Chen019, you are a liar.

The BBQ Pit
61

See my post six posts above yours: we know that because ***many groups of dark-skinned and kinky-haired people …

are no more closely related genetically to other groups of dark-skinned and kinky-haired people …

than they are to groups of light-skinned and straight-haired people***.

Likewise, if you and one of your (hypothetical) full-sibling brothers are both blond and green-eyed, and another of your full-sibling brothers is dark-haired and brown-eyed, you can’t validly assume that you are more likely to share other traits with your blond brother than with your dark brother. Because you’re equally genetically close to both of them.

I should note that Belowjob2.0 was making this same point back in post #47, where he said:

If you don’t know the degree of genetic relationship between two individuals, or two groups, who happen to look alike, then you can’t validly assume that they must be more closely related to each other than they are to other individuals or groups who happen to look less like them.

62

I just usually ignore any threads that Chen starts. the stupid burns too badly to even start reading them.

63

Thanks, Kimstu, but this pitting has now become just another recapitulation of all the other threads where well intentioned people explain repeatedly and at length only to get JAQ-off replies. That’s why **Chen019 **is being pitted, after all – for misrepresenting his own cites in order to support his racist beliefs. And as usual a full complement of his cronies have now joined in. It’s a circular JAQoff!

64

Exactly. Your conclusions are built on circular arguments. Specifically:

You believe that any classification of people into different racial groups is invalid because it has never been shown that there are any differences between those groups beyond the traits that define them.

And you believe that it has never been shown that there are any differences between those groups beyond the traits that define them because any study that uses racial groups can be dismissed due to the fact that any classification of people into different racial groups is invalid.

After that, it’s turtles all the way down.

65

and this

bolding mine

66

Nope, your response is based on misunderstanding. Point by point:

Wrong: I don’t believe that “any classification of people into different racial groups is invalid”. It’s possible that somebody may at some point come up with a classification scheme (say, skin lightness times follicle roundness times earlobe length, or whatever) that does use phenotype similarity as a scientifically reliable proxy for genetic kinship.

But at present, nobody has successfully come up with such a valid classification. It’s not just that attempts to treat currently defined racial groups as somehow representing genetic populations are unproven: it’s that they’re often factually, demonstrably wrong.

If you say “A black Australian Aborigine and a black sub-Saharan African are the same race, and therefore we can assume that they are genetically more closely related to each other than to a white European”, the problem with that is not that you’re being “politically incorrect” or something, but that you are literally, provably, scientifically WRONG.

DNA studies make it clear that those two “members of the black race” are NOT more closely related genetically to each other than to white people. And that makes complete hash of the concept of race as some kind of cross-cultural global category that reliably indicates genetic kinship.

Likewise, if you say “The light-skinned heavy-bearded Ainu Japanese are genetically more like Caucasians than darker-skinned smooth-faced East-Asian-looking Japanese”, you are just plain WRONG.

So if racial classification based on phenotype characteristics can’t reliably predict genetic relationships, then what’s the use of it?

Nope, it’s because studies on different populations within “racial groups”, like the ones on Aborigines and Ainu that I linked to above, have scientifically shown that the “racial group” classification is not reliable.

Now, that’s certainly not to say that some populations within a given “racial group” aren’t closely related. I’ve got nothing at all against studying genetic differences between genetic populations that are correctly identified as genetic populations.

But throwing a bunch of demonstrably genetically different populations into a single “look-alike” category called “the black race”, or “the Caucasian race” or “the Oriental race” or whatever, and claiming that their membership in the “same race” should be taken to imply genetic similarity, is simply horseshit.

It would be like a stranger coming up to the three Rover brothers whom I hypothesized in my previous post and saying “Well, clearly the blond Rand and his blond brother Ron are more closely related to each other than to this darker guy Milton”. Sure, it’s not unreasonable as a superficial guess, but you already know, and can scientifically prove, that it’s simply WRONG!

If the three of you are all full brothers, then you are not more closely related to one of them than to the other, even if one of them happens to look more like you. And anybody trying to draw any conclusions about the Rover family based on such a mistaken assumption would merely be a horseshit-generating horse’s ass.

And that’s what people are who attempt to draw conclusions about genetic differences between cross-cultural trans-ethnic phenotype-defined racial categories which contain population groups that have been proven to be no more genetically similar to other populations within the same “race” than to populations outside it.

