What is caucasian today?

[Captain Caboose]

What designates someone white these days? Legit like is it just skin color or is it heritage? 

 

I am 51% European but like 20% Caribbean and the rest is whatever but i have tan skin because of my Caribbean heritage so in society's mind i must be Mexican or Muslim, right? 

 

 

I was born a white baby, but Caribbean people get tan more easily so yeah

 

[puddingkip]

Holy fuck this is the most American post I have ever seen. Race is a social construct with no scientific back up. The outer ends of it are clear. I am white, Usain bolt is black. But when you go to the middle there is no way to define a divide because race is not a real thing and does not matter a fucking bit

[Manfred]

Wait, how can someone be 51% European?

[t0night]

you are mixed race and a good example of what pudding mentioned. race is a social construct. this doesn't mean it's not real; clearly it still has significance and impact for everyone. however, just as in the era of segregation when black people with lighter skin tones were able to "pass" for tanned white people and gain entry to exclusive establishments et cetera, there's clearly no actual line you can draw to say: okay, you have enough of x heritage in you now, you are this race. race (the idea of it, and the cultural effects it has) functions to create you as a person both in your own psyche and in the perceptions of others. it can't be boiled down to genetics or percentages.

[Captain Caboose]

Wait, how can someone be 51% European?

Ancestry from different parts of Europe?

[Dylyinyang]

Well there are different "races" ( we can't call it that way ), differences like the position and the size of the jaw, the form of the skull and of course the pigments of the skin etc. But I'm not specialised in biology so I can't answer with exactitude to your question

[funkle]

We're all a bunch of mutts these days. You legit need to get blood tests done to get an idea of what your ancestry is. If you call yourself caucasian these days, the average person wouldnt disagree with you if you were white. Im sure there's a history on it that someone on this forum will research but ya know. 

[Moyser]

We're all a bunch of mutts these days. You legit need to get blood tests done to get an idea of what your ancestry is. If you call yourself caucasian these days, the average person wouldnt disagree with you if you were white. Im sure there's a history on it that someone on this forum will research but ya know. 

 

I guess you could say that's a good thing, humanity will slowly change to one big race within a few hundred years (if we don't destroy the planet first while killing each other), no more black, yellow or white just a "sligtly tanned" color with probably some stereotypical thing remaining from the old races like having a wide nose, or weaker jaws due to not having to eat undercooked/raw food anymore. It's one less thing to draw us apart.

[puddingkip]

Ancestry from different parts of Europe?

No. That still doesn't make you 51% European. You're European or you're not. You, clearly, are not. You're an American. I am, and so is Mario Ballotelli. Race is bullshit and skin colour is not defined by continent. An andalusian and a swede look nothing alike, yet Greeks look, quite unsurprisingly, almost exactly the same as Turks.

 

 

And on a side note. How did you get to a super specific number like 51%? And especially 51% as that is such a weird number

[[Unactive Account]]

Caucasian in Canada usally means someone who is white and/or also has an european background. Such as having ancestors that are from england

[0123847a;fsdaklf]

Race is a social construct with no scientific back up.

 

 

Left is a Siberian Tiger. The right is a Bengal Tiger.

 

Every serious biologist will recognize these as subspecies to the tiger.

These tigers are different due to genetics caused by difference in environment, not social constructs.

 

 

This Logic applies to every animal on earth, and sure as hell goes for humans too.

 

 

 

Here's an animation of human movement. You can see how many different climates humans have been though. These humans have adapted to the changes of their environment. example: Closer to the equator = darker skin due to more sunlight

[t0night]

Left is a Siberian Tiger. The right is a Bengal Tiger.

 

Every serious biologist will recognize these as subspecies to the tiger.

These tigers are different due to genetics caused by difference in environment, not social constructs.

 

 

This Logic applies to every animal on earth, and sure as hell goes for humans too.

 

 

 

Here's an animation of human movement. You can see how many different climates humans have been though. These humans have adapted to the changes of their environment. example: Closer to the equator = darker skin due to more sunlight

 

the difference is that there's not a huge spectrum ranging from looking really like a siberian tiger but having lots of bengal tiger parentage to the opposite. in fact there's no spectrum at all. hence it's not a valid comparison, also there's no taxonomically acknowledged subsets of humans either so again it's invalid to compare that. 

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

technically caucasian means from the caucasus region so the iranian in me is more caucasian than the british (but less white.)

[puddingkip]

technically caucasian means from the caucasus region so the iranian in me is more caucasian than the british (but less white.)

racist 19th/early 20th century changed "white" to caucasian in their racial systems because at the time it was believed the "true, pure" white man came from there

 

 

Left is a Siberian Tiger. The right is a Bengal Tiger.

 

Every serious biologist will recognize these as subspecies to the tiger.

These tigers are different due to genetics caused by difference in environment, not social constructs.

 

 

This Logic applies to every animal on earth, and sure as hell goes for humans too.

 

 

 

Here's an animation of human movement. You can see how many different climates humans have been though. These humans have adapted to the changes of their environment. example: Closer to the equator = darker skin due to more sunlight

 

Actually there are less subspecies of tigers than previously believed. And a Bengal tiger and a Siberian tiger have (small) genetic differences between them and do not interact, because one kind lives in Sumatra and the other in Siberia. This is clearly not the case with people. There is no way you can define different subspecies of humans. South Africa is probably the best known case where this was sort of attempted but it was quite impossible to do this properly and it resulted in a vague and complicated system. Because human races are a social construct. There are no scientific facts that divide humans into races

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

racist 19th/early 20th century changed "white" to caucasian in their racial systems because at the time it was believed the "true, pure" white man came from there

 

ik, jus sayin

[sulker]

-

You are arguing that humans are split into subspecies as tigers are, and that the genetics that define you make you a certain species.  Your argument is valid as long as there are distinct differences (ie skin colour, basic characteristics that determine survivability in a climate through natural selection).  Just as the Bengal tiger is bigger than the Siberian tiger, meaning that it will mostly win if it were in a fight, a divergence in genes will show the superiority of one and the inferiority of the other.  Would you then support the argument that some races are therefore genetically superior to others due to a favourable combination of genes?  

