Do you as an autistic person have a racial identity?

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Perhaps no evidence for race, but certainly for those features that identify a person as part of a particular race.

I get this weird feeling that we are actually agreeing in some way, and that we are both too busy talking past each other to see it; but that's life!

Ah, I'd forgotten that. Maybe it helps explain why I never internalised the idea that I was part of a particular race - there's no such thing. Wikipedia would seem to broadly back up the idea that race doesn't have a sound scientific basis.
"Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created, often by socially dominant groups, to establish meaning in a social context. Different cultures define different racial groups, often focused on the largest groups of social relevance, and these definitions can change over time. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28h ... ization%29

Absolutely not! But this history of systematic dehumanization couldn't have gone without long-living consequences

My language uses the same word.

I'm in Eastern Europe and I'm trying to tell you that we have a very strong concept of nations but not of races. Yes, people from different parts of the world look differently but what matters is who (and how) raised a person, not who was their DNA donor.

Race is a social construnct in a way that some physical features suggesting one's ancestry influence one's position in a society.
If the social construct of race was successfully deconstructed, one's skin color would remain as their looks - similarily to how e.g. hair color is seen in the society of mine. Just a physical feature.

First of all it's a question of definition. A race is a different thing than a species. Every single significant attribute that is specific to a local population already defines a race. Different races are able to have fertile descendants who have mixed attributes otherwise it would be different species not races. Chimps and humans are different species for instance. Black and white people who are adapted to very different amounts of ultraviolet rays are just different races and can have fertile children who have mixed attributes. As long as there are visible differences it's nonsense to deny them.

If race was to humans what breed was to dog, it would be unhealthy for a Japanese woman to have the child of a tall African or European man. It isn't.

There are breeds of dogs that shouldn't breed together cos it will kill the mother. Toy poodles shouldn't have German shepherd's babies.

Humans aren't different enough for that. And I think it's dangerous/racist to suggest we are.

But you are wrong and it's rather racist to deny obviouse differences. Even the food needs to be different. You shouldn't give milk to Asians or Negros. But of course you can try to use black people as your secret service agents in Russia or China or white people in Kongo and make them easy detectable victims. Black or white skin a social construct? Guess there is no difference between moon and earth as well then?

Last edited by quite an extreme on 29 Jul 2020, 3:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

They're not denying that people can have different adaptations and conditions based on their ancestors geographic origins. Correct me if I am wrong, but the complaint is about comparing 'races' to 'breeds', which I also find to be a poor comparison. Breeds were almost entirely willed into being by humans in the 19th century (so was scientific racism for that matter). Differences between 'breeds' are much larger than differences between human 'races'.

You're aware that Africans have been herding cattle for centuries and that the majority of black people are not lactose intolerant, right?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- ... 180950064/

An estimate of the percentage of adults that can digest lactose in the indigenous population of the Old World:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance

I think when deciding weather to give milk to a person, the best approach would be to ask that person if they wants milk.

Agreed, 100%.

Compete BS.

Races are not "breeds" (in the way that dog or horse "breeds" are) because they are not the result of superhuman creatures "breeding" varieties of humans for specific purposes - to please these super human creatures- and to meet their ends. Blacks were already recognized a seperate "race" from White Europeans before new world slavery started. Blacks in Africa are still considered Black- even though their ancestors were never owned by american slave owners. Human varieties arose spontaneously as adaptations around the world to various climatic conditions etc.

I used to naively think that human "races" are analogous to "breeds" but they are not analogous.

Ahh ... THAT makes sense!  Maybe that's what Jiheisho was trying to tell me all along, and I'm just too dense to get it.And THAT is the goal for which we should all strive -- appearance is just a thing, and "race" doesn't matter.

what this w'rld very much needeth anon, is a valorous english to fusty english translat'r, eh?

I see physical differences, but when a line is drawn based on one feature alone, that is social.
Person A: Narrow facial features, dark skin
Person B: Narrow facial features, light skin
Person C: Wide facial features, dark skin
Person D: Wide facial features, light skin

Draw one line between these people. No, wait, it's a matrix. No! Draw one line!! !!

I look and see that persons sharing facial features and body types have over 100 points of commonality. But someone comes along and says the line should be drawn between the persons sharing the same skin tone - 1 commonality. If these people are looking, they are not seeing. Unless one is Albino --- then they will group by facial features. So the rule is arbitrary.

To make it personal, by facial features and body types, my daughter and I are similar and my son and husband are similar. By skin tone, my kids are similar to each other, separate of myself and my husband. Which way does the world draw one line between the four of us? (putting the gender binary "line" aside) I am not sure what "race" the world will assign them, or what "race" they will assign themselves. Perhaps multiracial which is now an option on many forms.

In the USA South in the 1980s --- at different times my father-in-law and husband were asked to choose black or white. There was no such thing as "red" or "brown" there and then. They looked at the white people at the front of the store, the black people out back, the white kids in the reading group with books and the black kids without. It didn't matter what body types or facial features they had, it didn't matter their abilities and skills ---- choose a skin color. Pick a side. You will find the related socioeconomic opportunities available to you (or lack thereof). Social construct.

I am who I am, but the world sees me as a strange white woman. I have both enjoyed its advantages and suffered its disadvantages.

P.S. And I didn't even mention AS differentials, or handiness... shopping habits, etc. Can races be defined by shopping habits? My six-year-old recently declared that he is a Spender like dad, and my daughter is a Saver like me. (Nobody claimed to be a Sharer).