Is there any such thing as being a "race traitor"?

[Leaper]

Inspired by the incredible derailing on this thread. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=473342)

Now, I realize that the term "race traitor" is a bit loaded, being mostly associated with white supremacists against any white person who doesn't share their point of view. However, I think it's appropriate here, given what some believe about Colin Powell, Condelezza Rice, Michelle Malkin, Juan Williams, and other conservative people of color.

Is there a point where, simply by holding certain political views (thus including folks like Malkin and Williams, who, unlike Powell and Rice, have little power to really influence national policy), you are betraying your race, becoming an Uncle Tom, a houseboy, or, as I said before, a race traitor? What about Log Cabin Republicans?

[Bryan Ekers]

No. Race is an illusion and tribalism is stupid.

[John Mace]

Well, it depends. If you honestly hold certain political views, then no. If you cravenly espouse views you don't believe in to get political power knowing that those policies are wrong and will do damage to people of your race, religion, ethnic group or what have you, then yeah, you're a traitor to that group. How you determine the motives of another individual is always problematic, though.

[Indistinguishable]

As a more general issue, cannot one sincerely hold traitorous views?

[Gozu]

If you have sex with a dolphin, you are a sex traitor in my book.

Or a monkey.

[tomndebb]

If you have sex with a dolphin, you are a sex traitor in my book.

Or a monkey.If you have sex with a dolphin, you are a monkey?

Whoa!

[Der Trihs]

In a sense, I think. The problem is, while race is an arbitrary, artificial construct, people take it seriously, especially bigots. If you do something that aids those bigots, you are acting against your own and your family's interest, not to mention many innocent bystanders. Because regardless of your or my opinions of the reality of race, the racists take it dead seriously, and will act on those beliefs.

If the term "race traitor" bothers you, just use "inconsiderate, self destructive fool who's making a deal with the devil" instead.

[Gozu]

If you have sex with a dolphin, you are a monkey?

Whoa!

No, what I meant was...ah nevermind. Yes, you are a monkey.

[tomndebb]

No, what I meant was...ah nevermind. Yes, you are a monkey.Just to be clear: I, myself, have never engaged in sexual activities with either dolphins or monkeys (or any non-human).

[foolsguinea]

I think a white Rhodesian who somehow aided & abetted Robert Mugabe's purge attempts without some hope of modifying Mugabe's views or mitigating his damage might be a race traitor; but he'd also be messing with the country in general, since apparently Mugabe ended up being bad for black Rhodesians too.

[ignis_glaciesque]

Just to be clear: I, myself, have never engaged in sexual activities with either dolphins or monkeys (or any non-human).

I imagine they call them 'blowholes' for a reason...

:p

[Baldwin]

No. Race is an illusion and tribalism is stupid.
I agree. Tribadism, on the other hand . . . .

[dropzone]

No. Race is an illusion and tribalism is stupid.The stinking, cruller-eating Canuck is right. ;)

Bryan, have I posted my complaint about La Fête nationale du Québec and how it affected this dumb Yank when he tried to get some drawings plotted and delivered to Westmount last Tuesday? Me, I said, "But Canada Day isn't until the First! And what sort of moron puts a half-assed, PROVINCIAL holiday on a TUESDAY these days?"

"Check the provincial holidays," said a cow-orker.

D'oh! It isn't JUST a holiday, it's the "Fuck You, We're Really a Country" holiday and NOTHING happens in Montreal that day except the consumption of crappy Canadian beers and wines. Including FedEx deliveries had I plotted them here and sent them. And my stupid effing customer has lived therefor years and should've known better than to expect them.

:mad: since a vein in my forehead is still throbbing. I HATE effing Canada. ;)

[John Mace]

In a sense, I think. The problem is, while race is an arbitrary, artificial construct, people take it seriously, especially bigots.
Let's be clear about something. Race is a social construct, but that doesn't mean it does not exist. It just means that there is no scientific basis, not that there is no social reality of race. And I'm not trying to contradict you here, but to make it clear that one cannot dismiss race as an illusion as Bryan Ekers did in his post. Social constructs can be very real.

[dropzone]

Dammit! Ran out of time to adjust that one.

[Cardinal]

While I realize that people will tend to see others as part of a group based on where they come from and what they look like, I completely reject the idea that you are not your own person. The very idea of a "race traitor" assumes the person has a greater loyalty to the "group" as someone else defines it, and is not free to make his own decisions. It really gets me mad.

[Der Trihs]

Let's be clear about something. Race is a social construct, but that doesn't mean it does not exist. It just means that there is no scientific basis, not that there is no social reality of race. And I'm not trying to contradict you here, but to make it clear that one cannot dismiss race as an illusion as Bryan Ekers did in his post. Social constructs can be very real.That's partly why I called it an "arbitrary, artificial construct", instead of just "imaginary". The other is because it is real, to an extent, but arbitrary. By the latter I mean that there are more-and-less loosely related collections of genes that roughly match racial differences ( which is why one can speak of the prevalence of a particular genetic disease among this or that "race" ), so to that extent they are "real"; but they are arbitrary because there's any number of other ways we could categorize people genetically that we don't consider a "race".

[brickbacon]

While I realize that people will tend to see others as part of a group based on where they come from and what they look like, I completely reject the idea that you are not your own person.

But it's painfully obvious that a person is who they are in large part because of where they are from and what they look like (among other things). The more integral something is to who a person is or how they are treated, the more traitorous it is for that person to willfully undermine the values or ideals the group holds without sound reasoning and thoughtful deliberation.

Taking the stand you are taking calls in to question the idea of being a traitor in a general sense. Would you hesitate to call an American who sells arms to Iran, or John Walker Lindh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Walker_Lindh) a traitor?

The very idea of a "race traitor" assumes the person has a greater loyalty to the "group" as someone else defines it, and is not free to make his own decisions. It really gets me mad.

You can make your own decisions, but you have to deal with the consequences.

[Guinastasia]

I suppose, if you have someone who is Jewish, who hides his or her background, and joins the KKK, (and not undercover), yeah, I think that someone would DEFINITELY be a race traitor.

(Probably would be very unlikely, but I suppose you could have someone doing so, in a fit of self-loathing. Sort of like the old "Hitler was Jewish" theory.)

[FriarTed]

I suppose, if you have someone who is Jewish, who hides his or her background, and joins the KKK, (and not undercover), yeah, I think that someone would DEFINITELY be a race traitor.

(Probably would be very unlikely, but I suppose you could have someone doing so, in a fit of self-loathing. Sort of like the old "Hitler was Jewish" theory.)

It's rare but does happen. William Potter Gale. a leader of the white supremacist Posse Comitatus turned out to be half-black. And Google up a fellow named Douglas Wolfgang Hawke, aka Brit Greenbaum.

[monstro]

I remember a few years back hearing about a black woman who was in the National Association of the Advancement of White People.

Before someone chimes in, the organization is NOT an analog to the NAACP.

While I'm loathe to link black Republicans/conservatives to the "race traitor" category (for instance, I think one can be against Affirmative Action and be radically pro-black at the same time), I'm not going to say there's no such thing as a race traitor. For instance, it's hard not to think that slaves who snitched on runaways or rebellions weren't traitorous...even if their actions might be completely understandable from a self-preservation standpoint. The history of black Americans might be vastly different if it hadn't been for these traitors.

[smiling bandit]

I've mentioned it before and I will probably do so again, but there IS such a thing as race. It has nothing to do with intelligence or capability or moral worth, but the scientific concept does exist. Anthropologists are very uncomfortable with it, and tend to hide it these days, but it does exist and denotes certain extremely large human populations, all of which have interacted and interbred. There are only about four of them.

There is also such as thing as ethnicity, which is a much more complicated beast.

Now, I can't imagine such as thing as a race traitor. or really even an ethnic traitor.

[John Mace]

I've mentioned it before and I will probably do so again, but there IS such a thing as race. It has nothing to do with intelligence or capability or moral worth, but the scientific concept does exist. Anthropologists are very uncomfortable with it, and tend to hide it these days, but it does exist and denotes certain extremely large human populations, all of which have interacted and interbred. There are only about four of them.
Wrong.

If you insist on putting all of humankind into 4 groups, there are going to be millions of people who just don't fit. All the traditional races blend as a continuum into each other. For instance, if you travel from Beijing to Berlin, there is no one place where people suddenly stop looking Asian and suddenly look European. Unless, of course, you know where that place is and can cite it for us...

You can, of course, draw arbitrary lines anywhere in the world and call people on one side of line race A and people on the other side race B. But that is necessarily arbitrary.

[Hypnagogic Jerk]

D'oh! It isn't JUST a holiday, it's the "Fuck You, We're Really a Country" holiday and NOTHING happens in Montreal that day except the consumption of crappy Canadian beers and wines. Including FedEx deliveries had I plotted them here and sent them. And my stupid effing customer has lived therefor years and should've known better than to expect them.
I have no idea what this has to do in this thread, but when you do business with other countries, you must keep in mind that they will have official holidays on other days than you do. And that includes local or provincial holidays, even those you dislike for some bigoted reason. So too bad for you, Ugly American. :p

[Zsofia]

I don't know, I would tend to think that if you were a slave in the antebellum South, and you ratted out your fellow slaves when they ran away and told the slave hunters where they were hiding even though there was no risk to you just to curry favor with the masters - I think it might be legitimate to call you a race traitor. However, "race" in that situation is just a convenient word for "group" - it's not bad because you're both black, it's bad because you're both slaves.

[Alessan]

What if you were a free black who turned in runaway slaves?

[BrainGlutton]

We had a recent thread (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=468929) about whether blacks who prefer politicians of their own race are therefore racists; sometimes you just can't win.

[StrawberryPaprika]

Is it possible to call someone "white" a race traitor, then?

[monstro]

What if you were a free black who turned in runaway slaves?

Or a free black who owned slaves (http://www.uwec.edu/Geography/Ivogeler/w188/south/charles/charles3.htm).

[BrainGlutton]

If you insist on putting all of humankind into 4 groups . . .

Actually, there are three. (http://sonic.net/~goblin/9moe.html)

[Cardinal]

But it's painfully obvious that a person is who they are in large part because of where they are from and what they look like (among other things). The more integral something is to who a person is or how they are treated, the more traitorous it is for that person to willfully undermine the values or ideals the group holds without sound reasoning and thoughtful deliberation.

Taking the stand you are taking calls in to question the idea of being a traitor in a general sense. Would you hesitate to call an American who sells arms to Iran, or John Walker Lindh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Walker_Lindh) a traitor? I know what you're saying, but it totally depends on the values and agenda of that group. Is anyone here going to say that Admiral Canaris was anything but a hero for stonewalling Himmler and aiding the group that gave Colonel Staufffenburg the bomb to plant in the bunker on July 20, 1944? He was executed for treason, and in the strict definition of the word he was treasonous, but he's one of my personal heroes for evaluating the situation on a moral basis and not rolling over for the groupthink around him.

I also drive around with a custom "Republican Against Bush" bumper sticker. I'm not going to blindly support something just because all these other people are.

So in the case of Lindh, I can call him a traitor, but more to the point, immoral (yes, I realize that starts another "No I'm not" "Are too" argument).

[BrainGlutton]

(Probably would be very unlikely, but I suppose you could have someone doing so, in a fit of self-loathing. Sort of like the old "Hitler was Jewish" theory.)

The Master Speaks. (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_325b.html)

[descamisado]

Is it possible to call someone "white" a race traitor, then?Actually white supremacists have called whites who were supportive of equal rights just that.

[cwthree]

William Potter Gale. a leader of the white supremacist Posse Comitatus turned out to be half-black.
Gale was half Jewish, not half Black. His father was a Russian Jew who either converted or ceased to practice Judaism prior to marrying Gale's mother. They raised their children as Christians.

You may be thinking of Leo Felton, who was convicted of conspiring to blow up Jewish and Black landmarks.

Cite (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=73).

[Guinastasia]

The Master Speaks. (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_325b.html)


True, he did. I don't necessarily BELIEVE it's true, (or not) but it's one theory that's been mentioned.

[Little Nemo]

The idea that race is arbitrary or illusionary doesn't stand up to any level of critical thinking.

Let's look at a similar but less controversial concept: hair color. There are blondes, brunettes, and redheads. It's a condition determined by genetics (leaving aside the issue of artificial coloring). There are many people who clearly belong to one of these groups and there are some people who don't fit as precisely. There are some people who have stereotypical and unjustified beliefs about people based on their hair color.

All of these statements are also true about skin color. But virtually nobody goes around claiming that hair color doesn't exist or is an illusionary or arbitrary concept or that we all have the same color hair.

The problem is that saying something silly like "race doesn't exist" is because it destroys your credibility. When you go on to say something like "nobody is better or worse than somebody else because of their skin color" why should someone think your opinion on that is worth anything more than your other demonstratibly false opinion?

[Der Trihs]

The idea that race is arbitrary or illusionary doesn't stand up to any level of critical thinking.

Let's look at a similar but less controversial concept: hair color. There are blondes, brunettes, and redheads. It's a condition determined by genetics (leaving aside the issue of artificial coloring). There are many people who clearly belong to one of these groups and there are some people who don't fit as precisely. There are some people who have stereotypical and unjustified beliefs about people based on their hair color.

All of these statements are also true about skin color. But virtually nobody goes around claiming that hair color doesn't exist or is an illusionary or arbitrary concept or that we all have the same color hair.Which rather underlines why race IS arbitrary. Why not call blond haired, or red haired, or green eyed people "races" ? Or people with Rh positive blood ? Why are 'blacks' a race, but not any of the subgroups that compose them races ? We group some shared characteristics and/or ancestry together and call them a race; others we don't. We could easily pick others, and ignore the present "races" the same way we do, say, RH positive blood for non-medical purposes.

[Bryan Ekers]

The problem is that saying something silly like "race doesn't exist" is because it destroys your credibility.

I'm prepared to take that chance.

[Captain Amazing]

However, "race" in that situation is just a convenient word for "group" - it's not bad because you're both black, it's bad because you're both slaves.

Doesn't that assume you have some obligation to other slaves, though, just because you're both slaves?

[you with the face]

Which rather underlines why race IS arbitrary. Why not call blond haired, or red haired, or green eyed people "races" ? Or people with Rh positive blood ?

O negatives in the house!

[Indistinguishable]

Which rather underlines why race IS arbitrary. Why not call blond haired, or red haired, or green eyed people "races" ? Or people with Rh positive blood ? Why are 'blacks' a race, but not any of the subgroups that compose them races ? We group some shared characteristics and/or ancestry together and call them a race; others we don't. We could easily pick others, and ignore the present "races" the same way we do, say, RH positive blood for non-medical purposes.
Indeed. Nobody's saying "skin color is illusory" or "presence or lack of epicanthal folds is illusory" or whatever, because that would be ridiculous. But it is perfectly legitimate to to call racial categories out as arbitrary and lacking genuine foundation, the "reality of race" being something above and beyond the reality of various such attributes.

[Leaper]

Is it possible to call someone "white" a race traitor, then?

Of course. As I said in the OP, white supremacists seem to have almost invented the term (at least in the public eye).

Also, I'd like to note that many of the "exceptions" mentioned in the replies so far involve direct action (e.g. ex-slave giving up Underground Railroaders) of a kind (IMHO) likely motivated by greed. Is that kind of situation really analogous to, say, Condelezza Rice working against affirmative action laws? Michelle Malkin being a right-winger? At what point to actions motivated by genuine personal beliefs (or even just HAVING personal beliefs) go "over the line"?

[Little Nemo]

Which rather underlines why race IS arbitrary. Why not call blond haired, or red haired, or green eyed people "races" ? Or people with Rh positive blood ? Why are 'blacks' a race, but not any of the subgroups that compose them races ? We group some shared characteristics and/or ancestry together and call them a race; others we don't. We could easily pick others, and ignore the present "races" the same way we do, say, RH positive blood for non-medical purposes.The connotations we associate with race are arbitrary. Race itself is not. Race is a condition that exists regardless of how we feel about it.

What if Hillary Clinton had decided to combat Barack Obama's lead by running as a black candidate herself? If race is arbitrary why can't she have decided to be black instead of white?

[Der Trihs]

What if Hillary Clinton had decided to combat Barack Obama's lead by running as a black candidate herself? If race is arbitrary why can't she have decided to be black instead of white?Because as far as I know, she doesn't fit that arbitrary definition. Although if she has even one black ancestor decades ago, she could have called herself "black", and would have been called that ( or less polite words ) if he ancestry had been discovered. The "one drop" view of race was popular back then. The difference between now and then is that the arbitrary definition of race has changed, and she no longer fits it. Since it has no underlying scientific basis, it could easily change again.

[ZebraShaSha]

O negatives in the house!

O negative please.

[Little Nemo]

Because as far as I know, she doesn't fit that arbitrary definition.Maybe you need to check out what the word arbitrary means.

Random House Unabridged Dictionary says "subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion". American Heritage Dictionary says "Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference". WordNet says "based on or subject to individual discretion or preference or sometimes impulse or caprice". Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary says "not decided by rules or laws but by a person's own opinion".

If race was arbitrary as you've claimed, then anyone could decide what race they wanted to be. The fact that they can't indicates that race isn't arbitrary; it's decided by external factors over which the individual has no control - generally skin color. People can't decide what race they are because they can't decide what color their skin is.

And it's not an individual decision. If you asked a hundred people what race this person (http://blog.syracuse.com/metrovoices/2008/01/large_king.jpg) was, they'd all say he's black. And they'd all say this person (http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2007-09-08-RonaldReagan1981.jpg) is white. So obviously there is some common set of standards involved.

To use an example you gave, saying that race is arbitrary is like saying that blood type is arbitrary.

[Little Nemo]

Nobody's saying "skin color is illusory" or "presence or lack of epicanthal folds is illusory" or whatever, because that would be ridiculous.It's certainly ridiculous but don't say nobody's saying it. Bryan Ekers said it in post #2: "Race is an illusion".

When it comes to race, some people have just fallen into a habit of denial, rather than applying any thought.

"Black people tend to be dumber than white people." "No, no, no, that's not true."

"Black people tend to be lazier than white people." "No, no, no, that's not true."

"Black people tend to be more athletic than white people." "No, no, no, that's not true."

"Black people tend to have darker brown skin than white people." "No, no, no, that's not true."

Huh?

No, really, black people do tend to have darker brown skin than white people. It's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a fact. But you'd be surprised how many people would argue the point. It's like they believe that conceding that black people are different from white people in any way is a betrayal of racial equality.

Racial equality is great. I'm all for racial equality. But racial equality should be knowing that people are equal despite having different races. Not denying that they have different races.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I don't know, I would tend to think that if you were a slave in the antebellum South, and you ratted out your fellow slaves when they ran away and told the slave hunters where they were hiding even though there was no risk to you just to curry favor with the masters - I think it might be legitimate to call you a race traitor. However, "race" in that situation is just a convenient word for "group" - it's not bad because you're both black, it's bad because you're both slaves.
I'm more about your disclaimer than about the main body of your post. If you are black, and you support policies that are harmful to black people, that doesn't make you any worse of a person than if you were white and you supported policies that are harmful to black people.

Now, if you support policies that are harmful to people you know personally, then I could say maybe you're worse than someone who supports policies that are harmful to folks they DON'T know personally. And a black person may be likelier to know folks harmed by anti-black policies than a white person would be. But it's the intimacy with those harmed by your actions, not your membership card in a granfalloon (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Agranfalloon), that makes you a bad person.

The word "traitor" is pretty problematic in this context. (I don't much like it in other contexts, either: I think it assigns a negative moral weight without justification in many cases. But that's another thread).

Daniel

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

No, really, black people do tend to have darker brown skin than white people. It's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a fact. But you'd be surprised how many people would argue the point. It's like they believe that conceding that black people are different from white people in any way is a betrayal of racial equality.

Racial equality is great. I'm all for racial equality. But racial equality should be knowing that people are equal despite having different races. Not denying that they have different races.
I think the people objecting to the reality of race would point out that the only statement in your list that's true is the one true by definition. "Black people tend to have darker skin than white people" is akin to saying, "Left-handed people tend to write better with their left hands than right-handed people."

If your definition of race starts and ends at skin color, then of course the concept has scientific merit. You'll also find that it's a difficult concept to work with, though, since there are folks recognized as white with darker skin than other folks recognized as black.

If your definition is more of a fuzzy-logic one that takes into account a collection of physical characteristics, then I think it has more real-world relevance, but is much less clear-cut and nearly useless from a scientific perspective (at least until we get better at working with fuzzy logic).

If your definition allows for white people who "act black" or similar nonsense, then it moves into the scientifically useless category, I think.

Daniel

[smiling bandit]

Wrong.

If you insist on putting all of humankind into 4 groups, there are going to be millions of people who just don't fit. All the traditional races blend as a continuum into each other. For instance, if you travel from Beijing to Berlin, there is no one place where people suddenly stop looking Asian and suddenly look European. Unless, of course, you know where that place is and can cite it for us...

You can, of course, draw arbitrary lines anywhere in the world and call people on one side of line race A and people on the other side race B. But that is necessarily arbitrary.

Rarely do I get irritated here. But you succeeded in ticking me off. Would it kill you to READ what I wrote?!

Races exist. I pointed out in my post that they were not some mythical "pure" group or bloodline. These races have to do with various population migrations from the African cradle of humanity. Had you actually read my post, you would also note that nowhere did I say people fit neatly into those groups.

I am sick and tired of people in GD who do not read the posts they respond to, instead choosing to dump their own prejudices and preconceptions into it.

[John Mace]

Rarely do I get irritated here. But you succeeded in ticking me off. Would it kill you to READ what I wrote?!

Races exist. I pointed out in my post that they were not some mythical "pure" group or bloodline. These races have to do with various population migrations from the African cradle of humanity. Had you actually read my post, you would also note that nowhere did I say people fit neatly into those groups.

I am sick and tired of people in GD who do not read the posts they respond to, instead choosing to dump their own prejudices and preconceptions into it.
You can get as irritated as you want, but you're still wrong. I read your post, and it is simply incorrect. When you put something like this in a post:

Anthropologists are very uncomfortable with it, and tend to hide it these days...
you're telling us there is a conspiracy of scientist to hide the real truth that you somehow know. Well, I'm not buying it. If you want to make a real argument with real cites, go ahead. But just posting some nonsense in GD and getting irritated when someone calls you on it isn't a debate.

[smiling bandit]

you're telling us there is a conspiracy of scientist to hide the real truth that you somehow know. Well, I'm not buying it. If you want to make a real argument with real cites, go ahead. But just posting some nonsense in GD and getting irritated when someone calls you on it isn't a debate.

No, you are wrong. And again, you seem unable to even comprehend what I posted, instead blindly dumping your own opinions of what you wanted me to say so you could blindly accuse me of racism.

Shipman, Pat. The Evolution of Racism: Human Differences and the Use and Abuse of Science. Cambridge: Harvard University. 2002.

Chapter 10 in particular describes how anthropologists pulled back in the post-WW2 era, ashamed over the (unfortunately close) association of their science with Eugenics and Nazi race theories. Unlike your suggestion, I did not say there had been a conspiracy; rather, there was a change of opinions not founded in science, but rather in politics and social order, such that anthropologists took their interests elsewhere out of fear of supporting another racist killer.

Early anthropology tended to be more interested in the lines of descent: which groups went where when, with whom they merged, or when and how they seperated, but without the use of modern techniques like carbon dating or whatnot (which meant a lot of guesswork). At the same time, classical anthropology was interested in cataloguing and seeing the vast array of human differences and variability; this was dropped in favor of emphasizing human unity.

[Indistinguishable]

It's certainly ridiculous but don't say nobody's saying it. Bryan Ekers said it in post #2: "Race is an illusion".
I believe you've misinterpreted my post. "Race is an illusion" is a different statement from "Skin color is an illusion". To the extent that race exists in our culture (as a fairly arbitrary social construct), it's certainly something other than mere skin color.

[John Mace]

No, you are wrong. And again, you seem unable to even comprehend what I posted, instead blindly dumping your own opinions of what you wanted me to say so you could blindly accuse me of racism.
Now you're simply going off the deep end. There is nothing in my post that even remotely accuses you of racism. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

Chapter 10 in particular describes how anthropologists pulled back in the post-WW2 era, ashamed over the (unfortunately close) association of their science with Eugenics and Nazi race theories. Unlike your suggestion, I did not say there had been a conspiracy; rather, there was a change of opinions not founded in science, but rather in politics and social order, such that anthropologists took their interests elsewhere out of fear of supporting another racist killer.

Early anthropology tended to be more interested in the lines of descent: which groups went where when, with whom they merged, or when and how they seperated, but without the use of modern techniques like carbon dating or whatnot (which meant a lot of guesswork). At the same time, classical anthropology was interested in cataloguing and seeing the vast array of human differences and variability; this was dropped in favor of emphasizing human unity.
Again, simply wrong. There is a thriving effort to understand lines of descent and human migration, all founded on the study of DNA-- something completely unavailable to science in the 1950s. Whether politics played a roll in anthropology right after WWII is irrelevant given the hard data we have available to us now. Look up The Genographic Project. (https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/) But "lines of descent" is not equivalent to race. Perhaps you are thinking that haplogroups (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup#Human_Y-chromosome_DNA_haplogroups) are some sort analog to race, but that isn't correct either.

[MrDibble]

Maybe you need to check out what the word arbitrary means.

Maybe you need to read more than just the definition that supports your argument? "Arbitrary" can also just mean unreasonable or unsupported. In that sense, yes, race is arbitrary, in the same way that definitions of art and pornography are arbitrary (the "I know it when I see it" definition).

[tomndebb]

No, you are wrong. And again, you seem unable to even comprehend what I posted, instead blindly dumping your own opinions of what you wanted me to say so you could blindly accuse me of racism.Why don't you wait until a charge of racism has been laid before you go after another poster for making an accusation that I cannot find anywhere in his posts?

[ /Modding ]

[tomndebb]

As to the point of the discussion:I've mentioned it before and I will probably do so again, but there IS such a thing as race. It has nothing to do with intelligence or capability or moral worth, but the scientific concept does exist. Anthropologists are very uncomfortable with it, and tend to hide it these days, but it does exist and denotes certain extremely large human populations, all of which have interacted and interbred. There are only about four of them.

There is also such as thing as ethnicity, which is a much more complicated beast.

Now, I can't imagine such as thing as a race traitor. or really even an ethnic traitor.
No. The Four (or Thre or Five--folks cannot even agree on that number much less who gets to be in which group), do not exist as a biological reality.

There are, indeed, populations of people who are more closely related, genetically, but there are far more than three to five of such groups. The lumping of large numbers of determinable populations into "races," however, is meaningless. For example, most lumpers would put all the various African populations into the "black' or "Negro" race, yet the Khoi-San are genetically more distant from the peoples of central Africa than the peoples of central Africa are from some Asians.

I do not like the phrase "races do not exist" because it makes a series of declarations with different meanings and different understandings among any group of speakers and listeners.

It is, perhaps, more accurate to note that the word race carries so much baggage that its (potentially) legitimate use as the term for "population" has been irredeemably compromised.

In the Decmber 20, 2002 issue of Science, (Vol 298), Noah A. Rosenberg, Jonathan K. Pritchard, James L. Weber, Howard M. Cann, Kenneth K. Kidd, Lev A. Zhivotovsky, and Marcus W. Feldman published a study, "Genetic Structure of Human Populations." In that study, they determined that there were a number of neutral markers in human DNA that, when analyzed as groups of loci, could identify with relative certainty the geographical region in which a person's ancestors lived. (There were six such regions, BTW, not four.) However, the clustering of such loci was required, because no specific marker could be found limirted to any of the four geographical regions. Two individuals from Asia or South America might be able to be identiied as such without sharing any of the loci in common. Each autosomal microsatellite locus could be found in every population. It was only by seeing which ones clustered (often differently) among different people that they could work back to the six geographic regions.

The point about anthropologists backing away from the use of "race" as a descriptor probably has some validity, but the anthropological community continued to discuss "race" well into the 1970s until Cavalli-Sforza began producing biological evidence that the identifications of "races" (i.e. lumping all people into three to five groups), had no biological basis.

[Little Nemo]

If your definition of race starts and ends at skin color, then of course the concept has scientific merit. You'll also find that it's a difficult concept to work with, though, since there are folks recognized as white with darker skin than other folks recognized as black.

If your definition is more of a fuzzy-logic one that takes into account a collection of physical characteristics, then I think it has more real-world relevance, but is much less clear-cut and nearly useless from a scientific perspective (at least until we get better at working with fuzzy logic).

If your definition allows for white people who "act black" or similar nonsense, then it moves into the scientifically useless category, I think.I explicitly have said that many people do not have a clearly defined race. But many people, probably the majority, do.Maybe you need to read more than just the definition that supports your argument?I guess I should have provided some cites for what I wrote. Oh wait, I did.

Maybe like race, the dictionary meaning of the word arbitrary is just an illusion and people are actually feel to use whatever meaning they wish.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I explicitly have said that many people do not have a clearly defined race. But many people, probably the majority, do.Would you mind clearly defining race, then, since many people have one?

The post you're responding to had several fuzzily-defined starting points; the gist is that there are poorly-defined categories of race that have no scientific merit, or very little. If you say there are clearly-defined categories, it would really help move the argument forward if you'd provide those clear definitions, so we can know what one another are talking about.
I guess I should have provided some cites for what I wrote. Oh wait, I did.

Maybe like race, the dictionary meaning of the word arbitrary is just an illusion and people are actually feel to use whatever meaning they wish.
Trust me, you do NOT want to go there (says LHOD, the board's radical descriptivist). :)

At any rate, you provided cites showing why you interpreted the word in a way that made your opponents look like idiots. That's not cricket: instead of interpreting a word in an argument in a way that makes your opponent look stupid, the honorable thing to do is to interpret the word in a way that matches common usage AND that makes the argument defensible.

For example, from dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/arbitrary) comes definition 4:
4. capricious; unreasonable; unsupported: an arbitrary demand for payment.
This is almost precisely how Mr. Dibble defined it, and is pretty clearly what he meant. Your cite for a different definition, one that would make his point stupid, is totally irrelevant.

Daniel

[Bryan Ekers]

I explicitly have said that many people do not have a clearly defined race. But many people, probably the majority, do.

Okay, define it. And define how one can be a traitor to it.


Please.

[Pleonast]

Scientific American recently published a nice phylogenic tree of humankind, The Migration History of Humans: DNA Study Traces Human Origins Across the Continents (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-migration-history-of-humans) (sorry, it's pay-only, but it is relevant and very interesting), that may be of interest to readers of this thread. It shows how different human populations are related both genetically and geographically.

I think the scientific evidence clearly points to the existence of human races, both biological and cultural. There are measurable differences in gene distributions. Where to draw the lines (and how many) is a rehash of the classic biologist debate, Lumpers vs Splitters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters).

But I think the real issue about "race traitor" is whether there should be any presumed loyalty to others of your race. Why should there be? Few people swear oaths of loyalty to a race. Certainly there are good reasons to work toward the same goals as people similar to you. But I wouldn't fault anyone for putting their own and family's interests first.

It follows the same logic after all: if you should display loyalty to people whose only connection with you similar genes/culture, then wouldn't greater loyalty to those closely related to better? And ultimately, one is most closely related to oneself.

[John Mace]

Scientific American recently published a nice phylogenic tree of humankind, The Migration History of Humans: DNA Study Traces Human Origins Across the Continents (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-migration-history-of-humans) (sorry, it's pay-only, but it is relevant and very interesting), that may be of interest to readers of this thread. It shows how different human populations are related both genetically and geographically.

I think the scientific evidence clearly points to the existence of human races, both biological and cultural. There are measurable differences in gene distributions. Where to draw the lines (and how many) is a rehash of the classic biologist debate, Lumpers vs Splitters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters).
Firstly, let's understand that race = subspecies, if we're going to be scientific here. There are no recognized extant subspecies of the genus H. sapiens. Period. There are lots and lots of populations that show some genetic differences (meaning frequency of genetic markers or alleles) but that is an entirely different thing.

[Little Nemo]

Would you mind clearly defining race, then, since many people have one?Okay, define it. And define how one can be a traitor to it.
A population of people distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics, such as skin color, hair texture, and eye shape or color.

I haven't posted up to now about the concept of race treason. But I believe it can exist. If a group (including a government) is practicing discrimination against people because of their race and a member of that race supports that discrimination then I'd say that person could be defined as a race traitor. It's not an absolute definition - there are examples that would fit my offhand definition in a literal sense without really qualifying in the general sense.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

A population of people distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics, such as skin color, hair texture, and eye shape or color.You said that many people had a "clearly defined" race. That clear definition appears to include the phrase "more or less distinct." That doesn't seem at all clear to me. Could you perhaps be a little clearer? An example race might help. If you could, for example, define the black race (or the Caucasoid race, or some other race of your choosing), I do think it'd help folks understand where you're coming from. It's entirely possible that once I know what you mean, I'll agree with you.

Daniel

[Pleonast]

Firstly, let's understand that race = subspecies, if we're going to be scientific here. There are no recognized extant subspecies of the genus H. sapiens. Period. There are lots and lots of populations that show some genetic differences (meaning frequency of genetic markers or alleles) but that is an entirely different thing.By scientific, you mean biological? (I don't think you mean to imply culture cannot be studied scientifically.) I do not think that race and subspecies are the same term in biology. (Please correct me (with a cite or two) if I'm wrong. I'm a cladist and don't put much weight on Linnean classifications, and so don't remember well.) Races are same-species populations that show strong differentiation from each other. Subspecies are that plus a tendency not to interbreed. Different species are even less likely to interbreed.

My point was this is a continuum of differences and is a common topic of disagreement among biologists. It is not an entirely different thing; it is a degree of difference thing. I am not aware that there is any conclusion among scientists about the nomenclature for different human populations. And no matter what the scientific community decides to call it, there are in fact geographical differences in gene distributions in human populations.

[Lemur866]

The trouble with defining "races" is that human populations often simply don't work that way.

It is true that there are, or were, a couple of geographic barriers in the world where people on one side of the barrier tended to have a particular set of characteristics, and people on the other side had a different set. The Sahara desert is one, the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are another.

But we quickly realize we have a problem when we try to define who's Caucasian, who's Negro, who's Asian, who's Native American, and who's Australian. Like where do people from India fit in? Are they white? When some south Indians are as dark as sub-saharan Africans? Or do Indians get their own race? How about central Asia? Where do people stop being caucasian and start being asian? Are Arabs white? How about Italians and Greeks? How about Sudanese, or Somalis, or Ethiopians? There are several African groups that are genetically distinct from all other African groups, do each of these get their own race, and if not, why not? Are native Americans one race, or are they part of the Asian race? I know plenty of Eskimos who could walk down the street in downtown Seoul and not get a second glance. And Australians, which islands along Wallace's line are Australoid and which are Asian?

Yes, if you show pictures of people from Sweden, and people from Zimbabwe, most people will be able to sort those pictures into the correct pile with very high accuracy. But can they sort the Italian guy from the Sudanese guy? Can they sort the Kazakh from the Mongol, or the Eskimo from the Korean, or the Indian from the Burmese?

When people say "Race is not a scientific concept, it is arbitrary" all they are saying is that the apparent chaos of human phenotypic variation is real. Humans aren't sorted into neat groups. Human evolution just didn't happen that way, although we can imagine that it could have, given different geographic barriers. All human beings are very closely related, it just so happens to be the case that we are all very closely related, but it might not have happened that way, there might have been populations of archaic Homo sapiens or Homo neandertalensis that survived into the modern era, and those groups would have been clear examples of races. But all those populations just happened to go extinct, and so we are left with a situation where all living human beings happen to belong to the same race.

[John Mace]

Firstly, let's understand that race = subspecies, if we're going to be scientific here. There are no recognized extant subspecies of the genus H. sapiens
:smack: Species, not genus.

By scientific, you mean biological? (I don't think you mean to imply culture cannot be studied scientifically.) I do not think that race and subspecies are the same term in biology. (Please correct me (with a cite or two) if I'm wrong.
Yes, I mean biological. That would be the particular science involved.

If you are proposing some sort of scientific (ie, biological) classification below the level of species, that would be a subspecies, by definition, whether you call it that or whether you call it "race". You can't propose some level of classification below subspecies without there being subspecies to begin with. It would be like having 3 species in a Family but no genus.

Now, if you want to use the term "race" to mean some sort of loosely defined social group, then that's fine. But that's a social construct, not a scientific classification.

[John Mace]

I always like showing this picture of Uzbek students (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:UzbekStudents.jpg) in these threads about race. What race are they? It should come as no shock that Uzbekistan is located somewhere between Beijing and Berlin.

[Drunky Smurf]

I always like showing this picture of Uzbek students (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:UzbekStudents.jpg) in these threads about race. What race are they? It should come as no shock that Uzbekistan is located somewhere between Beijing and Berlin.
Wouldn't they be cauc-asian? You know half caucasian and half asian. :p

[Bryan Ekers]

A population of people distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics, such as skin color, hair texture, and eye shape or color.

Uh-huh. Is an Australian aboriginal the same race as a tenth-generation Jamaican? Are Adam Goodes and Colin Powell of the same race?

What race is this man (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Ira_Hayes.jpg)?

Your definition is "more or less" a cobbling together of a handful of superficial physical traits that can vary pretty freely within families, let alone regions.

[Little Nemo]

The fact that there exceptions, even millions of exceptions, doesn't overrule the fact that there are billions of people who do unambiguously belong to one race.

I feel that a rule of thumb that works 999 times out of a thousand is pretty solid. You may feel that a failure rate of one time out of a thousand makes it too weak. This is a difference of personal opinion that's unlikely to be bridged.

[Bryan Ekers]

The fact that there exceptions, even millions of exceptions, doesn't overrule the fact that there are billions of people who do unambiguously belong to one race.
Can you name the races, then, as well as the unambiguous markers of membership in a particular race?

I mean, as long as it's so obvious and all, this should be easy.

[Indistinguishable]

I think everyone can agree on this:

Many people do engage in a particular cultural practice, whereby they have certain racial categories into which they group the masses of humanity, and in many cases, even if not nearly all, they feel entitled to make an unambiguous such classification, which is justified insofar as that most of their peers would agree. The system of categorization isn't rendered incoherent simply by the existence of ambiguous cases, any more than color words or movie genres suffer from the same problem.

However, that having been said, any such particular entire system of racial categories itself is basically one of arbitrarily drawn lines and groupings, influenced by rather superficial factors and piddling historical caprices. Outside of the culture-specific attitudes of the society in which it is formulated, it does not track anything of any independent interest; certainly, while there is an extent to which it is "biological" insofar as that will have some correlation with (arbitrarily grouped) genotypical traits, it is not a system of classification which biologists would naturally devise, any more than they would naturally seek to group people by the time zone in which they were born. The system is of no great scientific merit in itself; insofar as there is any reason for scientists to discuss it at all, it is not within biology, but within a sociological study of attitudes towards ethnicity and so forth.

Well, maybe everyone can't agree on this. But it's correct.

[Bryan Ekers]

If I may, if the racial groups are truly huge, then trying to define what is and is not "race treason" becomes just as arbitrary as trying to define the race itself - how could (for example) a billion unambiguously white people have a common interest that individuals defy in the form of being race traitors? Has it ever happened that conflict between races (however one defines them) has ever surpassed the conflict within mostly homogeneous nations in the form of political conflicts?

[Lemur866]

The fact that there exceptions, even millions of exceptions, doesn't overrule the fact that there are billions of people who do unambiguously belong to one race.

I feel that a rule of thumb that works 999 times out of a thousand is pretty solid. You may feel that a failure rate of one time out of a thousand makes it too weak. This is a difference of personal opinion that's unlikely to be bridged.
What race are people in India? Are they white? Note that there are a billion people living in India. What race are North Africans? What race are Egyptians, Sudanese, Eritreans, Ethiopians or Somalis?

There are 6 billion people in the world. You honestly believe that there are only 6 million people out of that 6 billion that don't fit into your racial classification scheme? There are more than 30 million "black" people in the US, and the MAJORITY of people who identify as "black" in the US are of mixed African and European descent. There are 100 million people in Mexico, and more than half of Mexicans are mestizo--of mixed Native American and European descent. So how can your rule of thumb apply to 999 out of a thousand people in the world?

[Little Nemo]

What race are people in India? Are they white? Note that there are a billion people living in India. What race are North Africans? What race are Egyptians, Sudanese, Eritreans, Ethiopians or Somalis?White. Yes. Noted. White. White, mostly black but white in the north, mostly black but with a white minority, black, black.

I'm sure somebody will not point out that there's a Korean family living in Addis Ababa that renders everything I just said invalid. After all, a population of 75,000,000 black people and four Asians is not black.

[John Mace]

White. Yes. Noted. White. White, mostly black but white in the north, mostly black but with a white minority, black, black.

I'm sure somebody will not point out that there's a Korean family living in Addis Ababa that renders everything I just said invalid. After all, a population of 75,000,000 black people and four Asians is not black.
What makes Indians and Egyptians "white"? Ethiopians (like many East Africans) are culturally, linguistically, and genetically closer to M.E. Arabs than they are to West Africans. What makes Ethiopians and West Africans the same race? If it's just the color of their skin, then why are Indians, many of whom have skin as dark as Ethiopians, black?

[Indistinguishable]

As a description of current American cultural attitudes (and, I would imagine, European, etc.), it strikes me as flatly incorrect to call Indians white. They are not generally perceived that way, nor do they generally self-identify that way.

[As a matter of historical curiosity, the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_Thind) is somewhat interesting]

[Lemur866]

So these people are white: http://www.everyculture.com/images/ctc_02_img0344.jpg

But these people are black:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Eritrean_wedding.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Somaliland_somali_nomad_girls.jpg

Really?

And since Indians are white, how about Nepalese? Are they white? How about Burmese?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Amarapuralocals.jpg

And where along the axis between Eastern Europe and Central Asia do people stop being white and start being Asian? There are hundreds of millions of these people, for crying out loud.

[Bryan Ekers]

Stop confronting Nemo with exceptions! They prove nothing! NOTHING!

[Little Nemo]

So these people are white: http://www.everyculture.com/images/ctc_02_img0344.jpg

But these people are black:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Eritrean_wedding.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:...nomad_girls.jpg

Really?

And since Indians are white, how about Nepalese? Are they white? How about Burmese?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Amarapuralocals.jpgNow I've been right twice. Once when I said race exists and a second time when I predicted someone would try to claim it didn't by posting some of the rare exceptions (which I've already repeatedly stated exist).

I could prove my point by posting four thousand jpgs of Eritrean people that do match what I said but I'd probably exceed this board's bandwidth before you'll admit your worldview doesn't reflect reality.

[Indistinguishable]

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about the position I outlined in my post #73, Little Nemo?

(Also, I'm still somewhat curious why you classify Indians and Egyptians as white. Could you expand on that?)

[Bryan Ekers]

Now I've been right twice. Once when I said race exists and a second time when I predicted someone would try to claim it didn't by posting some of the rare exceptions (which I've already repeatedly stated exist).

I could prove my point by posting four thousand jpgs of Eritrean people that do match what I said but I'd probably exceed this board's bandwidth before you'll admit your worldview doesn't reflect reality.
I don't think we're closer to defining "race treason" but this sure looks like "logic treason".

I've been to India (and Bangladesh). The people there didn't look unambiguously white, or black. Maybe I only ran into rare exceptions for ten months.

[tomndebb]

Now I've been right twice. Once when I said race exists. . .Race as a biological reality rather than a societal construct?

Piffle.

How many races are there?
Who is included in each race?
What justifies your attempt to place any population into any race?

[GomiBoy]

Biological construct of race:
People who are genetically similar through heredity and share physical characteristics such as skin, hair, or eye colour or such as epicanthic eye folds. Sometimes, but not always, sharing a close geographic location.

Political / social construct of race:
A myth. Especially when one considers a 'group think' social set of mores or beliefs.

Agree?

[smiling bandit]

No. The Four (or Thre or Five--folks cannot even agree on that number much less who gets to be in which group), do not exist as a biological reality.

Define "biological reality".

INo, it doesn't mena anything outside of a scientific discussion, but the concept which more or less acccurately describes ancestral dispersion and genetic semi-cohesion of certain population groups over time. The fact that they don't exist as an identifiable, discrete phenomenon in nature does not mean the concept is wrong.

The point about anthropologists backing away from the use of "race" as a descriptor probably has some validity, but the anthropological community continued to discuss "race" well into the 1970s until Cavalli-Sforza began producing biological evidence that the identifications of "races" (i.e. lumping all people into three to five groups), had no biological basis.

I didn't say that people today actually fall definitively within any of those races.

Races existed as population movements, which themselves diverged into ethnicities. The fact that they make no real different in the world does not mean they aren't critical to our understanding. Today, they talk about abstract population movements more and don't use the old labels, but it amounts to the same thing.

[Lemur866]

Yes, but we're learning that the old notion of waves of Indo-Europeans moving into an area and replacing the autocthonous population just didn't happen. Language and cultural change doesn't imply the the old population died and a new one moved in. Look at, say, Ireland. Today the vast majority of people in Ireland speak English, not Irish. And yet, most people living in Ireland aren't descended from English immigrants, they are descended from native Irish. Feel free to put "native" into scare quotes if you like, since Celtic languages are also Indo-European interlopers. Similarly, the Etruscans weren't wiped out, they just started speaking Latin instead of Etruscan.

It certainly is true that as you move south from Scandinavia to Zimbabwe you get more and more curly haired people. And skin tones get darker and darker, sickle-cell trait becomes more and more common, noses get broader, hair gets darker, and so on. And as you move from France to Korea, hair gets darker, epicanthic folds get more common, people get less hairy, and hair gets straighter.

But the problem is that all these traits don't vary together. A person with an epicanthic fold is pretty likely to also have straight black hair and tawny skin tone, but it sure isn't guaranteed. All that epicanthic fold tells us is that the person has the allele that causes epicanthic fold. Sure, that alelle is very common on one side of Eurasia and very rare on the other side of Eurasia, but so? There are blue-eyed blond-haired white-skinned Slavs with epicanthic folds, what does that prove?

It sure doesn't prove that at one time there was a group of pure asians (epicanthic fold, straight black hair, button nose, tawny skin) and a group of pure whites (blue eyes, wavy blond hair, straight nose, white skin) and a group of pure blacks (dark eyes, kinky black hair, wide nose, dark skin), and the people with have intermediate facial features are the result of inbreeding between these pure populations.

It means that there are various alleles for various features, and various people in various places have various distributions of these alleles, for complex reasons including the founder effect, genetic drift, and natural selection.

[John Mace]

Races existed as population movements, which themselves diverged into ethnicities.
That makes no sense at all, and I have never seen race described that way in the scientific literature -- ie, as "population movements". If the races "diverged into ethnicities", then we should still be able to group the ethnicities into their ancestral races. And if races once existed, but no longer do, then that means you would find more genetic diversity in the past than in the present, which also makes no sense (unless all but one of these ancestral races died out).

There have been a few known populations that existed in relative isolation for brief periods of our history as a species, but that is not generally true of our species as a whole. American Indians may have existed for 10k years or so with not much gene flow from the rest of the world, and the same was probably true of Tasmanians. For Europe, Asia and Africa, however, constant gene flow between populations was the norm, not the exception.

[Little Nemo]

Can I ask what part of what I've said people are disagreeing with? Is it that people have different skin colors? Or is it that skin color is often a hereditary trait?

[Indistinguishable]

Is it your contention that race is synonymous with skin color? That would not appear to be the case, judging from your categorizations, but I just want to check.

[Cardinal]

I haven't posted up to now about the concept of race treason. But I believe it can exist. If a group (including a government) is practicing discrimination against people because of their race and a member of that race supports that discrimination then I'd say that person could be defined as a race traitor. It's not an absolute definition - there are examples that would fit my offhand definition in a literal sense without really qualifying in the general sense.I know what you mean, and it does somehow viscerally seem more traitorous for a black person to argue for Jim Crow laws than for a white person to do so. It's certainly more illogical or underhanded, whichever the motivations are.

In the final analysis though, I pretty much want to call the whites traitors too: traitors to all logic and compassion to other humans. The point being that I won't let them say, "but those aren't my people!" Yes they are, especially if you really read that Bible you're thumping while you argue for enforced segregation.

[Mtgman]

Biological construct of race:
People who are genetically similar through heredity and share physical characteristics such as skin, hair, or eye colour or such as epicanthic eye folds. Sometimes, but not always, sharing a close geographic location.

Political / social construct of race:
A myth. Especially when one considers a 'group think' social set of mores or beliefs.

Agree?
So I can be a "Strawberry Blonde" supremecist? I think I could get behind that. All you "dirty blondes", get down on your knees!

Enjoy,
Steven

[MrDibble]

But the problem is that all these traits don't vary together. A person with an epicanthic fold is pretty likely to also have straight black hair and tawny skin tone, but it sure isn't guaranteed.Especially since it's also a Khoi-San trait - pepercorn hair, yellow-brown skin and all.

Can I ask what part of what I've said people are disagreeing with? Is it that people have different skin colors? Or is it that skin color is often a hereditary trait?
For me, it's that skin colour alone is any criterion to base a conception of race off of, given its high variability.

[Pleonast]

Scientific American recently published a nice phylogenic tree of humankind, The Migration History of Humans: DNA Study Traces Human Origins Across the Continents (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-migration-history-of-humans) (edit: text is now freely available, but diagrams are not), that may be of interest to readers of this thread. It shows how different human populations are related both genetically and geographically.I guess no one else reads SciAm, since the phylogeny published there shows us exactly how to subcategorize the human species in a scientific way. Simply pick the clades you feel are most useful* and call them "races". Yes, we can disagree about which clades are most useful, but those are exactly the arguments biologists have about many species. Since we are one species and thus the clades can outbreed, some individuals will not fit cleanly in a single clade. But that doesn't remove the usefulness of the phylogeny or categories sized between species and individual.

*I use "useful" to mean for some scientific discipline, for example anthropology, linguistics, medicine, etc.

[Hostile Dialect]

People can't decide what race they are

:dubious: Are (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halle_Berry) you (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Jeter) sure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwayne_Johnson)?

Trust me, you do NOT want to go there

Agreed!

A population of people distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics

So "muscular blondes" is a race, then? No? How about "Dark-skinned twinks"? No? "Redheads"? Am I getting closer? How about "athletes"? What the hell, man? I thought you said this was easy!

[Indistinguishable]

I guess no one else reads SciAm, since the phylogeny published there shows us exactly how to subcategorize the human species in a scientific way. Simply pick the clades you feel are most useful* and call them "races". Yes, we can disagree about which clades are most useful, but those are exactly the arguments biologists have about many species. Since we are one species and thus the clades can outbreed, some individuals will not fit cleanly in a single clade. But that doesn't remove the usefulness of the phylogeny or categories sized between species and individual.

*I use "useful" to mean for some scientific discipline, for example anthropology, linguistics, medicine, etc.
I can't imagine why linguistics would particularly care to group people into clades qua clades; surely they'd prefer to group people by language, and not be terribly concerned with the small correlations between this and biological descent.

Also, I wouldn't have thought modern humanity separated in a significant, clean, useful way into distinct clades, particularly given the common estimate that the most recent common ancestor of living humans lived within historical times.

[John Mace]

I guess no one else reads SciAm, since the phylogeny published there shows us exactly how to subcategorize the human species in a scientific way. Simply pick the clades you feel are most useful* and call them "races". Yes, we can disagree about which clades are most useful, but those are exactly the arguments biologists have about many species. Since we are one species and thus the clades can outbreed, some individuals will not fit cleanly in a single clade. But that doesn't remove the usefulness of the phylogeny or categories sized between species and individual.

*I use "useful" to mean for some scientific discipline, for example anthropology, linguistics, medicine, etc.
I read the article several weeks ago, and I didn't see where it said races exist. Can you quote the section? The entire article is on-line now.

[Pleonast]

I read the article several weeks ago, and I didn't see where it said races exist. Can you quote the section? The entire article is on-line now.It doesn't talk about races (and I haven't said it does). It does have a phylgenic tree of human populations, which would the starting point of scientifically dividing humans into races. I couldn't find the figures before, but you're right, it's online now: Whole Genome Results (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=whole-genome-results).I can't imagine why linguistics would particularly care to group people into clades qua clades; surely they'd prefer to group people by language, and not be terribly concerned with the small correlations between this and biological descent.
Also, I wouldn't have thought modern humanity separated in a significant, clean, useful way into distinct clades, particularly given the common estimate that the most recent common ancestor of living humans lived within historical times.Linguists may be interested because the phylogeny is associated with geographical migrations.

The authors of this article have found evidence for clades. I find that fascinating, myself. Whether or not this holds up in the long run is another question, but that's how science progresses. For now, it's scientifically reasonable to divide the human species into clades.

[Mtgman]

I guess no one else reads SciAm, since the phylogeny published there shows us exactly how to subcategorize the human species in a scientific way. Simply pick the clades you feel are most useful* and call them "races". Yes, we can disagree about which clades are most useful, but those are exactly the arguments biologists have about many species. Since we are one species and thus the clades can outbreed, some individuals will not fit cleanly in a single clade. But that doesn't remove the usefulness of the phylogeny or categories sized between species and individual.

*I use "useful" to mean for some scientific discipline, for example anthropology, linguistics, medicine, etc.
I think the problem is the Scientific American(I subscribe, but I didn't read that particular article) article is talking genotypes and most people, when they use the term "race", are using it to discuss phenotypes. Genotypes can be grouped, loosely with a significant number of exceptions, assuming we have access to genetic information about an individual. These categories can be useful when tracking disease resistance/susceptibility(sickle-cell anemia for instance) and for analyzing likely outcomes of offspring(what are the odds this child would have an inheritable heart defect). There are genetic markers, in the genotype, which can be traced regionally and the presence of such a marker could be used to change the order in which a medical professional runs a series of tests based on the relative frequency of a certain disorder within a group of individuals with the same marker. Ok, so at a genome level, there may be some possibility of a loose grouping which has value, although this is being bred out of the genome with increasing globalization and population shifts.

The problem is when you take that same concept(loosely grouping large numbers of individuals) based on a phenotype. Genetic makers are either present or absent. They function as "bright lines" as much as anything can in biology. Phenotypes show a spectrum of variation and are not useful for classifying an individual into "races" because the variation within a race would be greater than the variation between races. This renders the whole concept of dividing into "races" based on phenotypes useless for any practical purpose.

Enjoy,
Steven

[Pleonast]

Just to show it can be done, here's a cladistic division of the Homo sapiens:
African: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and San. Equivalent to Homo sapiens. Non-african: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Mozambite. Sub-clade of African. Eurasian: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Tuscan. Sub-clade of Non-african. European: descendants of the common ancestor of Russian and Tuscan. Sub-clade of Eurasian. Asian: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Adygei. Sub-clade of Eurasian, sister clade of European. Pacific: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Cambodian. Sub-clade of Asian. American: descendants of the common ancestor of Pima and Columbian. Sub-clade of Pacific. I don't know how useful this division is any particular purpose, but it's easy enough to adjust.

On preview: I think you're right, Mtgman. Going forward, the out-crossing between clades is going to (sooner or later) totally swamp the existing phylogeny.

[Mtgman]

Just to show it can be done, here's a cladistic division of the Homo sapiens:
African: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and San. Equivalent to Homo sapiens. Non-african: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Mozambite. Sub-clade of African. Eurasian: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Tuscan. Sub-clade of Non-african. European: descendants of the common ancestor of Russian and Tuscan. Sub-clade of Eurasian. Asian: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Adygei. Sub-clade of Eurasian, sister clade of European. Pacific: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Cambodian. Sub-clade of Asian. American: descendants of the common ancestor of Pima and Columbian. Sub-clade of Pacific. I don't know how useful this division is any particular purpose, but it's easy enough to adjust.

On preview: I think you're right, Mtgman. Going forward, the out-crossing between clades is going to (sooner or later) totally swamp the existing phylogeny.
And to the extent the existing phylogeny may be useful, which is largely theoretical, it only acquires usefulness with regards to any individual when a genetic analysis is performed. At this point genetic analysis is rare enough that individuals can not be grouped into "races" easily. The thing which would make this easier, the phenotype, is unreliable and should be ignored.

Enjoy,
Steven

[John Mace]

Just to show it can be done, here's a cladistic division of the Homo sapiens:
African: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and San. Equivalent to Homo sapiens. Non-african: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Mozambite. Sub-clade of African. Eurasian: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Tuscan. Sub-clade of Non-african. European: descendants of the common ancestor of Russian and Tuscan. Sub-clade of Eurasian. Asian: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Adygei. Sub-clade of Eurasian, sister clade of European. Pacific: descendants of the common ancestor of Papuan and Cambodian. Sub-clade of Asian. American: descendants of the common ancestor of Pima and Columbian. Sub-clade of Pacific. I don't know how useful this division is any particular purpose, but it's easy enough to adjust.

On preview: I think you're right, Mtgman. Going forward, the out-crossing between clades is going to (sooner or later) totally swamp the existing phylogeny.
The problem with those clades is that they don't have clear boundaries. If you are going to subdivide below the species level in a scientific manner, you need to establish some sort of clear boundary between the populations. Humans vary in a clinal way, though, and populations which vary in that way are generally not subdivided. There isn't any objective place to divide them. The fact that you can identify clades isn't remarkable at all. My family (grandparents, parents and their siblings, my siblings and cousins) is a clade, but it isn't a very useful one.

