I don’t buy this argument. That’s like saying there is no such thing as language, because languages aren’t distinct. Languages are in groups and families, but there are no clear boundaries between some of them. Italian: separate language, or modern latin? Norwegian/Swedish: two separate languages, or mutually intelligible variants of the same?
I don’t get why a “biological race” would have to be utterly distinct. Why couldn’t it be blurred, based on general shared traits?
Because it has, historically, been used to mean discrete populations. Race is simply a word. However, it is a word that has already attained (among its three or four definitions) a particular meaning when applied to biology. It is a bit disingenuous to simply claim, “well, let’s use it with a different meaning” when the overwhelming majority of English speakers will not understand that less sharply defined meaning.
It already has the meaning of “general shared traits” in its sociological meaning. However, when that sociological meaning is applied to biology, it has pretty persistently led to errors, so why perpetuate the errors?
I guess when I use it, I don’t tend to think of it like that, ie discrete populations. I agree with you that the borders are far too blurred for that - also, that that suggests different human “species” which is of course rubbish.
I wonder if the useage, or the weight of the word is very different in the US, with the background of miscegnation laws(?) and “one drop” and stuff. Maybe it used to be in days of segregation that black people were (obviously erroneously) seen as a different “species”? I tend to think of race as quite a loose concept, similiar to a family/clan/tribe but extending over a wider area of people.
Here at least, when people use race to distinguish physically, they are only looking at the skin/features etc, not referring to genes. It is hugely multicultural here, historically it’s been a “melting pot” being a port, spice route, etc, so there is no stigma with race, people are used to mixing. Marriage restrictions between “races” derive here from religious and social castes, far more than skin colour.
When you look at someone here, you can legitimately tell what geographical area they come from by their physical appearance, because with limited permanent migration you don’t get African Emiratis, eg, or East Asian Emiratis. If someone has features common to people in the Philippines, then they’re filipino. I’m white, therefore I’m European. This may be a different concept of race than what you guys are debating, but it’s what is used here. Maybe this is what you mean by a social construct?
That’s not entirely true though is it? You can tell with some success whether someone is an Emirati or non-Emtirati based on physical appearance, that’s true enough. But you can’t tell what geographical area the non-Emiratis come from. I can’t imagine that you would have more succes than anyone else distinguishing between a Phillipino, a Bengalese and a Timorese when all three appear nearly identical.
Even with people who appear to be Emiratis, can you really distinguish between an Emirait and a Greek based entirely on physical characteristics?
I think that we are talking about dividing groups by appearance. That does work on some level, (it has certainly been used effectively to oppress or elevate some people according to their appearance).
The problem arises when we wish to reify those apparent similarities or differences–particularly in terms of biological groupings. When someone tries to claim that a group exists and then makes claims for attributes of that group with faulty or absent data, then we really have a problem. The various attempts to claim that one group is more or less intelligent than another group, when each group is composed of dozens or hundreds of smaller groups for whom no evidence has been provided regarding intelligence, is the most glaring example, but there are others.
Another problem arises when we try to take scientific utility out of a concept which we all agree is nebulous. I have difficulty explaining this because I am not so eloquent as others in the field. So I will digress into science-speak. Pologize.
People want ascribe similar complex multigenic phenotypes to groups of widely dispersed randomly breeding groups: athletic performance, musical ability, intelligence, whatever. A high prevalence of these phenotypes would indicate a limited set of alleles. This is brought about by one of three things: genetic drift or some other founder effect or evolutionary selection.
The obvious exception is the way we group people – exterior features. But this is a selection bias. We would expect many of the same alleles responsible for giving rise to certain exterior features would be found in people who look similar. Note that this is not always the case, as in tomndebb’s example of the Andaman Islanders, who have a very dark skin color. Similarity at these alleles implies nothing about the rest of the genome, though, due to Mendel’s Laws.
The next problem we run into is that there are medically important findings that are roughly grouped by race. Since race roughly corresponds to descent, what we are looking at are indeed the three exceptions noted above: limited allele sets caused by genetic drift, evolution, or founder effect. The obvious example is sickle cell disease or G6PD. The alleles causing these two came to high prevalence in malaria-prone regions due to their selective advantage.
I would put good money on the theory that most other medically relevant associations correlated with race are monogenic. A digenic correlation would be seen at a prevalence of a square root of a monogenic correlation, given random breeding (which most current breeding is). Again, these alleles are probably at a higher prevalence because of drift, founder, or evolution.
No - because like I said, the boundaries are blurred. That you can tell that someone is from the subcontinent, even if you can’t distinguish whether they are Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi, you can still put them in a physical appearance geographic (heritate) grouping.
I can tell though that the Emirati-Greek looking person(!) is almost certainly not from Africa, or of African heritage, or of Swedish/Scandinavian heritage. I can’t usually tell if someone is Spanish, French or Italian, but I can see that they’re of Mediterranean appearance.
I’m not saying that these groupings or distinctions are necessarily useful, but the fact is based on physical appearance, you can very often tell someone’s original geographical heritage, albeit by wider region than specific town/country. I would suggest this original geographical heritage grouping is what most people (at least outside the US) mean by “race.”
I think as tomndebb points out, the big problem with this is that people get oppressed and elevated depending on (sking colour) group, hence why the debate is so politicised. Within subcontinental society, they discriminate against darker skinned people from their own nation, hence the wide array of skin bleaches available, I kid you not.
And yes - it’s clear that there has never been a study to show that these “races” or groups - when you take out sociological issues, such as education, discrimation, etc - are more or less intelligent than one another. But there are physical differences, in appearance, and in size (generally rather than individually).
I know we’ve had heated threads in the past about people in certain countries not being “shorter” than average, or “bigger” than average. But I have friends in Japan who say it’s really hard to get large size clothes and shoes. I met a tall Japanese woman (not that tall, maybe 5’9) who said she had a nightmare getting clothes, because she was so much taller than average. I bet she wouldn’t have had the same problem in Germany or Holland.
So the point for me is that these groupings and physical distinctions are rough, they are blurred, they are littered with exceptions, but they do exist in at least a general sense.
The point of my post is that I don’t believe you or anyone lese can. A Phillipino isn’t from the subcontinent, while a Timorese isn’t even close. Many Australian Aborigines are indistinguishable from people from the subcontinent. Do you believe you can tell them from people from India? If not would you consider an Aborigine to be the same race a Pakistani?
This is simply one example of where race can’t even tell you someone’s original geographical heritage, even by wider region than specific town/country. There is no recent geographical commonality between an Indian and an Aborigine, yet they are often indistinguishable. Where they share an ancient common heritage (>40, 000 year BP) is debatable, but there is no more recent link.
Similarly you claim that you “can tell though that the Emirati-Greek looking person(!) is almost certainly not from Africa, or of African heritage”, and yet I know a man of exclusively Greek heritage who is a dead ringer for Colonel Ghadaffi, albeit 20 years younger. And Ghadaffi is certainly from Africa. Now I realise you meant sub-Saharan Africa, but I am illustrating just how blurred the boundaries to appearance really are.
Of course you could say that a white person isn’t of sub-Saharan heritage. However that doesn’t tell you where they did come from. And then we have the problem that there is no way at all of telling where a black person came from, so all that race has told us is that a person didn’t come from one fairly small part of the globe. It doesn’t actually tell us anything at all about where they did come from.
Do you have any estimated as to how accurate your ability to pick s person’s geographic heritage based on race is? Would you be able to tell whether a person was from Africa 40% of the time, or 90%? Could you pick an Aborigine 10% of the time, or 75%? I guess what I’m asking is whether your results would produce more false positives than accurate assessments. I suspect it would, and if that’s the case then there’s no scientific validity to the grouping.
I will intervene somewhat reluctantly simply to elucidate on MENA and regional physical types:
In Emirates, sure … usually. However in my experience telling a Pakistani from an Omani, e.g. requires oft more than merely physical clues. E.g. the husband of my secretary is Pakistani, I always took him for Arab - been here for so long he speaks like an Arab even in English.
Take a visit to Oman, with its centuries of contact with both the sub-Continent and East Africa, and reflect further. I’ll tell you, it is bloody hard to differentiate Omanis from Pakistanis and / or Eith/Somali types when they are not socially segregating - ie non-phenotypical clues like dress and the like.
