Do Different Human Races Exist?

Great Debates
21

Sorry…about the 3 times post…I am new here and did see it posted…so I thought I wasnt!

As for the “human Genome”…yea…I know about it…I WORK IN GENETICS…MISS…Biggirl.(thanks though)

O.K…since you people dont seem to value rushton…how about these SCIENTIST…

Garrett Hardin is Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the author of numerous important books and articles on biology, ecology, and ethics…

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/hardin.html

Seymour W. Itzkoff has been a professor at Smith College since 1965. He is a true renaissance man
he states:
“On intelligence and national power. - The northeast Asiatics, of predominantly Mongoloid racial ancestry, and as nations fairly homogeneous ethnically, are aware of the realities. They are quietly acting in their own interests, confident that their own homogeneously high intelligence will enable then to inherit the civilizational mantle in the twenty-first century… Their intellectuals and academicians give only lip service to the orthodox Western sociological dogmas. The leadership understands the dynamics of national survival and they are quietly acting on the basis of the facts that are in hand”

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/itzkoff.html

Professor Miller was Tsanoff Professor of Public Affairs at Rice University before coming to the University of New Orleans…He is married to a lady from Shanghai, China, and enjoys reading, hiking, and traveling the world. He welcomes serious comments of his work and can be reached at emmef@uno.edu.

His interesting articles include:

[The Survival of Genes for Stupidity: Consistency of Fitness and Heritability]

[Do the Ignorant Accumulate the Money?]

[Stranger in the Nest: Do Parents Really Shape their Child’s Personality, Intelligence, or Character ]

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/miller.html

Michael Levin is a Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York and the Graduate center, City University of New York

He is the author of many good articles and books…and is often remembered for his insightful quote:

“No matter how many penguins congregate on an ice floe, or for how long, they will never form a constitutional monarchy. It therefore makes perfect sense to seek to explain a group phenomenon via the characteristics of the group’s constituent individuals, and equally good sense to suppose that some of those characteristics are genetically influenced…This is the structure of genetic explanations of cultures and of cross-cultural differences - in particular, differences between cultures composed of different races.”

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/levin.html

SOME RECENT BOOKS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

  1. Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, Richard Lynn, Praeger, 1996. Recommended by the Webmaster

  2. Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean, Michael Levin, Praeger, 1997.

  3. The Bell Curve (Free Press, 1994) by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray.

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstrea...urve/index.html

  1. The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability, Arthur R. Jensen, Praeger, 1998. This massive volume is the culmination of almost thirty years of dedicated research into intelligence, its nature, significance, and distribution.

  2. The TgF NewsLetters
    by Christopher Brand…http://www.webcom.com/zurcher/thegfactor/

  3. America in Black and White, Stephan Thernstrom & Abigail Thermstrom, Simon & Schuster, 1997

7)Race, Evolution, and Behavior, J. Philippe Rushton, 2nd Edition, Transaction Publishers, 1997. A must read!

Or how about What Others Have Said:

“(An) incendiary thesis…that separate races of human beings evolved different reproductive strategies to cope with different environments and that these strategies led to physical differences in brain size and hence in intelligence. Human beings who evolved in the warm but highly unpredictable environment of Africa adopted a strategy of high reproduction, while human beings who migrated to the hostile cold of Europe and northern Asia took to producing fewer children but nurturing them more carefully.”

—Malcolm W. Browne, New York Times Book Review

“Rushton is a serious scholar who has assembled serious data. Consider just one example: brain size. The empirical reality, verified by numerous modern studies, including several based on magnetic resonance imaging, is that a significant and substantial relationship does exist between brain size and measured intelligence after body size is taken into account and that the races do have different distributions of brain size.”

—Charles Murray, Afterword to The Bell Curve

“Describes hundreds of studies worldwide that show a consistent pattern of human racial differences in such characteristics as intelligence, brain size, genital size, strength of sex drive, reproductive potency, industriousness, sociability, and rule following. On each of these variables, the groups are aligned in the order: Orientals, Caucasians, Blacks.”

—Mark Snyderman, National Review

“Rushton’s Race, Evolution, and Behavior…is an attempt to understand [race] differences in terms of life-history evolution…Perhaps there ultimately will be some serious contribution from the traditional smoke-and-mirrors social science treatment of IQ, but for now Rushton’s framework is essentially the only game in town.”

—Henry Harpending, Evolutionary Anthropology

“This brilliant book is the most impressive theory-based study…of the psychological and behavioral differences between the major racial groups that I have encountered in the world literature on this subject.”

—Arthur R. Jensen, University of California, Berkeley

“The only acceptable explanation of race differences in behavior allowed in public discourse is an entirely environmental one…Professor Rushton deserves our gratitude for having the courage to declare that ‘this emperor has no clothes,’ and that a more satisfactory explanation must be sought.”

—Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., University of Minnesota

“The remarkable resistance to racial science in our times has led to comparisons with the inquisition of Rome, active during the Renaissance… Astronomy and the physical sciences had their Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo a few centuries ago; society and the welfare of humanity is the better for it today. In a directly analogous fashion, psychology and the social sciences today have their Darwin, Galton, and Rushton.”

—Glayde Whitney, Contemporary Psychology

“The data are startling to the uninitiated…Race, Evolution, and Behavior confronts us as few books have with the dilemmas wrought in a democratic society by individual and group differences in key human traits.”

—Linda Gottfredson, Politics and the Life Sciences

“Professor Rushton is widely known and respected for the unusual combination of rigour and originality in his work…Few concerned with understanding the problems associated with race can afford to disregard this storehouse of well-integrated information which gives rise to a remarkable synthesis.”

—Hans J. Eysenck, University of London

“Should, if there is any justice, receive a Nobel Prize.”

—Richard Lynn, Spectator

For more comments on the book please go to Amazon.com
Ohh…you should also Check out the Charles Darwin Research site…great site!

http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/

You may remember this also??:

[“The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100 the bell curves for Jews and Asians are centered.
…Racial-ethnic differences in IQ bell curves are essentially the same when youngsters leave high school as when they enter first grade. However, because bright youngsters learn faster than slow learners, these same IQ differences lead to growing disparities in amount learned as youngsters progress from grades one to 12. As large national surveys continue to show, black 17- year-olds perform, on the average, more like white 13-year-olds in reading, math, and science, with Hispanics in between”]
…The following professors-all experts in intelligence an allied fields-have signed this statement:
Richard D. Arvey, University of Minnesota
Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., University of Minnesota
John B. Carroll, U.N.C. at Chapel Hill
Raymond B. Cattell, University of Hawaii
David B. Cohen, U.T. at Austin
Rene W. Dawis, University of Minnesota
Douglas K. Detterman, Case Western Reserve U.
Marvin Dunnette, University of Minnesota
Hans Eysenck, University of London
Jack Feldman, Georgia Institute of Technology
Edwin A. Fleishman, George Mason University
Grover C. Gilmore, Case Western Reserve U.
Robert A. Gordon, Johns Hopkins University
Linda S. Gottfredsen, University of Delaware
Richard J. Haier, U.C. Irvine
Garrett Hardin, U.C. Berkeley
Robert Hogan, University of Tulsa
Joseph M. Horn, U.T. at Austin
Lloyd G. Humphreys, U.Ill. at Champaign-Urbana
John E. Hunter, Michigan State University
Seymour W. Itzkoff, Smith College
Douglas N. Jackson, U. of Western Ontario
James J. Jenkins, U. of South Florida
Arthur R. Jensen, U.C. Berkeley
Alan S. Kaufman, University of Alabama
Nadeen L. Kaufman, Cal. School of Prof. Pshch., S.D.
Timothy Z. Keith, Alfred University
Nadine Lambert, U.C. Berkeley
John C. Loehlin, U.T. at Austin
David Lubinski, Iowa State University
David T. Lykken, University of Minnesota
Richard Lynn, University of Ulster at Coleraine
Paul E. Meehl, University of Minnesota
R. Travis Osborne, University of Georgia
Robert Perloff, University of Pittsburg
Robert Plomin, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Cecil R. Reynolds, Texas A&M University
David C. Rowe, University of Arizona
J. Philippe, Rushton U. of Western Ontario
Vincent Sarich, U.C. Berkeley
Sandra Scarr, University of Virginia
Frank L. Schmidt University of Iowa
Lyle F. Schoenfeldt, Texas A&M University
James C. Sharf, George Washington University
Julian C. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University
Del Theissen, U.T. at Austin
Lee A. Thompson, Case Western Reserve U.
Robert M. Thorndike, Western Washington University
Philip Anthony Vernon, U. of Western Ontario
Lee Willerman, U.T. at Austin
Hope I cleared up some things for you !
Kukulkon

…Oh…let me guess…ALL of the SCIENTIST…are wrong…there all “cranks”…yea right!

22

Parameter Π², in re-reading our exchange, it occurs to me that you might have been challenging my assertion that there is no convergent morphology currently operating among primates.

I will admit that I cannot produce any evidence for the specific genetic codes that occur in all primates and prove or know that they will not mutate into more closely appearing creatures in the future.

However, I still feel pretty confident in my claim based on how we have observed actual convergent morphology. One of the evolutionary pressures on convergent morphology (and, hence, one of the predictors of where will find it in the fossil record) is the old architectural cliché that form follows function. Animals tend to fill certain niches in their local ecologies and certain forms or shapes are better suited to carry out the “tasks” related to those niches. Thus, in the earliest examples of confused convergent morpholgy, we discovered various marine animals in separate fossil epochs and, based on their appearance, the earliest paleontologists thought that the creatures in the earlier period had given rise to the creatures found in the later period. However, later examination showed that the first set of animals had been lizards or dinosaurs (I forget which) and the later set of animals had been members of the opposite order.

