Just so I’m understanding you (others can chime in, as well), is it your opinion that all races, or all groups of people identified along racial lines must necessarily be equal to each other in all metrics?
And if one holds an opposing view, that he is, therefore, racist?
Does anyone else find it just a bit ironic that this thread was started by one of the few resident climate change denialists?
Well, I give him a break, just because he has a blind spot it does not mean that he is wrong elsewhere, on other issues he is very good.
Point well taken and agreed with. It’s kind of nice when the irony meter doesn’t actually go off the scale.
Chiming in as requested: No, that is not the opinion of anybody that I know of who discusses racism on these boards. And you’ve got some straw leaking out of your argument there.
A much more accurate representation of the average anti-“race realist” position is that while populations have many scientifically identifiable and testable genetic differences, the socio-ethnic categories that we call races don’t map well onto actual genetic populations.
Consequently, claiming to be confident that measured differences between racial groups reliably reflect actual genetic differences between those groups is frequently a sign of ignorance and/or racial bias.
That’s fine. And thanks. But it doesn’t really get to what I was asking. Is it you position that:
In other words, if we went back 6,000 years where the races were more isolated and mapped more tightly with specific geographies, would you expect each of the races to rate identically on all metrics. And more specifically, performance metrics?
If you do allow that these different races might very well have different performance metrics then, why do you think that those inherent differences aren’t there today?
I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, just trying to pose the question in a clear way.
If I understand you here, the problem is no the possibility that different races might have different metrics, but the level of confidence displayed by people who hold that opinion is the problem?
Is that right?
The problem is that it depends on what you mean by “race”, and that the sort of people who bang on about this here are not doing idle statistical analysis but rather, as Kimstu notes, are trying to map genetic differences onto socio-ethnic groups and vice versa. It’s virtually never an honest debate and JAQing off about it does not create one.
Of course difference populations will perform differently on different metrics no matter how you slice it. You could study whether redheads can jump higher than blondes on average or whether tall people do better on IQ tests than short people and get differences. That’s not the issue at all, and let’s not pretend that it is.
The problem with this arguement is that folks want to use this to “prove” that certain groups are always mentally inferior. Point out that any difference is still well within the means of humanity as a whole, that there is far more overlap in the overall numbers than anything else, and it is handwaved away. All people who hold this viewpoint want is for someone to fall for the trap. They (and I assume you) only want someone to say “well yes, there are some differences” and suddenly they think they are validated, some races are mentally inferior, and they can go on with their shallow, ignorant mindset intact.
Geographic isolation creates speciation. This is one of the foundations of biology. But the human race hasn’t really had enough time, isolated, to create the sharp differences in anything but bare surface appearance.
If the two cirlces of a venn diagram overlap by 95%, is it still a diagram? And if so, why focus on the 5% that is outside the overlap, when the 95% overlap tells us much more about humans as a whole?
Incidentally, this is why there is The Pit. GD is for argument, evidence and reason. But at some point it’s appropriate to call people out on their bullshit. This is one such case. Note that invective was not the first thing Blake reached for. He gave precision and focus a solid try for multiple days, even though the poster had a long history.
Those of unusually high character will listen, learn, inquire, repent and reform. Most will not. For the moment, we have a richer sense of Chen019’s weak ethical fiber.
Just as a side point, performance is a function of nature, nurture and prenatal environment. The last sometimes isn’t stressed enough in these discussions. Six thousand years ago systematic dietary deficiencies would have also played a role, some involving micro-nutrients like iodine others linked to sheer caloric intake.
It’s my opinion that those are meaningless and arbitrary categories to begin with. How in the name of Cecil do you define and apply them?
6000 years ago, “the races,” as we are inclined to see them now, probably didn’t exist in their current forms.You’re assuming pure morphological and genetic groups which later underwent mixing.
The actuality is one of constant migration, mixing, and adaptation to different environmental conditions. For example, the dark skin of most sub Saharan Africans is probably an adaptation to changes to the diet due to agriculture and the resulting vitamin deficiencies. Before agriculture, their ancestors were probably much lighter skinned. The rise of agriculture also occasioned a massive migration from West Africa into the rest of the continent, dislocating and/or absorbing the original populations.
There are two different issues. One is whether or not there are actual differences between “races”. Most of us, I think even most of the people in this thread, would agree that there are differences. When we can see a group of people that are best described as Asian, Caucasian and Black, it’s hard to argue that there aren’t differences. And it seems odd to think that all the difference that there are would be relegated to things as overt as eye shape skin color and hair texture. So it would not surprise me one iota to learn that there might be some small difference in mental ability or any other metric.
That leads us to the second issue: does it matter? I think not. As someone pointed out, I think the advantage, as it exists, is one that is slight. If I were hiring someone, I wouldn’t hire an Asian over a White or a Black because as a population Asians might have greater mental ability. But that doesn’t change the (supposed) fact that Asians have greater ability than other races. But, so often, these debates appear to be one side (the majority here on SDMB) doing anything and everything possible to undermine what is evidently a biological fact. It’s as if the people who claim to be fact-based suddenly find one fact that is Krptonite to them.
::shrug::
Except that your observation doesn’t demonstrate a scientific fact at all. That’s the point that every knowledgeable poster has been explaining. The groupings you see, that you keep referring to as races, are not.
Lewontin addressed this in “Biology As Ideology”, he said that intelligence tests that were administered to orphaned children in Banardo’s care homes (roughly the same environment) found a slight racial advantage that wasn’t statistically significant… For the black children over the white ones. Merely pointing out that the supposed direction isn’t always the same as people assume.
And this is an example of what I mean. Forget the term race if you must. Use “groupings”. And example of one such genetic grouping being those people that have dark skin and kinky hair.
Prediction: some post from someone showing people that are not squarely in one “grouping”. This evasive maneuver interests me not at all.
And that’s good to point out. Someone who claims to be scientifically minded would accept any order that presented itself. One school seems to be not a great sample, but that don’ts mean it’s wrong either. I think this whole thing gets clouded by PC-ness, which is unhelpful in any endeavor, especially one that is supposed to be fact-based. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the sensitivity to the issue. It’s one thing for Whites to be outranked by Asians, because there’s no historical hierarchy that was not only assumed as fact but put to horrible use as a justification for despicable behavior.
Still, that doesn’t changes the facts, whatever they may be.
But the only traits that dark skinned kinky haired people share at greater than 95% confidence level is dark skin and kinky hair. In all other characteristics they exhibit as much variance from each other as they do from people lacking dark skin and kinky hair. Sometimes more. Dark skinned kinky haired people are not a race. They can though be a sociologically defined self referential group.
How dark? How kinky?
Why do you associate those two traits?
It isn’t an ‘evasive maneuver’. It is a valid objection and a good point.
As I said above, it seems I’m in pretty good company in thinking there are human races. The 2004 winner of the Curt Stern Award for starters. Not to mention the major figures in evolutionary biology such as Ernst Mayr & Sewell Wright.
Heck, even Richard Lewontin’s star pupil was pointing out that there are human races just the other day.
Relax Blake, it’s ok for there to be human races just as there are in other species. Unless you’re a creationist like Rick Santorum?