To: ThePythonicCow
"is Colin Powell bigger than Condi Rice because he is a man? Well, he's bigger. But being a man doesn't make him necessarily bigger." Sometimes people here "X because Y" to mean there's a necessary connection between X and Y. But that's not how we ordinarily talk or think about causation. For example, smoking causes cancer, but it doesn't follow that if you smoke then necessarily you'll get cancer. Let's pick a neutral idiom to avoid this sort of complication. Let's use the phrase "It's no accident". Now, if you point to a man and a woman and the man is taller than the woman, I'd say it's no accident that he's taller. If you point to a Scottsman and an Irishman and the Scottsman was taller I wouldn't make the same claim. The fallacy at the heart of the folk theory of race isn't that group A has statistical properties not shared by group B. It's the "it's no accident claim". Once you give it up, race becomes useless as an analytical tool becuase it's not doing any explanatory work.
To: ConsistentLibertarian
Once you give it up, race becomes useless as an analytical tool because it's not doing any explanatory work.
It's no accident that Shaq is a black male.
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