I also invite you to hang out in Bahrain for long periods of time, then fly over to Eritrea, and reflect on what Eritreans would look like if they were as fat as your average Bahraini.
You should see extended family gatherings more often. As a Brit I suppose you don’t see it oft, but let me assure you, the phenotypical range is oft stunning.
Sure, you can often tell, by wide region. As often not. If I, of largely Northern European extraction, but oddly darkish for that, can pass as some generic Turk or North African, then that tells you something.
There is a rough and ready utility, but that goes to the social, and only roughly to the biological, as the genetic evidence in the past has shown.
Of course, and? Like the language example, you’re not making a biological argument.
Well, enough of this, I have tired of race arguments, the data is there and those who wish to read it can, I wanted only to respond to Istara’s comments on the phenotypes round here.
The concept of race is, as far as I can tell, both a biological and a social construct. The fact that humanity can be divided into fairly distinct groups based on physical characteristics, and that those physical characteristics “breed true” in the absence of intermarriage, is a matter of biology. People can argue all they want that the boundaries between races are blurry, and that these boundaries become increasingly blurry as people marry and have children with people of other races, but that doesn’t change the fact that the differences do exist. Unless a black couple have one or more caucasion ancestors, they are simply not going to give birth to a child with fair skin. The differences are real, in spite of the fact that they can’t be precisely quanitified.
The fact that these differences are perceived as being meaningful, however, is purely a matter of social construction. Biology determines whether somebody’s skin is black, white, yellow or red. Society determines whether one skin color is “better” or “worse” than another. Society determines (falsely) that people of the same race must share the same personality traits as well as the same physical characteristics.
It is disingenuous, in my opinion, to try and argue that there are no distinct differences between the various races, or that the differences are “purely” a matter of social construct. The differences are obvious to the naked eye, and it’s also obvious that humanity can be grouped according to those differences. Instead, we should be arguing that the differences are purely a matter of appearance and have nothing to do with the way a person feels, thinks or acts.
I hope what I’ve said above doesn’t make me sound racist, and if I’ve offended anyone I apologize. My younger brother (whiter than white) is married to a wonderful woman from Haiti. It is obvious that there are distinct racial differences between them, but personality-wise they are as alike as two peas in a pod. My wife happens to be Chinese, and again it is obvious that I am caucasian and she is asian. None of her ancestors look like me, and none of mine look like her. And yet, once you get beyond outward appearances, we are very much alike in the way we think, feel, and act.
Regards,
Barry
Coll - I don’t disagree with you, you seem to be making some of the same points I made.
Oman is a particularly interesting example because of the extensive intermingling of Omanis and East Africans. And the many Baluchi Omanis. But doesn’t that to some extent prove the point about physical appearance, in that the reason it’s hard to distinguish between certain peoples is because they have intermingled and taken on one another’s external physical features?
Creating that extraordinarily loose group so beloved of certain airport staff and law enforcement agencies: “of middle eastern appearance.”
Also: I wouldn’t actually assert that it is easy to spot an “emirati” as opposed to a pakistani, bar national dress. There are a considerable number of subcontinental-origin people who became absorbed into citizenship in the last century.
[quote]
The fact that humanity can be divided into fairly distinct groups based on physical characteristics, and that those physical characteristics “breed true” in the absence of intermarriage, is a matter of biology.
[quote]
Is it really? Can you pint me to the biology text that says that?
Can you please tell me what these groups are? Assuming that all humans have a common group of ancestors can you explain how these ‘true breeding’ groups developed?
You seem to be saying that you can see distinct groups and you believe they breed true, therefore that is so. You haven’t actually produced any more evidence, you have just made an assertion that race is bilogiclaly based. And that is nothingmore than argument form assertion.
Non-issue. The truth of the matter is that “race” has never been consistently defined. Why would a Christian family that identified themselves as “Armenian” legally be “white” but a Muslim family that identified themselves as “Turkish” who had nearly exactly the same ancestry be “Asiatic”?
Nevertheless, that was how the law of the USA would have treated them back when it was illegal for “Asiatics” to become naturalized citizens.
There are physical traits that are assigned to “race” but “race” itself is a mere cultural construction.
Here’s a riddle:
When was a black man not a black man?
When he crossed state lines!!!