[gthtjtkt]

Funny how people are jumping out of the woodwork to defend racism. There's literally no context where attributing qualities to people based on their skin color is OK.

When did we go back to the 1950s? I sure hope you don't feel comfortable being this racist in real life.

[seneca]

> There's literally no context where attributing qualities to people based on their skin color is OK.

Strongly disagree. Talking about likelihood of having sickle cell anemia without talking about race would be absurd.

This probably sounds pedantic, but my point is that we should stop all of these emotionally charged over reactions, on both sides. Saying "attributing any characteristic based on skin color is racist" is almost as absurd as what you're arguing against. There has to be room for nuance.

[kardianos]

There is clearly one area where your ethnicity/race matters: genetics. Your ethnicity can can be used to approximate genetic clustering and that is done to some degree within pharmacogenomics.

Apart from the that one carve-out, their point is correct.

However, ethnicity is only rough approximation for genetics as clustering is not perfect (obviously). Thus the cure for even this area is improved NGS testing.

So actually, their point is completly correct as-is.

[gthtjtkt]

> This probably sounds pedantic

It doesn't just sound pedantic, it is pedantic.

The topic is clearly about personality traits not medical conditions.

[inglor_cz]

Some medical conditions are psychiatric in nature, so there is definitely a space for stereotypes to emerge ("X are depressive, Y are manic").

[seneca]

> The topic is clearly about personality traits not medical conditions.

Contextualizing it would make sense if you had not said "literally no context". This is my point, black and white language like this repels nuance.

[Nacdor]

You're changing the subject. This topic is about personality traits, not medical conditions.

This statement is still true: "There's literally no context where attributing qualities to people based on their skin color is OK."

You wanted to be pedantic, so you ignored the context in which that statement was made. If you hadn't ignored the context, you would've known the statement was about personality traits and not medical conditions.

[seneca]

The person I am replying to used the phrase "literally no context" and you're saying I am ignoring the context in order to make an argument. My entire point is that the OP is throwing away context, and in so doing falsifying their own argument. The lack of context is the whole point of contention. You're attributing to me the very thing I'm disagreeing with.

[Nacdor]

Once again, you are ignoring the context in which the statement was made and then using that to change the subject and justify your pedantry.

The statement was obviously about personality traits, that much was clear based on the context in which the statement was made (this HN thread). You are now ignoring the context in which the statement was made and instead focusing on the use of the word 'context' within the statement itself. To make it easier for you to understand, here is what was implied by the statement given the context in which it was made "There's literally no context where attributing PERSONALITY qualities to people based on their skin color is OK."

Your argument about medical conditions is not only wrong (as pointed out by another commenter), it's completely irrelevant and off-topic. The discussion was only about personality traits until you tried to derail it.