I thought about adding this into the discussion going on about the 12 Israeli teens but figured that might be too much of a derail.

I think there is a point of contention when it comes to race and religion. How does this work when it comes to Jews? It seems to me that Jew is considered a race as well as a religion. Therefore when there is criticism, often towards the Israeli ruling parties and the military for some of the demonstrably fuckwitted actions they take, the person making such criticisms are sometimes labelled as racists as well as anti-semites.
A related consideration is when I see someone labelling another person hating on muslims as racist, isn't islam actually a religion that counts adherents from a wide variety of nationalities and ethnicities? I realise that often it is brown-skinned muslims that are getting targeted with unwarranted hate but what about when said labelling is applied to someone critiquing silly or even reprehensible islamic doctrines that an adherent follows?

Alan C wrote:I think there is a point of contention when it comes to race and religion. How does this work when it comes to Jews? It seems to me that Jew is considered a race as well as a religion.

There's this thing whereby it is said being a Jew is genetically transmissible, because if your mother was a Jew, then you're a Jew, like it or not. This is a beyond unhelpful state of affairs IMO. So much trouble in the world

Many many years ago we had a conversation here that went like this:
"But Jewish isn't a race"
"Try telling them that"

Jews can't catch a break. The KKK and Nazis certainly see them as a race. A lot of POCs interested in social justice see them as white. I've seen both Jerry Seinfeld and Ben Shapiro attacked as angry white men reacting because their privilege is being called into question. The latter was viciously attacked by white supremacists previously for criticising Trump.

Ironclad wrote:Many many years ago we had a conversation here that went like this:
"But Jewish isn't a race"
"Try telling them that"

Jews are a race, or Sephardim would admit that ashkenazim are proper jews.

There's only one race - the Human Race...
Carved up by the illusions of religion and sovereignty.

Don't, for example, Eastern European and Russian Jews mess up the notion of race?

I'll wait to hear what Alan A has to say.

Alan C wrote:Don't, for example, Eastern European and Russian Jews mess up the notion of race?

But seriously, everything real messes up the notion of race, which is why if one wants to employ the notion of race, one should do one's utmost to ignore anything fact based and instead delve deeply into one's own emotions!

I think it's probably the most widespread biological misconception still present today, and it's always fun to counter excessively hostile and argumentative interlocutors insisting on race realism while calling you all manner of names for questioning it to say 'Go on then - list the races'. What you nearly always get is a list of skin colours which suggests to the discerning that such people have the intellectual sophistication of a slightly under-developed 3 year old.

Indeed.

On a related note I find it curious when some inbred white knuckledragger bleats about genetic purity when, to my knowledge, the indigenous peoples of Africa would likely be the closest to the notion of 'pure' humans. Genetic diversity being one measure I'm aware of. Regardless, we're all humans when it comes down to it, until Homo Superior pops up.


I also now recalled a comment years ago about Indians having had some genetic influences or similarities with white Europeans so I'm now partway through an article on this topic, following this I'll then check for other articles on this [hunting for the most apparently reputable sources I can]. It's interesting.

The notion of a 'pure human' though is nonsensical - we're all pure human, possessing no genes or traits that aren't human. You could - for silly reasons - opt for 'pure haplogroup' meaning you have all the markers of a particular haplogroup and none of the markers of any other with derived mutations, but given that haplogroups are all nested hierarchies of derived alleles, then the 'pure' element there would be the alleles shared by all humans, not any derived grouping. The markers also represent an absolutely tiny proportion of variation comparative to the majority of shared genes. We universally share 99.9% of the same genes, regardless of where we're from, and we share approximately the same degree of variation - approximately 3 million differences with everyone, regardless of whether they're your neighbour or were born on the other side of the world. Essentially all genomic differences (90%+) between humans are in their SNPs - single nucleotide polymorphisms - of which there are approximately 2 million in the human genome out of a total of 3,200,000,000 nucleotides. Puts things into perspective!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21134/

Alan C wrote:
I also now recalled a comment years ago about Indians having had some genetic influences or similarities with white Europeans so I'm now partway through an article on this topic, following this I'll then check for other articles on this [hunting for the most apparently reputable sources I can]. It's interesting.

This is due to Proto-Indo-European populations spreading from the Pontic Caspian Steppe Region sometime in the Late Neolithic. Basically, it was the Mongols millennia before with horse riding pastoralists conquering and interbreeding with local populations of agriculturalists from Europe, through Persia, into India taking language, tools, material culture, animals, and genes with them.

Speaking PIE is my nerdy party trick where I pretend I know words in every language because many agricultural words share an ancient PIE root. In English, 'ewe' is one such word, as is 'fart'.

Do jews themselves have words to distinguish the notion of inherited jewishness from that of religious commitment to jewishness?

well they have different words for Hebrew (including the Hebraic language) and Jewish...

Alan B wrote:There's only one race - the Human Race...

Nothing much to be said.

One species, two races - us and them.
Get them!!

Ironclad wrote:One species, two races - us and them.
Get them!!

Them are those people who use two exclamation marks when just one will do! Get him!

Fucking hell!