african berbers did not define them in the eyes of christian spaniards, but their religion did. if the spanish had conceived of race the way you do, they would have become "christianized moors," and not spaniards who formerly were moors.

The whole idea of the "five races of man" is demonstrably a relatively late construct. People saw the world differently in the past. They will see it differently in the future.

rapidcarbon, I salute your masterful troll. :beer: