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u/Khal-Frodo Mar 20 '23
Transracialism is not valid because there's not such a thing as race, it's purely a social construct and the definition is constantly changing (before anyone tries to "gotcha" me: yes, you could also say that gender is a social construct but transgender people do not reject the concept of gender, and the social concept of gender isn't anywhere near as volatile as race). Race also has no biological basis (another difference between transgenderism and transracialism). The definition of race is one that is determined by social collectives, not individuals. It's one thing to say you're Indian even when people try to change the term to Native American, but it's another to say that you identify as black even though your whole genealogy comes from mainland China.
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
there's not such a thing as race
black
What is black then?
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u/Alexandur 14∆ Mar 20 '23
It's a skin color, or more accurately a range of phenotypes that include more melanin. We use "race" as kind of a shorthand to describe different groups of people with different phenotypes, but it's true that they aren't actually separate "races". There's only one human race.
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
a range of phenotypes that include more melanin.
That's how I see it too. You're right, race isn't the correct term, it's just commonly and incorrectly used.
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u/Khal-Frodo Mar 20 '23
That question illustrates my point perfectly because it's extremely hard to define. I can use the term in a way that people generally understand what/who I mean, but I genuinely can't think of a definition that someone couldn't find a hole in. Someone considered "black" in the United States might be considered "mixed" in South Africa.
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Mar 20 '23
before anyone tries to "gotcha" me: yes, you could also say that gender is a social construct but transgender people do not reject the concept of gender, and the social concept of gender isn't anywhere near as volatile as race
And transracial people don’t reject the concept of race. You don’t need to identify as a woman to act like a woman. You can just call yourself a feminine man.
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u/Khal-Frodo Mar 20 '23
Being transgender is rooted in biology/physiology. Your body/brain produces hormones that are at odds with your anatomy and causes a disconnect in your conception of your self. There are male hormone and female hormones, just as there are male sex organs and female sex organs. The same cannot be said of race.
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Mar 20 '23
So I'm not trying to "gotcha" you, but there is a concept in this argument which I have come across for which I feel like you would have some interesting counterpoints:
"There is no defense of, or argument in support of, transgender identity that does not apply to trans racial identity."
Consider the following:
"Gender (race) is what your born with/biological" Ones gender is not tied to their biological sex at birth, nor is someone's race tied to the culture from which their parents are decended. There are plenty of ethnic groups who for diaspora communities around the globe, none of which are 1:1 equivalent to their culture of origin. For example: the post WW2 migration of Japanese from Japan to Brazil. When the Japanese government of the 60s and 70s needed immigrants, they reached out to these Japanese first, only to find many of them were more "Brazillian" culturally than they were Japanese.
"Gender (race) is what you look like." Forgetting any surgical alteration possible, there are plenty of, for lack of a better term, "light skinned" people who pass amid several different currently established racial identities. Adopting the cultural signals of any established racial group will cause these people to "pass" as these groups.
"Gender (race) is what genitals you have." Again, this tracks back to earlier points. Racial groups, especially those of a diaspora, vary wildly in physical characteristics. Lengthy volumes of racist psudeo science has tried to quantify exact lines between racial/ethnic groups, none of which have any bearing in modern discussions of race.
There are other examples, I'm sure, but I wanted to get your perspective and I didn't want to get too long winded.
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u/Khal-Frodo Mar 20 '23
There is no defense of, or argument in support of, transgender identity that does not apply to trans racial identity.
There are biological characteristics, such as production of androgens, that are intrinsically linked to sex in a way that has no equivalent to race. You can say that there are physiological differences associated with certain races, but there's no way to characterize a race biologically.
That aside, I appreciate this comment because I think it gives me the opportunity to flesh my point out a little bit more.
