I said I had used the same example and you called me a liar. I’m showing you I had used that same example before. I’m not writing a dissertation with 300 paragraphs in each of these threads.
Of course I know the difference between black and white and various ethnic groups that are lumped into the skin color method of racial division. I even said such in the post you just read. I.e. if blacks are a set containing 500 ethnic groups… You make very simple reading comprehension errors I’m wondering if English is your first language. You write well and are obviously intelligent. But you parse sentences oddly.
Although you are poking fun at these types of considerations, the field of behavior genetics has shown how fairly subtle variations in the lab can lead to dramatic changes observed in the differences in behavior patterns between sets of genetically uniform mouse strains.
If you define race as it’s used in the West today then it would be bad because it would be bad science. Races (as we use the term commonly) have little useful basis in biology so any policy or ideas based on them would be faulty.
Now, if you have a different definition of race that maps to actual biology then we can discuss your hypothetical in a different light.
The short version is there’s virtually no utility in making such an observation, and the only reason people want to point out such things is because deep down they want to generalize and categorize. But as a society we’ve agreed that prejudice is a bad thing.
If you were to say to me “It would seem that people with recent ancestry from certain parts of East Africa have a higher prevalence of some gene or genes that aid long distance running” I’d say “Yeah, looks that way”.
But I’ve never had that kind of conversation. It’s always a much more broad brush generalization complete with some sinister “them and us” theme.
I try to never get involved in these discussions, because the science is so terrible on both sides. But, the idea that “race” (as defined by self identification) is related to one’s genes is pretty well established. There are multiple GWAS studies that have looked at people who self identify as one race or another and then compared their entire genomes, and find, unsurprisingly, that the self identified races tend to strongly group together.
I don’t want to make any inferences from this except to ask how do people square this entirely uncontroversial idea with the concept that race has no basis in biology.
I know that. I certainly do not believe that your argument for the role genetics in participation patterns in athletics is bad. It’s the most convincing, especially so when compared to the cartoon depictions of science you see in this and all these other race threads.
The point was that even under the controlled conditions of a lab, environments are not equal and what makes environments unequal, practically speaking, is often surprising. Maybe not so surprising in hindsight, but surprising at the time of discovery.
Because to do this you have to acknowledge, that race exists and differences between races exist. If differences between races exist that means that different races might have different outcomes in life that might not be explainable by discrimination. That makes it harder to sue for discrimination.
Thus people who are invested in the discrimination explains all differences narrative, have to either pretend that race does not exist or that there are no differences.
While I personally believe there is no evidence at all for racial differences in intelligence, I respectfully submit to you that you’d have to have your head buried very, very deep in the sand to think there isn’t a remarkably strong moral aversion to even raising the issue in polite society. The concept IS unacceptable for discussion to most people.
In truth, much the same as true of racial athletic advantage. Raising the issue is distasteful. It’s the sort of thing one expects of racists, and so even those who are not racist usually avoid the issue.
Whether or not some people enjoy racial advantages in sport I really don’t know. There are too many conflating factors.
There’s no need to go hypothetical, we have real world examples of this. The Tibetan Sherpa population have physiological differences from the rest of the human population that allow them to operate much better at high altitude. Does that unfairly cheapen or dismiss their accomplishments in high altitude mountaineering? No non-Sherpa will ever be able to accomplish what the best Sherpa mountaineers can do.
BTW, this is an example of why you should concentrate on populations rather than races. “Black” covers a huge variety of populations which have diverse and far ranging attributes. Do Dinkas and Pygmys have the same genetic advantage to play basketball?
I’m not convinced, and so far nobody’s proffered any evidence, that there is any significant aversion (moral or otherwise) to responsible scientific study of genetic contributions to human intelligence.
Sure, a lot of people are strongly averse to hearing or discussing the kind of pseudoscientific blather that “race realists” frequently try to pass off as scientific fact.
But you can hardly blame them for that; it’s not a matter of social “acceptability” but of basic intellectual honesty.
The whole field of neurogenetics research on human intelligence, as I’ve noted, is still in the early stages of trying to figure out even what “intelligence genes” are or how the hell they work. The attempts of ignorant “race realists” to seize on bits of this exploratory research to make their unsupported speculations about innate racial-group differences look superficially “scientific” are not worthy of serious attention from anybody.
