Gestation period different for different races?

Factual Questions
21

If Desmond were here, I’d surely demand a cite from him. My Google searches continue to refuse to give me any kind of support for this remarkable statement.

The gestation period for homo sapiens is given as 266 days after fertilization. The doctor figures your due date by counting 280 days from the date of your last period (266 plus 14). You can break that all down into “months” however you want.

http://pc65.frontier.osrhe.edu/hs/science/brepro.htm

If you change your Google search for “human gestation period” to “human gestation period Asian” you suddenly get hits dealing with Asian elephants. Desmond Morris notwithstanding, :rolleyes: there’s no difference in the official gestation period between human “races”.

However, I will say that I know where Badtz is coming from. I, too, have heard people say, “Oh, tiny little Asian women tend to carry their babies a shorter period of time. It’s because their pelvises are so narrow.”

First, there are lots of tiny little Caucasian and black and Eskimo women with narrow pelvises, too. A quick Google check under “causes premature birth” shows nothing that says that a narrow pelvis predisposes a woman to give birth earlier than a woman with a wider pelvis. A narrow pelvis can cause problems with the actual delivery, but it doesn’t make the baby ready to be “hatched” any sooner than a wide pelvis.

Here’s a list of risk factors for pre-term labor, that does mention that one risk factor is if the mother weighs less than 100 pounds. No doubt this is the source of the factoid: “all those tiny little narrow-hipped Asian women can’t carry a baby to full term.”

It’s also worthwhile to point out that other risk factors include urinary tract and vaginal infections, extreme youth of the mother (under 18), late or no pre-natal care (which would include poor nutrition), and smoking or drug use during pregnancy. All of these problems may be found in the Third World, where a lot of “tiny little Asian women” live. So, the factoid amounts to a kind of statistical skewing, not a genetic predisposition. And when these “tiny little Asian women” live in a time and place where they get good pre-natal care and good nutrition, they don’t give birth to any more preemies than anybody else.

22

Tomndebb has pretty well addressed this, but I wanted to draw attention to one thing:

Rushton is a well known racist and racial differences pseudo-scientist. I would not depend on anything in which he has participated, although his whack-ass “theories” about sexuality and race do make for some amusement (as well as a fine illustration of his tenuous grasp of biology).

23

What I don’t understand is why the concept of “race” seems so threatening to y’all. If I see someone with light skin, blonde hair, and green eyes, I’ll assume that person’s ancestors came from Europe and, conventionally, I might refer to that person as “white”. If he or she has very dark skin and very curly hair, I might assume that his or her ancestors came from Africa and, conventionally, I might refer to that person as “black”. If he or she has straight black hair and epicanthic folds over the eyes, I might refer to him or her as “Oriental” or “East Asian”. Of course, I might be proved wrong, and as a reasonably intelligent person, I’ll say, “wow, that’s an interesting exception to the rule” and move on with my life. (When I first saw a picture of Bjork, for example, I thought that she might be Oriental, but then I find out that she’s Icelandic. My reaction upon this discovery: “Huh. How 'bout that”. I mentioned my initial confusion to some of my Asian friends, and I don’t think any of them felt oppressed.)

So, is there a problem with my conventional usage of these terms? And if you feel there is a problem, is it something I would or should give two seconds thought about?

I’m sure that a convention of Trotskyites would disparage the man on the street’s usage of words like “capital”, “economy”, or “class”, because that man’s usage doesn’t reflect the carefully constructed intellectual framework of Marx and Engels, but as it turns out, the man on the street probably doesn’t give a shit. The words themselves were there a lot longer than the tortured framework that a small coterie of intellectuals is currently trying to impose on them.

24

tomndebb, glad I could help (and I’m not being sarcastic, either). I would have spent more time on the reply, but it was late and I was tired.

It is unfortunate that the term race is so politically- and emotionally-charged, and that (mis)use and misunderstanding of the term often hinders research into the real differences between different populations of humans. I find the designations of “black” and “white” to be overly broad; “Hispanic” strikes me as especially meaningless as does “Asian”.

We could rephrase the OP to “Are there differences in gestation period between different human populations?”, using the term “population” in its biological sense. To answer this question, I wouldn’t be surprised that there may be differences in gestation period between different human populations. Neither would I be surprised if these differences could be attributed more to environmental and cultural differences, such as nutrition and lifestyle, rather than some nebulous “race”.

25

But isn’t it fair to say that the majority of people who have epicanthic folds have ancestral origins in East Asia?

So couldn’t I make a general statement that, at least in the context of the US, sickle-cell anemia–the consequence of a specific genetic trait–does occur much more frequently among those members of the population that are conventionally referred to as black? From your tone, I get the sense that you somehow believe that you’ve refuted my point rather than confirmed it.