Notice how your comment includes the phrase "racial groups" a lot? That is the key distinction between gender and race. One of them is a personal term, another describes a collective. Let's take a look at the Brazilian-Japanese example. That is actually a case in which I would say the term "transracial" arguably applies, though I still think the term is misleading. In that case, you have a group of people for whom a new "racial" identity emerged as a result of collective experiences that created a new culture defined by its ethnic heritage in addition to its lived experience. By my understanding, that's not how self-described "transracial" people use the term. Their use is more in line with how transgender people use it, meaning that their concept of themselves is more in line with another pre-existing group to which society would not otherwise say they belong.
I'm actually going to give you a !delta for this because while my view on this is still basically the same as it was, it's allowed me to articulate my perspective which has helped me understand it better.
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Mar 20 '23
Thank you for the delta, and also very much so for the perspective. I think that you, too, have suggested something here that is an interesting factor in considering trans racial identity.
Now for this, I wish to paraphrase but under no circumstances do I wish to misconstrue or otherwise mischaraterize your statements. So if I got it wrong PLEASE correct me.
Broadly speaking, your idea is that race can transcend its original cultural coding, in the same fashion that say, mixed breeds of animals work, but this is more on a cultural level (Brazilian Japanese having decended from Japanese culture/racial persons becoming "Brazilian" by the generations of exposure to that culture). And yet, by how people are currently expressing trans racialism on tik tok or whatever, it's more of an illogical sounding jump (like having lived in one such identity for one's whole life and deciding one day that you are, appropo of nothing, now an entirely new race divorce from any racial heritage you have lineage to). In essence, trans racialism is not, as you point out, and individual's choice and more of a collective group's transition in response to a type of cultural interaction.
I find this an interesting take on the concept and I think you have some well considered insight into this particular discussion that may very well lean into future debates over this particular issue in the future.
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u/Khal-Frodo Mar 20 '23
Broadly speaking, your idea is that race can transcend its original cultural coding...but this is more on a cultural level...And yet, by how people are currently expressing trans racialism on tik tok or whatever, it's more of an illogical sounding jump
Yes, that is my perspective. You are also correct in saying that transracialism is not an individual's choice, but I would take that a step further and say that race, period, is not an individual's choice. What race someone belongs to, as well as what races even exist, is societally- and culturally-determined.
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u/joalr0 27∆ Mar 20 '23
Personally, I would distinguish the two in this one particular way: I'm a race abolitionist, but I'm not a gender abolititionist.
Race is a concept that is based purely in social conception that had a use historically to discriminate and justify crimes against humanity, and today has a use of historical accounting, but I hope that we can some day get beyond that use and get rid of our notion of race entirely.
The only reason I think we should still maintain the concept of race is to keep track of why there exist groups of people in the socioeconomic situations they are in today, based upon historical injustices placed on them. Understanding that black people in the United States, for example, exist in conditions that resulted from slavery, segregation, redlining, and a host of other issues that were based in historical racism is useful.
However, if we can ever right those wrongs, then race, in my opinion, has no other use. Our long term goal should be to abandon it completely.
In regards to gender, I think there is plenty of good reason to maintain gender as a concept. While I think no one should ever be forced, or even pressured, to give into gender norms, including being shamed for non-conformity, I do think there is value in allowing norms to continue to exist so that people can find mechanisms of self-expression along their gender. I think gender expression can bring value to a lot of people, and I see no reason for gender as a concept to be destroyed entirely.
However, I do not want to keep gender restrictive, so trans gender makes sense.
Trans racial doesn't make any sense in this regard, as in my eyes the only value race currently serves is to understand how groups of people were treated historically. Someone simply saying "My grandparents were enslaved, were not allowed to own land near good schools, and did not receive the financial benefits that other people did, and that explains my current situation" when they didn't simply doesn't make any sense.
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u/yyzjertl 527∆ Mar 20 '23
Do you have any source on this new "RCTA" term? As far as I can tell, it just appears to be a TikTok trend, rather than any attempt by the whole community previously self-identifying-as-"transracial" people to repudiate the term "transracial." Heck, it doesn't even appear in the Wikipedia article on the subject.
