Reading comprehension. Try it, you’ll like it.
Gross. People go through every kind of hardship imaginable every day because of the “social construct” you think is so silly and meaningless. It’s always interesting to see racists put this “imagined construct” argument out over and over again. Disgusting and stupid.
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If I may attempt to reconcile the two sides: I think you’re agreeing at the tops of your voices.
My reading of the original post completely agrees with yours – that it is tragic that a social construct which SHOULD be silly and meaningless is, unfortunately, taken seriously and used as a justification for bigotry.
Biologically, what we call “race” in humans is closer to what we call “breed” in other animals, and in fact breeds of many domestic animals diverge genetically much more than humans do. But unfortunately society still hasn’t assimilated that idea. And I suspect that it’s going to take an ongoing effort to rise above our ape selves, suppress our pack instincts, and learn to treat different as interesting rather than threatening.
One on one, human interaction is mostly hedonic. Unfortunately, pack-on-pack has a tendency to drift toward agonic, and we spend too much effort worrying about whether someone is a member of another pack rather than incorporating them into our own.
Living while black in America? Try it. You’ll like it! I read quite well,
it’s apparent you choose to miss something that isn’t very subtle! But then
that is why sooooo many white folks think we darkies live in a race blind
society! Give me a break!!!
It gets back into the “what is trolling” thread… I’ve been filling in the blank marked RACE with the word “human” (sometimes I have to check a box marked OTHER first) on government forms since I was a teenager, and have occasionally gotten in trouble for it (always stood my ground, though). Have I been trolling? I kinda think yes, although I’m open to argument (in that other thread, not this one!).
On the 2000 census they worded the question something like “with what race or ethnicity do you most closely identify yourself (check all that apply)” and I checked all the boxes. My immediate family finds this behavior most annoying (but it serves them right for never putting the cap back on the toothpaste, I say.)
@anon67050589 wasn’t arguing that we “live in a race blind society” so it’s a little confusing what you’re trying to argue.
Doesn’t really bother me, though if everyone did this it would be essentially impossible to do a meaningful sociological study of the correlation between racial identification and, well, anything at all.
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Yup. I prefer my sociological studies to be a) voluntary and b) validated. Census is neither, although admittedly for the last couple of decades “race” has been mostly a voluntary option on federal forms. I feel no guilt about failing to take part in bad science 
Given that you haven’t offered a better method for obtaining demographic data than the census nor acknowledged that the data can be statistically validated by comparison to other data sources forgive me for not taking your judgment of what constitutes “bad science” particularly seriously. 
Hey, I never asked you to respect my value judgements, don’t worry about it.
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You know that voluntary responses create immediate sampling bias, right? “Bad science” indeed.
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What does it even mean that “the Census is not validated”? It’s a basic demographics questionnaire, not a measurement instrument. “Test validity,” “construct validity,” etc. are not even applicable concepts. You could argue the validity of any given statistical test run on Census data, but your statement makes no sense as written.
Well, you’re not getting what I was trying to say. I don’t claim to be a good author.
If government demands people fill out annoying and intrusive forms with questions worded to satisfy political ideologies, and then doesn’t independently check what is claimed in the responses, the data is garbage for nearly all purposes.
If a human being (#1) asks another human being (#2) what race or ethnicity human #1 is, and human #2 notes this down with independent annotation of the perceived accuracy of the response (2 examples: Subject reports “Black” and has visible African features and a Brooklyn accent. Subject reports “Black” but has asiatic coloring, an epicanthic fold, and speaks only Japanese) the data can be significantly more useful.
The former is the census data, the latter is more like the sort of data that might be used in “good” science.
Do you see what I’m driving at yet? I don’t feel at all guilty about pushing my social, political and religious agendas by answering “human” when someone asks me what race I am, or answering “all of them” when somebody asks me which human tribe I mostly strongly identify with. I’m modeling the behavior I want to see, I’m “being the change I want in the world”. And I haven’t hurt any data usage that wasn’t already completely corrupted.
But I’m not defending racist arguments against affirmative action based on pretending that acknowledging ancestry, history and biology is inherently racist. I recognise the similarity and I’ll explicitly disavow it, OK? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
You presume that people will, in fact, falsify those “annoying and intrusive forms”. Evidence is that they mostly don’t. The data may not be provably good, but statistically it has seemed to hold up tolerably well when checked, within the limits of the design. i happen to agree with you that the proper response to “race” is “human”, but there aren’t many who will actually answer that way, since they realize that the answer may affect funding of things they care about.
Noisy data can be worked with scientifically. You just need to be able to account for that noise in your analysis.
Surely they do spot checks to find out the level of lying they can expect and adjust the data if they really need accuracy. Doesn’t data massaging go on even in the best science?
I remember in first quarter chemistry, before I realized I should be at the other end of campus, they taught us that the world is stochastic. In other words, things are not so clear when you do real experiments. Hazy, cloud like, like the arrows shot at a target, data approximates theory for the most part.
Feel free to tell me I remember wrong.
Another good use of census data is that they compare one census to the next. Unless there is a good reason to think that more people have taken to lying on one you can see trends through the lying.
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@technogeekagain, @timquinn, there are definitely ways to use low quality data that aren’t bad science. However. Didn’t BB just link to an analysis of government data that claimed 99% of American farm laborers are “white”? Because, of course, not one of them is a Mexican illegal being paid less than minimum wage like all the guys I see in the fields every harvest… I think if someone’s using census data correctly, my answers won’t hurt their efforts; conversely, if my answers hurt their efforts, they were already doing it wrong. So I remain unrepentant.
@anon50609448, that’s true, but one of the problems with the census “race” questions is that they’ve changed both the way the questions are asked and the permissible answers repeatedly, mostly for good reasons, thus further damaging the consistency of the data. It can’t be compared without significant massaging that has to be accommodated by the uses to which you wish to put the data.
Ye Ghods that’s some horrible grammar. Sorry.
Oy, I would never question your right to do what you want on any form. I was just wondering about data purity.
I wonder if the real figure on farm labor you mention is that 99% of laborers who are citizens are white. That might be true. Still seems unlikely.
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