Similarly, when the fossil hunters began digging up Australia, they found a number of creatures that looked amazingly like various canine and feline predators–except that they were marsupial, and could not have been related to the current wolves and cats that cover the rest of the earth. (A similar phenomenon occurred in South America which also had a larger marsupial population before the placentals drove them to extinction.)

However, in no case have we found two separate animals who converged in shape in the same place at the same time. The rules that we have discerned governing ecological niches indicate that one or the other will drive the other to extinction. Thus, the likelihood that any great ape (to say nothing of a representative from some other order) is going to successfully evolve to look like humans while we continue to dominate our niche, (that we have actually begun to modify, ourselves), is somewhere short of negligible.

23

Actually, we went through this drivel on an earlier thread, as well. As I recall, the list is of a whole bunch of people who happen to teach at various colleges, few of whom are actually working in “intelligence or allied fields” and none of whom have been able to explain why they supported The Bell Curve after it had been demostrated to contain such serious flaws of methodology as to be worse than useless–providing a polemic behind the facade of science that actually contained no science. (Which, of course, is why the book was published without being submitted for peer review–the authors knew that their methodology was so tainted as to be useless.)

Your Professor Emeritus Hardin has not published a scientific paper in almost thirty years, according to the bibliography you provided, the remainder of his stuff being philosophical musings (and little of that, recent), so there is no evidence that he is current on actual genetic research into the human distribution throughout the world.

Professor Itzkoff certainly sounds like a crank. The selections quoted from his works all rely on the already discredited “measurements” of brain capacity and intelligence that have been thoroughly debunked over the last 25 years.

In short, you appear to be fascinated by people who are more interested in promoting an agenda than people interested in performing science. That is unfortunate.

24

**

Convergent evolution is what you’re thinking of, and it’s not limited to zoology.

To piggyback on what tomndebb has said, it would foolhardy to view the various “races” of humans as separate, morphologically convergent “species”. The biological species concept (which is probably the most widely accepted definition within the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology) states that species are groups of populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups. Meaning, in order for “races” of humans to be considered species, there would have to reproductive barriers–pre-zygotic or post-zygotic–between them.

It’s clear that humans beings of all stripes have no problem producing “hybrids” when societal taboos are cast aside.

Furthermore, convergent evolution would not explain the overwhelming phenotypic and genotypic similarities that the human “races” share. For instance, while euphorbes and cacti look superficially the same (they both have spiny leaves, similar growth habits, etc.), a more careful analysis shows that they are very different (enough that they belong to different families). The similiarites between different human “races” are more than superficial and extend all the way to the molecular level.

25

It is threads like these that bring home how much was lost in what TubaDiva called “The Winter of Our Missing Content”. Yes Mr. KuKu, as tom said, that list was already done by our last resident eugenologist, AWC-- perhaps you know her.

It’s been a while since I updated myself on what the latest racialists are up to. When I get home I’ll read up on them-- see what new nonsense they are selling in the name of science.

Also KuKu, since you WORK IN GENETICS, perhaps you can give us your slant on the work of Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza. And, since you are a SCIENTIST who has heard of it, you can give us your spin on the work being done on The Human Genome Project in regards to race.

26

This has been mentioned already in this thread (and I’ve also posted this already-- but the hamsters must have gnawed it on the way to the server), but here is a link to a critizism some GENETICISTS have regarding the HGP.

http://genomebiology.com/pressrelease01dec00.asp

27

I’m curious, KuKu. Even if you believe your sources, and believe in the varying bell curves for the different “races” (however you define the term), so what? Are you proposing that we adopt any particular policies as a result of these “findings”? What are you proposing that we do in response to this great insight you have bestowed upon us? If your answer is “nothing,” then what was the point of the studies in the first place?

Now let’s ignore all the methodological flaws for the moment and assume that these studies are correct, and that the bell curves for the various races differ. Would you agree that even so, there would be considerable overlap? And that any given individual black person may test above the mean IQ for white people or (gasp) even Asians? And if you will concede that point, can you also concede that even if these hare-brained theories had any validity, that you really have to give each individual the benefit of the doubt? Can you concede that you must judge each person on their own merits?

What do you see as the point of all these racial studies?

28

Well, I’m sure she had the best intentions and felt she was doing the right thing at the time. But…Me too :smiley: .

Yes. Right :slight_smile: .

Humans also fit neatly into every other species concept used ( I have an exhaustive list somewhere, if anyone hasn’t already seen me post it before ).

Humans are absolutely unique in the animal world in the sheer extent of our enormous vagility and panmictic breeding behavior. Even the concept of “subspecies” as it is currently used in the Zoology community ( and it is controversial subject even there, though it continues as a default ), would fail when attempting to apply it to large human populations like any subset of the “classical” races.

