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4 years ago by MrDrDr

Brilliant. Race will likely always remain an important cultural concept (for many important reasons) - but this is a compelling demonstration of its fragile foundations.

4 years ago by cloverich

> Race will likely always remain an important cultural concept

Why? What is the hard relation between race and culture exactly?

4 years ago by exo-pla-net

A sticky race-culture relationship forms when society uses the phrase [Some Race] Culture to describe a given culture, such as Black Culture.

It's unfortunate when this happens, because it creates a gravitational pull toward racial prejudice: seeing a skin color and making immediate cultural assumptions. Or seeing one's own skin color, and feeling as though one ought to be acting a certain way, as Obama talked about experiencing as a young man.

I believe it's a happier thing when we choose the construct [Non-Race Culture], such as Silicon Valley Culture. Then anybody can join in, and we're not meanwhile eyeing one another's skin color.

4 years ago by dncornholio

What's black culture? I know Chinese culture, Thai culture, Japanese culture, African culture. I know Christian culture, buddhist culture, etc etc.

We don't distinct culture with the color of ones skin but from where he's from right?

Black culture does not exist. To me it's just US culture.

4 years ago by mwambua

This is great! I hope we can slowly stop referring to people using these crude reductions.

I remember arguing with a classmate when I was a child, arguing that I wasn't "Black". I wasn't necessarily offended by the term... more confused and disappointed that they didn't see me as I saw myself. If they spent just a couple seconds looking closely, they'd see that hardly anyone is actually black or white.

4 years ago by lurquer

Would you prefer being referred to as “Pantone 4637-C”?

Do you sincerely think people do not realize “hardly anyone is actually black or white”?

Nobody cares what color your skin is. Except, maybe, a dermatologist or a makeup manufacturer.

4 years ago by mwambua

I prefer any grouping that describes me using attributes that actually belong to me. "Human", "Dark skinned person", "Engineer", etc

I'm not a "Black Person". I get that's the term that people use (and I won't be offended if someone uses it to refer to me), but it's inaccurate and I wish we'd stop using it.

> Nobody cares what color your skin is.

I sincerely wish that were true.

4 years ago by lurquer

>but it's inaccurate and I wish we'd stop using it.

You’re not making sense.

Is your beef with being referred to by a color? Or, is it being referred to with an inaccurate color?

The video — and your post — seems to ask people to open their eyes and realize people come in all kinds of colors.

We’re supposed to say, “Wow. That’s so profound! How enlightening!”

Whatever. It’s an obvious fact.

What, then, is the point of the video?

What purpose is served by focusing on skin color?

Nobody thinks Blacks are literally black. Nobody thinks Whites are literally white.

4 years ago by antattack

I so dislike sites that make shipping so hard to find.

If you want to order the book, shipping options are:

    USPS Media Mail: $2.89 
    UPS 3 Day Select: $22.25 
    UPS Ground: $11.20 
    UPS Next Day Air Dom: $45.93
4 years ago by eco

My prices on the UPS options are about double yours (USPS is the same). I'm in the Salt Lake metro area.

    UPS 3 Day Select: $49.19 
    UPS Ground: $20.85 
    UPS Next Day Air Dom: $118.86
Every time I ship something it seems like it is priced about the same as these options. How do individuals (and this company) unlock those magical shipping rates you get from other businesses without which they'd be dead in the water as a business?
4 years ago by 83

Commercial accounts get significantly better rates, I've seen at least one startup whose business model is passing along the commercial rate to consumers for a small cut of the savings (my quick search is only finding pirateship.com but that's not who I was thinking of). Similar thing happens on Ebay when you do your shipping label through them (not sure if they're actually taking a cut or just passing on their better rate though).

4 years ago by undefined
[deleted]
4 years ago by geocar

DHL to Portugal: $137.71

Anyone have any idea why shipping 22 pieces of dead tree is so freaking expensive?

4 years ago by undefined
[deleted]
4 years ago by neom

re-shippers rates are usually a lot cheaper, just a quick look around seemed it was about $30 to forward a package that is less than 1lb to Portugal.

4 years ago by Grustaf

The photos are nice, but the ones that talk about "skin color" are usually "anti-racists".

Actual racists, to the extent that they care about biological race, are interested in the entire phenotype, the statistical groupings of traits like hair color, eye color, facial features, head shape, length, body structure and yes, also skin color.

Africa is full of tribes with similar skin colors that are only very remotely related, often more genetically diverse than Russians and Basques. (There are of course also lots of _different_ skin colors in Africa!) Calling them all "Black" is just reductionist and frankly racist.

4 years ago by arketyp

>Calling them all "Black" is just reductionist and frankly racist.

But you just said actual racists care about statistical groupings of traits. Seems then that the "anti-racists" would be more prone to that kind of reduction.

4 years ago by Grustaf

They are, only talking about skin colour is way more reductionist that taking the entire phenotype, and history, into account.

4 years ago by SamBam

"The anti-racists are the real racists," eh?

4 years ago by SamBam

The book in the post explicitly makes that point. It shows multiple people who might be labeled different races with the exact same skin color, for instance.

It's making the point that skin color is far more diverse than simplistic ideas of race, and far less-correlated to race than one might think.

I think seeing everyone in a multi-dimensional spectrum, in which the viewer occupies one point and is not simply on one side of some line, like they might simplistically imagine, does a lot to show our commonality.

4 years ago by Grustaf

> It's making the point that skin color is far more diverse than simplistic ideas of race, and far less-correlated to race than one might think.

My point is that very few actual racists (outside the US, at least) think in terms of skin colour, so if that is the purpose of the book it seems to miss the target.

I would say that it is the skin colour concept that is simplistic and meaningless though, it is race that is a diverse and interesting concept, related to biology, geography, migrations etc.

Skin colour is just one out of hundreds of characteristics, and arguably one of the least interesting and meaningful ones.

4 years ago by dragonwriter

> Calling them all "Black" is just reductionist and frankly racist.

When Black activists talk about Black with a capital “B”, they are referring to a shared identity group, not a skin color. Now, its true that the name of the identity group has origin in other people's description based on skin color, but that’s history, not meaning.

4 years ago by Grustaf

Sure, in a way that's just a historical accident, they could have used some other word, I'm not really talking about that. I'm more about skin colour discussions in general, as if that was the important thing for anyone.

I feel it's kind of a straw-man, very few biologically oriented "anti-black" racists look at albinos differently. They dislike them just as much, the literal "skin color" is not relevant.

4 years ago by acchow

What a fantastic work of art.

I'm curious why they chose Pantone, a single-dimensional number, instead of something more intuitively understandable like RGB?

4 years ago by amelius

Pantone patented our skin colors?

4 years ago by neom

You can't patent a colour, you patent a process. If you're referring to the R next to Pantone, the R is because Pantone is a company and the wordmark Pantone is a registered trademark.

4 years ago by amelius

They sure know how to make it look like they own these colors, though.

4 years ago by rjmunro

No, they own the Pantone numbers. They don't own the colours themselves.

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