My questions is - when does a race become a race? The historical way a race developed was through long geographical isolation. In my definition of race, I excluded self-imposed isolated groups, such as the Amish. Was I wrong? Are the Amish now, or on their way to becoming, a new race? Certain self-imposed isolates already demonstrate genetic differences (incidence of Tay-Sachs among Ashkenazi, prevalence of multiple births among Amish). Is there an accepted number of genetic characteristics that must be expressed before anthropologists say that this group of people is a race? And, am I erroneously discounting culture?
You’re getting into murky water as the only definition I can dig up for a taxonomic definition of race is a group that passes on characteristics by descent distinct enough to characterize it as a distinct human type. Muddy enough for you? By that definition each of us are multi-racial members of a virtually unlimited number of distinct “races.”
That was a good GD, pink. It was my assertion there, that the several of the various Human races were on the verge, or had crossed over the line into being subspecies. However, with all the international travel going on, and interracial marriages, that is going away. It takes a lot of generations to bring forth a new race, and even more for that race to become a subspecies. I do not believe the Amish, etc have had long enuf, or have been separated enuf, to become a new race.
Elucidator, if you knew how many race threads have started in the few months I’ve been on this board (some started by me) and how many times, after all the scientific gobbledygook, I (and others) have tried to get this point across.
Read some of the other threads linked here. Some people will cling to the smallest DNA evidence proving that they are a people apart.
The problem with that definition of race, is that it includes many ethnic groups as being distinct races: Irish folk, for instance, are generally considered the same race (Caucasian) as Germans, but it’s (usually) possible to distinguish folks from the two countries based on physical appearance. Most folks will end up breeding with someone of the same nationality, and for many nations (including all island nations) the borders are geographic, not artificial or self-imposed. I think that to even have any hope in defining “race”, you need to specify some minimum amount of physical difference, and I have no idea how you’d quantify that. Why is skin color more significant than, say, foot length?
Simple example – I walk into an ER, my blond, blue-eyed Aryan godlike self (OK, balding, a little pudgy, blond, blue-eyed self), and present my symptoms, one condition the ER docs will rule out immediately is sickle-cell anemia. I simply don’t possess the RACIAL criteria to possibly have that disease.
I agree that miscengenation is good thing, and, hopefully in the future, we will be able to say that there used to be races, but until then, we have races.
What it really comes down to is that human beings are animals, and when animal populations are separated by geography, genetic differences arise. When the river rises to the point that the squirrels can no longer cross it, the ones on the north side and the ones on the south side will eventually exhibit differences in fur color, eye color, etc. If the separation lasts long enough, speciation occurs. If it lasts a lesser period of time, subspeciation occurs.
Same for humans. The problem with the word “race” is the cultural baggage to which you refer – peoples develop value judgments about the differing physical characteristics of peoples.
Chronos: I agree with your criticism of my definition of race – to modify it, I would change it to populations separated by largely insuperable geographical boundaries. The Irish have always possessed the technology to leave their island and, more importantly for breeding purposes, other nearby peoples have always possessed the technology to settle/invade Ireland.
What is the scientific difference between the races? That you look different? So, if all the blue eyed people all moved down the block and only married other blue eyed people, given time there will be a new blue-eyed race?
There are more differences within the races than there are between the races, what does that speak to?
None taken, but, as to the rest, tommyrot, sir! Balderdash!
Is that the best you can do? A Nordic type is unlikely to get sickle cell anemia? How about you take after your Mom (Blonde on blue) but your Dad is Italian? Or Lebanese?
Show me one, even one definitive criteria for distinguishing one race from another, by which I mean,a blind sample taken to the lab will come up “Caucasian” or “Negroid” To steal from St. Mark of Twain, I await “with the calm confidence of a Methodist with four aces”
There is not a single one now, Elucidator. So? My answer would be very different were we in the year 1600, before English colonization of Australia. As best discovered by archeological evidence, the aboriginal population of southeastern Australia had no contact with other populations for millenia. (Northwestern Australia had some contact with the population of Indonesia at that time, but it appears that the Indonesians established no permanent settlements, with corresponding breeding and interbreeding. Similarly, Northeastern Australia had some contact with the population of Papua New Guinea, but the only established intermingled colonies were on islands between the two landmasses. In both cases, geographical barriers existed between those areas of Australia and the more densely populated southeast Australia). Having lost my genetics degree (damn U.S. Mail) I cannot point to unique genetic markers among the aboriginal population of that time, but I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that they existed.
The facts that miscengenation ALWAYS occurs when populations intermingle, and that the explosion over the past roughly two thousand years of large scale movements and intermingling of populations have spread otherwise unique genetic characteristics of races throughout other populations does not mean that the characteristics do not exist, nor that certain populations in the world today are more likely to have, and to have more of, such characteristics. Further, given all of humanity’s innate xenophobia, even today people will preferentially mate with superficially alike persons, thus delaying the day in which races finally depart this earth.
Genetic drift happens, and such genetic differences (esp. if advantageous) spread through a population. When the population is isolated over a long period of time, often the genetic differences stay in that population. Example: very dark skin would be a disadvantage to the Inuit, who need every bit of sunlight they can get to produce sufficient amounts of Vitamin D. Therefore, if genetic drift produced among the Inuit a person or persons with increased melanin production, that person or persons was very unlikely to survive long enough to reproduce. Hence, before large scale population movements from Africa to America (read, slavery), Inuit peoples did not have black skin, and even today, I doubt many persons of Inuit background have black skin.