[Pleonast]

And to the extent the existing phylogeny may be useful, which is largely theoretical, it only acquires usefulness with regards to any individual when a genetic analysis is performed. At this point genetic analysis is rare enough that individuals can not be grouped into "races" easily. The thing which would make this easier, the phenotype, is unreliable and should be ignored.Agreed on ignoring the phenotype. And, yes, grouping into "races" may not be easy, but it is possible. I think that answers the question of whether or not humans can be grouped biologically into races. The usefulness of such groupings is best determined by scientists using the groupings. For medical purposes, complete genotyping of each individual is probable the best course. But in lieu of that, determining the clade of an individual (maybe via a cheap test looking at a handful of genetic markers) could be a quick way of estimating other genes.The problem with those clades is that they don't have clear boundaries. If you are going to subdivide below the species level in a scientific manner, you need to establish some sort of clear boundary between the populations. Humans vary in a clinal way, though, and populations which vary in that way are generally not subdivided. There isn't any objective place to divide them. The fact that you can identify clades isn't remarkable at all. My family (grandparents, parents and their siblings, my siblings and cousins) is a clade, but it isn't a very useful one.The phylogenic tree is an objective way to divide populations. And the division is clear, at the level of populations. The objectiveness and clearness of the boundaries is as good as the phylogenic tree is. The fact that a phylogenic tree can be constructed with enough confidence to publish it shows that human populations are not entirely clinal. Although this particular tree may turn out to be wrong, for the time being it is good science. If it's difficult to place an individual into the phylogeny, that doesn't necessarily negate the utility of the labeling clades as applied to large populations.

[John Mace]

The phylogenic tree is an objective way to divide populations. And the division is clear, at the level of populations. The objectiveness and clearness of the boundaries is as good as the phylogenic tree is. The fact that a phylogenic tree can be constructed with enough confidence to publish it shows that human populations are not entirely clinal.
I can, theoretically, publish a phylogenetic tree of my family going back 20 generations. It will be clinal. The fact that such a tree can be published is not an indication that the population is not clinal.

Although this particular tree may turn out to be wrong, for the time being it is good science. If it's difficult to place an individual into the phylogeny, that doesn't necessarily negate the utility of the labeling clades as applied to large populations.
All proper races are clades, but not all clades are races.

[Pleonast]

All proper races are clades, but not all clades are races.Yes; why does it matter? The clades I've chosen are certainly large enough to be called races. They roughly correspond to what many people would call races, so I feel justified in calling these clades "races".

[John Mace]

I can, theoretically, publish a phylogenetic tree of my family going back 20 generations. It will be clinal. The fact that such a tree can be published is not an indication that the population is not clinal.
Let me clarify that a bit more. You and I can trace our ancestry back until we find only common ancestors. We can then construct Mace and Pleonast clades based on generations just below the common ancestors, by splitting off those that don't lead to me and those that don't lead to you. In all likelihood, those clades are going to vary clinally, if they vary in any measurable way at all. So, just because you can create all these genetically verifiable clades and construct all kinds of detailed trees does in any way imply that you will find nonclinal variations. I noted above that (at one time anyway) there may have been a few isolated populations like Amerinds and Tasmanians. Those are the rare exceptions, though, as most populations worldwide had constant gene flow.

I strongly suggest you find a copy of Genes, Peoples and Languages by LL Cavalli-Sforza and read pages 25 - 27: What is Race,Then? It demonstrates the futility and arbitrariness of dividing our species into races.

[Pleonast]

I've added the book to my Amazon list, the review sounds interesting. Thanks for the pointer.

While you make a good point about clades constructed from known ancestors, the phylogeny constructed in the SciAm article was constructed from genetic analysis. If the human species was purely clinal, the phylogeny would correspond exactly to geography, where relatedness would be proportional to distance. Instead, they find genetic markers that are not purely distance-based (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=tracking-y-chromosomes-through-time), but instead reflecting past migrations. The markers they used are clearly non-clinal.

That the DNA analysis finds this is the evidence against a purely clinal population. With increased mobility, these markers will certainly be spread thoroughly in the future. The phylogeny would then be impossible to reconstruct with the populations of that time, and we will have an entirely clinal population.

[John Mace]

I'm very familiar with that work and that map. It looks pretty darn clinal to me.

If the human species was purely clinal, the phylogeny would correspond exactly to geography, where relatedness would be proportional to distance.
I don't think that is correct. It would only be correct if there were a constant rate of migration outward from a central origin, into a geography that was limitless in all directions. As it is, there was lots of looping, doubling back, and situations where migrations would have stopped for extended periods of time, or people just simply stayed put.

If you look at that map, you see where one population blends into another with simple, single point mutations on the Y-chromosome. Besides, you don't define races by single, non-coding markers on one chromosome.

I think you'll enjoy that book. It's a little dated now, but it stands up remarkably well. You might also want to try Deep Ancestry, by Spencer Wells. He's the guy who basically drew the map you linked to.

[Pleonast]

I think the loop-backs are the essential non-clinal part. They represent edges in the populations' DNA distributions. After a long time, the loops will be smudged out completely as the markers diffuse. Then we will have a clinal population.

The map is based on genetic markers on the Y chromosome, but the phylogeny is based on the whole genome.

[Mtgman]

Ok, but to take the discussion away from the technical details, and back to the question in the OP, there can't be a "race traitor" without a strong concept of "race." Because the only means most people have to discern a person's "race" is the phenotype, which varies too widely to accurately categorize people with, the only categorization which, somewhat, withstands scrutiny scientifically is based on the genotype. Most people are ignorant of their genotype. It takes extensive, and expensive, testing and analysis for someone to be aware of their genotype.

Accepting, for the sake of arguement(I don't accept it overall by the way), the idea that clade="race", we still run into problems with fairly calling someone a "race traitor." Even if someone was aware of which clade they belonged to, they would have no idea who else among the general population was a member of what clade. Thus the only time someone could be a "race" traitor would be if they knew their clade, knew the clades of other individuals(some which matched their own, and some which did not) and made a choice which would be detrimental to their own clade, but not to the others. In the Star Trek: the Next Generation episode The Vengeance Factor (http://sttng.epguides.info/?ID=231) something like this happened. A species was subdivided into clans, and there was inter-clan warfare. One clan wiped out all but a couple members of another. The surviving members of the decimated clan developed a biological weapon keyed to a unique genetic factor amongst their persecutors. It would be harmless against anyone but a member of this clan.

To be a "race traitor" someone would have to develop some sort of method for testing for, and harming, those of their own clade, without harming others. This is completely beyond us at this point, so no one can be a "race traitor." Q.E.D.

Enjoy,
Steven

[John Mace]

I think the loop-backs are the essential non-clinal part. They represent edges in the populations' DNA distributions. After a long time, the loops will be smudged out completely as the markers diffuse. Then we will have a clinal population.

The map is based on genetic markers on the Y chromosome, but the phylogeny is based on the whole genome.
Can you tell me what you see as non-clinal about that map? Where specifically are you seeing abrupt changes in phenotype or genotype? I'm just not seeing it, other than a few isolated Island populations-- maybe like the Andaman Islanders.

[John Mace]

Let's also keep in mind that race as a social construct really only has meaning within a certain country or geographic area. The races we tend to recognize in the US are not the same ones recognized in Mexico or much of Latin America. Nor would they be the same ones recognized in China, Japan, India or the Middle East.

[Pleonast]

To be a "race traitor" someone would have to develop some sort of method for testing for, and harming, those of their own clade, without harming others. This is completely beyond us at this point, so no one can be a "race traitor." Q.E.D.I agree and would go farther to say that even if one did act against others of the same clade, that it doesn't rise to the level of treachery, since there should be no presumption of loyalty to one's "race".Can you tell me what you see as non-clinal about that map? Where specifically are you seeing abrupt changes in phenotype or genotype? I'm just not seeing it, other than a few isolated Island populations-- maybe like the Andaman Islanders.For example, where the gold M174 path meets the pink M122 path in China. Or, the blue M170 and the cyan M343 in Europe. Those are where distantly related genotypes are geographically close. Unfortunately, the article does not associate the map's Y marker lineages with the clades in the phylogeny, so we can't determine how distinct they are, other than when they diverged (50k and 45k years ago for my examples).Let's also keep in mind that race as a social construct really only has meaning within a certain country or geographic area. The races we tend to recognize in the US are not the same ones recognized in Mexico or much of Latin America. Nor would they be the same ones recognized in China, Japan, India or the Middle East.Yep. Common usage of "race" is almost completely cultural and culture-specific. Any genetic component is based on appearance only, not on any other underlying genetic similarities.

[John Mace]

For example, where the gold M174 path meets the pink M122 path in China. Or, the blue M170 and the cyan M343 in Europe. Those are where distantly related genotypes are geographically close.
I don't think so. Do you really believe you could go into China and find a place where gold and pink are clearly delineated? These pathways are obtained by measuring the relative frequency of markers, which typically increase or decrease directionally so the researchers can infer how the migrations took place in the past. They do not generally represent distinct boundary points visible today, unless there was some very recent migration. You might have been able to see some non-clinal populations in Colonial America, for example, when large number of Europeans displaced the Native Americans in sections of what would become the east coast of the US. But that's not what you'd see in China or Europe today.

It's like blond hair in Europe. There is a high frequency of bond hair in Norther Europe, and it becomes less frequent as you head south towards the Mediterranean. But you can't point to a place where blond hair suddenly disappears.

Besides, there is no reason that variations need to be clinal in all directions in order for there to be no biologically based subspecies/races. Think of ring species, for example-- they may meet at one end and be incompatible, but you often won't be able to draw a line anywhere else to delineate distinct populations.

[Pleonast]

Yet despite genetic diffusion, they found enough differences across the entire genome to construct a phylogenic tree. If the population were entirely clinal, then distance in the tree would always correspond to distance in geography. They didn't publish a geographic map of the clades in the tree, so I can't give examples of distantly related clades in geographic proximity. But given that they do show Y-chromosome markers that diverged 50k years ago in close proximity, I don't think it's a stretch to assume that other genes follow similar contours.

I don't deny that some genes are clinal. I'm simply pointing out that some genes are not.

And ring species are an excellent example. A ring species is often divided into subspecies (which is what I'm trying to do with H. sapiens), subject to the usual splitter/lumper debate. That seems to be the essence of our discussion.

[you with the face]

Ok, but to take the discussion away from the technical details, and back to the question in the OP, there can't be a "race traitor" without a strong concept of "race." Because the only means most people have to discern a person's "race" is the phenotype, which varies too widely to accurately categorize people with, the only categorization which, somewhat, withstands scrutiny scientifically is based on the genotype. Most people are ignorant of their genotype. It takes extensive, and expensive, testing and analysis for someone to be aware of their genotype.

You are making the question to be more difficult than what it is. Treachery is purely a social construct, so it makes no sense to bring biology into this. If a society groups people by race and a person within a socially defined racial group knowingly acts in a way that is perceived to go against the interest of their own racial group, then there is nothing semantically incorrect with calling them a "race traitor".

It would be no different if we were talking about countries. The boundary lines which delinate nations are pretty much arbitrarily set and can be considered social constructs in a similar way that races are. Does that mean it's wrong to call John Walker Lindh an American traitor?

Just because race doesn't have a strong biological basis doesn't mean there's no such thing as race as a social way of classifying people. I wish we could make this a sticky or something, because failure to understand this is starting to look like a persistent hangnail on this board.

[Mtgman]

I don't deny that "race" exists as a social construct. There were arguments being put forth for a biological, scientific, basis for "race" and I was speaking against those being able to support an accusation of a "race traitor."

The sociological usage of "race" is too muddled a subject for me to take much interest in. It quacks like a dog, walks like a bird, and looks like an amoeba. I prefer to stick to matters with reasonably objective answers. Essentially my argument is there is no such thing as a biological "race" that a person could identify with, and easily identify others as not part of, and to which they owe a duty of fealty. Ergo, no such thing as a "race traitor" in any objective sense.

