What are the racial demographics of Earth?

[Mahaloth]

I know, it seems like a simple google search would bring up a quick answer. I don't seem to be able to find it. I assume that it is because it is very difficult to define race.

I'm curious what the basic racial breakdown of the planet is. I'm even willing to accept just about any definition of race, but I'm not interested in answers like, "Well, It's 100% human."

Anyone know where to get data like this?

[Chief Pedant]

http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...-3706/Overview

Check back after watching.

[Mahaloth]

Is that an order? Does it answer the question?

[Polycarp]

As you said, it depends on your breakdown. WikiAnswers, citing the USAID Population Reference Bureau's 2006 World Population Data Sheet (warning: PDF), gives these "major-race" figuires: Asian 60.6%, Black 14.1%, White 16.7%, Latino 8.5% (and I do question Latino as a separate race, and wonder what happened to Amerinds, Polynesians, Khoisan, etc.). That's probably as good a "grouper" response as is available.

At the other extreme, the CIA World Factbook's online data gives detailed ethnic breakdowns for every country -- and I've been using CIA Factbooks to confirm this sort of thing since 1975; the data are reliable and extremely detailed.

[Mahaloth]

Yeah, I was trying to view the CIA Factbook for "World", but it didn't have the breakdown, probably do to how complicated it is to define race.

[Mahaloth]

I guess what I'm really looking for would be a list of racial demographics that had too many groups as opposed to too few. A list like that would allow me to group ethnic types together based on how I define race or by how I am interested.

Surprising how hard it is to find.

[jackdavinci]

Originally Posted by Polycarp

At the other extreme, the CIA World Factbook's online data

Great link! Fascinating list of terms, many of which I've never heard of. I like that groups that haven't had much outside influence are just designated 'homogenous'. This seems to be a immigratory perspective on ethnicity.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by Polycarp

Asian 60.6%, Black 14.1%, White 16.7%....

So Egyptians presumably come under white, while the paler Afghans an Russians are a different race known as Asian and are lumped with the Chinese and Indonesians.

Interesting scheme.

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by Polycarp

As you said, it depends on your breakdown. [url=http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_world_population_and_race_breakdown"] Asian 60.6%, Black 14.1%, White 16.7%, Latino 8.5% (and I do question Latino as a separate race, and wonder what happened to Amerinds, Polynesians, Khoisan, etc.). That's probably as good a "grouper" response as is available.

"Asian" as a category makes no sense even according to traditional racial categories. About 2.1 billion people, or 33% of the global population, are East and Southeast Asian, who would traditionally be classified as "Mongoloid." Most of the rest, those of the Indian Subcontinent, as well as Iranians, Turks, Arabs, etc, would under traditional schemes be classified as Caucasians (although they would generally also be considered "non-white"). "Latino" as you observe is not a racial category at all. Most of the population of Central and South America are racially mixed, the majority being mestizo - a mixture of European (Caucasian) and Amerindian (usually considered "Mongoloid"). There are millions of pure or nearly pure Amerinds, but their numbers are far exceeded by the mixed population. Of course many Latin Americans are Caucasian (most of Argentina and Uruguay) or of sub-Saharan African ancestry (especially in Brazil).

While distinctive, groups such as Khoisan, native Australians, Melanesians, etc have such relatively small populations they can pretty much be ignored on a global scale.

[Polycarp]

I apologize to everyone -- on looking carefully at the PRB study, I see that WikiAnswers simply grabbed figures somewhat at random, and I bought into it.

Much like "Jewish" as descriptor of both a religion and an ethnicity, "Asian" is commonly used to denote "people of (one of) the ethnic groups formerly termed 'Mongoloid'," as well as "inhabitant or native of Asia the continent." As Colibri notes, this usage confutes ethnic groupings by confusing "denizen of Asia" with "person of East Asian or related racial extraction."

I would love to see some system set up that acknowledges, without bringing into the picture the 300 years of abuse and hatred, oppression and fear, that poison the well, that Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, and Desmond Tutu have phenotypical characteristics in common that they do not share with Dag Hammarskjold and Mohandas Gandhi or with Sun Yatsen and Saionji, each pair of which also have characteristics in common justifying some sort of broad grouping of ethnicities. Maybe someday....

