Anyone who want some evidence that race is an incoherent concept just has to watch some reruns of “The Cosby Show”. Here we have the youngest daughter who seems to have 100% african ancestry, and Lisa Bonet who, if she hadn’t identified herself as “black” I would have assumed to have 100% european ancestry.
“Race” is a very strange concept, especially as it is applied in the US. If you call yourself black, you’re black. And the reasons it matters whether you think of yourself as black or white are very strange indeed.
Back to Zwalld’s question: “Why is it that everyone I see that has an epicanthic fold also has straight black hair?”
OK, this is actually pretty simple. It just so happens that most people in the US that have epicanthic folds came here from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Phillipines. And it just so happens that most of the people in those countries have both characteristics.
There are asian populations that have epicanthic folds but curly hair. However there only a few, and most of them are still at home.
Another way to think of this is to imagine a set of maps of the world. We could look at every single human gene, and put a dot on the map for every person who possesed a given gene. So, we could look at the genetic distribution of the epicanthic fold across the world. Well, we’d find China, Japan, etc solid black. We’d find greyish pockets in america where immigrants live. And we’d find the density getting lower and lower the further west we go across Eurasia. Eventually we’d reach an area where the black dots are almost non-existant.
Then, we could map genes for black hair. And we’d find black dots across the entire world, except for some grey areas in northern Europe and north america. And pretty much all of asia would have black hair.
Then we could map the genes for curly hair. I seem to remember that there are a couple of different genes that can cause curly hair…anyway, it all comes down to the cross-section. Round hair=straight. Oval=wavy. Flat=curly. Anyway, we’d find that the genes that produce curliness are pretty much absent in the places where asian immigrants come from. Africa would be colored in, europe would be grayish, most of asia would be white, but with small pockets of dots in new guinea, melanesia, etc.
Then we could look at a map of sickle-cell trait, or ABO blood type frequencies, or MN blood proteins, or Rh factor, or hemophilia, or achondroplasia, or cystic fibrosis, or what have you.
The general idea is that while some of these maps would look similar to each other, most would not. The map for black hair is very different than the map for curly hair, and both are very different from the map for epicanthic folds, or for skin color, or for sickle-cell trait, or anything.
So, where does that leave the concept of race? Pretty much no where. If race were a meaningful concept, we’d find lots and lots of maps that matched. But we don’t, most gene frequencies vary independently.
So, suppose we find a gene that correlates with increased intelligence…suppose some people have a protein in their neurons that does such-and-such. If we mapped the distribution of that protein, would it be likely to look anything like the map for dark skin? Or curly hair? Or sickle-cell trait? Probably not, since these maps look nothing like each other.
But it is possible that the trait is more common in one part of the world than another. So, using a layperson’s racial classification, we could say that such-and-such a race would be smarter becuase the frequency of the allele is greater in such-and-such a race. But would this be meaningful? Not really, since the trait has nothing to do with skin color or or any of the other traits we’re talking about that we as lay people use to define race. The trait for “intelligence” probably wouldn’t have any correlation with race, except at random.
Does this help explain why scientists have discarded the concept of race?
