Sunday, April 27, 2008

‘Pink is the color of healthy flesh...’

Anyone who reads Undercover Black Man knows that blogger Michael Fisher never misses an opportunity to point out the perniciously pervasive “Global System of White Supremacy.”

I don’t buy into Fisher’s rhetoric. But when I find a piece of evidence that might serve my opponent’s case, I don’t run and hide from it.

So below is a 2½-minute Al Jazeera news report on an urban- improvement campaign in Manila that’s all about painting stuff pink.

Bayani Fernando, a local official, explains: “Pink is the color of healthy flesh, and we all want to be a city or a metropolis in the pink of health.”

I have no idea why a brown-skinned Filipino would equate the color pink with “healthy flesh.” But I’m sure Michael Fisher could break it down for anyone who cares to listen. This one’s for you, Fish:

37 comments:

ItAintEazy said...

All it means is that the Global White Supremacy has already claimed at least one brown-skinned brethren, therefore proving the conspiracy :p

Michael Fisher said...
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Michael Fisher said...

Well, I don't know enough about Filipino culture to say what they mean by "pink is the color of healthy flesh".

Though I'd much rather you answer this question (since I answered yours in the thread below):

If "black" people are a socio-political group of individuals rather than a biological group (which they are not, even by the definition you supplied de facto) then, logically speaking, is the the behavior ascribed to this socio-political group of individual "blacks" learned or is it biologically innate to this group?

Undercover Black Man said...

^ The answer is: this is not known. This is a mystery. I don't happen to think it's unknowable.

What if the study of the human genome leads to the discovery, for example, that different human subgroups have different levels of testosterone, generally speaking?

Your problem, Michael, is that you're not interest in what's knowable. You seem religiously attached to the idea that there are no biological distinctions between human subgroups.

If you were to argue that certain cultural differences -- let's say a high homicide rate in a given society -- are the result of "learned" behaviors, that wouldn't negate the possibility of genetic differences as well.

Perhaps certain modes of behavior are "learned" because they are in accord with biological realities like high testosterone.

I don't know. I don't pretend to know. But I'm open to the idea. And you -- for purely political reasons -- have closed your mind.

Michael Fisher said...

Mills...

"Your problem, Michael, is that you're not interest in what's knowable. You seem religiously attached to the idea that there are no biological distinctions between human subgroups.

Not so. There are biological differences between males and females, between short people and tall people, between, people with four-inch diameter right big toes and 3 inch diameter right big toes, between propel with green eyes and blue eyes, big dicks and small dicks, big breasts and small breasts, etc.

But are these people races?

What you did, and what every racist on the planet does, is take an arbitrary biological marker, namely "skin color", maybe in combination with another one or two arbitrary biological marker(s), namely hair "nappiness" or nose shape, and lip shape and construct a human sub-group out of that. Without even exactly quantifying what the objective physical standard each individual biological marker which you chose arbitrarily is supposed to look like. That is, what range of skin colors are markers for the "black" sub-group/race? What exact width of nose? 2 inches? Or maybe put it in percentage terms in relation to the whole face?

The there is the question where do you stop creating these races? Ok, let's say we create the sub-group "short people" and assign the value 5'5" and below. Which is kinda arbitrary yes? cause what are the folks who are 4'11" to the 5'5" inches folks. Another "race"? And what about those even shorter? What about people who are 5'5", but have a big 4 diameter toe? Are they members of the 5'5" race or the "big toe" race?

As you can see what I am saying has nothing whatsoever to do with religion but with a rigorous logical and thus scientific approach. What you have demonstrated, no offense, David, is sloppy thinking.

And when it comes to subjects such as political violence, social disparities, disease, and social behaviors you can not do that, because you end up where Auster, Duke, Hitler, and Himmler ended up. yes, even you David, as well meaning as you are.

estiv said...

A friend of mine told me something interesting along these lines. To begin with, one of those counter-intuitive but true facts is that we don't really base our idea of "normal" appearance on what we look like ourselves, but on the people we are used to seeing around us. There are stories of nineteenth-century white Christian missionaries in China who were shocked when they saw a white person for the first time in years.

So--my white friend lived in Newark for a couple of years in the seventies. He told me that after a while, any white person he passed on the street looked kind of strange. And in fact, to bring this back to your original story, their pink skin looked exactly the opposite of healthy--a normal person was some shade of brown. Pink didn't look healthy at all.

ItAintEazy said...

Well, actually we do have a pretty good idea about how different genetically the different races are, and the answer is not much. The truth is that there are more genetic variations within a specified racial group than between racial groups. That's why it's questionable why some people insist that Africans are good at sports because of the high ratio of high-twitch muscle even though Africans also excel at sports (e.g. marathons) that require a high percentage of slow-twitch muscle.

