lololol someone just called me (and apparently everyone on QOTO) a racist for saying our instance's policy is to treat all races and nationality by the exact same standard... I must have slept a lot longer than I realized because when I went to sleep the definition of racism was WAY different."

Apparently this is what he posted as "proof" that me and QOTO are racist fascists. You seriously can't make this shit up. No one has ever even reported a single one of our members for racism.

@freemo I’ve been doing some research and it’s actually not OK to be white.

@Jurassicnps haha, good to know

@freemo it’s not a joke

@Jurassicnps The irony is that if your serious then that makes it MORE of a joke, not less of one.

But on a serious note telling someone it is not ok for being born a certain way, particularly of a certain race, will not be tolerated around here.

@freemo race is a social construct, not a biological one.

@Jurassicnps

Well... not really. I mean, there are physical differences between groups of people, which are now referred to as "populations" in more biological terms, but that doesn't really change the fact, just changing the word used.

I'm not saying there are precise boundaries between a race and the other, but in natural sciences there rarely are such boundaries anyway. Taxonomy is only accepted when it's useful, and in terms of dynamic of population it usually is.

I am not sure why animals would have races and humans not. But that's an honest perplexity of mine.

@freemo

@arteteco @freemo

Genetic differences that exist between isolated populations of humans are remarkably small. Genetic variability that exists from human to human is much more significant. Although populations that were isolated can have a couple dominant phenotypes that differ, the use if these insignificant phenotypes to categorize humans and define their culture is ignorant at best and insidious at worst.

@Jurassicnps

"Small" and "significant" are usually related to the context.

For example, people from Sardinia, who have a pretty similar genetic, have a very high incision of favism. That is, they are more resistant to malaria, but allergic to fava bean. That is really important when you are cooking dinner.

Thalassemia (a blood genetic disorder) is more common in European, South Asian, Turkish, saharian people.

Other differences are countless, from the high incision of diabetes in some populations due to different metabolism, to the how much you could expose youself to the sun.

Now, you think those phenotypes are "insignificant" in an absolute way, that is not related to anything. I argue there is no absolute value of anything, and characteristics should be appreciated and considered as relative to what we are looking at.

@freemo