Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Born Racist?


Question for the class: Why is the baby Caucasian?

10 comments:

Tangalor said...

LOL! Not cool.

Nick Pacific said...

I don't know... looks kind of racist to me. Look at how that right eyebrow is slightly raised in judgment.

HokiePundit said...

Is it, though? Could it be Arab or Indian or mixed-race? What does it say that our initial view is that it's Caucasian?

Unknown said...

Question for the class: Why is the baby Caucasian?

Cuz only Caucasians can be racists. Or did you not get the memo?

Tam said...

"Is it, though? Could it be Arab or Indian..."

...which are, at least according to old-timey theories back when anybody gave a damn about "race", both Caucasoid.

There's no such thing as "race". As P.J. O'Rourke put it, "There's less difference between George Bush and an Australian aborigine than there is between a Lhasa apso and a toy fox terrier. If we were dogs, we'd all be the same breed."

Shermlock Shomes said...

Hokie Pundit does make a point. And by chance I received the following from a colleague who saw the post:

"Hmm, what makes you think the baby on the Newsweek cover is Caucasian? Sorting races by physical features is always dicey at best. Take this little test, which I use in my race lectures in class.

http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm

I'll tell you later what the average # correct in the class is."

Joanna said...

I remember an article a year or two ago about preschool teachers who were supposed to watch out for racist behavior in 2- and 3-year-olds; namely, an unwillingness or aversion to new (read: ethnic) foods. It was the stupidist thing I ever read. How do you think a 2-year-old's going to react to his first exposure to curry?

WV: joked. No, unfortunately, it wasn't.

Joanna said...

Note: the above incident was in Britain. Go figure.

Tam said...

"Hokie Pundit does make a point. And by chance I received the following from a colleague who saw the post:"

Has the sociology department gathered up several jawbones of E. hemionus and gone on a rampage through the physical anthropology department?

Am I the only person here that finds the very word "race" to be quaintly Edwardian?

Mike Gallo said...

Shermlock - that's an interesting link from your buddy; now that we self-identify for the census, I am technically Hispanic, seeing as my (Italian) family moved here from Brazil (the Portuguese identify themselves as hispanic).

Sweet! I'm now a "minority," and can help my community bring home some federal tax money!