So isn’t the OP a legitimate question? In specific contexts (say, the North American continent), are twins rarer in certain populations due to genetic factors, and can those genetic factors be roughly correlated to (if you like) ancestral origins in East Asia?

And OK, the studies cited above only looked at particular “ethnic” groups. So they prove nothing in themselves, but are suggestive enough to merit our legitimately seeking of a more broad-ranging study–which may or may not be out there, but isn’t the point of the OP?

You don’t have to call it “race” if you personally disagree with the term, but the basic idea behind the question is still legitimate, don’t think? I’m sure a Trotskyite might personally disagree with my usage of the term “borgeouise”, but if he’s an intelligent Trotskyite, he should be able to look past the particular word I used and answer my question instead of going off on a tangential diatribe on how I picked the wrong word. Not only is that unintelligent, it’s also bad manners.

26

As I recall, I did ask that you read some of the discussions that we have had on this same subject. We have addressed your most recent question on multiple occasions, as well.

Short answer: (I hope)

We are not “threatened” by the use of the word race. The concept of race in a cultural context can be useful shorthand (although it also can lead to many problems when people think that there is some underlying reality to it).

Certainly, some people in the U.S. have received benefits and others have suffered discrimination based on their appearance, which is a generally decent (but not perfect) indicator of where their ancestors originated. Note that you, yourself, have encountered a situation where a person’s appearance led you to misidentify her ethnic background. Identifying blacks, whites, Asians, Pacific Islanders, or whoever for the purposes of recognizing people who may suffer discrimination or who may have different cultural experiences does not, in itself, cause harm and may be a useful tool for sociologists, anthropologists, lawmakers, and others.

However, if you do a web search for the Andaman islands and poke around until you find a photograph of an inhabitant, you will be unable to distinguish that person from an inhabitant of the Congo River Valley, yet the Andaman is more closely related to the Chinese and the Burmese than to anyone in Africa.

The appearances upon which early “racial” categories were based have turned out to be totally misleading when identifying related groups. Too many features (such as darkness of skin or variety of hair) are the result of common genes expressing themselves in similar ways under similar conditions and have no bearing on the relatedness of any groups who live in similar climates.

Your examples of casually describing persons you have met, using “racial” linguistic shorthand, to present an image to others who have not met them does not bother me at all. I would consider someone who took offense at the situations you described extremely PC or overly sensitive.

The problem occurs when we attempt to take the cultural perceptions and try to associate them with a biological reality. The Bell Curve was written (using horribly flawed data and extremely bad logic) to show that we would waste money trying “elevate” the “black race” because they are simply not capable of handling that much education. The principle error was not in their tortured statistics, however, but in assuming that there is one “black race.” The OP asked about the duration of pregnancy among different “races” when we cannot biologically identify any races. (These are unrelated examples and I do not associate the OP with the authors of The Bell Curve.)

What all the studies that were cited on the page to which I have linked show, is that there is so much genetic diversity within any of the classically defined “races” and so much homogeneity among the classically defined “races” that using the concept of race for biological or medical studies is waste of effort and time.

The OP was a specific question regarding gestation and race. If there is no race, the question becomes meaningless–as Badtz Maru himself indicated in the question posed in the OP.

Is it possible that some populations of humans have longer or shorter gestation periods? Yes, it is possible. But to the extent that it occurs, it will almost certainly occur within a small subset of any large group that would have been called a “race” by earlier analysts.

27

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Zarathustra *
**

This may be true, but if it is, so what?

I know a woman, A, who has pale pinkish skin, wavy blonde hair, blue eyes, and…drumroll please…epicanthic folds! If she’d been an actress in the early days of Hollywood she probably could have been a yellowface star like Myrna Loy. Her family is mostly of German ancestry. As far as she knows has no East Asian ancestors, and certainly not any recent ones.

I know another woman, S, who is from Japan. Her family is ethnic Japanese going back for centuries. She has light beige skin, straight black hair, brown eyes, and…you guessed it…no epicanthic folds!

So, we have people who are not East Asian with epicanthic folds, and people who are East Asian without epicanthic folds. Given this, how can the presence or absence of epicanthic folds serve as a race marker?

28

I have no problem with anyone studying various human populations. Those clearly exist and several have been identified.

The problem is the word “race.” It is already a word in the English language that has a meaning. To the overwhelming number of people, it means “one of the three great divisions of humanity” or “one of the five great divisions of humanity.” To a smaller number of somewhat better-read people, it might mean “one of the 60 (sort of) great divisions of humanity.”