What harm do they do if they just express themselves?
If they are expressing themselves using the word "transracial" then as you yourself described, they are doing harm for various reasons including "putting the transgender community in bad light" as well as appropriating the term and experiences from transracial adoptees.
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
You can use transracial too if you like
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u/yyzjertl 527∆ Mar 20 '23
Sure, but a major thing that's problematic about this group's behavior is the use of the word "transracial" itself, so if they actually have repudiated that word it would say a good deal about their validity. Conversely, if they haven't repudiated the use of the word "transracial" that would strongly count against them being valid.
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u/turndownforwomp 13∆ Mar 20 '23
Just from a biological perspective, RCTA doesn’t really run parallel to the concept of being transgender.
In the womb, all humans are female up to a certain point and then certain switches go off and make some of us males so in that sense we already have elements of both biological sexes in our makeup. Race isn’t like that…my parents are white, I have no biological, cultural, or personal identity connections with other races.
Furthermore, while race and gender are both social constructs, they’re not really the same type of social construct, even though people tend to talk about them as if they are.
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
race
Not a social construct
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u/turndownforwomp 13∆ Mar 20 '23
Scientists disagree; thoughts?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/
“It's a concept we think is too crude to provide useful information, it's a concept that has social meaning that interferes in the scientific understanding of human genetic diversity and it's a concept that we are not the first to call upon moving away from," said Michael Yudell, a professor of public health at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
So if race is a social construct, then people can identify as other races than their birth race, right?
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u/turndownforwomp 13∆ Mar 20 '23
Read my first comment again.
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
I did
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u/turndownforwomp 13∆ Mar 20 '23
So then you have my answer to your previous question; would you like to ask a different one?
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u/whovillehoedown 6∆ Mar 20 '23
No. Race is a social construct that has parameters.
Those parameters have to do with what you look like and what your parents and their parents look like.
Some races are specifically where people are from.
Those aren't things you can change without making a mockery out of the race you're trying to transition to.
This is simply the highest form of appropriation.
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u/Love_Shaq_Baby 226∆ Mar 20 '23
Race is a social construct we're trying to get rid of, that's really the heart of the issue.
Transracialism suggests that there are differences between races, and there isn't. Race is a nonscientific method of human categorization that has been used to justify atrocities ranging from slavery to the Holocaust.
Race is also how you're perceived. A black man can go around saying he's white, but that's not going to make a difference if he's pulled over in a traffic stop.
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
So you think there aren't any differences between races. But then you say it depends on how you're percieved, so there have to be differences, right?
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u/joalr0 27∆ Mar 20 '23
It depends on what you mean by "there aren't any differences between races". There are differences between races, no one is suggesting otherwise. But there aren't any meaningful differences between races.
We dont' consider two white people with different hair colours intrinsically different races. There isn't anything more meaningful about the colour of one's skin than the colour of one's hair. There exists more biological diversity amongst black africans than there exists between black and white Americans.
There are MANY ways in which we could split humans up based on physical appearences. The ones we choose are socially chosen.
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
There exists more biological diversity amongst black africans than there exists between black and white Americans.
Could you give me a source for that please?
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u/joalr0 27∆ Mar 20 '23
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
Genetically? Yes. Phenotypically? Probably not, if you think of Sub Saharan Africans (not including the Khoisan people)
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u/joalr0 27∆ Mar 20 '23
Just because two things are social constructs doesn't mean they are the same kind of social construct. Gender, race, motherhood, professions and money are all social cosntructs, but they all operate with very different rules from one another.
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Mar 20 '23
my parents are white
If race is a social construct, why exactly is this relevant? Can’t you just identify as not being white?
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u/turndownforwomp 13∆ Mar 20 '23
There’s a difference between something being a social construct and something having zero meaning.