Example: being a carrier of the gene for sickle cell anemia provides protection against malaria. Hence, the gene arose in certain (though not all) malarial areas. Since malaria was not an issue among the Lapps, it did not arise there.
Example: In one of the great unanswered anthropological questions of the day, the native population of Madagascar is a Melanesian, not an African population. How do we know that? The population is genetically more similar to current day Indonesians, rather than any African population. They are a different “race”.
Just because all persons in a population do not exhibit a particular genetic characteristic does not mean that the population does not constitute a unique breeding population, and hence, a “race”.
I will agree that certain definitions of races are cultural artifacts, and that certain traditional “races” don’t exist. I think the best way to describe this is to say that races of peoples existed, exist to a lesser extent today, and at some point will fade away (see California).
Finally, I think that different races are a good thing. (As a side note, I think that the alleged differences posited by the Bell Curve-type idiots is not only offensive, but plain silly. Under any environmental conditions, characteristics like intelligence would be a benefit and would therefore be a characteristic that spread through the breeding population.) Humans are an amazingly adaptable species, and, from a purely genetic point of view, the diversity that has arisen is healthy. In a few millenia, after we have totally fucked up this planet, it may be that genetic diversity that allows the species to survive.
V
P.S. Jois, don’t you find actually knowing what you are talking about limits your ability to present your argument?
As I’ve brought up before in one of the aforementioned threads, “race” is an inadequate concept to describe human variation.
However, it does exist, and humans continue to exhibit variation in the characteristics associated with ‘races.’
I’ve got to also introduce my usual diatribe against the subspecies concept and the notion of subspeciation. Luckily, we’re talking about sexually reproducing vertebrates here, and the (perhaps) simplest definition of species as a group of organisms defined by reproductive isolation applies. If those are our grounds for defining species, what are our grounds for defining subspecies? A convenient definition might be based on genetic relatedness… but would this coincide with our common definitions of the different ‘races?’ Wouldn’t then the African ‘race’ contain more subspecies than the other ‘races?’ And wouldn’t the other ‘races’ be considered part of some of these African subspecies?
We’ll have to resort to another definition of subspecies if we want it to coincide with our predetermined notions of ‘races,’ one based on the physical characteristics we somewhat arbitrarily consider important. Since we are defining it based on arbitrary characteristics, as Chronos pointed out, isn’t ‘race’ itself a somewhat arbitrary concept?
So what criteria are we using to divide and seperate the races?
Again I say there are more differences within a so-called race than between races. Genetic variety is a good thing, but when you start dividing peoples by special “characteristics” you get into some very disturbing areas.
You are absolutely right. I don’t recall the authors of the study who determined this, but I do recall reading the Scientific American article.
I think that mayhaps “races” can only be defined by the visible genetic differences. The reason that races still exist to the extent they do is preference to mate with those who seem alike.
With that in mind, I confess to being overzealous in my defense of the concept of races, to the extent that I implied that there were signficant genetic differences between peoples. If I did that, I did not mean to, as significant differences do not exist. However, I still assert that differences do exist, and the most obvious ones arose as a reaction to the environment where the population developed, i.e., darker skin in areas where exposure to sunlight, and the resulting danger of skin cancer, was greatest.
As for the concern that talking about characteristics gets into some disturbing areas, you are again right, but the problem lies not in the stars, but in ourselves. I firmly believe that the most universal and ugliest aspect of humanity is xenophobia, often translated into racism. The way to combat xenophobia is not to ignore differences (racial or cultural), but to explore them and (forgive the sappiness, but I can’t think of a better way to say it) celebrate them.
Suasponte:
I’m hard pressed to understand how your long argument says there are races as a useful comment. You assert you’re sure there are measurable genetic differences between groups but to date we have nothing of the sort (other than the PNAS article back in 98 asserting they had id’d a private allele for non-Africans, but then they neglected to adequately sample Africans --why make the more diverse population the smaller sample pray tell, and why on earth neglect to sample the key transitional pops, in the Sahara and East Africa where everyone knows they’re transitional?–). Races is just a useless concept as it exists in our culture and langauge.
Now your later post seems to be saying that you’re really just arguing that in ridding ourselves of race we shouldn’t pretend there is no regional variation.
Fine! Agreed! But what does the word race get us other than some yahoos who think that the old big three actually have some meaning biologically? Wevets really hits this on the head in any case. Well, I know from past experience (a few years ago in the usenet group sci.anthro) that there’s no killing off the Victorian era’s old romantic myths.
I’m not informed enough on the subject of this thread to say anything about it–I can’t even comment on what the fake me said–so I’ll leave it alone. I don’t wanna parade ignorance in a place meant to fight it.
Big three? What are you talking about? I assume you mean Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongloid. Never mentioned them, and I don’t think anyone else did in this thread. Indeed, my OP asked whether new races, among self-imposed isolated groupings, are still developing.
What I am saying is that the regional variation that you agree exists are races (and there are considerably more than three - I agree that the “old big three” are biologically and anthropoligically non-existent). From your post “But what does the word race get us …?” your real problem seems to be the cultural baggage that has been heaped onto that poor word. OK, from now on, we will call them “agglomerations”. So, do agglomerations exist, and, if so, are new ones developing?
I’ll answer my first question: because the large majority of members of human populations remain near their birthplace and marry within their cultural group, interbreeding occurs, and when interbreeding occurs, the group begins to share genetic characteristics. Therefore agglomerations exist.