No I’m not a fascist (at least I hope not…)

I’m trying to understand why we’ve normalised the idea of eugenics in dogs (e.g. golden retrievers are friendly and smart, chihuahas are aggressive, etc.)¹ but find the idea of racial classification in humans abhorrent.

I can sort of see it from the idea that Nurture (culture and upbringing) would have a greater effect on a human’s characteristics than Nature would.

At the same time, my family tree has many twins and I’ve noticed that the identical ones have similar outcomes in life, whereas the fraternal ones (even the ones that look very similar) don’t really (N=3).

Maybe dog culture is not a thing, and that’s why people are happy to make these sweeping generalizations on dog characterics?

I’m lost a little

1: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/74/f7/df74f716c3a70f59aeb468152e4be927.png

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
    62·
    9 months ago

    This is true. As far as I know there is no scientific basis for the set of race categories we use culturally.

    As an aside, I normally abhor attempts to engineer language, but I really think we need to retire “black” and “white” as skin color descriptors. I’ve never met a human who didn’t have brown skin. There’s lighter and darker for sure but it’s a spectrum not a binary.

    Have never met a person with black skin, nor white skin.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
      3·
      9 months ago

      really think we need to retire “black” and “white” as skin color descriptors.

      Black is the name African Americans gave to themselves. Black Power. Black Panthers.