# If "there's no such thing as race," is there such a thing as gender? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 5, 2012, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779 "2012-03-05T03:43:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 26
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/501 "2012-03-22T22:22:48Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > As we have pointed out _ad nasueum_ in this thread, no standard of race is rational and objective. Therefore no standard of race is biologically meaningful. Sorry for not responding earlier, or at length, but it’s exhausting and unrewarding to be arguing a position of “I totally agree with you 99.9%, but just think that you’re overstating a point in which we’re in fundamental agreement”. But to make one more stab at things, I think “biologically meaningful” is a continuum. On one end you have, say, gender. Gender is totally fundamental to nearly everything in biology, is clearly and rigorously defineable and measurable, etc. On the other end you have, say, last-digit-of-social-security-number… something which is (barring something really freakish, or barring patterns of how they hand out the numbers other than pure nationwide birth order) totally orthogonal to anything relating to biology whatsoever. You’re never going to be able to make meaningful predictions about the 7s vs the 6s vs the 4s, etc. You’re never going to be able to predict the last-digit-of-SSN of a baby by studying the parents. No disease is going to strike 2s harder than 8s, etc. So if we call gender a 1.0 and last-digit-of-ssn a 0.0, the question is, where is race? You seem to be saying it’s a 0.0, and I think that it’s a very very small number, but not quite 0.0. I’m not even going to hazard a guess as to what it is, because what would that gain, and I’m not an expert, and I don’t care; but I think that the general anti-racism argument is weakened by making an unsustainable claim of TOTAL biological meaninglessness rather than ESSENTIAL biological meaninglessness. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/502 "2012-03-23T05:23:02Z")
I’ll say this one last time - race isn’t just a biological concept, it’s a scheme for classifying the human species _into taxonomic subcategories_. As such, the _only_ question worth considering is whether that has any taxonomic validity. If the scheme falls down _as taxonomy_, we’re perfectly justified in saying race is biologically meaningless **because all race is is a taxonomic classification**. The fact that it’s not valid taxonomy _means_ it doesn’t actually work for science, yes. “Biologically meaningful” is not a continuum in this case - either the classification scheme is valid or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then find one that works better (much smaller population groups, for instance, or blood types, or specific gene carriers, whatever) for the kind of science/medicine you’re doing. ---
**Author:** ![Dominimus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7993a0/32.png) [@Dominimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dominimus)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/503 "2012-03-23T05:45:10Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Why do you think the size of the gray area matters? Size has everything to do with whether or not we treat something as fact or perception because there is an amount of gray area in everything, whether it be as subjective as perception or as objective as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Just because there is a minute chance that I’ll plummet straight through Earth due to an unfortunate (non)interaction between my own atoms and the atoms of my environment doesn’t mean that I will live in constant fear of such a thing happening. Regardless, from what I understand, this gray area can be rather simply categorized with the amendment of a short list of exceptions. Edit: Seeing as how I felt compelled to answer this question before finishing the thread, I see that we’re on the subject of race. I think before one considers the idea of race, he or she should consider the fact that biology has yet to define _species_ as a whole (by physiology? ancestry? genotype? e.t.c). ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/504 "2012-03-23T06:18:34Z")
**MaxTheVool** , until you adress my last post, we have notong to dicuss. You were arguing that the political party that a person votes for is a biologically meaningful categorisation scheme. At this stage I don’t know whether you are still arguing that, and as such I lack the information with which to address what you have said in your most recent post. Common courtesy alone should dictate that you spend the 1.5 minutes necessary to address the three questions put to you in hat thread. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/505 "2012-03-23T17:45:50Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > You were arguing that the political party that a person votes for is a biologically meaningful categorisation scheme. No I wasn’t, specifically, but maybe it is, because “biologically meaningful” is such a vague term. > [@](#): > > At this stage I don’t know whether you are still arguing that, and as such I lack the information with which to address what you have said in your most recent post. The position I’m taking is a bit of a weird one, because I don’t really care about or want to support any of the examples I came up with in my previous long post, because I don’t really support them, I’m not knowledgeable enough about, or interested enough in, the topic to really want to debate them at length. I’m using them as examples of the types of things which make race different from last-digit-of-SSN when it comes to biology and/or genetics. Are you making the rather extraordinary claim that race is in fact precisely equivalent to last-digit-of-ssn? > [@](#): > > Common courtesy alone should dictate that you spend the 1.5 minutes necessary to address the three questions put to you in hat thread. Common courtesy also might preclude you from being as snide and condescending as you have been in all your responses to me. Here is my absolute fundamental key point… respond to it or not as you like: “So if we call gender a 1.0 and last-digit-of-ssn a 0.0, the question is, where is race? You seem to be saying it’s a 0.0, and I think that it’s a very very small number, but not quite 0.0.” ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/506 "2012-03-23T17:51:14Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > “Biologically meaningful” is not a continuum in this case - either the classification scheme is valid or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then find one that works better (much smaller population groups, for instance, or blood types, or specific gene carriers, whatever) for the kind of science/medicine you’re doing. So you’re a scientist studying epidemiology, and you have huge quantities of survey data about some public health issue, and you can correlate that with another huge survey done by a non-scientist earlier which happened to ask the participants’ race, in the “traditional” American black/white/Asian/Latino sense. Being a scientist, you would vastly prefer to have much more precise and useful taxonomic information, but you don’t have the logistical ability to go out and gather than information at this point. So… do you toss race into the computer and see if any patterns pop out, not because you think the final result of your study will be “blacks suffer X and asians suffer Y and whites suffer Z” but because there’s some chance that patterns might emerge that might lead to further, more precise and valid, learning? Or do you say “well, I’m a scientist, and race has no scientific validity, none at all, so I’m sure as hell not going to use that stinky non-scientific data”? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/507 "2012-03-23T18:09:04Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > So you’re a scientist studying epidemiology, and you have huge quantities of survey data about some public health issue, and you can correlate that with another huge survey done by a non-scientist earlier which happened to ask the participants’ race, in the “traditional” American black/white/Asian/Latino sense. So a survey that asked about a completely non-scientific, self-assigned social category? Sure I’d _use_ it, but I wouldn’t pretend it was anything like the same thing as the “race” the race realists in this thread are talking about. So a data set, but not a biologically meaningful one, no. I certainly wouldn’t draw any hard conclusions from it, given the proven murky nature of American race groupings. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/508 "2012-03-23T19:12:02Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > So a survey that asked about a completely non-scientific, self-assigned social category? Sure I’d _use_ it, but I wouldn’t pretend it was anything like the same thing as the “race” the race realists in this thread are talking about. So a data set, but not a biologically meaningful one, no. I certainly wouldn’t draw any hard conclusions from it, given the proven murky nature of American race groupings. So if you saw a correlation between self-identified race and some piece of medical data or whatever, you would not instantly say “well, race is purely biological, and I see a correlation, so this is clearly hereditary and genetic and race X is more susceptible to condition Y”. But, there would also be at least a vague vague possibility in the back of your mind that, since there are SOME correlations between race and genetic origin, there might in fact be a genetic correlation at work here, but you would first examine a bunch of other hypotheses, gather more data, examine environmental conditions, try to get more-precise-than-race taxonomic information, and so forth? That’s the position that seems reasonable to me… ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2012, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/509 "2012-03-24T10:41:23Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > So if you saw a correlation between self-identified race and some piece of medical data or whatever, you would not instantly say “well, race is purely biological, and I see a correlation, so this is clearly hereditary and genetic and race X is more susceptible to condition Y”. But, there would also be at least a vague vague possibility in the back of your mind that, since there are SOME correlations between race and genetic origin, there might in fact be a genetic correlation at work here, but you would first examine a bunch of other hypotheses, gather more data, examine environmental conditions, try to get more-precise-than-race taxonomic information, and so forth? That’s the position that seems reasonable to me… Precisely. Always at the back of my mind will be the awareness that race groupings are so imprecise that relying on them would possibly lead to errors that more precise, scientifically-derived groupings would avoid. Take sickle-cell, for instance, a genetic disease that plots to precise geographic origin but cuts sharply across any notion of races. No opponent to race classification in this thread has said you can’t draw correlation between some single genetic value and geographic population groups. It’s easy to fall into the trap (as the race realists have) of seeing _some_ utility value in the correlation for a _highly-filtered subset_ of humanity, and accepting that as genetic gospel for the whole human race. ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2012, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/510 "2012-03-30T18:31:54Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I’ll say this one last time - race isn’t just a biological concept, it’s a scheme for classifying the human species _into taxonomic subcategories_. As such, the _only_ question worth considering is whether that has any taxonomic validity. Sorry, I’ve been ill of late and haven’t had a chance to follow up here. To retread old ground. Academic discussions of the “biological meaningfulness” of race do not merely revolve around race’s taxonomic validity. I’ve already cited examples. Let’s take Armand Marie Leroi’s “A Family Tree in Every Gene.” Leroi argues that race is real because genetic differences correlate. He goes onto argue that even Basques constitute a race: > [@](#): > > So, too, it is with the genetic topography of our species. The billion or so of the world’s people of largely European descent have a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else; they are a race. At a smaller scale, three million Basques do as well; so they are a race as well. Race is merely a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though with no great precision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences Clearly, Basques do not constitute a zoological subspecies. So is this prominent geneticist off his handle in making this argument? Let’s look at some ant-racist arguments: “[T]here is only one race— the human race” …“there are no alleles that define the black people of North America as a unique population." (Schwartz, 2001). “The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise. . . . All populations or population clusters overlap when single genes are considered, and in almost all populations, all alleles are present but in different frequencies. No single gene is therefore sufficient for classifying human populations into systematic categories.” (Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza, 1994.) Clearly a single gene is not required for zoological subspecific classification. Are all these proponents misinformed about the debate? Obviously not. The reason is simple: there are multiple debates going on. Multiple concepts of “biologically real,” “race,” and “biologically meaningful” are being discussed. As such, it is necessary to clarify which meanings we mean in discussing this topic. While the taxonomic validity by international zoological standards might be the only issue of worth _for you_, it obviously isn’t for others. ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2012, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/511 "2012-03-30T19:14:00Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Precisely. Always at the back of my mind will be the awareness that race groupings are so imprecise that relying on them would possibly lead to errors that more precise, scientifically-derived groupings would avoid. Take sickle-cell, for instance, a genetic disease that plots to precise geographic origin but cuts sharply across any notion of races. No opponent to race classification in this thread has said you can’t draw correlation between some single genetic value and geographic population groups. I appreciate, though, that you are moving the debate in a constructive direction. Focusing on specific definitions and concepts represents two large steps forward. (Reducing the issue to one specific concept or definition, represents a small step backwards.) Compare the current debate with this previous one in which Blake was arguing about [unicorns](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=603182&page=7) and [logical coherence](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13660483&postcount=348). ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2012, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/512 "2012-03-30T20:20:02Z")
> [@Chuck11](#): > > I won’t even discuss this point unless we agree on the others, about which I seem to be obviously correct. (If “unique geographical range” precluded the overlapping of ranges it would preclude hybridization; and this isn’t by the definition). Contrary to what some might think, I’m not a human subspecies fundamentalist. I do think, however, that the idea of human subspecies is unduly dismissed in the Anglosphere. (It’s not, however, in [other regions](http://dlib3.cnki.net/KNS50/Navi/item.aspx?NaviID=1&BaseID=RLXB&NaviLink=%E4%BA%BA%E7%B1%BB%E5%AD%A6%E5%AD%A6%E6%8A%A5).) Elsewhere, I’ve discussed many of the problems of applying the subspecies concept to humans. For example, with regards to the geographic race concept, I’ve noted on Nick Matzke blog (3/10/2012): > [@](#): > > As I was noting above, there are multiple interpretations of the 75% rule. The more lax interpretation is (or was) just that 75% of individuals can be correctly classified into the respective populations. This is the interpretation that Sewall Wright (quoted above) was referring to in “Evolution and the Genetics of Populations” in his discussion of human races. Ditto Bodmer and Cavalli-sforza in “Genetics, Evolution and Man.” By this reading of the rule, clearly the 5-7 major human population clusters qualify as subspecies. I can’t imagine anyone seriously dissenting on this point. Perhaps, they would argue that by event of mass transportation many individual don’t “share a unique geographical range ” with others of their said race and maintain that this invalidates the concept as applied to humans. This is an interesting point — or would be were someone to make it, but this would, at best, only regress the question from “Are the said populations subspecies?” to “Were the said populations recently subspecies?” > > …Now, by this more rigorous interpretation of the rule, it’s not clear if the 5-7 major human population clusters qualify using any combination of traits — at least, I’m not aware of the qualifying differentia. They might be out there, though. As for the geographic issue, I’ve noted, on Richard Dawkins’ site (2/11/2012): > [@](#): > > When we ask, “Are there human races (qua subspecies)?” what we are really asking is “Given how the concept is applied to some non-human populations, does it apply to some human populations?” There is no clear cut answer though, because as just said, there are no clear cut rules. We might ask then, “Given how the concept is applied to some non-human populations by liberal, moderate, and conservative classifiers, does it well apply to some human populations?” I imagine we would find that by conservative standards it does not. I argue that it does by liberal standards, because liberal classifiers are prone to put a name on any population they can find. I’m not sure about moderate classifiers. > > Whatever the case, first figuring out how the concept is applied to non-humans – by liberal, moderate, and conservative classifiers – is where we must start to answer this question. > [@](#): > > I think that the the effects of modern transportation (by which I mean the means of transportation developed within the last few thousand years) poses the real problem for the geographic concept as applied to humans. I’m not sure that a geographic concept can well be applied to a species that shows such mobility on the individual level. All sorts of underlying assumptions are violated. From what I recall, Mayr briefly mentioned this problem. > > I think we would have to ask both: “Given how the concept is applied … did it apply to some human populations?” and “Can it still be applied?” My opinion is that it did apply (as least by a liberal usage of the concept – which, perhaps, doesn’t say much) – and that in the near future it will not apply by any usage. And that currently it quasi applies. (There were human races; there will soon be none; there kind of still are.) I think the best critique of contemporaneous human geographic subspecies is contemporaneous human migration. But at best this only regresses the issue to “Where there recently human geographic races?” If so, “human races” can be “meaningfully biologically defined” as “the aggregate descendants of historic geographic races.” Precedent for maintaining this classification schema despite recent migration can be found in zoology as noted elsewhere. And if this doesn’t hold up, not much is lost in the transition from “members of taxonomically valid subspecies” to “members of once taxonomically valid subspecies.” (It could be argued, of course, that no human populations ever recently qualified as subspecies by the geographic concept, but I find this untenable. Blake seems to make much of the criteria that “members of a subspecies share a unique geographical range or habitat,” but I’m sure that I can show, given how the criteria is used, that some major populations recently fit this criteria (i.e., if not my 5 races then at least the big 2, e.g., sub-Saharan Africans and non-sub-Saharian Africans.) I open to discussing this, though – at least if we can be sensible (and avoid getting bogged down with issues such as whether or not the concept “unicorn” is coherent or whether or not human’s can have natural histories.) 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