Unfortunately, none of those three or five or 60 divisions is real. There are real populations of genetically related humans, but there are far more than 60 of them, and there are numerous other large collections of individuals who, through the haphazard intermixing from among the coherent groups, cannot be included in any specific genetically coherent groups. When the word “race” is used to describe the biological traits of any group, the wrong message will be conveyed to anyone who reads the statement.

As long as we stick with the technical term “population” and then rigorously define who is included in that population, we will avoid the errors that we propagate when we use the word “race.”

If we want to discover variances in gestation in human groups, we need to sample the whole population of the earth. Taking a sample from a Yoruba and exterapolating to “black” or a Magyar and extrapolating to “white” or a Japanese and extrapolating to “yellow” (for want of a commonly accepted “racial” term) will give us incorrect results.

We are far better off doing the extensive sampling we need and leaving the word “race” to the behavioral scientists (many of whom also reject it).

29

First, in re Terminus Est:
I believe I was more or less suggesting precisely what you arrive at in your second paragraph.

I thought I might expand on your first paragraph:

I think we should be clear that here we are talking about ** biologically ** defined populations rather than cultural entities (whether Asian is really such an entity of course is another game…).

In this context, I believe we can all agree that the classical race concept gets in the way of understanding human populations structures. I’m sure the link which someone cited above to past discussions delves into this in adequate detial.

Precisely my position. I’m certain there are differences in gestation period between adequately defined biological populations.

Now, Zarathustra, I thought you were around for this.

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Zarathustra *

Well, your point is somewhat obscure. In the context of the US sickle-cell is largely a “black” disease, but then it also is prevalent among such ethnic groups as… Lebanese and southern Italians. Illustratively, my Leb comrade here has family in the US, he reports to me a goodly number of them suffer from sickle cell.

Legitimate question, of course. The framing is a bit off insofar as framing things in racial terms usually leads one astray analytically if one is looking for genetically based explanations.

Again, your thinking is obscure to me. I believe Tom addresses where you seem to be going, but let me advise you to follow through with the race discussions link. I, Tom and Edwino, among others, have in the past provided substantive citations and links to the relevant literature in this area.

The term is flawed, it should be discarded. The reasons have been thoroughly discussed in the past. I believe you will find the past conversations enlightening.

Bad analogies are not helpful.

30

Thus Spake Collounsbury: "The term is flawed, it should be discarded."

From “The Principles of Newspeak” (George Orwell, 1984):

31

Since everybody else is asking for them, may I please have a cite on this? And, while we’re at it, could you please show me how this article which apparently made it through peer-review was biased to the point of uselessness by the author’s alleged racial bias?

32

Zarathustra: Don’t bother responding to the “race-deniers.” I have seen their kind in action on USENET and they are crackpots in the same league as those who deny that cigarettes cause lung cancer and those who deny the holocaust.

And their modus operandi is remarkably similar:

They focus on one or two specific pieces of evidence at a time and poke at those pieces. Thus, they can reasonably point out that some whites have sickle cell anemia; that results from testing cigarettes on rats do not necessarily translate to humans; that eyewitness accounts are frequently incorrect; and that many researchers and historians have political agendas.

But they avoid looking at the entire body of evidence as a whole – if you look at the “big picture” with a little common sense, the only reasonable conclusions to be drawn are that cigarettes cause cancer, that the holocaust happened, and that racial differences exist.

It’s a little funny actually, to watch people desparately ignoring the forest, one tree at a time.

33

Here is the substance of Lamia’s quotes, above.

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Lamia *
**

Tomndebb didn’t say this. Zarathustra originally said this. Lamia’s response, “This may be true, but if it is, so what?” should thus be understood to be directed towards Zarathustra, not Tomndebb.

Carry on. :slight_smile:

34

If “races” were biologically valid, we would find that people assigned to one race would be more closely related to each other geneologically than they would be to people of another race. But that turns out not to be the case.

Some sub-saharan african populations share more genes with european populations than they do with their neighbors. Calling them one race implies that all members of the race share a common ancestor with each other. This does happen, but the units it happens in are much smaller than the classicly defined races.

One could talk about the Yoruba race, the Frence race, the Andaman Islander race, and in fact the word race used to be used this way. But nowadays it would just confuse people. So scientists use the word “population” instead.

35

I am a scientist who uses the word “race” to differentiate the prevalence and distribution of certain diseases between different ethnic/population groups in our state. And the rates do vary widely, so it’s relevant to look at. I also notice that there are a few obvious physical differences between most persons with predominant African ancestry and persons with predominant White European ancestry, though I certainly don’t want to get involved in an argument about this.

