Color vs. Race

Great Debates
1

This is a serious thread considering whether we should abandon “race” as an indentity standard and move to a somewhat more useful “color” standard (with certain caveats: see below).

Specifically, race is somewhat useles now, as Cecil’s column reminded me. Race, as a descriptor, has become muddled and probably never was very specific. Color, OTOH, is more useful. It would be easy to match skin tones for identificaion purposes, or simply not use that at all in identification.

On a practical level, it helps some people, such as Law Enforcement personnel, so I can’t blame them for wanting to use something more specific than “male, average height and build” when looking for a suspect. Race or color is a useful category here, so they ought to have something.

As much as leftists dislike, racial profiling, there are good reasons for its use in at least certain specific cases. As unfair as it is to the vast majority who do not commit violence, young-middle aged Arab men are more likely to commit terrorist acts, and I can’t consider it evil for, say, Airport Security, to watch them a bit more closely.

However, because “race” is an extremely flexible construct, perhaps we should use more specific ethnicity, color, and features if at all possible. When interviewing a witness, it may not be possible, but official services should attempt to use as specific identifying features as possible.

2

“Ethnicity” is a perfectly valid way of describing someone’s appearance. “Colour”, ie. simple epidermal melanin count, is if anything rather less useful (do I suddenly switch bands by getting a suntan?) If somebody looks West African, or Indian, or North European, why not say so?

3

When, I say color for the simple reason that it’s easier to learn to match a shade than to decide an individual’s ethnicity. Color is simply a compromise system because individuals can’t always be that discerning. Certain general, common ethnicities are easier than others: India, West African/ European. Some are tougher: there’s a fine gradient between “Arab” features (which are similar with slight distinction to many others in the Middle East) and South African. A color shading scheme could be easier to describe, and possible more useful.

I’ve never heard of police actually taking out a color chart and asking witnesses to say, match a suspect’s skin tone to it. Maybe there are good reasons not to do so, but if so I am unaware of them.

4

The color thing is too hard to standardize (even for law enforcement purposes). Some people may think a medium tone is dark, where others may consider that light. It’s rather pointless. There are so many shades in between albino and the darkest skin; it’s not like the difference between red and green.

5

I don’t want to get rid of all racial terminology. We do have “A” race – humanity.

All other divisions are pretty arbitrary.

Of our arbitrary divisions, “ethnicity” makes the most sense to me. Ethnicity is the confluence of some specific mix of nationality, language and a specific culture or subculture influenced by regional history. I suspect no matter how worldly you are, everybody gravitates to some ethnic group or another.

While I respect the beliefs others who feel otherwise, it’s not enough for me to be an American, nor do I feel worldly or Pan-African enough to be simply black.

As for color, I’m kinda burnt umber.

6

It is? What does an “Indian” look like?

If I say someone had medium-brown skin, that’s very descriptive. If I just said the guy was “Black” and the expected your to fill in the blanks for his overall appearance, then you might be correct. But giving skin tone should be quite useful, as part of an overall description (eye color, hair color and length, hair texture, build, etc.)

7

Medium-brown will be different for me, the white chick than it will be for Jose the Mexican cop or John the African-American detective. It has no real meaning.

8

That’s why I was actualy thinking of using a color wheel. Having just seen someone, it’s easy to look at a color wheel, pick a shade, and mention features. It would be easy for law enforcement to make available, and of course they could presumably just check the shades (“OK, we have an Caucasian suspect, weatherbeaten look, Tan #3 skin, 5’10, 160 pounds.”)

For the rest of us, I do agree that ethnicity is more useful than race. It’s also not entirely true that race doesn’t exist, but suffice it to say it doesn’t exist in the form popular ideas make it out to be.

9

Self-identified race is still a useful tool.

10

Just wait until the future, when cameras and or occular implants can take more detailed information about facial structure. I think this is would be much more useful combined with skin color. (not all of one ethnicity has the same skin tone, as mentioned above, so a non-hispanic white can have a dark tan that some would say is hispanic in appearance, in that case what do you call him?)

