AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Like, I just said that I don't like Japan and its culture, and people said I was racist. Wouldn't that make me nationalist though?

No, that makes you a racist AND a nationalist

Hm, so not liking their culture makes me racist? Well okay then.

Well, it kind of depends on the extend of your dislike. I mean it's fine to not like something, if you just wouldn't like to live in Japan that's understandable. If it's to the extent of hate though, you would be an intolerant bigot. But I'm sure that's not what you mean.

Well, I don't like using Japanese words when I could be using American ones instead.
I think using honorifics in English translations is dumb.

Well...do you not like ANYTHING about Japanese culture? Like the second you find out anything originated in Japan, do you find yourself instantly disliking it? Or is it more that you dislike certain things about the culture?

The later is entirely too understandable. The former...well the former is just insane.

Well, I like their cool things, but I hate the things they have that I think are dumb.

That's...very nondescript, but I think I get it. It's not racist to not like certain things about a culture. I mean shit, there are certain aspects to American culture I find rediculous. It's not racist...it's human.

Race is just a dumb social construct humanity can't seem to get past. It's a mixture of culture and class really.

Race is not a dumb social construct. It is about genetics. Problem is that we mix our genes so the categories become very fluid. There are different races of dogs with different traits. The most obvious difference in humans is the colour but there are other smaller differences as well. Ultimately, we are all humans and that is what should be the most important factor.

99% of every human's genes are exactly the same. Biologically we are exactly the same, culture is the only thing that makes us different.

While I understand what you're going for, you can't honestly say that if you saw a white person, and a black person standing next to each other, you'd be at a loss for words for what makes the two of them different at a first glance.

The white dude can't jump.

seriously though, besides superficial appearances, humans are all the same. Superficial stuff does count for a lot though, since humans are naturally very sight oriented.

We share +95% of the same genes as most mammals, meaning the number isn't all that important.

That there aren't differences between races is an absolutely ridiculous claim. This blog entry (couldn't find all that many scientific papers discussing this.) explains it fairly well. http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com ... man-races/

I agree. There are not all that many functional differences, but there are medical and some diseases affect different types of populations differently. This means there are some difference somewhere.

Besides which, there are millions of genes. Even if humans have a 1% deviance in genetic material (which seems pretty high for a species), you're looking at tens of thousands of genes with the ability for variable expression.

That's a lot of basis for differences in a species. Hell, chimpanzees and bonobos are only 1% different than the average human genome and they're drastically different from humans.

It's true that we're not reproductively isolated, but neither are dogs, yet we classify them by breeds.

The simple fact of the matter is that race is more often than not equivalent to the genetic origin that gives rise to human "breeds". There are people in central europe that were of a race/breed/genetic origin that were resistant or immune to the plague. They largely kept to themselves, so their genes diverged in a way that made them not susceptible to the same disease.

Now, socially you run into some issues with the terms.

I find that a lot of Americans tend to use race and nationality interchangably, which seems to irritate people who use them for "place of origin" and "current location". For example, asking an American what nationality they are over here will result in them usually giving their race ("I'm German"). But asking about nationality in a place with less immigration usually seems like a weird thing to do (go to Finland and ask what nationality they are, it'll seem odd, since it's assumed that most people originate from Finland).

Additionally, while I have the issue brought up, how do people feel about places with high immigration (especially America), discussing their nationality without mentioning the country they live in (saying German instead of German-American). This can be confusing when discussing matters on the Internet, and cultural differences in how language is used can rear up issues too.

To me, I think the issue comes up because in places like America, everyone is an immigrant, so saying you're American is really irrelevant on the local level (you're not going to say to a neighbor "hello, I am, X! my family is German-American."), it's a level of redundancy, so it's just not done compared to places where nationality is more likely to be ambiguous with immigration and tourism and such.

I've had this discussion on another board, but unfortunately it got heated before anyone could really give a good perspective on the matter.