  • Tamerlane
29

Woo. I’m a geneticist, as well. In fact, I am sitting here pursuing a PhD in it.

First convergent evolution. What you would expect to see is a widely separated phylogenetic tree on critical developmental genes with similar phenotypes. Kind of like the Pax6 family in eye development. Sure the human and squid eye look the same, but the Pax6 homeotic genes clearly group out along the invertebrate/vertebrate thing. Just because two structures look the same doesn’t mean they develop, function, or evolved the same. This can easily easily be seen using genetics.

The theory of multiple separate evolutionary events giving rise to modern Homo sapiens from eariler Homo species has still not been 100% ruled out, but not much has in science, especially one so dependent on interpretation of data like anthropology. The genetic and archaeologic evidence keeps pointing to one descent with multiple waves of repopulation from Africa. It seems to be the far predominant theory nowadays. This is of course supported by genetics of the “races” – the largest divergence between humanity occurs between subSaharan Khoisan and the other peoples of Africa. Everyone in Europe, Asia, and the Americas seems to trace to relatively brief expansionary waves coming out of Africa.

The theory seems cohesive and is based on evidence from multiple scientific fields. Until something better comes along, I’ll take it.

In terms of the rest of the train wreck of posts on The Bell Curve, etc., you guys should recognize it for what it is. Phylogeny of the drive-by includes numerous quotes (often proveably out of context, from “prominent” scientists nobody ever heard of), fallacious assertions with usually little supporting evidence (often including the claim of expertise – I AM A GENETICIST!!), and of course the lengthy, verbatim passages from easily identifiable crank websites. I dare you to name one productive SDMB member who started off with posts like that. I know the mangled mess of steel, blood, and ALL CAPS proclamations is irresistable to rubber necking. Just don’t get sucked into the utter futility of it all.

30

I’ve seen it :stuck_out_tongue:

Trying to conclusively identify species is a difficult enough taxonomic task. Trying to further subdivide a single species, especially one so diverse as humans, is folly. There is no useful classification scheme wherein every human can be neatly placed into a given group - unless there were as many “groups” as there are humans. In any biological sense, there is no suite of features which will decisively set one group apart from all others - there are always exceptions.

Aside from the difficulty in even determining any sort of hierarchical classification scheme within humans, there’s no practicality to it. Suppose “race” is defined at the genetic level: so what? How do you determine what race John Q. Public belongs to? Are you going to drag him off the street and test his DNA to see if he fits the “profile”? Of course not.

The only “reasonable” (and I use the term very loosely) method is to use gross anatomical features - those which are readily visible to anyone walking down the street (e.g., skin color). And the only “usefulness” of such an approach is to further a social or political agenda (obviously, such an approach is useless in any sort of taxonomic sense). And then you’ve got problems.

31

I agree that there is no purpose to attempting to debate these folks. However, there is a steady influx of newcomers to the board who have never had the “pleasure” of wading through the “thoughts” of Phaedrus or peace or others. When the drivel shows up, we do need to at least point to the biological and social realities so that the weird stuff isn’t left unexposed for the anti-scientific claptrap that it is.

We have not recently (to my knowledge) pointed folks to that grand collection of old posts where most of this has been addressed so eloquently (if at tedious length) before:
Reality of Race

32

Heck, if we were seperate races, then we wouldn’t be able to interbreed. Dunno about you, but I have a beautiful amerasian daughter that is walking proof we are not seperate races.

33

Well…lets see here.For the folks keeping score at home…lets just recall the latest…In the "Scientific debate"To the observations that race is a totally obviouse fact of life, and Biology…that the populations of the world differ very greatly in such wide ranging topics as…Chemistry, Fertiliy, testtosterone levels,size of sexaul organs… Brain size,shape, and density…as well as at least 60 othere varibales…
And that these variables show different and Consistent patterns expressed by the differeent races of homo-sapiens…such as… differences in Intellegence…Behavior…(including criminal tendency and agression )…family stability and structure.
We then find these responses:

  1. this is… " liable to get you laughed at"----tomndebb
    2)"When I get home I’ll read up on them-- see what new nonsense they are selling in the name of science. "------Biggirl
    3)“This is my favorite part. I enjoy it so much because it reminds me that elephants and whales, with their enormous brains, are the most intelligent species on Earth. This explains why Elephants have much higher IQs than humans.”----Sexywriter
    4)"the list is of a whole bunch of people who happen to teach at various colleges, few of whom are actually working in “intelligence or allied fields” and none of whom have been able to explain why they supported The Bell Curve "-------tomndebb
    5)“I’m curious, KuKu…what was the point of the studies in the first place”------spoke-
    6)the facade of science that actually contained no science-------tomndebb
    7)Woo. I’m a geneticist, as well. In fact, I am sitting here pursuing a PhD in it. -----edwino
    8)“often including the claim of expertise – I AM A GENETICIST!!),” -----tomndebb
    9)“any given individual black person may test above the mean IQ for white people or (gasp) even Asians”--------spoke-
  2. the 20-30 scientists…at Many different univesites I listed are all …“cranks”???..“Yes. Right”------- Tamerlane
    ********WOW…I did know that:
    { Johns Hopkins University, Case Western Reserve U, U.C. Irvine, Michigan State University, U. of South Florida, University of Ulster at Coleraine, Cal. School of Prof. Pshch., S.D., University of Georgia, University of Pittsburg, University of Hawaii, U.N.C. at Chapel Hill , U.C. Berkeley, Fleishman, George Mason University, University of Delaware , University of Alabama , U.T. at Austin, Texas A&M University, University of Arizona, Schmidt University of Iowa Western Washington University, Alfred University, U. of Western Ontario, University of Virginia, Case Western University,Smith College, , U.Ill. at Champaign-Urbana …and the Institute of Psychiatry, London}
    …ALL had so many…ahhh…“cranks”… at… ALL… of there Universities???(Hmmmm…sooo…ahhh…What University did all of you …recieve you “education” from?)**O.K…lets…rolling on…
  3. “as noted, Rushton is a crank.” —tomndebb
    12)"It is threads like these that bring home how much was lost in what TubaDiva called “The Winter of Our Missing Content”-----Biggirl
    13)“the list is of a whole bunch of people who happen to teach at various colleges, few of whom are actually working in “intelligence or allied fields” and none of whom have been able to explain why they supported The Bell Curve “------tomndebb
    14)” can give us your spin on the work being done”-----Biggirl
    15)“Professor Itzkoff certainly sounds like a crank”-------tomndebb
    16)“verbatim passages from easily identifiable crank websites”-------tomndebb
    17)“I agree that there is no purpose to attempting to debate these folks”--------tomndebb
    18)“crank”-------tomndebb
    19)“the facade of science that actually contained no science”-------tomndebb
    20)“don’t get sucked into the utter futility of it all.”------tomndebb
    21)“I’m curious, KuKu…what was the point of the studies in the first place”--------Biggirl
    *****and my person favorite…“When the drivel shows up, we do need to at least point to the biological and social realities so that the weird stuff isn’t left unexposed for the anti-scientific claptrap that it is”. ----------tomndebb
    *****well…brilliant…very well said…(if I may say so myself?)…all of this hard core science and deep intellectual… pros… has really convinced…and… converted me!(how could I have ever been so blind?)…the "social realities …of all…that…Wierd stuff…has truely been exposed!!
    All I have left are just hundreds of scientists…who say:
    “And so it has obviously been with many of the critics of behavior genetics. Over the last 25 years, as the scientific data accumulate, as the paradigm shifts, the stridency of the critics intensifies. Driven by ideology and not constrained by the truth, when all else fails they engage in misrepresentation and character assassination. They accuse their targets of committing the very propagandistic excesses that they themselves are doing” (Avery, et. al.,1994
    Avery, R. D., et. al. (with 51 co-authors)
    1994 Mainstream science on intelligence. The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1999, A-18
    *******LET ME PRESUME…THAT ALL…51 CO-AUTHORS OF THIS WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORT ARE ALL…“cranks”…as well.
    “Neither social policy, nor science, nor society itself is served well by scientific silence on racial differences in intelligence.”
    sociologist Robert Gordon The Johns Hopkin University, Department of Sociology, 1993.
    "Racial-ethnic differences in intelligence are real. The large average group differences in mental test scores in the United States do not result from test bias, which is minuscule overall, as even a National Academy of Science panel concluded in 1982. Moreover, intelligence and aptitude tests measure general mental abilities, such as reasoning and problem solving, not merely accumulated bits of knowledge - and thus tap what experts and laymen alike view as “intelligence.”
    Linda S. Gottfredson is professor of educational studies at the University ofDelaware and co-director of the Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society.
    “Like it or not, it is a reasonable scientific hypothesis that some, perhaps much, of the race difference in murder rate is caused by genetic differences in contributory variables such as low intelligence, lack of empathy, aggressive acting out, and impulsive lack of foresight”
    Glayde Whitney
    Past President Behavior Genetics Association
    Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida

thank you all…
Sincerly,
Kukulkon
AKA…The “drivel that shows up”
"Heck, if we were seperate races, then we wouldn’t be able to interbreed. Dunno about you, but I have a beautiful amerasian daughter that is walking proof we are not seperate races.
China Guy
…HEY GREAT!! Congrats…Sir!
Oh…China guy…in the Biological sciences we usually seperate SPECIES by the fact that they cant interbreed…no races…Races are not different species…(Think of Races as… Dog Breeds)
(Congrats again on the little one…lucky guy!!:slight_smile:

34

Holy flurking snit.

35

No.

