If a couple in Africa with no European ancestry somehow naturally conceived and gave birth to someone who grew up to look just like Sarah Michelle (Gellar) Prinze, would she be white? If a couple in Norway with no recent African ancestry naturally conceived and gave birth to a child who grew up to look just like James Earl Jones, would the child be black? If you think the cases aren't parallel, and one is yes but the other no, why is that?
Race Thought Experiment #7
Categories:
1 Comments
Leave a comment
Search
Contact
-
The Parablemen are:
,
, and
.
Recent Comments
- Chike commented on Race Thought Experiment #7: Presumably
Blogroll
Evangel | A First Things Blog
Uncle Sam's Cabin
The Prosblogion
My Picture Blog
Boston Bible Geeks
Crossroads (Jan Crawford)
If Only I Had Super Powers....
The Gnuvemberist
Between Two Worlds
C. Orthodoxy
The Volokh Conspiracy
SCOTUSblog
Gender, Race and Philosophy
Thoughts Arguments and Rants
La Shawn Barber's Corner
word and spirit
Election Projection
Alexander Pruss's Blog
LTI Blog
In Socrates' Wake
Kenny Pearce
GeekPress
GetReligion
Waving Hands
Ancient Hebrew Poetry
A True Believer's Blog
Really Random Rants
Stereo Describes My Scenario
538: Electoral Projections Done Right
Race 4 2012
The Bible Archive
Cobb: Strictly Old School
GetReligion
Bench Memos
Joseph Mallozzi
ScrappleFace
There is Some Truth in That
Language Log
Philosophy, et cetera
PHILREL WEBLOG
Intellectuelle
La Shawn Barber’s Corner
The Buck Stops Here
truegrit
Fantasy Fiction for Christians
He Lives
Think Tonk
Certain Doubts
Non-Blog Sites
- Trinity Fellowship
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
- Denver Journal (Review: Biblical/Theological Studies)
- Biblical Studies Bulletin
- Catalyst: Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives
- Numavox (Kerry Livgren)
- Proto-Kaw
- Kansas
- Neal Morse
- GateWorld
- Terry Brooks
- The L-Space Web (Terry Pratchett)
- Blog Carnival Submission Form
- Christian Carnival
- List of Christian Carnivals
- Philosophers' Carnival
- Biblical Studies Carnival
- BugMeNot
- The Holy Observer
- snopes.com: myths and urban legends
- BoardGameGeek
- Fair Play Games
- Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard
- TinyURL.com
- David Chalmers' list of philosophy blogs
Games I've Been Playing
- Uno (Sophia and I each won)
- Gnu's Red Riding Hood Dice Adventure Game
- Last Word (Sophia and I each won)
- Variation on Hearts (I won)
- Crazy Eights (I won)
- Carcassonne with Carcassonne: Inns & Cathedrals, Carcassonne: Traders & Builders, and Carcassonne: The Princess & The Dragon (Tim Albert and Mark Quick tied for the win)
- Carcassonne (I won)
- War (card game) (Sophia won)
- The Settlers of Catan (Sam won)
- Chutes and Ladders (Ethan won)
- Scramble (Wink won two, Bonnie Lindblom won two, Carl Burdick won one, and Bill Carroll won another)
- Go Wacky! (Sophia and I each won)
- Citadels (Sam won)
- Chutes and Ladders (Sophia won)
- Scrabble (Paul K won)
Powered by Movable Type
This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.









































































Presumably in both cases, you're talking about couples who look like the average African or Norwegian - i.e., a black couple in the first case and a white couple in the second.
The cases seem to me to be parallel. One possible difference I can see is that there might be the tendency to suspect in the case of the Sarah Michelle lookalike that we are dealing with a very strange case of albinism, despite the fact that Ms. Prinze does not resemble an albino.
I think there would be reasonable tendency to classify both as the races they *appear* to be, if only as a reaction to the freak-of-nature character of their appearances. That is, in cases when nature seems to bend its rules, we are so excited about the "super"-natural occurrence that we desire to highlight that over any other more natural aspect of the case.