May be we should consult with Dr. William Shockley on this?
I don’t think these ‘special traits’ have anything to do with race.
I’m Scottish as far back I can can research, (There is one part Irish in there) and longjevity [sp] runs in my family…not only long life, but healthy to. (My grand mother is 97 and healthy as a horse…Methusilas Children anyone? 
)
I rarely get ill (Cold and flu wise) and I do kinda look young for my age.
Now a lot of this may have something to do with diet, but my family on my fathers side didn’t exacly grow up on the ‘upper-crust’ end of town and a they didn’t always get the ‘best food’, so maybe genetics contributes to this somewhat, but who knows.
But I don’t think things like this make someone ‘superiour’ over anotehr person.
MHO
- Define “superior”. It looks to me it’s not a biological category. The race IS, by definition, biological:a distinct group of people, the members of which share certain inherited physical characteristics and transmit them …other meanings…(loosely) political, linguistic or nationalistic. [In my view, it can be used in political matters. There are only three major races - Caucasoid (White), Mongoloid (Yellow) and Negroid (Black). So, I do not think that “linguistic” or “nationalistic” definitions apply. But who am I to argue with the Webster? PC crowd, do not kill me, the colors are given only as historical guides, for ID purposes only.] Races existed before sociology was invented. As geology was invented after stones existed for billennia, in other words, politicians di not invent races, they objectively exist.
If parents come from very different genetic backgrounds, the progeny STATISTICALLY has a better chance to inherit genes, capable of “fightng” various diseases. Its also STATISTICALLY less likely that both parents would possess rare recessive genes. So, the progeny is less likely to have a rare inherited disease. If this makes one “superior”, the answer is YES. - ACHFrom said more than once, why the race is biological. It becomes a sociological category only in federal ledgers.
- If you do not believe me, talk to a dog breeder or an animal farmer. Yeah-yeah, I know that we are people and, therefore, superior …ooops!.. to animals, but all genetics laws were studied in (lower) animals and even plants and the same laws apply to humans. Intellect does not cancel chromosomes, and biracial progeny inherits 50% of theirs from each parent race.
- Eugenics is, roughly, animal breeding principles applied to humans. It is political, not a biological category. Is there a higher chance for beautiful parents to produce a beautiful child? YES, we see it every day. What about Nobel laureats? Perhaps, I heard that experiments are conducted in California. What about superior people?Define “superior” first.
P.S. I know it does not belong here: Moderators, this BB badly needs a font bar: I, for one, like to use bold, cursive or other features to emphisize things. The only way now is to CAPITALIZE. Some BB have font bars.
I’m of VERY mixed pedigree: English/Irish/Scottish/Danish/French-Canadian/German/Cherokee. I don’t consider myself superior. Well, not out loud anyway.
Tay-Sachs is prevalent among a sub-set of Ashkenazi, sickle-cell is found among various populations with historical exposure to Malaria including some but not all “black” sub-Saharan African groups, Mediterranean populations, and Indian sub-Continent populations.
On American Indian populations:
As far as I know recent evidence points toward a multiple waves of settelment theory from diverse sources, I do not believe that there is any evidence indicating a contstriction in population. Perhaps for some sub-group of American Indians, but not for all. Their lack of resistance to Old World diseases came simply from lack of exposure to diseases which jumped to Homo Sapiens after they left the Old World.
On Multi-Racial Superiority:
Well, given that most variation does not map ontu regional populations, you’re not gaining too much but you do reduce your chances of expressing recessive traits --usually bad often indifferent though-- as compared with marrying someone very closely related to you.
On HLA:
Siince no group has exclusive claim to a trait, we’re really only talking about odds of distribution. In fact in re the bone marrow, I put even money that the focus on same race donars is inefficient.
Collounsbury posts:
From U Penn
Their cite for this is: Kasiske BL, Neylan JF, Riggio RR, et al. The effect of race on access and outcome in transplantation. N Eng J Med. 1991;324:302-307
From http://www.taiwanheadlines.gov.tw/880915/880915s5-1.htm
So - how much money we talking here? 
Race Response:
Unfortunately I don’t have access to that journal and thus that article right now, so I can only respond in a general way.
The first issue is exactely as I suggested above, is race not being used as a short-cut short hand for distribution patterns? That is a proxy for much more complicated patterns of distribution?
The question immediately comes to mind, how do the authors define “race”? What is, if any, their working definition?
What we know from population genetics is there is no coherency at this macro level to trait distribution. Thus the observation that race has no biological reality. What we find, nonetheless, is a good number of researchers outside of genetics who continue to use racial categories, unexamined, which end up being short hand for distributional tendencies (meaning trait X occurs with frequency 2x in one population but only 1/2x in the second popultion, both populations have shared traits. We get into odds then.)
Fine, no doubt African Americans will have similar patterns, where the laziness factor comes in is assuming racial coherency and not looking to non-Af.Am pops for similar distribution patterns who might also provide donor reservoirs.
HLA traits, for example as I understand maps unto environmentally similar conditions --much in the way the sickle cell trait(s) map onto the same. Past history and racial thinking have too often ignored the non-racial nature of these distributions, leading to misleading conclusions. Of course given limited data, few donars and the like, such shortcuts may be more efficient proxies than not, however this does not void our genetic data.
Ergo, I maintain my skepticism in this regard.
Well until we know what the underlying definitions are, I’m afraid I can’t respect the cited data. There’s still lots of folks using race for lack of knowledge or tradition etc.