If we come up with terms that describe colors much more specifically I don’t think it would be much of a problem. I think it would be great if we could come up with terms that describe how a persons face looks, other than narrow chin, mustache, etc. With specialized occular implants one could give specifics, Cheekbones protrude 1.256cm, chin is narrow, starting at X.XX cm and tapering to X.XX cm. Skin color is reflected at XXX.XX nm. :slight_smile:

Of course this all sounds like Science fiction I am sure, but trust me it is likely coming soon. Only tangentially related, it appears that every human hand has a unique blood vessel configuration that could be scanned for indentification. I suppose if the same can said about blood vessel configuration throughout the body, one can find a way to scan whole people and transmit the information. At the point, I would say physical descriptors would be obsolete.

11

This is just a weird quiestion I’ve thought of before but are the different races of humans at all analogous to the classification to animals with differing species. If only because a given species of an animal shares close genetic material with one another and exterior appearance?

12

This is just a weird question I’ve thought of before but are the different races of humans at all analogous to the classification to animals with differing species. If only because a given species of an animal shares close genetic material with one another and exterior appearance?

13

I’ve found that people within a race tend to be more adept at describing the racial features in their group than people outside of that group.

For instance, I’m really lousy at deciphering all the different kinds of “blond”. If your hair isn’t sunflower yellow, then–to my eyes–you are auburn or brunette.

But I’m really good at describing skin color, because that’s a trait that I pick up on immediately. Tawny, toffee, honey, chocolate, medium brown, and red are all words I might use to describe a black person’s complexion. But I’ve noticed that white people generally are not as precise. Ever notice how the news will sometimes describe a suspect as “light-skinned black male” but you rarely hear “medium-complected” or “dark-skinned”? To me, that’s a critical piece of information that’s missing. But for a lot of people, simply saying “black” is enough.

Here in South Florida (and I imagine all over the country), suspects are often described racially as Hispanic (based on their appearance of video footage, for instance.) Hispanic isn’t a race. Mexicans and Cubans do not generally resemble each other at all. Quite a few Spanish-speakers resemble other groups–like Arabs or Italians. Lots of Hispanics have mixed ancestry, while others are best described as “white”. A less “ethnic”, more generalized description would be appropriate in a situation like this, IMHO.

14

From a certain perspective, sure. People obsessed with race as a biological construct often conflate splitting the human race into differing breeds.

Yeah, good luck with that for THEM.

15

Humans are certainly all one species, and pretty cloe within it at that. There actually three major races, however, and the distinction is more or less correct. We have:

The Negroid: (Black Africans)
The Caucasoid: (Europeans, Russians, Middle Easterners, India-Indians)
The Mongoloid: (East Asians and Native Americans.)

But as they say, the differences within these “races” are bigger than the differences without. We’re all human, and closer toegther than, say, canines (ever compare a Jackal to a Wolf to a tiny Terrier?). But races do more or less exist in some fashion. But I agree that they are a poor and very inaccurate tool for describing people, hence this thread.

PS: Supposedly there are actually one or two additional races, which are mostly comprisied of rather small human pockets which broke off early. I think they mostly live in Africa.

16

Polynesians, Micronesians and Melanesians will be happy to hear this.

17

What’s the difference between “species” and “race”?

Are there quantifiable genetic differences between “races”?

18

Admittedly, I’m not too clear on where they fall, but I thought they actually were Caucasoid or Mongoloid. Or a mix of both.

All members of a species (regardless of race) can breed and produce fertile children. There are sometimes small quantifiable genetic differences. But these are again aggregates from ethnicities.

Races only exist because of human settlement patterns. Simply put, there were three (or so) big waves of human colonization, two of which came out of Africa. One spread north, east, and northwest, and the other went north and thence east and southeast. Of course, that’s disgustingly oversimplified. The other wave stayed in Africa and went west and south.

19

I forgot to add that race is becoming hazy in some places, a result of interbreeding. This always took place, but was much less common previously in history, and usually limited to specific regions.

20

Yeah point taken, if you start labeling humans as different species, it seems like a really bad idea, though we do it in the form of labeling of race, at least to some degree. Oh yeah I guess that is where racism really comes from.

It wasn’t until I started coming to this board that I had ever heard that there is no biological basis for race. And though that sounded bizarre at first, it really does make sense. It is just a matter of different ethnic groups being isolated from others in much earlier times, i.e. it isn’t all black people have curly hair, its just people in those regions through years of evolution to adaption to the environment and dominant genes being magnified for however many years, like black skin of blacks (dur!), the usually completely straight black hair of asians, etc.
Well I think I’ve uncovered the obvious, wow go me! :stuck_out_tongue: