I recommend checking the links. The theory of “race” is a bourgeois idea based on genetics, the theory of nations is a Marxist understanding of historically constituted peoples.
Right, I think we might be misunderstanding each other, because I looked at the links. How does “race being an idea based on genetics” go against “race is a social construct”? Gender is also based, in part, on some biology, but it is still a social construct. Gender, like race (as far as I understand it, and from what I got from the linked texts, though I only skimmed them, so my apologies if I am missing something big) uses genetics as a post-hoc justification for its existence.
Gender is a social expression of one’s felt sense of self. Race is pseudoscience used to categorize people into different “races” on the basis of genetics, but the Marxist understanding of nations is a more correct understanding of different groups of peoples with common history, language, and culture. The danish are not a “race,” they are a nation. Nations are very real, just as is gender, as is class, but “race” is not.
Gender is a social expression of one’s felt sense of self.
I really feel like we’re talking past each other. A person can express gender however they wish. It is also a social construct.
Race is pseudoscience used to categorize people into different “races” on the basis of genetics.
Right. Its something that society makes up without any real material basis. A social construction. Like gender. The patriarchy and all that.
Nations are very real, just as is gender.
Now I think youre the one conflating things. Sex is generally the thing people describe as “real” though it is also not a binary. Gender is the social construct, boys are blue and trucks girls are pink and ponies. “Gender” isn’t real beyond the social realm, just like race isn’t (and nations for that sense. We can construct a national identity around all sorts of stuff, the stuff does exist, the nation is socially constructed)
I must admit it really seems to me like we’re talking past each other. Or I hope we do, because otherwise I would be worried you believe in the gender binary. Im sure I’m misunderstanding something
I don’t think you’re quite understanding me. I’m not saying the “gender binary is real,” I am saying that gender as a social expression of one’s felt sense of self is real. The identification of oneself as gender nonconforming is a real, social aspect. Race is not. The social relations we all have are material processes. Capitalism is a material process. It sounds like you are dangerously close to suggesting trans identity is idealist, but this is fundamentally incorrect. I know you aren’t directly saying this, and that you do support trans identity, but without a grounded understanding of dialectical materialism, we cannot understand how social relations function.
Using capitalism as an example, capitalism is a material social relation. You cannot directly point to capitalism, just like you cannot point to gender or nation, but these all involve concrete relations between people. This is not idealism, where we see ideas as prior to matter, but instead relations between people as concrete processes. Race is not real, it is a bourgeois theory that attempts to draw hard lines between peoples that do not exist. Ideology is another excellent example of the relation of ideas to matter:
Ideology, in this context, refers not just to philosophy or ideas, but to a profoundly material force which exists in the practices, rituals and institutions of civil society; institutions such as the education system, the family, the church and the media.
I recommend checking the links. The theory of “race” is a bourgeois idea based on genetics, the theory of nations is a Marxist understanding of historically constituted peoples.
Right, I think we might be misunderstanding each other, because I looked at the links. How does “race being an idea based on genetics” go against “race is a social construct”? Gender is also based, in part, on some biology, but it is still a social construct. Gender, like race (as far as I understand it, and from what I got from the linked texts, though I only skimmed them, so my apologies if I am missing something big) uses genetics as a post-hoc justification for its existence.
Gender is a social expression of one’s felt sense of self. Race is pseudoscience used to categorize people into different “races” on the basis of genetics, but the Marxist understanding of nations is a more correct understanding of different groups of peoples with common history, language, and culture. The danish are not a “race,” they are a nation. Nations are very real, just as is gender, as is class, but “race” is not.
I really feel like we’re talking past each other. A person can express gender however they wish. It is also a social construct.
Right. Its something that society makes up without any real material basis. A social construction. Like gender. The patriarchy and all that.
Now I think youre the one conflating things. Sex is generally the thing people describe as “real” though it is also not a binary. Gender is the social construct, boys are blue and trucks girls are pink and ponies. “Gender” isn’t real beyond the social realm, just like race isn’t (and nations for that sense. We can construct a national identity around all sorts of stuff, the stuff does exist, the nation is socially constructed)
I must admit it really seems to me like we’re talking past each other. Or I hope we do, because otherwise I would be worried you believe in the gender binary. Im sure I’m misunderstanding something
I don’t think you’re quite understanding me. I’m not saying the “gender binary is real,” I am saying that gender as a social expression of one’s felt sense of self is real. The identification of oneself as gender nonconforming is a real, social aspect. Race is not. The social relations we all have are material processes. Capitalism is a material process. It sounds like you are dangerously close to suggesting trans identity is idealist, but this is fundamentally incorrect. I know you aren’t directly saying this, and that you do support trans identity, but without a grounded understanding of dialectical materialism, we cannot understand how social relations function.
Using capitalism as an example, capitalism is a material social relation. You cannot directly point to capitalism, just like you cannot point to gender or nation, but these all involve concrete relations between people. This is not idealism, where we see ideas as prior to matter, but instead relations between people as concrete processes. Race is not real, it is a bourgeois theory that attempts to draw hard lines between peoples that do not exist. Ideology is another excellent example of the relation of ideas to matter:
I also recommend the work of Harry Haywood on the question of “race” vs. Nation in the context of Black Statesians.