Mainly what I want to comment on is the observation that twins occur much more commonly among the Yoruba people of Africa. I read once - I swear - that someone attributed this to high consumption of yams. I can’t find any references that support this now, though. Has anyone else seen this and if so, can you provide links/references?

36

Interesting. First Zarasthustra quotes Orwell, then Autumn Wind Chick chimes in with a charge of “race deniers.”

Well, lets see. Who belongs to what race? Are there only three races? Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid? Are there six races? Blacks, whites, Pygmies, Khoisan, Asians, and Australian Aborigines? Is there some other grouping that you would like to propose? (Do either of you have any evidence that such “races” have a physical reality?)

Note several things, please:

  • None of us “race deniers” or “new speakers” has denied that there are populations of people who can be classified into coherent genetic populations.

  • None of us “race deniers” or “new speakers” has denied that in cultural association, “race” can be a convenient term to identify certain groups as they interact, especially when they interact based on the appearances they perceive in each other.

  • We do note that the general use of the word “race” does not provide a clear and effective grouping of a biological nature that has meaning. Assigning sickle cell to a race, for example, would be a convenient way for an insurance company to deny benefits to a person of Italian or Lebanese ancestry because they “can’t have” such a “black” disease. Discovering different gestation periods or levels of Leutenizing Hormone among Yoruba or Japanese does not allow us to predict that Koreans or Ibos will have similar periods of gestation or LH. So what is the purpose of hanging on to a word in a biological context when it has no meaning in genetics or medicine?

Jared Diamond had this to say in his article in Discover© magazine, How Africa Became Black, in February, 1994.

So I ask you again: what do you mean by “race”? Who is in a “race”? How do you identify a member of a “race”.

We are not following any particular politics. We are following the the science that has shown that humans are too intermixed to be cleanly divided into large populations (commonly called races), although smaller populations can and have been identified.

What is the point of using a specific word that conveys inaccurate information? If (for example) only the Yoruba had longer gestation periods than the rest of the world, it would be inaccurate to claim that blacks have longer gestations if 95% of all blacks had gestation periods within the range that all other humans display.

How do you intend to use the word in a scientific context that it will not cause more confusion than substituting the more accurate “population”? Do you have a particular need to say “race”? If so, what is the context in which it can be used accurately?

Autumn wind Chick, I find it interesting that you consider every leading genetic researcher in the field a “crackpot.” I strongly suspect that indicates that you have chosen to not read the information provided on the linked page, above.

manhattan, Chronos, and JillGat, if this thread gets too close to GD land, could I ask that you close it here without moving it? Every time the subject comes up, the thread winds up moved to GD (or the Pit) and then readers of GQ who do not read GD wind up missing the points being made.

37

Opus, J.P. Rushton is a well-known racist. The Skeptic’s Dictionary says so. Oh, not in so many words, because that would be libellous, but their meaning is clear.

http://www.skepdic.com/iqrace.html

If you’re a true Doper, that oughta be enough for you. And if you’re a die-hard Doper, you can do a Search for old threads discussing Rushton’s theories.

But hey, don’t take it from me. Listen to the man himself. In his own words (a rebuttal of Stephen Jay Gould’s debunking of The Bell Curve:

http://www.eugenics.net/papers/rushton.html

Again and again he hammers home his points (and, I might add, while he complains, incorrectly, that Gould’s book consists of nothing but ad hominem attacks on its authors, he then goes on to make a great many ad hominem attacks on Gould himself), that intelligence is directly connected to race, that intelligence is directly connected to brain size, and that different races have different sized brains. All three of these points have been well-debunked by reputable researchers who have no racist axes to grind.

But hey, don’t take it from me. http://www.google.com :slight_smile:

(As for the cited article making it through peer review, well, he is a professional, and just because he’s also a racist wouldn’t particularly bother some of his colleagues, who might very well agree with his conclusions and see no reason to look any further for more information.)

P.S. to mods: dunno how Badtz feels, but I think the OP has been answered. Eh?

38

Jill, you didn’t imagine it.

Google. “Yoruba yams twins”.

http://www.suntimes.co.za/1999/08/29/insight/in06.htm

39

Collounsbury was urging that the word race be “discarded” because it was politically inconvenient, and I was pointing out a certain resemblence to totalitarian logic there. “Race deniers” I have no problem with, it’s the “deniers of anybody else’s use of the word race” that I find disturbing.

Well, aren’t you the presumptive one. Are you the OP? Do you have any perogative to shut off this discussion? Ah, the silencing of dissent, another totalitarian method.

40

By “presumptive”, of course, I meant “presumptuous”. It’s late.