Re: >H gender apartheid and transhumanists

Bernard Hughes (bjhughes@istar.ca)
Tue, 17 Nov 1998 22:53:32 -0330

Phil Goetz wrote:

> Someone who believes there are or can be
> significant observable behavioral differences correlated with race
> is a racist. And anyone who considered themselves transhuman would
> necessarily believe that.

Seems to me the significant word is "significant". I would consider someone a racist who believes the differences in races are sufficient to stereotype individuals behavior. e.g..

"You are Asian, you must be good at Maths". "You are black, you must be stupid".

I think few racial differences are significant in that sense. Only one case springs to mind where it might be valid to treat individuals differently based on race. That is in testing for certain heritable genetic diseases. I'm hard pressed to think of racial differences that are not swamped for the individual by environmental factors and personal genetic variation.

Bernard

--
Bernard J Hughes   bernard@timedancer.com
Timedancer Systems http://www.timedancer.com
 -- Creative Laziness at its best --