No, he is referring to a single aspect of research in a field, cites mostly 2nd hand sources and then labels all of it “behavioral genetics”. The lame article then shows up in a regular old online magazine. Lame. The philosopher’s reference list is only slightly worse.
I’m not in anyway supportive of the modern day claims of scientific racists and particularly how they abuse the field of behavior genetics, but your citation points people to equally ignorant bullshit form the other side of the spectrum.
For example, even if he had said ‘human behavior genetics’ it would have been far better but not by much.
So you may have a point, but I think you are going too far on the way to claim both sides are bad on this, the cites I bring are not misrepresenting things like the race realists do.
btw. What exactly do you mean by race realist? This is something I’ve asked others - if you support racial prefences in college admissions then you must believe in race, no?
Really? So someone with zero african ancestry could claim to be african-american and their race could be considered for the purposes of college admission?
Also, the “social-cultural phenomenon” claim could extend to adolescence. Of course people have no difficulty understanding that also has a biological component.
Race has a social/cultural aspect attached to it, but people (on some level) clearly understand it also has a biological component. There really is a correlation between genetic structure and geography, so between people from different places you find statistical differences both in genes, and in things like physical attributes. This reflects evolutionary history as groups migrated out of africa.
This doesn’t even vaguely follow from what I said, so, uh . . .
Now I want you to demonstrate exactly who has argued the contrary of this. Because I haven’t seen where anyone in this thread has, but you saying this implies that you think that someone has.
Hah, so typical, I already cited even experts that demonstrate that your few repeated to nausea cites are not making much of a headway on changing scientists to follow their “lead”.
So what did you mean by socio-cultural phenomena? If college admissions use race then they must include a biological component (ie. African american = ancestors who were born in Africa). They can’t be completely divorced from this geographic ancestry component. In which case, you’re back at how race is commonly defined.
Again, I thought that by socio-cultural phenomena you were saying that these groups don’t have any particular connection to biological groupings. They could for instance, all have similar genotypes.
Chen: All south Asians are the same race, they are all closely related and all share patently obvious morphologies.
Blake: Pakistanis and Andamanese are both South Asians. Care to provide some evidence for this claim that Pakistanis and Andamanese are the same race, are closely related and share patently obvious morphologies?
Chen: Sure here. Leroi is pointing out that the Andamanese are their own particular racial group. He notes that the Andamanese are not at all closely related to Pakistanis, and that they have their a morphology utterly unlike that of Pakistanis. That proves that Pakistanis and Andamanese are the same race, are closely related and share patently obvious morphologies.
This is the funniest thing that I have read in years.
Please keep doing this Chen. Your dishonesty, inability to accurately represent the references and the total batshit insanity of your position becomes more apparent with each post.
And it has given me the best laugh I have had all week.
Wow, so in your imaginings, you think either I must believe that either we can safely divide humanity into four or five major genetic groupings that can be reliably determined by looking at a person, or else I believe that geographical proximity means nothing about similarity of either genotype or phenotype?
I.e. I have to choose between believing that we all have some magical ability to determine a person’s ethnic background at a glance, or else I have to believe that it’s impossible that perhaps two people in the same village in the Gambia might look a bit more similar than either does to Björk.
Yes. This sounds like the epitome of legitimate science.
If you actually thought someone had actually argued that – no one has – you’d be able to point to the post where they did, now wouldn’t you?
His argument is becoming more batshit insane and more divorced from reality with every post now. He’s not even managing a coherent argument or keeping his lies straight. He’s all over the place. He originally came across as ignorant and weaselly and dishonest, but he is now coming across as actually crazy. He doesn’t even appear to see that his arguments are utterly incoherent or that he is contradicting himself from one post to the next.
I genuinely think he is becoming unwound, and that if we keep this up for another week he is going to have a meltdown.
No, I think you’re misunderstanding the genetics involved.
It’s true that the chances of a bone marrow match increase with closeness of genetic kinship. So you’re more likely to find a match among members of your own genetic population.
Where culturally defined “race” correlates fairly closely with genetic kinship, it’s a good starting point to look for potential bone marrow matches. For instance, the so-called “Nordic race” of pale-skinned Northern Europeans such as Scandinavians and Germans includes a number of genetic populations that really are closely related. A member of that “Nordic race” group seeking a bone marrow donor would be smart to start the search among other “Nordic race” members.
BUT: in cases where race doesn’t correspond to genetic kinship, that strategy doesn’t work. For example, many black East Africans are no more closely related to black West Africans than to Norwegians or Japanese.
Consequently, looking among West Africans for a bone marrow donor for an East African recipient wouldn’t make sense, even though both West and East Africans are socioculturally classified as belonging to “the Black race”.
Standard racial classifications are not the same thing as true genetic populations, even if they sometimes overlap with them to some extent.
This illustrates once again the fundamental problem with using “race” as a biological category. It isn’t that race is never a useful indicator of genetic relationships, but that it’s not a reliable indicator of genetic relationships.
Fundamentally, it’s someone who is interested in human genetic diversity but does not understand science.
Chen019 when people say race is meaningless they mean that capricious social groupings have no real validity, take 100 random people snatched from all over the world and have people group them according to race, you know like white and black etc. Now of course these race groups will be meaningless aside from appearance. Well that is what the real world is like, people are classified according to appearance.
So you are right that the social construct of race is real in the sense it effects people everyday, no one is disputing that. You however go one step further and claim that since a college admissions clerk decides Bill and Bob are both dark skinned enough to qualify as African American that this means anything in a scientific sense, and that they are genetically related members of the same race which is nonsense.
