when it comes to africa for example i was taught that they're poor cause their land isn't harvestable or some bullshit like that, and then i find out as an adult it's actually cause western countries fucked the shit out of them and huh that makes a lot more sense
The point is, you walk into Brooklyn in the 1920s and 9/20 people look like that
Then you walk into Iowa and 1/20 people look like that
numbers are numbers and we notice them even if we don't mean to. There is an observable difference en masse so it is noticed.
And a greater number of outliers isn't the only thing--if you have more outliers it means you also have more people who are closer to the outliers. If 10% of your pop. lies outside the natural "Anglo" appearance variation, it also means that 60% of your pop. lies on the "darker half" of Anglo appearance variation. It's not "just" the outliers who influence the perception, because everything in nature is analog and continuous, not discrete. Those differences are very noticeable if you just walk into an explicit community of Italians.
The word "Italian" is an aggregate term, so aggregate differences are applied.
italian is a cultural term not a racial term but go off.
im not saying it cant be noticed en masse that people from different areas look a bit different.. what im saying is that on an individual level there isnt anything to differentiate that odd-duck 1/20 iowan from the "racially distinct" 9/20 folks in brooklyn, ergo the distinction isnt distinct and your race science shit is shit.
if you need to do a genetic test to look at phenotype markers to figure out if someone is italian or french or british or irish or polish or whatever with any significant degree of certainty absent them living in a community explocitly of those people... guess what? the only difference is cultural
Italian is a term used to denote people from Italy. If people from Italy look recognizably different in aggregate from the people in country X, then the X people will begin using "Italian" as a "racial" term. Race is a social construct that only exists due to perceivable visual differences from what people are "used" to seeing.
great, so you agree with me. Italian, en masse, look different enough from Anglos to differentiate.
No there isn't. The difference is that when it happens 1/20 times in your ethnicity, and 9/20 times in another, you notice the difference in aggregate. The difference that Italians, on average, look substantially darker and with more Mideast leaning features than Anglos.
And since the term "Italian" is an AGGREGATE TERM, the Italians, IN AGGREGATE, are seen as less white than Anglos.
We are literally in complete agreement here.
Noone said anything about genes. Different extreme ethnicities of Europe look different. South Europeans look different in aggregate from North, and even Eastern look different from Western (the difference is in features, not color, so it's harder for a white American to spot)
Can a single particular individual Italian pass for Russian? Of course. Can a single individual Ukrainian pass as Dravidian South Indian? Of course.
In aggregate though, the differences are very observable (with the Italian-Russian difference being much smaller than the Ukrainian-Dravidian difference, obviously)