[Elendil's Heir]

An interesting, concise summary: http://www.familycare.org/news/if_the_world.htm

[Quercus]

Originally Posted by Polycarp

I would love to see some system set up that acknowledges[...] that Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, and Desmond Tutu have phenotypical characteristics in common that they do not share with Dag Hammarskjold and Mohandas Gandhi or with Sun Yatsen and Saionji, each pair of which also have characteristics in common justifying some sort of broad grouping of ethnicities. Maybe someday....

The thing is, it's not clear that Nkrumah, Kenyatta, and Tutu do have more genetically in common with each other than with Hammarskjold or Yatsen. You've just grouped by pretty much one phenotypic characteristic-- skin color (OK, maybe you're also include eyefolds). If you look at real genetic variation over a broad selection of gener in humans, it turns out that populations in (sub-Sarahan) Africa differ by more than populations around the rest of the world. So if we split up human populations into races using broad selection of genetic markers, you'd have this list:
Africa Group 1, Africa Group 2, Africa Group 3, RestoftheWorld.

[Giles]

Originally Posted by Elendil's Heir

An interesting, concise summary: http://www.familycare.org/news/if_the_world.htm

I think some of those numbers are wrong, e.g.,

5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens

That implies that substantially all of the 5% of the richest people in the world are US citizens. 5% of the world's population is about 340 million: I would guess that of the 340 million richest people in the world, no more than 40% would be from the US. (Some would be from Western Europe, some would be Japanese, and there'd be significant numbers from other places).

7 people would have access to the Internet

That's around 400 million people. I think that's a bit dated, and the number is significantly higher now.

82 would be non-white; 18 white

That's not all that useful a racial divide. For a start, there's a continuum in Caucasoid people, from Scandinavia to South India: where does "white" end and "non-white" start? Secondly, it groups together East Asian, South Asian and Sub-Saharan African all under the name "non-white": if there are racial groups, these are all distinct.

[Chief Pedant]

by CP:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...-3706/Overview

Check back after watching.

Originally Posted by Mahaloth

Is that an order? Does it answer the question?

No, and please let me apologize...on re-reading it it does sound curt. It was not meant to be. I was in a hurry.

The emphasis of the program is ancestry of various individuals--and trying to sort them out. Were I interested in your question, I'd like to know about the show as it seems particularly germane. The concept of "race" is closely related to the question of how and to what extent we are all related to one another.

[orcenio]

Originally Posted by Polycarp

I apologize to everyone -- on looking carefully at the PRB study, I see that WikiAnswers simply grabbed figures somewhat at random, and I bought into it.

Much like "Jewish" as descriptor of both a religion and an ethnicity, "Asian" is commonly used to denote "people of (one of) the ethnic groups formerly termed 'Mongoloid'," as well as "inhabitant or native of Asia the continent." As Colibri notes, this usage confutes ethnic groupings by confusing "denizen of Asia" with "person of East Asian or related racial extraction."

I would love to see some system set up that acknowledges, without bringing into the picture the 300 years of abuse and hatred, oppression and fear, that poison the well, that Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, and Desmond Tutu have phenotypical characteristics in common that they do not share with Dag Hammarskjold and Mohandas Gandhi or with Sun Yatsen and Saionji, each pair of which also have characteristics in common justifying some sort of broad grouping of ethnicities. Maybe someday....

If you say that Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, and Desmond Tutu, etc belong to the same race, then they belong to the same race. That's it. The same goes with Dag Hammarskjold and Mohandas Gandhi or with Sun Yatsen and Saionji. Race isn't something real. It's not a measurement of something. It's just an artificial grouping based on geography; but even this definition breaks down in places where there are/have been migrating humans (cities, the "Americas").

So have fun, take out a map and draw the racial lines wherever you want. It's not like it means anything, nor will you ever get anyone to agree with anything you say. That's race!