Oh please let it be a fully egalitarian future…
Attached is a perfectly acceptable social media post and two entirely understandable LLM responses to the post and a reimagining of the post.
One relevant data point in terms of how soon we’d conceivably be refactoring language models and updating our own views:
From their research, Sáenz and Poston Jr expect the United States to have progressed to overall white minority demography by 2044.
Of course, a white minority doesn’t necessarily equate a dismantling of a power structure favoring white folks.
It shouldn’t need to be said on the fediverse that racists need not reply - expect most folks will approach this academically as intended.
PS: if you hate this post, please try to be as nice as you can about it - e.g. toss me a polite sentence after you downvote
I don’t think there would be perspectives on race, except as a hypothetical- the way I (and I assume others) feel when something like those head shape diagrams that tell you about whether someone’s a criminal (edit: phrenological diagrams)come up: it’s an invented way to keep people in groups, so it won’t stick around once people are no longer separating themselves on that basis.
Given that we don’t live in that society, I see no issue with treating a post from a white man specifying white beauty differently from one from a black man about black beauty. They are different statements. I see it similarly to how a woman saying “it was great to see a woman win a scientific award” is a different statement from a man saying “it was great to see a man win a scientific award.” Black women have been excluded from American ideas of beauty since there was an America in a variety of ways.
Thanks for overcoming my shortsighted decision to put too great of a spotlight on software when it overshadowed the (sociological? anthropological?) question you adeptly responded to.
Interesting:
As obviously pseudoscientific as those foot diagrams (reflexology).
Is there way more validity/importance to race than phrenology? Some folks seem to love connecting with their culture, their ancestors, and race plays a part - they’ll take pride in all of it.
Indeed, we should. But what if we fast forward not to just a time when the oppressor class’s race is a minority, but also there’s no racial connection amongst the oppressor class? So, year 3000, and everyone is perfectly represented amongst Fortune 500 CEOs. Nobody’s disadvantaged, and there’s no great need to raise up any particular group of people.
1: would a Black man specify the race of a Black flight attendant?
2: would a white person specify the race of a white flight attendant?
And would either or both of those be viewed as totally normal observations?
(this does assume we continue to notice our racial groupings technically exist - if race is no longer a distinction, believe the question’s moot)
Culture is a good thing to compare it to, because they’re both sociological, rather than biological distinctions. People want to connect with their culture, but I think if race were truly irrelevant, they might base it on different things. I’ve heard my stepsister attribute her loudness to being Jewish, Italian, and a New Yorker- I’d expect more of the latter if no one else had told her that Jews or Italians are loud.
If there’s not a connection between a behavior and a race (or ethnicity), I don’t know how one could take pride in it. I also don’t really see how the world can be fully egalitarian if they still exist- would someone who believes Italians are inherently louder than, say, Japanese people give mr. Policetti and mr. Yamamoto the same chances when hiring an academic dean or a DJ for a kid’s party? I can’t see how they would.
Maybe I’m missing something, but if that thought is somewhere in peoples heads, I think it’s got to have an effect.