Race
This ain't working
60 years ago human categories were much clearer than they are now.
There were only 2 genders and those mapped onto biological sex.
The races were clear and distinct. There were whites and blacks and chinese and native americans, etc. By distinct I mean each race was pretty clearly identifyable by physical characteristics.
I now understand that that clarity was an illusion.
For instance we now recognize that gender sometimes doesn't map onto biological sex.
When I was young, racism involved white people discriminating against non-white people in negative ways. Non-whites had to sit at the back of the bus and couldn't sit at a lunch counter.
My grandmother was racist and she warned me against playing with the 'coons' (black kids) up the street.
I thought that racism was on it's way out. By now (2023) I figured that racism would be gone from our society. The color of people's skin just wouldn't matter.
Boy - was I ever wrong.
There have been improvements. The old style discrimination on busses and restaurants is long gone. Landlords can be sued at human rights tribunals for discrimination in housing.
In the news, rather than ignoring race, the race of the people in stories is prominently featured even if it's not particularly relevant to the matter at hand.
For me, the weirdest twist is that now you can't tell race by physical characteristics. I went to a class taught by a prominent Cherokee professor. He looked like a balding middle aged white guy.
Lately in Canada there has been a series of scandals involving people who claim to be First Nations people who aren't who are taking up prestigious positions in academia that are reserved for First Nations people. I've heard of similar cases in the USA where people have been claiming to be black.
When I was quite young I thought that evaluating people based on their race was a bad idea. I still do.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.