As for the "healthy flesh" thing, it seems more likely to be an opinion of a well-heeled Filipino than a widely shared belief.

Michael Fisher said...

Mills...

"If you were to argue that certain cultural differences -- let's say a high homicide rate in a given society -- are the result of "learned" behaviors, that wouldn't negate the possibility of genetic differences as well."

Of course not, David. But again, you are doing sloppy thinking here. Maybe there is a sub-group with testerone level X compared to a sub-group with testerone level Y and you can empirically ascibe a behavior to one and another to the other.

But this is not what you or other de facto race theorist do. You said of a group that you defined, and on top of that defined sloppily and ascribed certain behaviors to them based on which you supposed might be genetically based. The fact, however is, that the group which you cobbled together based on your non-defined and arbitrary markers DOES NOT EXIST. And that is exactly because your "biological markers" are non-defined and arbitrary.

In fact, Davis, there is more genetic diversity within humans residing in the geographic region called "Africa" then there is between the humans residing within the geographic region Africa and the rest of the planet.

Thus to ascribe some genetic commonality to this construct of "black" people is in contravention of all current scientific knowledge.

Now doing that, namely ascribing some genetic commonality to this construct of "black" people which plainly does not exist, is the first step in racism.

Michael Fisher said...

Now the next exercise is to go and define what "white people" are. Again, there is no such biological human sub-group called "white people", and it is for the exact same reason. Do you have any idea how ludicrous the German Nazi efforts became to actually define the "Aryan Race"? They, particularly the SS basically, drove themselves nuts. If you go on stormfront.org and the VNN forum today, these fools keep arguing who really "white" is and who is not. There was a guy named Lothropp Stoddard (google his dumb, though slick, ass) who developed the theory of the three sub-divisions of the "white race". the Nordics (people residing in Scandinavia and the British isles), the Alpines (the Germans/people residing in central Europe), and the Mediterraneans, short "Meds" (Italians, Greeks, Spanish, Portuguese, etc). Arbitrary as hell, but politically highly effective.

Stoddard had a lot of influence on official US government "racial" categorization policy.

But the stormfront.org and VNN forum retards still argue about who is "pure white", or compromise at times.

You don't want to de facto join these retards in sloppy ass reasoning, David.

Michael Fisher said...
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Michael Fisher said...

Ok. And lastly, because the "racial" group that you constructed by going "here, here, and here" pointing to various people in diverse geographic locations, does not (because it can not within the framework your arbitrary and non-defined biological markers) exist as a genetic group, any clearly identifiable behavior common to that group as defined by "here, here, and here"...

any such common behavior that is clearly different from that of "white" people can not be biologically based...

and can not be so, again...

...since the group of individual humans which you defined as a human sub-group doesn't exist as a biological "race".

But since there is a common identifiable behavior among these "here, here, and here" individuals which you in shorthand call "black people", any such grouping by you is de facto based on their behavior. That is, they are a socio-political group.

Which means that any such behavior displayed by this socio-political group must learned behavior.

Which brings up the question: "Who is/are the teacher(s)"?

And then, of course: How?

Michael Fisher said...

That's supposed to be "logically must be learned behavior"

Anonymous said...

All this mumbo jumbo about what's knowable and what's not. Sometimes you should just start with observable phenomena. People have all different skin tones. People with different skin tones can procreate and create a skin tone that is similar but not like either of the parents. Do we expect these parents to define their child as different from them because of skin tone differences? We do not and most of us would consider the very thought to be ridiculous. That in and of itself should convince any thinking person that there is no basis whatsoever for classifications based on skin color.

As for the Filipino cultual confusion, any time a brown skinned person sees lighter skin as more positive than darker skin, they are evidencing a symptom or ramification of the white supremacy system. How can you hate your own view of yourself enough to think that someone else's lighter skin color is better than your own? But then flip the very same script and you see that people classified as white also appear to evidence this same self-loathing of their skin color as evidenced by the myriad activities performed by these white people to add color to their skin.

And even though you may not be able to see it, these are two sides of the very same coin. Examination of this matter does not require that you delve into obscure genetics theory. A simple glance at history can give all the empirical evidence needed to explain the phenomena.

Undercover Black Man said...

Pink didn't look healthy at all.

And of course, estiv, albinos are renowned for their healthy pink glow!

CNu said...

Examination of this matter does not require that you delve into obscure genetics theory.

It does if you're stuck on trying to rationalize a chickenbone of anti-Black racism you have permanently lodged in your throat...., nothing like the conflation of 19th century animal husbandry, social darwinism, and pseudo-scientific genetic phrenology to warm the cockles of bigots with deficient scientific training and understanding.

CNu said...

This is what the pink painting initiative is actually all about.....,

Undercover Black Man said...