To Peace: I see you did not follow up my citations from the last discusion we had. In brief, your three great races are nothing but myths in terms of biological reality. There is nothing political about this, that’s simply what population genetics has revealed in the past ten to fifteen years. I provide once more the link to the discussion where these issues were thoroughly hashed out:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=39955
I’d say Chinese people are the superior race … hands down! (didn’t say they were more advanced) I don’t know if the are considered multiracial or not, but they seem to flourish and it appears they will be here till the end.
Do you know, I think that this is the first time that I’ve ever seen this topic handled in a sane, rational manner? I’m impressed. Keep up the good work, folks!
A girl I knew in high school had fair-skinned blue-eyed parents. Her mother had black hair; her father was reddish blond. The girl, though a fair-skinned, blue-eyed strawberry blonde (and quite a beauty), has a high forehead and high cheekbones. (I once commented that she could pass as an American Indian with suitable skin toner, brown contact lenses and a black wig. She is multitalented and one of the nicest people I remember from my teenage years. If this is a result of racial mixing, I’m all for it.
Collounsbury, you’re missing the point.
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You seem hung up on the fact that racial divisions are artificial, and to a certain extent, I agree. In my initial post here, I used ethnic background rather than race because that is a better way of describing the non-random distribution of recessive traits and HLA types.
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You say:
I sincerely hope you’re not suggesting that transplant workers are too lazy to look for potential matches in people of different races. That is not the case at all. The point, though, is that at least for bone marrow transplants where HLA compatibility prevents the transplanted marrow from rejecting the recipient (GVH or Graft vs. Host disease) finding the est possible match is essential. Finding a perfect match in a person from another ethnic background, let alone race, made headlines.
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As you suggest, while the distribution of HLA types varies widely between ethnic groups, it is not absolute. It is not a case of a certain HLA type being found ONLY in one group, and never in others. It is, however, a case of 80% of people with a certain HLA type might be from this ethnic group. Mutiply that by 12 different HLA antigens per person, and the odds of finding someone who is a perfect outside one’s ethnic group can become remote. Newsworthy or headline-making, even.
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When you mix HLA types from different ethnic groups, you are likely to get some combinations that are not common anywhere, thereby decreasing the probability of finding a match in the event that a transplant is ever needed in the future. Doing targeted recruitment within ethnic groups does 2 things. Any person who undergoes tissue-typing is more likely to match the person in need, AND for sociological reasons, you’re more likely to get more volunteers for a same-race person in need.
Since you seem unwilling/unable to look up medical journal articles, here is an abstract from
’Tis better to receive than to give: the relative failure of the African American community to provide organs for transplantation. Rozon-Solomon M; Burrows L Mt Sinai J Med 1999 Sep;66(4):273-6.
If the abstract is to long a quote (although abstracts generally do fall within fair use guidelines, mods) and is deleted here, it can be found by going to http://igm.nlm.nih.gov clicking on MEDline, and entering organ procurement and minority groups as the subjects. MEDline does not allow for direct linking, unfortunately.
The girl I referred to certainly has American Indian ancestry, apparently on both sides, but the only clue to this would have been her mother’s black hair and high forehead. (Both parents are now deceased.) she also had a foster brother who, though having the same coloring, is the son of a full-blooded Cherokee.
I too have discovered that so called multi-racials tend to look better than mono-racial people. Maybe this is the whole whoever-looks-average-looks-better thing at work here. We observe the people around us, unconsciously recording all the different physical traits we see, then average them out to find the perfect model. I think on an evolutionary perspective, this would be a factor that propels us to make the safest bet reproductively. Now that we’re all smarter and armed with the knowledge of genetics and evolution however, this is one innate ability we can afford to lose…
My apologies, I partly misread your argument. I still have issues with some of your points, however
This largely captures the issues and to respond to your note
I’m currently flitting about the southern Mediterranean and Middle East on business. As both internet access and library access are, how shall we say, less than ideal, I lack to resources to really get into this. (simply connecting to the board can be a pain!) Since I can’t do justice to this right now, I’ll just thank you for a good response,and of course my apologies for misreading your position.
Hey, Collounsbury - I’m sorry if that bit about your being unwilling/unable to access the article came off as being a bit testy; I did think that your earlier post sounded a bit like you were saying that you saw no need to track down references that supported a different point of view from your own, and certainly no need to consider changing your point of view, and was reacting to that. My apologies for seeing arrogance where none existed.
Thank-you for the gracious explanation for why you couldn’t look something like that up, and I’m glad that we were able to find some common ground.
I like it. Civility makes people superior. This trait is completely absent in animals (no offence intended, animal lovers, they are OK as they are).
A question: would multiracial progeny be more civil than parents? OOOOOps! I forgot, it’s cultural.
peace, I forgot to answer this earlier:
there is a way to bold or italicize text here
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Zor wrote:
Beat me to it.
There was a study that showed that when you “averaged” the features of a large number of people to come up with one composite face, the composite face was pretty close to our ideal of beauty.
So maybe when people of two races breed, then because the parents have such divergent genetic backgrounds, the children are more likely than most to approach that ideal “average” face.
Damn, I was going to say that. Oh well Ill just say that because of my multiracial status i am immortal.
Multi-racial people are superior in one, non-genetic sense:
They are less susceptible to the political myths of race and lies of racism.
A population of multi-racial folk may or may not be healthier, smarter, longer-living or more pretty to look at, but they might get along better. Maybe.