Post by Souriquois on Mar 3, 2018 11:42:17 GMT -4
they complain about people saying race is a "social construct" when they themselves make up "social constructs" to suite their agenda
I don't know why folks get so offended over race as a social construct. It is. Doesn't mean it's any less real, it has tangible effects on people's lives.
Humans are social creatures, almost everything is a social construct.
I just got back from the supermarket... I exchanged a piece of paper, for some food. It's just that this piece of paper, happened to look like this:
There are many other pieces of paper in the world.
Why can I not just exchange any old piece of paper for goods and services?
Social construct.
Some people may say "But but but... money is backed by gold in a reserve somewhere!"
Yes, but the reason gold is valuable, is because of social construct too. It's just metal. You cannot exchange steel for goods and services, but you can gold or silver (or nickel, which most Canadian coins are made of... but then, they are made to look like gold or silver, because social constructs put value on those metals so it's a subconscious association). If everybody started to believe gold was useless tomorrow, gold would be useless.
The indigenous people of the Americas used to use wampum shells as currency, and when Europeans first came here, they adopted it as a currency as well, wampum was recognized as an official currency in Canada and in US for many years. In fact, wampum was probably the most successful currency in human history, the only modern currency that would come close is the Euro (which IMO, is not a good currency, but more because Europeans screwed up the social construct, not the currency itself).
And I posted a Canadian banknote, well, the Canadian government dumped all its gold reserves in 2015, switching to a Blockchain based crypto-currency similar to Bitcoin... Bitcoin is based on Blockchain. Tunisia and Senegal also did the same (it's quite shocking that Senegal did, because that country has so much gold, you'd think they'd be railing against Blockchain in order to gain an economic advantage). The reason Blockchain is valuable is because we have attached a value to it, that value is social construct.
Actually, this Daily Show skit explains it quite well:
Currency, whether it be paper money, gold, wampum, or blockchain, is only valuable when people have faith in the social construct. If people lose faith in the social construct, then that currency is useless. The decline of wampum shells is a good example of that, people just switched to paper money and dollars, and wampum became useless because the social construct weakened among the population. Now, hell, people who eat seafood throw away wampum, they will eat the shellfish, and throw the shell in the garbage... but that used to be money.
Although wampum, especially wampum pearls, are still quite valuable as jewelry, but you would have to exchange a lot of paper bank notes for it (a necklace of regular wampum beads will put you back $150, pearls probably close to $1000 or maybe more, depending on quality):
Now people look at wampum currency as weird, and when learning that the Dutch bought Manhattan Island using wampum, people today say "WTF? They exchanged beads for land? They got tricked!", but if you got a time machine and brought an indigenous person from the region to a present-day store where people were exchanging paper bank notes for stuff, they'd probably be like "WTF? The store owner is giving them stuff for pieces of paper? They're getting tricked!" They'd probably be banging their head against the desk over Blockchain too, because I bet they'd think it's completely stupid since nothing physical is being exchanged.
Money is a social construct. This doesn't mean it's any less real. It's very real, and you can die if you don't have it, and you have power to influence policy if you have lots of it. With the exception of Blockchain currency, you can see, smell, and touch money. Still, the fact that it has value is a social construct.
How is race any different?