^ "Drunk-tank pink" on a citywide scale. They should try that one in Oakland.

Undercover Black Man said...

Fisher (and Nulan):

(1) Do you accept that a genomic scientist, when presented with four vials of blood, will be able to determine which blood belonged to a West African, which blood belonged to a Northern European, which blood belonged to an East Asian, and which blood belonged to a Mayan?

If yes:

(2) Do you accept or reject the notion that human subgroups widely separated by geography underwent genetic adaptations influenced by their environments?

CNu said...

You didn't acquit your views very competently the last time we round on this topic David. As it stands, I have neither the time or inclination to further disabuse you of the precious "magical thinking" idiosyncracies you share in common with Rushton

I'll leave you to your intricately rationalized superstitions like your boy Denmark Vesey is won't to tell folks,

"it's not a good look."

Anonymous said...

Cnu, I almost think you might agree with me.

Strange that you follow that with a link to some psychobabble implying the Filipinos are trying to pacify themselves in an ultimately destructive fashion.

Lola Gets said...

Ok, Im not reading all of these damned comments, lol. But UBM, SKIN is colored - brown, black, tan, biege, etc. FLESH, ie the shit thats under the skin, if its healthy, its pinkish, lol. Its kinda gross when you break it down like that, but there it is.

Anonymous said...

Some points:

The argument that "there are more genetic variations within a specified racial group than between racial groups", is known as Lewontin's fallacy. In other words, it's bunk. See this paper.

So, while just about all human genetic variation can be found within any given race, the frequencies of different traits vary between races--90% of members of one race may have trait X, while only 1% of another race has the same trait, and so on. For this reason the races can be distinguished from each other in genetic studies.

Of course, race is a problematic concept. There are always intermediates between two populations, so it's difficult to tell where one race ends and another begins. On the other hand, if you take a bunch of native people from, say, Nigeria, Belgium and Japan, and compare their genomes, every single person will be genetically more similar to every single member of his own population than to any member of the other two populations.

It's erroneous to assume that preference for light skin is always due to European influence. India, China, and Japan at least seem to have had a preference for fair skin (in women at least) long before any meaningful contact with Europeans.

Undercover Black Man said...

Lola: How "healthy" can the flesh be ... with the skin peeled off it?? ;^)

CNu said...

the dunderheads at yale evidently succumbed to Lewontin's fallacy

As genetic polymorphisms, the common alleles at the loci catalogued in ALFRED must be considered normal variation. It is a demonstrable fact that almost every human population differs from every other population in allele frequencies at one or more loci, but that the largest fraction by far of genetic diversity occurs among members of the same population.

I wonder why that th post positively REEKS of pseudo-scientific and unreconstructed dragonhorseshit?

David, is a "mayan" a member of the oriental or caucasian race? Or is their some woodpile negroidism insinuated up in there, up in there?

silly rabbits, "race" is for imbeciles....,

CNu said...

How "healthy" can the flesh be ... with the skin peeled off it?? ;^)

David, gently separate some vulva this week and find out!!!!!

rotflmbao.....,

Undercover Black Man said...

^ Now that's what that Filipino bureaucrat shoulda been talkin' about, Craig.

Undercover Black Man said...

^ And also, Craig... I'm kinda surprised Lola didn't beat you there. (Lola probably is too.)

Anonymous said...

If pink is the color of healthy flesh, I'm gonna live forever...

Anonymous said...

the dunderheads at yale evidently succumbed to Lewontin's fallacy

Lewontin's claim is true to the extent that most human genetic variation is shared by all populations. However, Lewontin's "discovery" does not prove that there are no meaningful genetic differences between populations/races.

As the Edwards paper demonstrates, when, instead of just one allele at a time (like Lewontin did), one compares a bunch of alleles and their frequencies in different populations, the traditional racial, ethnic etc. groupings pop out of the genetic data. This has been empirically proven in numerous recent studies (e.g.).

The ALFRED folks know all this, which is why they warn against using their data to demonstrate unpleasant facts about differences between populations.

I wonder why that th post positively REEKS of pseudo-scientific and unreconstructed dragonhorseshit?

Perhaps because you share Lewontin's prejudiced Marxist perspective on racial issues, and cannot tolerate the fact that science contradicts your preconceived notions?

Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, opined on Lewontin:

Lewontin, in particular, is known to be strongly politically biased and himself admits to being scientifically unscrupulous on these [racial] issues. That is, he takes them as political ones and therefore feels justified in the use of biased arguments.

It is unlikely that Lewontin ever believed in his own argument about human genetic variation.

CNu said...

The ALFRED folks know all this, which is why they warn against using their data to demonstrate unpleasant facts about differences between populations.

Please, let's see your comprehensive laundry list of genotype to phenotype and thence behavioural "unpleasant facts"?