The reason they’re invalid is not that they’re using racial categories per se, but because they’re jumping to conclusions about the genetic kinship of population groups within the same racial category that have been scientifically demonstrated to be—what’s that word? oh yeah—WRONG.

67

Good one!

68

Vinyl, I just typed a long message and it somehow got eaten by my computer. Anyway, as far as your point concerning the Black race and Aboriginals, just because a race my have a characteristic like black skin, that doesn’t mean that all people (or groups of people) with black skin are of the Black race. Simple fallacy. Just because all dogs have four legs doesn’t mean that a cow or a table is a dog.

69

Well for mercy’s sake, then what’s the point of having a category called “the black race” if it doesn’t mean “people with black skin”? Not just that it might include the occasional light-skinned individual descended from black-skinned parents, but that it actually excludes entire populations that typically have black skin?

I mean, if you are using “the black race” to mean a specific genetic population of black-skinned Africans that doesn’t include other black-skinned populations such as Aborigines or Melanesians or South Indians, then why use such a non-specific term? If “the black race” actually signifies, say, “sub-Saharan Africans of the L2 haplotype lineage”, then why not just call them “sub-Saharan Africans of the L2 haplotype lineage” instead?

70

(Missed edit window) I should point out, by the way, that I have absolutely nothing against the idea of scientifically studying sub-Saharan Africans of the L2 haplotype lineage, or any other actual genetic population, to investigate its genetic differences from or similarities to other actual genetic populations.

71

In fact, magellan01, your comments on race seem kind of self-contradictory. In this thread alone, you’ve said

First, you seem to be saying that all “people that have dark skin and kinky hair” fall into the same “genetic grouping”, which is called for convenience “the Black race”.

Then you say that the category of “the Black race” in fact excludes entire populations of “people that have dark skin and kinky hair”, such as Australian Aborigines.

This makes no sense. What exactly do you actually mean by “the Black race”?

72

Conflating skin color with race seems to be a relatively common confusion. Something thatRisch et al address:

(my bolding)

73

Maybe because at least some of the racial categories are actually named for skin colors?

It seems to me pretty obvious that if you don’t want people to think that a category called “the black race” refers to black-skinned people in general, it would make sense to call the category something else.

Preferably, as I said to magellan01, by identifying racial categories with actual specific genetic populations and referring to them by the names of actual specific genetic populations.

74

Seems like more of a deliberate strawman to me. I’ve never heard anyone complain that “The South” does not exist since Wheeling, West Virginia is significantly further north than Cape May, New Jersey.

Normally, most people can accept that language and the underlying thinking can be flexible – that a “red tide” is not necessarily red or even tidal in nature. That “SoHo” does not include many blocks which are nonetheless south of Houston street. That “Asian-American” does not include recent immigrants from Israel.

75

As someone who always bristled at forms asking you to identify your race or ethnicity, I had to laugh what a simplistic and elegant solution the government of Trinidad&Tobago arrived at on their national ID cards. Instead of race on the application or card, it lists skin tone which doesn’t carry all kinds of baggage and controversy.

76

What helps avoid confusion in such cases is that people who use those terms are generally willing and able to define them more precisely when necessary. There are specific geographic designations such as county names and street names that you can list if you need to specify exactly which ones you include in categories like “The (American) South” or “SoHo”.

But so-called “race realists” seem unwilling or unable to be similarly precise about what specific genetic designations are included in what they call “races”. Probably because, as I noted above, it would reveal that some of the genetic populations they assign to one race are actually more closely related genetically to populations assigned to a different race than to other populations within the same race, and consequently that racial classification is not a reliable indicator of genetic kinship.

Anyway, the remarks of magellan01 that I quoted above make it quite clear that it’s not the anti-“race realists” who are creating most of the ambiguity around these terms. If you’re going to claim on the one hand that “those people that have dark skin and kinky hair” constitute a particular “genetic grouping” or “race”, and in the next breath claim that Africans and Aborigines—both of whom have dark skin and kinky hair—belong to different races, you shouldn’t be surprised when people find that confusing or inconsistent.

77

I do not engage with Kimstu due to his past weaseling and strawmanning.

78

Your comprehension of my posts seems to be about as accurate as your idea of my gender.

79

By this token, no one on this board should ever engage with you.

80

Show me one instance where I misrepresented another person’s position and did not own up to it when called on it. Or one instance where I misrepresented my own position and did not own up to it when called on it.

Just one.