Rushton is a crank. The “51 co-authors” are, however, not “experts” working in “intelligence or allied fields.”
many of them are teachers of History, Math, Art, Chemistry, etc. who simply happen to share misplaced ideas regarding humanity that are not supported by the sciences of genetics or related biological sciences.

Similar to your list are the lists put forth by Creationists of “respected” college professors who doubt the Theory of Evolution. They generally include lots of well-educated people who are simply talking about issues outside their field of expertise and who are letting their cherished beliefs dictate their pronouncements while ignoring the evidence from science.

The differences in various “measurable” body parts that you provided ignores (as always) the point that the differences between groups is always smaller than the differences within groups and that the mean (or even median) difference is simply a meaningless number. In order to arrive at any numbers, the people doing the measuring have to pre-select their populations (unless you can show that anyone has actually measured every human on earth?). The people who trumpet the differences generally select smaller populations to be “representative” that are predefined to match the results they wish to discover.

36

Actually, this is untrue. Even seperate species can breed (horse + donkey = mule). A mule is sterile, but other unions between seperate species can produce semi-fertile offspring such as tigons and ligers (lion +tiger). Sub-species unions usually produce fertile young.

A subspecies is a geographically localised population with distinct characteristics (such as striping, coat color, etc.) which differentiate it from a population localised elsewhere, so a case can be made that there are different subspecies of humans along racial lines - just not a very good case. Taxonomy is full of stuff like this. Nature does not follow our arbitrary classification system and even the lines between species can be blurry at times.

Anyhow, if we view “race” as a classification level below subspecies, we have to admit that there are different races among humans. Native Scots look different from native Australian aborigines and they occupy different parts of the world. Our “plumage” shows slight differences geographically, but the morphological and genetic differences are so small as to have no real effect on interracial interaction. The fact that we can tell geographic ancestry by appearance may have contributed to strife in the past, but such evils slavery and ethnic wars are largely social phenomena and have little basis in biology.

About the only thing racial classifications are good for is identification (Officer, the perpetrator was a 6’2" 175 lb white male) and the study of a few rare genetic diseases.

On preview I see that Kukulkon has posted what appears to be a recap. I say “appears” because that un-paragraph-broken mess of sentence fragments is nigh incomprehensible and I’m not going to attempt to examine it further.

37

For taxonomy to have any real usefulness in biology, it really must be tied to a theory of the evolutionary relationships between organisms. Otherwise, one is doing nothing more than grouping based on appearances (and, in the case of humans, more often than not, prejudices).

For such an infrasubspecific category as “race” to be taxonomically useful, it would need to tell us something about evolutionary relationships between the alleged races. Not being a follower of human paleontology, I don’t know what the current lines of thought with regard to such relationships are.

From a taxonomic point of view, however, there’s not a lot to be gained by attempting to classify any species below the subspecies level. Species can be difficult enough to identify,as mentioned previously. Subspecies are pretty much downright arbitrary. Anything below the subspecies level, even moreso. The Zoological Record, in fact, while recognizing the existence of infrasubspecific categories (e.g., group, race, form, morph, aberration), does not grant such designations a discrete rank within the scheme - that is, below the subspecies level, there is no recognized hierarchy. And, as I mentioned above, without a hierarchy to work with (such as the nested hierarchies found as a result of evolutionary patterns and processes), you can’t really establish a useful taxonomy.

So, whether one “admits” to the “realities” of race or not, there is still no useful biological information that can be gained.

I don’t doubt that molecular analyses, such as those perfomed on various species to establish relationships between them, could shed light on the relationships of various human populations. However, I suspect that such genetic-level relationships (which are likely to indicate some sort of evolutionary relationships) would not break cleanly along “established” racial lines.

38

First, yes, 2nd, no. I don’t know of any racially bounded disease. Commonly used examples are all false: Tay-Sachs, a sub-set of Jews, not Jews generally. Sickle-cell, all populations with deep historical exposure to malaria, including ‘white’ Med. through to Indian sub-Continent, excluding some African pops outside malarial zones. Etc.

Enebauer’s site, linked by Tom points to some recent primary literature.

Generally speaking, genetic evidence points strongly to an all ex-African origin by budding off of a NE African sub-population --i.e. Eithiopia region-- (NE Africa being closer in some respects to ex-African diversity) with an unknown number of waves and back-washes. I think edwino metnioned that above? One might, on this basis make a kind of macro-level differentiation for analyzing descent by thinking of three world pops, NE Africa + Rest of World as sub-set of NE Africa; sub-Saharan excluding khio-San; Khio-San. But these are blurry, very blurry groupings largely useful for thinking of initial movements.

39

I have to correct myself on this one. The “51 co-authors” were mostly psycholgists. (I was apparently confusing this list with a similar one–these things are fairly popular on some web sites.)

These were the signatories to a letter to the Wall Street Journal “supporting” the publication of The Bell Curve.