Show me somebody who thinks it’s “unacceptable” even to raise the issue of genuine scientific findings on the subject of genetic bases of human intelligence, and I’ll join you in condemning that person’s narrow-mindedness. But what I suspect you’re seeing is just a bunch of people who think it’s unacceptable to discuss typical “race realist” bullshit as though it were scientific fact.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
Whether or not some people enjoy racial advantages in sport I really don’t know.
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Manfully acknowledged. And neither does anybody else, so far.
That’s not to say it’s intrinsically impossible to determine potential links between specific genetic heritage and specific physical traits that may conduce to high levels of athletic performance in certain sports, as suggested by some of the previously-cited targeted studies of the genomes of athletes from particular distinct genetic population groups (ETA: and also Telemark’s example of high-altitude adaptation among Tibetans, Quechua Andeans, etc.). (Which, by the way, I haven’t seen anybody exhibiting any “aversion” to, or complaining that their investigations are in any way “unacceptable”.)
But we’re still a long, long, long, long, long way from being able to responsibly extrapolate any information from such specific studies to immensely complicated physico-sociocultural questions such as why certain broadly defined racial categories in a multiracial society tend to be disproportionately represented in certain sports at a certain historical moment. There is nothing squeamish or “PC” about being averse to the kind of ignorant and irresponsible conclusion-jumping that “race realists” try to pull on this subject.
Your wikipedia article shows that increased frequencies of certain alleles of the genes EPAS1, EGLN1, and PPARA are the genetic basis for Sherpas’ and Tibetans’ adaption to high altitudes. Ignoring the fact that Tibetans in general can probably do what Sherpas can do, let’s go on.
It also says that the population known as Han Chinese have alleles of these genes in their population, but at a much lower frequency. I think there are 100s of millions of Han Chinese. Even if only a small percent are homozygous or heterozygous for these alleles, don’t you think it stands to reason that we can find enough Han Chinese who can adapt to the mountains like the Sherpa?
It says that Andeans also seem to have a high concentration of other alleles of the EGLN1 gene and this is believed to confer their advantage even though they do not show the same patterns of hemoglobin regulation exhibited by Tibetans. Do you think the people most closely related to these tribes of Andeans have alleles of these genes present at some decently high frequency in their populations?
Why should I take this example of adaptation to an extreme environment as evidence for a genetic basis to the dominance of this or that arbitrarily defined social group in particular positions in professional team sports? Draw me all the links because I think this is apples and oranges.
Just to follow up with a few more examples of such ignorant conclusion-jumping:
Again, these are empirical studies of heritability of psychological traits (in this case, certain aspects of political attitudes) among very closely related individuals.
Nobody disagrees that there is strong empirical evidence for such heritability. But that doesn’t tell us jack-shit about the genetic mechanisms involved and to what extent their effects may be detectable at the level of population, much less racial group.
Again, these are empirical studies of heritability of mental illness (in this case, psychopathy) among very closely related individuals.
Nobody disagrees that there is strong empirical evidence for such heritability. But that doesn’t tell us jack-shit about the genetic mechanisms involved and to what extent their effects may be detectable at the level of population, much less racial group.
It wouldn’t be wrong to ascribe a difference to genetics as long as there was actual evidence to back up the claim.
The problem is that some people jump to genetics as the first explanation before any facts are gathered.
The reason this leaping to genetics is associated with racism is because it’s essentially boils down to “Those people are different from us. And they always will be. You can’t change their nature.”
Another problem is that ascribing a good trait to genetics diminishes that trait. It’s arguing that the reason blacks are better athletes isn’t because they practice more - it’s because they have a sports gene. And the reason Asians and Jews do better in school isn’t because they study harder - it’s because they have a smart gene. The implication is that white people earn their successes and deserve credit for them. But other races are just exploiting an unfair advantage.
You understand that’s not the same thing as saying that race is a valid biological grouping, right? That self-identified groupings can map to genetic groupings is not disputed. That those groups are coherent and discrete biological entities is.