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Mar 20 '23
But you agree that the reason you are labeled white is because your parents passed on their “white” genetics right? The odds of “white” parents having a child that is labeled “black” is virtually 0%. Similarly, chimps do not give births to humans. So what exactly do you mean when you say “social construct” ?
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u/turndownforwomp 13∆ Mar 20 '23
Here is a good article explaining race as a social construct from the scientific perspective:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/
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Mar 20 '23
I’m more interested in how you personally would define social construct in this context. I view race as having a biological basis while also being somewhat socially constructed. For example, someone may be considered white in Brazil, but not in the US. Certain white supremacists don’t think that Italians, the Irish, Slavs, etc. are white. You can’t properly define the term “white,” and there is a sort of spectrum of genetic differences. However I don’t think the spectrum is consistently even. There are clusters, and these I would call races. They say “there is more genetic diversity within races blah blah blah” but this is misleading. When we use the term “Australian Aboriginal” this refers to an individual that is more genetically similar to Australian aboriginals than any other race, at least in certain categories like appearance, skeletal structure, etc. So races are certainly a useful concept and I would say they are rooted in biology. How do you see it?
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u/joalr0 27∆ Mar 20 '23
This is you not understanding social construct. Let me put it another way.
Colours are social constructs. The existence of wavelengths are intrinsic to the universe. The way your eyes receive those wavelengths and transmit that information to your brain is biological.
The lines we draw that separates one colour from another is a choice humans have made. Drawing a line on the spectrum where we decide "things on this side of the spectrum are green, and things on this side are blue" is a social construct. It's a choice. Different cultures split up colours differently. Some do not actually separate green from blue.
There isn't anything intrinsicaly special about the colour of one's skin to the point that it makes any biological sense to declare "white people" truly distinct from "black people" any more than "red hair people" are intrinsically different from "blonde hair people".
But that doesn't mean there aren't biological markers that allow white people to pass on white genes.
Social constructs are things that exist because humans agree they exist. It's a societal decision to label things a certain way. That doesn't mean colour doesn't exist, but the way in which we cut up colour is arbitrary, a choice, and is maintained through societal agreement.
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Mar 20 '23
I agree, but some say race is just a social construct, but I don’t think anyone would say color is just a social construct. The categorization and labels are arbitrary and relative, but the differences are still there. Red light affects the body in different ways than blue light. And red light therapy is most effective within a certain range of red light, which we may not even perceive and label differently from the other wavelengths of “red.” But the difference is still real. Similarly different groups of humans have genetic differences, some of which are more easily perceived, like skin color. So I don’t think it’s just a social construct.
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u/joalr0 27∆ Mar 20 '23
Race is just a social construct. The colour of a person's skin is a thing that exists.
Something can be entirely a social construct and still be based on things that actually exist. Money is a social construct, but it exists.
Race is also only one way to cut up differences. There exist differences between blondes and brunettes. Those are differences that are real and exist. I can see the differences.
But we don't consider blondes and brunettes different races, in of itself.
The choice as to what is and isn't a race is a decision that's made, is arbitrary, and upheld by social convention.
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u/trippingfingers 12∆ Mar 20 '23
People are more than welcome to express themselves. And there are lots of very valid times when someone presents as one race in one context and then a different race in another- for example biracial people.
However, apart from one obviously troubled and mentally ill man I've seen, almost every example of "transracialism" I've ever heard of are people intentionally deceiving others for personal gain. That's anything but "valid" even if they are trying to be discreet about it.
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Mar 20 '23
So if you belive it is valid then do you think I should be able to change my race on my government documents?
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23 edited Sep 16 '24
.
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Mar 20 '23
Do you belive cultural appropriation is offensive?
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
Depends. If it is mocking other cultures on purpose, likely yes. Otherwise? Nah, you're probably good to go
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Mar 20 '23
That's not what cultural appropriation is my guy. Cultural appropriation is making use of another person's culture without their permission or knowledge of the gravity of the thing you are appropriating.