David, you can leave the light on for this nazi boy toy - if you like. I'm not overly concerned we'll be reading anything else of substance from these quarters....,

Michael Fisher said...
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Michael Fisher said...

Mills...

"Do you accept that a genomic scientist, when presented with four vials of blood, will be able to determine which blood belonged to a West African, which blood belonged to a Northern European, which blood belonged to an East Asian, and which blood belonged to a Mayan?"

While this is not the issue at hand, let me point out to you your, again no offense, sloppy analysis here.

First, you are stating the same thing as in comment 4/27/08 at 8:42pm, only now in the form of a question.

My answer is the same. Clearly there are genetic differences between humans. Individual humans that is. Again, in order to construct a race you have to choose biological markers that a large (define large) group of individuals have in common that no other group of individuals possess and do so on the basis of scientific objectivity.

Now, the statement "this person is East Asian" is completely useless. East Asia is a geographic region which contains multitudes of people who define themselves as different "ethnic" groups. See the Indian caste system, for example.

So the first thing you gonna have to do is give me the "standard" East Asian against whom I can measure who is not East Asian and who is. How do make the objective judgment that the particular individual you select is the "standard" out of the 1 billion diverse folks in India alone?

The Nazis had the same problem. They arbitrarily selected a "standard": light blond (though they failed to define exactly how light) hair, light (though they failed to define exactly how light) skin, skull shape, nose shape, blue eye color (although again the question of how blue was not resolved. Each feature was, if defined at all, defined within arbitrarily defined parameters and then cobbled together to make a "race", namely the “Aryan Race”.

Now, presumably there are humans that were born in East Asia who are 6 feet tall versus East Asians who are 5 feet tall. Moreover there presumably are humans who were born in Europe who are 6 feet tall versus Europeans who are 5 feet tall.

Could I successfully construct a race based on height by saying all 6 feet tall people constitute one race and all 5 feet tall people constitute another? Of course. Now I go and test for the genetic marker. And voila, there it is in the 6 feet tall persons born in East Asia as well as the 6 feet tall persons born in Europe. It is a marker shared only by 6 feet tall people. And it is more relevant than any marker based on some geographic and arbitrary standard. Though mind you, my choice of using the "6 feet gene" marker to construct my "race" was completely arbitrary.

Ok. Having dealt with that question, let me ask you this. On the basis of what biological markers did you define as a group these people on a Zimbabwean train (here), people in Haiti (here), people in Somalia
(here), people in Jamaica (here), and people in Liberia (here)
together as a "racial" group?

And how is my “race” of 6 feet tall people any less legitimate than the race you defined by linking to these different people in disparate geographical regions throughout the world?

Please answer that one.

Undercover Black Man said...

Michael, I did not connect Zimbabweans, Haitians, Somalis, Jamaicans and Liberians as one racial group. I was using the same definition of "black" that you used when you asked me:

"Why, in your estimation, do Black folks owe America anything?"

"Black folks" owe America some gratitude for being so much better off than other "Black folks" all over the globe.

Michael Fisher said...

Mills...

"Michael, I did not connect Zimbabweans, Haitians, Somalis, Jamaicans and Liberians as one racial group. I was using the same definition of "black" that you used..."

Well, as you well know, my definition of black folks is that of a socio-political group the functional content of that socio-political character is the victimization by a system of racism/white supremacy.

Thus you are saying that "[Victims of Racism/White Supremacy] owe America some gratitude for being so much better off than other '[Victims of Racism/White Supremacy]' all over the globe."

In any case. Since we appear to finally agree that "black" people are a socio-political grouping and are so planet-wide, let's look at the pathologies which you consistently point out and which indeed exist.

Now do you think that anyone in their right mind would go around shooting other folks of "their" kind, disrespect their elders, the opposite sex, drop out of high school, and choose prison over a productive life?

If no, and since this is not a genetically based behavior, but a learned behavior, who are the teachers?

Michael Fisher said...

David. This is what happens when one posits "human sub-groups" as races based on biologically arbitrary (though politically purposeful) markers. I put added the subtitles for this piece especially for you.

sondjata said...

I haven't watched the video so I could be off on this comment.

the comment I read said that pink.FLESH is healthy. which strictly speaking is correct. Flesh refers to the meat and not the skin.

So for example pink lungs are healthy. black lungs are not.

Undercover Black Man said...

For any language nerds who might be interested... I’ve just found the origin of the phrase “in the pink of health.”

It has nothing to do with the color of flesh... or the color of skin.

The British website Phrase Finder says “the pink of ____” dates back to the 1500s, meaning the epitome, the pinnacle. As in this line from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”:

“Why, I am the very pinke of curtesie.”

Or this line written by Charles Dickens in the 1800s:

“It is the very pink of hideousness and squalid misery.”