 

If you don't, you are contradicting yourself.

[t0night]

You are arguing that humans are split into subspecies as tigers are, and that the genetics that define you make you a certain species.  Your argument is valid as long as there are distinct differences (ie skin colour, basic characteristics that determine survivability in a climate through natural selection).  Just as the Bengal tiger is bigger than the Siberian tiger, meaning that it will mostly win if it were in a fight, a divergence in genes will show the superiority of one and the inferiority of the other.  Would you then support the argument that some races are therefore genetically superior to others due to a favourable combination of genes?  

 

If you don't, you are contradicting yourself.

his argument that there are genetically different races does not absolutely necessarily imply that there are superior and inferior races (but it has historically frequently been used to make that case).

[A Cyan Stone in Mustard]

If you're from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus

[herb johnson]

CAUCASIAN IS WHITE 

[Hyperqube]

Left is a Siberian Tiger. The right is a Bengal Tiger.

 

Every serious biologist will recognize these as subspecies to the tiger.

These tigers are different due to genetics caused by difference in environment, not social constructs.

interesting, because these are litterly images form the wikipedia page about subspecies. To quote

 

A monotypic species has no distinct population or races, or rather one race comprising the whole species. A taxonomist would not name a subspecies within such a species. Monotypic species can occur in several ways:

 

• All members of the species are very similar and cannot be sensibly divided into biologically significant subcategories.
• The individuals vary considerably, but the variation is essentially random and largely meaningless so far as genetic transmission of these variations is concerned.
• The variation among individuals is noticeable and follows a pattern, but there are no clear dividing lines among separate groups: they fade imperceptibly into one another. Such clinal variation always indicates substantial gene flow among the apparently separate groups that make up the population(s). Populations that have a steady, substantial gene flow among them are likely to represent a monotypic species, even when a fair degree of genetic variation is obvious.

 

Or for those who don't speak science: a species is not seperate into subspecies if

• there's no real criteria to split them up
• if there is a criteria but it's random
• if there are no clear lines between criteria

  (as this is the case with human skin color)

 

-------------------------------

 

Fun fact: There are 378 genes determining skillcolor. Simplified, what that means it that there are about 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 different skincolors out there.

Or, for there to be one of every kind, our population would need to rise 100 quadrillion times.

[0123847a;fsdaklf]

Or for those who don't speak science: a species is not seperate into subspecies if

• there's no real criteria to split them up
• if there is a criteria but it's random
• if there are no clear lines between criteria

  (as this is the case with human skin color)

Humans are easier to tell apart than most other subspecies, and different races are easily fit into different criteria. I agree with this.

[Hyperqube]

Except,

 

The variation among individuals is noticeable and follows a pattern, but there are no clear dividing lines among separate groups: they fade imperceptibly into one another.

 

that you can tell the difference between a "pure" european person and a "pure" african person - is not sufficient.

There needs to be a seperation line, not a gradient. There are no "51% Suberian with, like 20% Bengal roots" tigers (refering to the OP)

 

 

 

Anecdotally, Trever Noah (who has both a white & black parent) quite nicely adressed this, in pointing out that in South Africa, he's considered white, but in America, he's considered black.

[0123847a;fsdaklf]

There needs to be a seperation line, not a gradient. There are no "51% Suberian with, like 20% Bengal roots" tigers (refering to the OP)

Anecdotally, Trever Noah (who has both a white & black parent) quite nicely adressed this, in pointing out that in South Africa, he's considered white, but in America, he's considered black.

 If Siberian and Bengal tigers were to breed across subspecies, the tigers would still be subspecies. Same to humans.

[Hyperqube]

If Siberian and Bengal tigers were to breed across subspecies, the tigers would still be subspecies. Same to humans.

 

And congratulations on missing the point completely. The entire point is that you say "if" and not "when". See, they DON'T breed - an account of living thousands of miles appart from each other. That's the clear distinction between the two. siberian tigers live in siberia, bengal tigers live in the area around india.

 

And don't even try to argue that they can breed in zoo's or live all over the world - creatures in captivity usually aren't considered in taxonomy.

 

 

 

 

If you want to create subspecies in the human race. Well ... OK. Tell me, what clear distinction would you use that follows the rules of sub-specification as quoted in post 20.

a.k.a. Give me a criteria that, so that I can take any human, and say "this one is obviously X" or "this one is obviously Y"

[0123847a;fsdaklf]

I didn't miss the point.  

 

The aboriginal populations of Australia were separated from the rest of the world for some time. These native people from Australia are very different from the rest of the world(google images if you want to see.)

 

Once the British started colonizing Australia, the differences between the two didn't magically fade away, same thing applies to the tigers. The aboriginal Australians were still the same, and the British were still the same. Except of course when they intermingled.  

 

What I've been trying to argue the whole time is that race is not social construct, there are scientific differences between us all. And trust me, you could tell a Caucasian from an aboriginal Australian 100% of the time.