Re: What Are the Race Deniers Denying?
Ron Kephart (rkephart@osprey.unf.edu)
25 Jan 1997 23:42:26 GMT
<frank@clark.net> wrote:
> So you are a race denier also. Explain, please, what *you* mean by race
> and by "biological reality."
Frank,
I will answer, although I'm not the person you asked. I have type O
blood. Let's say I need blood, and there are two donors available.
One is a "white" person (by North American def.) with type A, and the
other is a "black" person (also by North American def.) with type O.
And, by the way, I am "white".
If I accidently get blood from the person of my "race" I'm a dead man.
That is biological reality. Getting blood from the "black" person
has no consequences at all. None. Although I suspect there are people
reading this who think I would start waking up in the middle of the
night craving watermelon. To those people I say: Go back to school,
and learn something this time!
No one has ever suggested placing people into races on the basis of
blood type, and yet that would be a more biologically meaningful way
of doing it. The fact that we don't shows that "race" is a concept
constructed for convenience, in this case the convenience of being
able to categorize people as legitimate targets of European military,
political, and economic exploitation. Skin color is a convenient,
easy to spot marker; blood type is not. It's that simple. I can't
make it any clearer, so I'm going now.
Ron Kephart
University of North Florida
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