I know there are other threads on this, but was watching a video on the genetics of prehistory and the narrator was saying that race is unquestionable a real thing with humans, it’s just different than people think (i.e. the standard races of white, black, hispanic, asian, etc are bullshit). There are distinct racial groups, for sure, but that they are much more complex than people think (one of the things he said was that there are more racial groups in Africa than the rest of the planet combined).
I always was told that race was a made-up construct, that humans were essentially the same with some regional variation. Things like lactose tolerance or variance in disease resistance, but that humans are actually (remarkably even) low with respect to genetic diversity…less than dogs or most if not all other mammals.
So, my question is, has there been a change in the view towards whether race is or isn’t a thing, or are people using ‘race’ in different ways…or is this guy simply what we commonly refer to as ‘wrong’? Is race a thing today with all our ability to map genetic diversity and population groups, is ‘race’ just the wrong term for it that simply comes with a ton of baggage and bad history, or…what?
This seems hard to answer without knowing how the guy in the video is defining “race”. Is he calling those minor body type variations (height, skin color, hair type, tendencies for medical conditions, etc) “races” or is he applying something else to it?
I don’t want to link to the video, as this seems to piss 'dopers off, but he seems to be talking about bone structure and things like the already mentioned lactose tolerance and variations in disease resistances…basically, he’s talking about population genetics from, presumably, all of the DNA samples and analysis that has been ongoing for a few decades now.
But I don’t really want to focus on what he’s saying…it’s more a general question, I’m merely using his video and what he’s saying as an example (really, it just got me thinking about the question which I figured I’d bring here to see what 'dopers think).
I think it’s important to be careful with the word “real”. Race is largely a social construct, but that doesn’t make it not real. Money is also a social construct, but it’s very real!
Genetics are a real thing, and they really do differ in sometimes-relevant ways in different subpopulations. But the answer to “do socially constructed races map onto distinct genetic clusters” is definitely “no”, in general. Socially constructed races aren’t even stable over short periods of time.
That’s fair. My less than expert understanding is that anthropologists and others in the field agree that clusters of humans may have genetic markers or similarities but have gotten away from using these to determine a “race”. So the person may be correct in that these clusters exist but is wrong in applying the word “race” to them.
To borrow the Supreme Court expression, “You know it when you see it.”
Some people use a grain-of-sand continuum argument, “Well, this half-white, half-black person doesn’t look all that different from a full black person”…sure, but at a certain point the difference is stark enough.
Or, look at it from the standpoint of someone who is being targeted. If you are about to be attacked for your race, telling your attackers, “But race is a social construct!” won’t do a thing.
As a complete non-sequitur (I appreciate your answer btw…exactly what I’m looking for), but your avatar is something I recall drawing when I was a kid for a contest.
Race is bullshit (from a biological perspective) 99% of the time (i.e. pretty much any time almost anyone encounters it in their daily life). There are distinct biological groups of humans with shared ancestry (like, for example, indigenous Andaman Islanders), but I don’t think anyone really considers or treats these groups as a “race”, aside from occasional weirdo scientists (like perhaps the one the OP is discussing).
I think it is safe to summarize all the previous responses as follows:
It all depends on how you define “race”. For some definitions, race is indeed a totally real thing. For other definitions, it doesn’t exist at all. And everywhere in the middle.
It gets very confusing, because the “social construct” races are just made up things. Right now, in the US, we pay attention to things like skin color or where your parents were born to define race. In other times and places other physical or social traits may have been used to define race. For example “the Jewish race” or “the peasants”.
Genetics are able to group people together into similar clusters. Start with your family compared to mine. Me and my first degree relatives will be one cluster, and you and your first degree relatives will be a different cluster. Now lets grow those clusters to include 2nd and 3rd degree relatives, etc. Eventually, your and my cluster may merge. At some point the cluster is so inclusive you are distinguishing humans from chimps and bonobos. So, dial it back a bit, lets stop the clusters where we distinguish humans by general continent of origin, and call that “race” if you want. It doesn’t work well for Africa, because there will be multiple “races” there.
The social construct of race and these genetic clusters may roughly map onto each other. People with light skin might often be in the cluster of European ancestry. People with dark skin may frequently be in one of the African groups. This mapping from one concept of race to another can be very wrong. The social construct might put two “black” people into the same group, but they’re actually less related to each other than somebody from Sweden is to somebody from Japan.
Of course, the social construct can have utility. Calling those two black people the same race might not be appropriate on a genetic level, but it might be completely correct in the context of how they’re treated by a racist employer.
We could put it another way: Even if race is nothing but a social construct, social constructs have enormous practical consequences. People can be murdered over a “social construct.” (Conversely, they can also have a lot of privilege for it.) So even if race is nothing but a social construct, that doesn’t change any of the practical reality of it.
It changes a lot of the practical reality of it, because lots of people believe that the “races” are different in things like aptitude and character, and behave with that in mind.
Sounds to me like someone is deciding the concept of race, which has several meanings, should apply to some type of real genetic groupings, which seems like a great way to distract people from the actual content of any real genetic science they might be doing/presenting.
I thought the genetic thing would be normally be called “populations”. Otherwise, there are hundreds of “races”, and no one refers to hundreds of races.
Didn’t humanity that left Africa go through a serious population bottleneck? I thought that was why there is more genetic diversity in Africa than in all of non-African people combined.
You’re contradicting yourself here. Population genetics is a completely different subject from race. You cannot throw the word race in without destroying the general discussion.
If the person in your unnamed video actually mixes the terms race and population genetics interchangeably, then the discussion is very simple: stop watching videos that say this and indeed anything else by this person.
If you want to discuss population genetics, then it would be helpful to narrow your questions because that is a gigantic topic that encompasses everything human.
You can divide humanity into some number of biologically and genetically defined subpopulations (with blurry edges, of course). And you can call those populations “races”. But they’re going to be very different from what everyone else calls “races”, and so it’s probably a very good idea to choose some other word than “race” to describe those populations, because communication that means something different to your audience than it does to you is poor communication.
If I wanted a discussion about population genetics I’d have done that. I came here to ask a basic question…is race still considered a thing. I didn’t think so, but, frankly, I don’t know enough about the subject know. So, I asked. And I got answers that pretty much confirmed my initial assessment…the guy is what we generally refer to as ‘wrong’. That’s fine. As far as I’m concerned at this point I’ve gotten my answer. If you would like to take the discussion in other directions, I’m totally good with that…it will be interesting and I will learn some stuff.
Why would I do that? I don’t watch his videos for his insights into population genetics or race, I watch them because he is a history specialist and I like some of his insights. Because someone is wrong about something doesn’t mean they have nothing of value to listen too. YMMV and I doubt his channel would interest you in the slightest…like most of the channels I subscribe too.
At any rate, I appreciate the responses. As always, it helps me to have a place I can ask questions and get insights into things that I don’t know that much about.
This was exactly my own thought. I know from my own DNA tests at one of the public sites that will show you your ancestry that my own genetics is a muddle. I’m classified (in the US) as ‘hispanic’, but my genetics is really all over the board, from Spain/Portugal to North Africa to Native America, with even stuff like Welsh/Irish and German/French in the mix. What ‘race’ would I be? Human is my take.
I remember reading two books related to the matter and written for a general audience, but I’m not sure how helpful they are to others: The Mismeasure of Man and Guns, Germs, and Steel. There were more, but these are the ones that I remember.