I will point out two things:

  • These 51 tend to be folks who work in the field of psychometrics and who, therefore, have a vested interest in supporting books that appear to show that psychometrics has value.
  • The letter was sent very soon after the publication of the book, before the peer-reviewed journals had had a chance to expose the flawed methodology and really bad statistical analysis embodied in the book.

I’d be really curious to know how many of these folks ever actually read the book and how many would still sign this letter.

Regardless, the book they were supporting has been demonstrated to be worthless as science, so their support for it hardly matters.

40

Gentlemen…and ladies…I at least must say I thank you for be…Civil…to me in you last posts!!!
Thank you…lets look at this some more…

“The differences in various “measurable” body parts that you provided ignores (as always) the point that the differences between groups is always smaller than the differences within groups”

------tomndebb

…I have seen you write that a few times…Its a typical…repeated MYTH…there is NOT MORE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ETHNIC GROUPS…THAN BETWEEN DIFFERENT ETHNIC GROUPS…I am not sure who invented that mantra…but its flat out false…(though often repeated by my friend on the LEFT…)

…It like saying that your less related to YOUR OWN FAMILY MEMBERS…(who share your same genetic structure)…than you are to some random stranger…This is one of those LEFT WING MINDA MANTRAS…

…“Strength through peace”
…“unity is difference”
…“Work will set you free”
…“Diversity is our strength”
…“Black is White”
…“All Men are created Equal”

To quote on the subject of the realtiy of RACE and the many differences between the races that are based in Biology and produced through Evolution…let me Quote one of the GIANTS of SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT …The great Jewish thinker Doctor Horowitz

“the utopianism of the Left is a secular religion … However sordid Leftist practice may be, defending Leftist ideals is, for the true believer tantamount to defending the ideals of humanity itself. To protect the faith is the highest calling of the radical creed. The more the evidence weighs against the belief, the more noble the act of believing becomes” Horowitz, 1995

OR MOREOVER…

"There is a “readiness to reshape reality to make the world correspond to an idea” Horowitz, 1995

There is a “Willingness to tinker with the facts to serve a greater truth” Horowitz, 1995

“so a case can be made that there are different subspecies of humans along racial lines - just not a very good case”
----Beeblebrox

…Really? So what let you to believe that is not a very good case?

A quick look at the Genetic Distance Data for Human Populations shows that quite to the contrary…the Data are very clear!!

(Genetic distance testing is a well established look at the differences is DNA…small differences would show little or no difference in the numers…These would be “CLONES”…or VERY CLOSE …Differences would show a difference in the numer…because the DNA structure is different it migrates in an electric field to a different location in the testing gell…)

(Genetic distance testing like this is don evry single day at most univesities around the world…so its not “new”…its well understood and excepted testing!)

Source:
The Genetic distances data is from a well known book:
The History and Geography of Human Genes:
(Abridged paperback edition)
L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza

http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/4593.html

DATA…

(Belgian DNA is the control…the DNA being compared to all the othere tribes DNA’s)

Ethnic group Genetic Distance:

EUROPEANS-----TOTAL DIFFERNCE=107 POINTS
Belgians 0
Dutch 12
Swiss 14
Germans 15
English 15
Austrian 16
Danish 21
Norwegian 24
Italians 30
Portuguese 31
French 32
Swedish 34
Poles 40
Spanish 42
Czech 43
Yugoslavian 50
Russians 51
Hungarians 52
Scots 59
Fins 63
Irish 75
Iceland 78
Greeks 103
Basques 107

NOW…AS YOU CAN SEE…ALL EUROEPANS ARE NEARLY CLONES WHEN GENETICALLY COMPARED TO THE OTHERE RACES…ALL OTHERE RACES ARE OVER TWICE THE DISTANCE OF ANY EUROPEAN GROUP?..

FURTHERMORE…ALL OTHERE TRIBES ON OUR PLANET ARE WELL OFF THE CHARTS HAVING AND CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE BELGIANS…OR ANY OTHERE EUROPEAN DNA

ASIANS-----------
Koreans 982
Filipinos 1117
S Chinese 1152
Japanese 1244
Amerinds 1300

AFRICANS--------
Nilo-Saharans 1767
Bantu 2288
Mbuti 2373

…so AS WE CAN ALL READ…VERY CLEARLY…THIS TEST OF DNA DIVERSITY SHOWS US THAT THERE IS FAR MORE…FAR MORE…DIVERSITY BETWEEN EUROPEANS/ASIANS/NATIVE AMERICANS THAN THERE IS BETWEEN ANY OF THEIR RELATIVES AND CLOSE KIN…(LIKE I REALLY NEED TO TELL YOU THAT…I KNOW A UNEDUCATED FARM BOY WOULD KNOW BETTER…BUT… I JUST WANTED TO DESTROY THE MYTH!!)

