Do you agree or disagree, that first?

Question

and foremost we are one race, the human race? or do you need to add the labels?

What is to be gained by dividing and categorizing people?

Answer 1

Indeed we all belong to ONE race. Human race. There are no other races. However, society seems obssesed with labeling the people. Some times, society confuses races with skin color and religion.

Answer 2

Not really. I disagree with racism which is essentially that people of certain races are better people. But people should realise that some races are innately better at some things and have distincitive characteristics. I have an equal like of all of them, and we are fundamentally equal in terms of the kindness we can offer, but pratically we are different.

For instance, olympic swimmers are nearly always white. Whereas the best long distance runners are quite often black. The chinese love their table tennis. Chinese and Japanese people have distinctive almond shaped eyes and most of them have black hair. Black people tend to have less body hair than white people. Asian hair is the strongest, black hair the weakest and white people inbetween.

I would say that many people have their identity linked with their race. Part of my identity is that I am a white male. If someone put me into a black body my sense of identity would be gone. And no matter how many people deny it, you notice it first when you meet other people. When I meet Asian people their distinctive characteristic is being Asian, and when I get to know them this becomes overtaken by their personality.

I'm probably going to get flamed for this. I'll emphasise again that I'm not racist. Obviously I can't prove that but I'd like to think you'd believe me.

Answer 3

Agree

Answer 4

Agree. Labels are a human invention, not who we are. Our differences can be noted- gay, straight, black, white- but should never be used to assign a value to an individual. Our real value to society is determined by our actions- not by what we say, what we believe, or what we look like.

Answer 5

I agree, whats next. The only gain I can see in categorizing people is that it will keep each cultures way of life alive. Most cultures categorize themselves just for the reason to keep their culture and way of life unique.

Answer 6

I am a label person, though not in the way you think.

For example, there is "the leaf man" in my neighborhood. He's the guy who is always dragging his yard debris down to the marsh.

Then there's "the club man." He's the guy always walking through the neighborhood with a big stick because he thinks wild dogs are going to get him.

The's Jeff-the-Plumber. Bill-the-lawn-guy. Larry-the-builder.

I've told them about their labels/nicknames and they love it. Oh, yes, they are all human beings and not all of them are white, caucasian middle class Americans. LOL

Answer 7

We've evolved to have such labels, and there are good reasons for having them. It's to do with cooperative behaviour, and how to maintain it.

The problem is that cooperation is based on trust: if you think you can get away easily with exploiting a situation for your own gain, then the superficially rational thing to do is to exploit. Like it or not, this is the case. It is rational to want something for nothing, provided you can get away with it.

There are various safeguards in place that help to counteract this: we don't lend money to people who don't pay it back, we set up laws to punish people who don't fit in with our cooperative norms or try to get an unfair advantage (e.g. by stealing), or we punish them without recourse to law. And we're careful to be less trusting of strangers -- after all, we might never see them again.

Another tactic is to have some sort of cooperative unit: a tribe or band, whose members cooperate with each other because they know that exploitative behaviour will come back to haunt them. Extremely often this is kin-based in origin: when we help our kin, our genes are aiding their own survival in other vehicles. All human cooperative behaviour most likely piggybacks on this instinct.

But this kind of unit gets complicated. There are units within units: we do more for our children than for our cousins (they share more of our genes), and when we hear of bombs abroad, it shocks us more if strangers from our own town are killed than if the victims are all foreign.

But the larger units can grow to a size where no member can know every other member by sight. This is why labels become important: we are more likely to help out people who are related to us, who look like us, and who sound like us. This is rational: these people are more likely to be related to us (our genes aiding their own survival in others again), and are more likely to be part of the same community as us and so, if not related, at least more likely to meet us again. It's not good tactics to pee on your own doorstep.

Now, the above mostly happens subconsciously but, like it or not, it does happen, and it's a part of human instinct. The fact is that we've evolved to be more ready to trust some people than others, partly based on how the look and speak.

This does not justify racism -- it is still rational to cooperate with our black neighbours just as much as our white ones, and our community can consist of people of all colours. However, this is part of the explanation for why racism exists.

I would add that it is sensible to expand one's community as far as is practical, so as to increase the number of people who can cooperate with us, which is good for the whole community. So it is definitely a noble and worthwhile cause to foster a feeling of community between everyone in the world. But in practical terms, it takes a lot of effort and involves setting up strong safeguards. It is a very difficult task.

And the labels are never going to go away: we need them, because we still need cooperative units within cooperative units, communities within communities. It's a behaviour that has helped the human race to survive.

Answer 8

We are one race, the human race. However, the labels do help in identification. For instance, if I understand that a person is of Chinese nationality, it helps me to understand their culture and values. For a Mexican, they have unique cultural values and it helps to understand these differences, especially in ensuring their needs are met.

When I think the race identification goes bad is when we generalize everyone. We cannot consider all Chinese alike, or all Mexicans alike or any other culture for that matter.

Answer 9

Human race will do it!
I have no qualms being dumped in the same class as Asians, Europeans, Latins, Africans, etc.

Answer 10

100% agree - we are all human beings!