I could make the same argument with regards to sociological "races" because being a "race traitor" requires some duty of fealty towards one's "race" and I've never seen evidence of such a duty. Biologically I take issue with the "race" part of a "race traitor" accusation. Sociologically I would take exception to the "traitor" part of a "race traitor" accusation.

Enjoy,
Steven

[John Mace]

Yet despite genetic diffusion, they found enough differences across the entire genome to construct a phylogenic tree. If the population were entirely clinal, then distance in the tree would always correspond to distance in geography. They didn't publish a geographic map of the clades in the tree, so I can't give examples of distantly related clades in geographic proximity. But given that they do show Y-chromosome markers that diverged 50k years ago in close proximity, I don't think it's a stretch to assume that other genes follow similar contours.
But what I think you're missing is that they do so by taking large samples and measuring the frequency of occurrence of these genetic markers. They are not finding step functions, but rather they are finding changes in the frequency of genes spread out over geographies. The fact that Y-chromosome markers of different lineages are found side by side just means that the population split off at some point and then came back together, then they mixed together again. You might very well find cousins in the same village with different Y-chromosome markers. Just look at the timescale on the graph of your map-- we're talking about migrations that happened 10s of thousands of years ago. To put it bluntly, there's been a lot of fucking going on since then!

I don't deny that some genes are clinal. I'm simply pointing out that some genes are not.
How many non-clinal genes does one need to find to create a race?

And ring species are an excellent example. A ring species is often divided into subspecies (which is what I'm trying to do with H. sapiens), subject to the usual splitter/lumper debate. That seems to be the essence of our discussion.
They will only be subdivided thusly if they meet the criteria for subspecies. Humans do not. You need to find some population that can be clearly distinguished from other populations of the same species and that rarely interbreeds with with those other populations due to some natural barrier preventing that interbreeding from taking place.

If an alien scientist arrived on Earth 1,000 years ago armed with our current BSC definition of species and subspecies, he might decide that there were a few subspecies of humans: The Afro/Euro/Asiatic/Pacific subspecies, the Americas subspecies and the Austro/Papua subspecies. If two such scientists arrived, they'd probably disagree about that last one, wanting to lump it into the first due to the fact that it is fairly clinal in nature. They might recognize a number of very small island populations that could be put into subspecies, but they might not bother because the populations are so small.

Still, the alien scientists would clearly recognize that the mobility of humans would lead to the inevitable collapse of such a classification scheme.

[you with the face]

Essentially my argument is there is no such thing as a biological "race" that a person could identify with, and easily identify others as not part of, and to which they owe a duty of fealty. Ergo, no such thing as a "race traitor" in any objective sense.

So do you think John Walker Lindh is an American traitor? There's no such thing as a biological "nationality", you can't tell just by looking at him what nationality he is, and it's debateable whether he owes anything except taxes to the US.

If your answer allows him to be an "American traitor" because you can look at his records and identify his nationality from a review of his birth certificate and other "objective" documents, remember that race shows up on birth certificates too. It's on mine.

[Pleonast]

But what I think you're missing is that they do so by taking large samples and measuring the frequency of occurrence of these genetic markers. They are not finding step functions, but rather they are finding changes in the frequency of genes spread out over geographies. The fact that Y-chromosome markers of different lineages are found side by side just means that the population split off at some point and then came back together, then they mixed together again.Yes, but the mixture is not complete. There are still statistically significant differences between the different clades. That's how they generated the phylogeny and the marker map.How many non-clinal genes does one need to find to create a race?
They will only be subdivided thusly if they meet the criteria for subspecies. Humans do not. You need to find some population that can be clearly distinguished from other populations of the same species and that rarely interbreeds with with those other populations due to some natural barrier preventing that interbreeding from taking place.That's precisely the lumper/splitter debate. Biologists disagree on it; other reasonable people can disagree. The fact that their are still genetic differences shows that something was slowing gene flow. One can choose clades within our species that are genetically distinguishable from other clades. Whether or not you want to label some of those clades "subspecies" is a subjective decision.

I believe we've reached the end point of this line of discussion. I think we can both agree that
1) Human gene distributions are more clinal than not.
2) There are significantly different gene distributions in different human populations.
3) Reasonable scientists can disagree on whether or not to label the clades within H. sapiens as subspecies.

Yes?

[Pleonast]

So do you think John Walker Lindh is an American traitor? There's no such thing as a biological "nationality", you can't tell just by looking at him what nationality he is, and it's debateable whether he owes anything except taxes to the US.

If your answer allows him to be an "American traitor" because you can look at his records and identify his nationality from a review of his birth certificate and other "objective" documents, remember that race shows up on birth certificates too. It's on mine.Nationality is different than race. Both are social constructs, but there is a tradition of allegiance to one's state (to conflate nation and state for now) where there is not for one's race. There is also a legal framework for measuring and enforcing allegiance to one's state. For example, the US Constitution's definition of treason: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." That's the law of this land and it creates a strong expectation of loyalty to the nation. Other nations presumably have similar laws.

There are no similar laws creating an expectation of loyalty to one's race.

[John Mace]

Yes, but the mixture is not complete. There are still statistically significant differences between the different clades. That's how they generated the phylogeny and the marker map.
Well, is there any species that has a mixture that is "complete"? Maybe cheetahs...

That's precisely the lumper/splitter debate. Biologists disagree on it; other reasonable people can disagree. The fact that their are still genetic differences shows that something was slowing gene flow. One can choose clades within our species that are genetically distinguishable from other clades. Whether or not you want to label some of those clades "subspecies" is a subjective decision.

I believe we've reached the end point of this line of discussion. I think we can both agree that
1) Human gene distributions are more clinal than not.
2) There are significantly different gene distributions in different human populations.
3) Reasonable scientists can disagree on whether or not to label the clades within H. sapiens as subspecies.

Yes?
I'm still unclear what your definition of a subspecies is. It's true that reasonable scientists can disagree on a definition, but I'm afraid your definition (from what I can gather so far) would be unmanageable if applied to all life on earth. We would have so many different categories, sliced and diced so many different ways, that we might as well just say every individual organism is a different species since there are genetic differences between us all.

[Pleonast]

I doubt many species are completely mixed. Why should we expect phylogenic structure to stop at the species level?

I would define a subspecies as a clade smaller than a species. Or something like that. I'm not sure what to use as a lower size boundary. I'm a cladist anyway, so these Linnaean classifications aren't really that important to me. I'd be happy enough to call them "clades within Homo sapiens" or simply "human clades".

[John Mace]

I don't see how that definition could work since it would mean that my immediate family, which is indisputably* a clade, is a subspecies. If you try and put an upper limit on the number required to be a "true clade", then that number is necessarily arbitrary, and we're back to the same problem-- arbitrariness.

*barring any unknown hanky-panky with the neighbors. :)

[Mtgman]

So do you think John Walker Lindh is an American traitor? There's no such thing as a biological "nationality", you can't tell just by looking at him what nationality he is, and it's debateable whether he owes anything except taxes to the US.

If your answer allows him to be an "American traitor" because you can look at his records and identify his nationality from a review of his birth certificate and other "objective" documents, remember that race shows up on birth certificates too. It's on mine.Nationalities are social contracts. I don't particularly care for them because as far as social contracts go, they're implicit ones. They require no explicit consent to join. We are generally forced to accept them at birth, and often don't have good means of breaking them. Emigrating to another nation is difficult in most parts of the world. On the other hand, I can't think of another way to do it. If everyone were given something akin to "resident alien" status upon birth and allowed to opt in to full citizenship upon majority, and proven understanding of the civics of the nation, I could get behind that. Still, as it works now a person who chooses not to emigrate is making a conscious decision to accept the rules of the nation they live in, which often include laws defining and proscribing treason. So Walker Lindh could be considered a "Traitor to the United States of America."

One can not emigrate from the color of their skin, slant of their eyes, etc. Because of this I don't think the same rules can apply. Nationality, as a social contract, is not the same as the social construct of "race" because, at least theoretically, one requires consent, which can be withdrawn, and the other does not.

Enjoy,
Steven

[Pleonast]

Yes, cladistic labels are arbitrary.

There are clades of many sizes between species and individuals. Pick for yourself which ones you want to call subspecies. Earlier I picked some that roughly match with what many people call races. Or, you could decide to not call any of the sub-specific clades "subspecies".

But a scientist who studies something that may depend on genetic differences within the human species would be wise keep in mind the sub-specific clades, whatever they're called. And it would be reasonable to call sub-specific clades "subspecies".

[John Mace]

Yes, cladistic labels are arbitrary.

There are clades of many sizes between species and individuals. Pick for yourself which ones you want to call subspecies.
We were discussing scientific classification. I don't think "pick for yourself" could be called a scientific classification scheme.

Earlier I picked some that roughly match with what many people call races. Or, you could decide to not call any of the sub-specific clades "subspecies".
Actually, I don't think what you picked can be called clades, due to extensive interbreeding between populations. What you picked are haplogroups. A haplogroup is not necessarily a clade. It's entirely possible for my cousin to be grouped into a different haplogroup than I am, either by Y-chromosome analysis or more extensive genetic analysis. That might be less true with some indigenous populations, but it is still going to be a significant factor.

I hope I'm not coming off as snarky here-- I don't mean to be. This is a subject on which I've done lots of research, and I honestly think you're wrongly interpreting the data. I think you are assuming exactness when the data is statistical in nature-- ie, group X has a high frequency of genetic marker Y, not group X is composed entirely of people with genetic marker Y. But even if the latter were true, that does not necessarily make group X a clade.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Nationalities are social contracts. I don't particularly care for them because as far as social contracts go, they're implicit ones. They require no explicit consent to join. We are generally forced to accept them at birth, and often don't have good means of breaking them. Emigrating to another nation is difficult in most parts of the world. On the other hand, I can't think of another way to do it. If everyone were given something akin to "resident alien" status upon birth and allowed to opt in to full citizenship upon majority, and proven understanding of the civics of the nation, I could get behind that. Still, as it works now a person who chooses not to emigrate is making a conscious decision to accept the rules of the nation they live in, which often include laws defining and proscribing treason. So Walker Lindh could be considered a "Traitor to the United States of America."
I was prepared to say that I don't consider Lindh to be a traitor in any meaningful sense, but you persuaded me otherwise with the "could emigrate" argument.

But didn't he emigrate? I mean, was he ever planning on returning home?

I think the idea of treason is only relevant when you're talking about a granfalloon that you've willingly joined. I can betray my marriage, I can betray a friendship, I can betray the Freemasons, I can betray my employer. Betraying your country is a much thornier issue, given that most folks didn't willingly join the country of which they're a citizen, and that it takes a lot of work to get rid of that citizenship.

Betraying a race is nonsense. You didn't choose your race; you didn't choose to ally with that particular group of people; acting in a way contrary to their interests has no special moral weight.

Daniel

[Pleonast]

We were discussing scientific classification. I don't think "pick for yourself" could be called a scientific classification scheme.

Actually, I don't think what you picked can be called clades, due to extensive interbreeding between populations. What you picked are haplogroups. A haplogroup is not necessarily a clade. It's entirely possible for my cousin to be grouped into a different haplogroup than I am, either by Y-chromosome analysis or more extensive genetic analysis. That might be less true with some indigenous populations, but it is still going to be a significant factor.

I hope I'm not coming off as snarky here-- I don't mean to be. This is a subject on which I've done lots of research, and I honestly think you're wrongly interpreting the data. I think you are assuming exactness when the data is statistical in nature-- ie, group X has a high frequency of genetic marker Y, not group X is composed entirely of people with genetic marker Y. But even if the latter were true, that does not necessarily make group X a clade.No, I'm not inferring any snark, and likewise, I'm not try to be snarky, either. Just trying to understand what things mean. I'm simply a physicist who's done a lot of reading on genetics and evolution.

I think the labeling of clades is largely a matter of convenience. Obviously, it's better to coordinate with the research field one is in, but I don't see why one couldn't pick a few clades and give them labels for convenience. It's the phylogenic structure that's the science; the labels are simply for labeling.

I'd take your point of haplogroups vs clades, but the phylogenic tree is based on the whole genome, not a single or even a few haplogroups. And I realize the groupings are statistical. A particular individual might not fit well in any single branch of the tree. But the populations as groups can be separated by comparing the gene frequencies. That means the interbreeding to date hasn't been enough to disperse the statistical differences between the branches of the tree. I think that justifies calling them clades, since the relatedness between the branches can be determined with some confidence.

[John Mace]

It can't be based on the entire genome-- there aren't that many people who have had their entire genome sequenced. Those articles are a bit misleading because what they call "whole-genome" sequencing isn't "whole". As you read closely, you find their talking about haplogroups. For example, in the Scientific American article, they say:

The first whole-genome studies earlier in this decade looked at differences among populations in short repetitive stretches of DNA known as microsatellites. More recently, the scope afforded by whole-genome scans has widened further. In February two papers, one in Science, the other in Nature, reported the largest surveys to date of human diversity.
But in the next paragraph, they say:

The two research teams analyzed the wealth of data in various ways. They compared SNPs directly among distinct populations. They also looked at haplotypes, blocks of DNA containing numerous SNPs that are inherited intact through many generations. The group that wrote the Nature paper also explored a new technique for surveying human variation by comparing repetitions or deletions of DNA stretches of up to 1,000,000 nucleotides long (copy number variations) throughout a person’s genome...
And these researchers are careful to select people who they think have been living in a given area for a very long time. For example, no American (who is not Indian) would qualify for this study, and few would fit into any of their groupings. If you look at the groupings in the family tree, you'll see that there are "Tuscan" and "Sardinian" groupings. You cannot seriously posit that there is a Tuscan or a Sardinian race. People have been moving in and out of Tuscany for, well, forever (or at least as long as people have been living there).

One other thing to keep in mind is that statistical analysis has shown that we all share the exact same set of common ancestors if you go back only about 10,000 years. IOW, everyone living at that time was either an ancestor of everyone alive today or an ancestor of no one alive today. So you can't have human clades that go back much further than 10,000 years.

[Mtgman]

I was prepared to say that I don't consider Lindh to be a traitor in any meaningful sense, but you persuaded me otherwise with the "could emigrate" argument.

But didn't he emigrate? I mean, was he ever planning on returning home?It's hard to say. I couldn't find anything which said he had filed any paperwork requesting revocation of his American citizenship, or applying for an Afghani citizenship. Of course given the chaotic nature of Afghanistan during the timeframe it's entirely possible the immigration process required no paperwork or was broken down completely. I would have been fine with asking Lindh whether he preferred to be tried as a US citizen who had committed treason or as a foreign national engaged in acts of war against the US. If he chose the latter, revoke his citizenship and treat him as a PoW according to the Geneva Conventions. When the conflict is over, ship him off to Afghanistan. His obligations to pay US taxes are gone as are his privileges as a US citizen.

Enjoy,
Steven

[you with the face]

There are no similar laws creating an expectation of loyalty to one's race.

My argument has nothing to do with the legalese behind perdity. Rather, I'm saying that if the you believe the "race traitor" concept to be meaningless because race isn't an objectively, biologically determined thing, you must extend that to all social groupings that aren't "objectively, biologically determined". Including nationality.

[Indistinguishable]

I'd take your point of haplogroups vs clades, but the phylogenic tree is based on the whole genome, not a single or even a few haplogroups. And I realize the groupings are statistical. A particular individual might not fit well in any single branch of the tree. But the populations as groups can be separated by comparing the gene frequencies. That means the interbreeding to date hasn't been enough to disperse the statistical differences between the branches of the tree. I think that justifies calling them clades, since the relatedness between the branches can be determined with some confidence.
But clade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clade) has a very specific, concrete definition; it's not so much a matter of arguing for justification. A clade has to be closed under all descendants of most recent common ancestors. If two people in group A have a most recent common ancestor whose descendants also include person X from group B, then groups A and B cannot be kept distinct. Do you think your system stands up to this scrutiny? If not, perhaps you shouldn't call your categories clades...

[Mtgman]

Rather, I'm saying that if the you believe the "race traitor" concept to be meaningless because race isn't an objectively, biologically determined thing, you must extend that to all social groupings that aren't "objectively, biologically determined".That was not my only objection to the term "race traitor." I believe the "race" part makes it fall flat when trying to talk about biological "races" of H. sapiens. I believe the "traitor" part falls flat when talking about an amorphous grouping with no defined obligations and involuntary membership. If one is forced into a group without their consent then they owe no obligations to the group.

Enjoy,
Steven

[you with the face]

If one is forced into a group without their consent then they owe no obligations to the group.

Enjoy,
Steven

That sounds like a legitimate argument and I don't disagree.

[Pleonast]

Short on time, so this is a quick reply...
It can't be based on the entire genome-- there aren't that many people who have had their entire genome sequenced. Those articles are a bit misleading because what they call "whole-genome" sequencing isn't "whole".Good point. But they did call it "whole genome". I can't imagine they'd use that phrase without it meaning something significant. Perhaps they mean something more like "a number of haplogroups of sufficient size that we don't statistically expect a whole genome analysis to be different". I'll have to think more about it.And these researchers are careful to select people who they think have been living in a given area for a very long time. For example, no American (who is not Indian) would qualify for this study, and few would fit into any of their groupings. If you look at the groupings in the family tree, you'll see that there are "Tuscan" and "Sardinian" groupings. You cannot seriously posit that there is a Tuscan or a Sardinian race. People have been moving in and out of Tuscany for, well, forever (or at least as long as people have been living there).Why not? A subspecific clade does not rule out out-crossing. See below. Of course, I probably wouldn't call such a small clade a race.One other thing to keep in mind is that statistical analysis has shown that we all share the exact same set of common ancestors if you go back only about 10,000 years. IOW, everyone living at that time was either an ancestor of everyone alive today or an ancestor of no one alive today. So you can't have human clades that go back much further than 10,000 years.Yes, but that doesn't effect the results that they've found genetically distinct human populations that can be placed in a phylogenic tree.But clade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clade) has a very specific, concrete definition; it's not so much a matter of arguing for justification. A clade has to be closed under all descendants of most recent common ancestors. If two people in group A have a most recent common ancestor whose descendants also include person X from group B, then groups A and B cannot be kept distinct. Do you think your system stands up to this scrutiny? If not, perhaps you shouldn't call your categories clades...Uh, where are getting the closure requirement? From your cite: "A clade is a taxonomic group comprising a single common ancestor and all the descendants of that ancestor." No mention of closure. As long as the clade contains all descendants from the clade's ancestor, then it's a proper clade.

It's true that clades at the species level and higher do not cross. But that comes from the definition of species, not the definition of clade. Clades below the species level must (by definition of species) have out-crosses. If they didn't, the clades would be species, not sub-species.

As an easy example, take my grandfather and define the clade of all descendants of that person. My father out-crossed from the clade when he had children with my mother (no inbreeding here :) ). Yet my grandfather's grandchildrens are still members of his clade.

[John Mace]

There is nothing in those articles that indicates the groups are clades. There is no "Tuscan clade". There is no "Sardinian clade". The very idea is ludicrous. I'm sorry, but you are extrapolating the data beyond what it can support.

[Pleonast]

There is nothing in those articles that indicates the groups are clades. There is no "Tuscan clade". There is no "Sardinian clade". The very idea is ludicrous. I'm sorry, but you are extrapolating the data beyond what it can support.Really? Presumably the individuals they sampled for each group are more closely related to each other than they are to those in other groups. And the groups nest together exactly how clades stack together. Yes, that is not definitive evidence of the groups being clades, but it is consistent with it. In fact, I don't see anything in the article that is inconsistent with the groups being clades.

[John Mace]

I can't imagine that my buddy who has one grandparent from Tuscany would fit into the "Tuscan clade", but his grandfather might very well fit in. Multiply that by millions, and the clades fall apart. They are looking at a tiny sample of people who can trace their lineage back a long time in a particular geographic area and deliberately ignoring all the people who have ancestors from that area but no longer live there.

[Pleonast]

I can't imagine that my buddy who has one grandparent from Tuscany would fit into the "Tuscan clade", but his grandfather might very well fit in. Multiply that by millions, and the clades fall apart. They are looking at a tiny sample of people who can trace their lineage back a long time in a particular geographic area and deliberately ignoring all the people who have ancestors from that area but no longer live there.I agree with everything here, if by "the clades fall apart" you mean they are becoming less distinct because of out-crossing. (Obviously, a grandchild is always in the clades that their grandparents are in.) Actually, more like the "clades merge together".

Just to reiterate, I'm not saying any or every individual is genetically similar to the other members of their clades. I'm saying that the populations as groups are statistically distinct enough for them to be distinguished and a phylogeny constructed, despite out-crossings continually reducing the differences. I'm not claiming that the sub-specific clades of the human species are useful for any particular purpose, but there's is apparently enough value for the article's authors to publish a phylogeny of sub-specific groups of humans.

And whether or not we want to call some sub-specific human clades "races" or "sub-species", there do in fact exist statistically, genetically distinct groups within the human species.

[John Mace]

I'm saying a bit more than that. I'm saying there are many people who are in the same "clade" with the people who are designated as, say, the "Tuscan clade" but who would not exhibit the genetic fingerprint that is allegedly a marker for being in that "clade". The "clade" is much bigger than the genetic test will show, and so the test is not a good measure of the "clade".

[John Mace]

BTW, let me quote from the SciAm article:

Genetic literacy will let a term like “Asian” or “Chinese” be replaced by more subtle classifications based on the differences in ancestral genetic makeup found in recent genome-wide scans, such as the distinction between China’s southern and northern Han groups. “There is no race,” Quintana-Murci says. “What we see [from the standpoint of genetics] is geographical gradients. There are no sharp differences between Europeans and Asians. From Ireland to Japan, there is no sharp boundary where something has changed completely.”
Emphasis added.

[Pleonast]

I'm saying a bit more than that. I'm saying there are many people who are in the same "clade" with the people who are designated as, say, the "Tuscan clade" but who would not exhibit the genetic fingerprint that is allegedly a marker for being in that "clade". The "clade" is much bigger than the genetic test will show, and so the test is not a good measure of the "clade".I agree. Just another way of saying it's statistical difference between the groups, not a definitive statement about any individual's genes.

While the authors say there is no "race", they suggest replacing it with "more subtle classifications based on the differences in ancestral genetic makeup", so they believe that cladistic distinctions can be made. At least that phrase sure sounds like a reference to clades to me. It's six versus half a dozen.

[John Mace]

Well, I just took its pulse, and I'm ready to declare this horse dead.

[Indistinguishable]

Uh, where are getting the closure requirement? From your cite: "A clade is a taxonomic group comprising a single common ancestor and all the descendants of that ancestor." No mention of closure. As long as the clade contains all descendants from the clade's ancestor, then it's a proper clade.
All and only the descendants of some particular ancestor. Yes, that's the "closure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_%28mathematics%29)" requirement I mentioned (if possibly worded in a different, but essentially mathematically equivalent way). The clade has to be "closed under" MRCAs and descendants. What'd you think I was saying?

I was suggesting that the groups you were discussing (and proposing as the basis of a classification system) are probably not clades, in that they are probably not the collection of all and only the descendants of some particular ancestor.