****THE EXCEPT OF COURSE ARE THE AFRICANS: THE AFRICANS HAVE THE GREATEST…indeed MORE… DIVERSITY than all the othere RACES…BECAUSE THE AFRICA TRIBES ARE A “MIXED” POPULAITON:

(What does that mean???)

…the modern peoples of Africa are a “mix” of “modern homo-sapiens”…I.E…“CRO-Maganons”…and a exstinct lineage of “Archiac”…“ancient”…non-CRO-MAGNON people…

…the Cro-MAGNONS…are believed to have evolved in the FAR NORTH…they then developed technology that enable them to spread out over the entire globe…eventually making their way back to Africa and then “mixing” with an “anceint”…or…“Archaic” NON-CRO-MAGNON people…

…thats why the people of africa have so much genetic divesity…it seems that this “ancient” people …never made it “out of africa”…OR…the later Cro-MAGNONS may have killed them off…outside of Africa…either way is possible???..so modern Asians and Europeans DO NOT HAVE THOSE GENES…they never were able to “mix” with those tribes…
"In order to arrive at any numbers, the people doing the measuring have to pre-select their populations (unless you can show that anyone has actually measured every human on earth?). "----tomndebb

…NO…we dont have to “measure every human on earth”…common on man!!!..Statistical analysis is done every single day in every Univeristy on this planet…its well understood…very reliable…and common practice for any Grad student…or even under Grad…

…just look at the Human genome data!! its is also very clear…the data is not “grey”…it shows that their are 3 main races an one lesser studied race in NE ASIA…so in reality…not only are there RACES…but genetically their are …4

"there are four major races, not three, and northeastern Asians are closer genetically to Caucasians than they are to southeast Asians… Northeast Asians tend to have superior intelligence, given that they survived the Wurm glaciation about 10,000 years ago, similar to northwest Caucasians or Aryans. "

I suggest you check out:" The History and Geography of Human Genes" by Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza.

http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/4593.html

"The many and important distinctions between objective investigation of group characteristics, and prejudicial pejorative values are lost in apolitical atmosphere where objective reality is sacrificed to political creed."Kahn, 1994
Kahn, P .
1994 Genetic diversity project tries again. Science, 266, 720- 722
“Do you have an emotional reaction? I know I do: Uncomfortable to even consider; Anxious; Repulsed; Upsetting. I conclude that I have been quite thoroughly conditioned. The Taboo against considering race runs deep. But some of our social problems continue to get worse”
Glayde Whitney
President Behavior Genetics Association
Florida State University

[IQ experts feel enormous pressure to “live within a lie,” ]
Vaclav Ravel

The area of the brain termed the cerebral cortex is the most recently evolved and most complex part of the brain. It governs the most advanced types of mental activity, such as mathematical ability and other forms of abstract reasoning.
there is a considerable difference between the Black brain and the White. The frontal lobe of the Black forebrain is less developed than that of the White. Thus, their ability in the performance of thinking, planning, communication, and behavior is more limited than in Whites.

Professor Carleton S. Coon (former President of the American Association of Anthropologists)

" major differences between the races in both brain size and development, and hundreds of psychometric experiments have again and again confirmed the 15 point average I.Q. advantage that Whites hold over Blacks…In addition, the researchers Baker, Eyseneck, Jensen, Peterson, Garrett, Pinter, Shuey, Tyler, and Yerkes all agree that Blacks are inferior in reasoning and abstract thought, numerical calculation and conceptual memory."
–Doctor Khang-cheng Ho and associates(1985)

“at Berkeley, the average score for black freshmen in 1988 was nearly 300 points below that of their white and Asian-American classmates (979 compared with 1267 and 1269 respectively out of a possible 1600 points). Hispanics fared almost as poorly, scoring on average a mere 1053, higher than black students, but still more than 200 points below the white and Asian-American averages (Bunzel 54). Critics of the SAT charge that such differences in scores do not represent actual differences in ability, but rather reflect the cultural bias inherent in the test itself. However, research at Harvard and other universities has shown that black performance in college, based on college grade point average, was actually worse than their SAT scores would have predicted, not better, as theories of cultural test bias would suggest” (Murray 198).
Murray, Charles. “Affirmative Racism.”

"social science has become "one-party science.“In one-party science, the disfavored line of work is subjected to intense scrutiny and nearly impossible standards, while the favored line of work is held to lax standards in which flaws are overlooked (called “oversight bias” in the psychological literature).
Neither social policy, nor science, nor society itself is served well by scientific silence on racial differences in intelligence.”
sociologist Robert Gordon The Johns Hopkin University, Department of Sociology, 1993

Kukulkon

“Society is thus being shaped to meet the dictates of a collective fraud. The fiction is aiding and abetting bigots to a far greater degree than any truth ever could, because its specific side-effects - racial preferences, official mendacity, free-wielding accusations of racism, and falling standards - are creating deep cynicism and broad resentment against minorities, blacks in particular, among the citizenry.”
Kuhn,T. S.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press