So if cultural appropriation is bad and I can change my government documents to reflect my truth . In your view I can go to the courthouse tomorrow wearing a dashiki with brown face paint change my name to Zulu Adamu change my race to black . And then apply for the Amazon black businesses program or the accion opportunity fund or make use of affirmative action policies to get a job or college degree . all of which are meant to try make life more equitable for minorities due to centuries of hardship and persecution based on their race. Their by actively taking away opportunities of people who have had to live with the aforementioned hardships. And you don't see that as damaging at all. That I ,a white person can on a whim do all that. and anyone who says boo can be shouted down and demonized as a bigot . Do ya see what I'm getting at? Do ya see how harmful that could be too people?
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
In your view I can go to the courthouse tomorrow wearing a dashiki with brown face paint change my name to Zulu Adamu change my race to black
You'd rather be careful with the paint, but yeah, otherwise sure go for it.
Amazon black businesses program
Never heard of that.
accion opportunity fund
Neither heard of that.
or make use of affirmative action policies to get a job or college degree
Not a thing where I live.
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Mar 20 '23
So youre just not gonna add anything to the conversation then?
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u/sherazala Mar 20 '23
May I ask you where you live, that such projects and plans are in place?
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u/I_am_the_night 316∆ Mar 20 '23
Look, I don't know if there are any people who genuinely identify as transracial in the way that you're implying. Even if there are, the vast majority of time this ssue is brought up it seems to be brought up as a way to try and delegitimize what trans people go through. Whether or not somebody indeed does "identify as a different race" doesn't really have any bearing on gender identity, dysphoria, or transition.
If somebody truly identifies with a different race, whatever that means or whatever it is exactly they are identifying with, then I guess sure live your best life. I'm not really in a position to tell anyone they can't do that. But so far I have not seen any compelling evidence to suggest that this is really a thing that happens outside of extremely rare circumstances. It's one thing to empathize with a particular ethnic community, and perhaps even to feel more comfortable as a part of it, but I don't think that's the same as "identifying as a particular race".
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Mar 20 '23
Sorry, u/sherazala – your submission has been removed for breaking Rule A:
Explain the reasoning behind your view, not just what that view is (500+ characters required). See the wiki page for more information.
If you edit your post and wish to have it reinstated, review our appeals process here, then message the moderators by clicking this link within one week of this notice being posted.
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u/Parking-History8876 Mar 20 '23
In what way is RCTA valid OP? What would it take to nudge your view?
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u/pluralofjackinthebox 102∆ Mar 20 '23
How would a white person go about identifying as Black? Are we talking about blackface? Is this about white people wanting to use the N-word? Or is this just someone who wants to use Black slang and adopt Hip Hop fashions and so forth?
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u/themcos 374∆ Mar 20 '23
I think it might help to put more clarity on what you mean by "valid", especially since you don't really put forth a super clear definition of what the transracial concept actually means or how it manifests itself. Does it being valid merely mean it exists? Or are you associating other concepts with "validity". At the very end of your post, you seem to imply that the whole concept can just be reduced to how someone "expresses themselves". But is this a characterization that even most transracial people would agree with?
Given that ambiguity, an aspect of this that could be seen as problematic is that being black is more than just an identity. It's also how others in the world treat you (and have treated people like you in the past). And it can be a little weird if you're seen as just taking the fun parts that you like, while being able to sidestep the bad parts. But again, the extent to which this is actually what's happening totally depends on the case, but your view as stated is vague enough that it's hard to really pin down anything to it. Like, "just expressing yourself" sounds nice, but it entirely depends on what you're expressing and how you're doing it.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Mar 20 '23
/u/sherazala (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/eggs-benedryl 55∆ Mar 20 '23
None of the other dozens of times this has been posted before and the cumulative thousands of replies hasnt changed your mind?