But that’s not how it works. Many colleges disfavor Asians and favor Blacks in their admission practices. A middle performing Asian would be better off on balance claiming to be black. Would that be unethical in your mind?
When I was in high school applying for college, it was a common discussion among the Asian students on how best to game the system - claiming a different race, denying to state race, choosing an unpopular major, etc.
About 90% of the people around me are mixed-race. I am mixed. My mom was. My child is. Shaun looks like he could be mixed?
One thing you learn about mixing: The results are pretty random.
I was pulled over once and while the cop was filling out paperwork for my ticket I saw him stare at my face in concentration long and hard before going back to writing. When I got home, I read my ticket and saw that the cop checked the box for hispanic for my race. I am not Latino or hispanic in any way, though I get confused for one all the time.
The point in sharing this story is that I have firsthand experience with a police report stating my race erroneously because a (white) cop eyeballed it instead of asking me. A police report isn’t evidence of anybody’s race, only one man’s perception of such.
**Dr. Deth’s *erroneous statements about the definition of race notwithstanding, the methodology of determining race is still self-reporting. I don’t know that we have statistics about how often that is abused. I’d be surprised if it was so common as to be a problem, but if someone has actual statistics I’m open to changing my mind.
*The definition is clearly stated on the census form. It’s the methodology that is not defined, or rather is assumed to be self-reporting.
Just to be clear, I was talking about the federal government’s definition in the above post. Not sure if states use something different.
I get that ALL the time too, including on official forms. I think it is the black hair and dark brown eyes and facial features. People argue with me I am hispanic.
I think this proves race is a social concept and has nothing to do with genetics.
Same here.
Well, I think it would be a stretch to say that your anecdote “proves” that race is a social construct. And it would be silly to say that race has “nothing” to do with genetics.
On a global scale, the problem with race is that human variation is clinal with few, if any, lines of demarcation between various populations when we’re talking about people with deep ancestry in where they live today. If we consider two populations, Berliners and Beijing-ites with deep ancestry in those places, I can sort out the "natives’ of those two places pretty easily. But I can’t walk between the two cities and tell you where the ethnic boundary is.
If, however, we were to create an artificial country made up of equal parts of those two populations, we’d be able to create a genetic test for race very easily. Over time, of course, that test would become less reliable as we’d begin to encounter more and more individuals with mixed ancestry. The US is sort of like that since almost everyone living here now traces their deep ancestry to another continent. But, our “artificial country” is almost 500 years old, so there’s been a LOT of mixing going on. Add to that the complication that many people have only been here a few generations, and maybe haven’t mixed in with the older populations that much. That means the genetic correlation with race is going to have different levels of accuracy depending on the particular background of the individual. Two people fresh off the boat from Norway and Nigeria are going to be pretty easy to slot into a racial category with a simple genetics test. (Assuming those people have deep ancestry in those places.) Someone tracing their roots in the Americas back 10 generations-- less so.
The problem with correlating genetic test in the US with racial identity is not that it is completely useless, but that it leaves out large segments of the population for which it doesn’t work well. When you encounter a genome from someone of mixed race, you can’t always tell if their phenotype would naturally slot them into a particular race (the social construct) or not. And this, of course, is going to get more and more muddled over time.
If we were to look at even messier situations, like in Latin America, where you have a population that is majority mixed, then you really are SOL in terms of trying to correlate genes and race.
In the US, if you wanted to look at just black and white, you’d have to come up with a somewhat arbitrary cut-off point to correlate genes with race. You could postulate that any admixture of African and European that is < 20% African puts the person in the “white” category. But you’d make a lot of mistakes on either side of that arbitrary cut-off point. And, of course, looking at the US through a black and white lens is becoming increasing less useful as we see significant increases in populations with deep ancestry in continents other than Europe and Africa (w/ Africa here meaning sub-Sahara Africa).
So, yeah, race is a social construct and you can’t always rely on genetics to correlate the two, but the accuracy of the correlation is going to vary from region to region. If you attempted to do so in the US, you’d end up with a bucket labeled “indeterminate”. It’s hard to say how many people would end up in that bucket , but I’d say 10% would probably be a lower limit.
And I’d also be surprised if the number of people in the “indeterminate” buck would amount to anywhere near 50% of the US population.
But let’s also keep in mind that, after a certain number of generations, you start to lose some ancestor’s DNA altogether. Once you go back about 6 generation, there’s a distinct possibility that one of your ancestors contributed 0 DNA to your genome. And when you get to 10 generations, it’s an almost certainty that one or more fall in that category.
That’s because you don’t get exactly 50% of your genes from your mom and your dad. You get 50% +/- some small amount. That amplifies over the generations, so that the farther back you go, the higher the probability that none of your DNA comes form certain ancestors, even though they might be as legit an ancestor as anyone else. (This is not true of your matrilineal ancestors, via your mtDNA that comes only from your mother, and y-DNA if you’re a guy that comes only from your father).
The way we use genetics to determine race is to look for certain markers that are typical of certain ethno-geographic groups. Obviously, over generations, you lose more and more of those markers and the tests become less accurate. If you’re looking for 20 markers, chancers are you’re only going to find about 5 of them from each of your grandparents. But sometimes you might find 6 or sometimes 4. So, depending on the number of markers you can look for and how accurate each one is for predicting “race”, your ability to determine ethnic origins from genetic tests is going to become increasing inaccurate if you’re looking for that one-off ethnic ancestor many generation back. Evidence of your great-great-…-great-grandfather who was of a different ethno-geographic group than the rest of that generation is going to be buried in the noise, or disappear completely.
This whole concept works less well for what we call “Hispanic”, since its definition mixes up peoples of different deep ancestry from the get go. That is, you have people from at least 3 different continents being lumped together and so the results are going to be all over the place, genetically. Not to mention the fact that, in the US, it’s pretty easy to “look Hispanic” and nor be from any of the groups that are supposed to make up that “race”, as noted by some posters here. My GF gets “Hispanic” a lot, too, even though her ancestry is Japanese and European. Actually, she’s a bit of a human chameleon, blending in with whichever group she happens to be standing with-- Asian, European, or Latin.
Which statement of mine was erroneous?
That race was self-identified? "An individual’s response to the race question is based upon self-identification. The Census Bureau does not tell individuals which boxes to mark or what heritage to write in. For the first time in Census 2000, individuals were presented with the option to self-identify with more than one race and this continued with the 2010 Census. People who identify with more than one race may choose to provide multiple races in response to the race question. For example, if a respondent identifies as “Asian” and “White,” they may respond to the question on race by checking the appropriate boxes that describe their racial identities and/or writing in these identities on the spaces provided."
or that the government does not recognize a “test” or biological definition? (Since there is none)> "The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as “American Indian” and “White.” People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race.
Eyeballing the chart in the Vox graph, the grey zone appears to cover the 15-50% range, with 28% being the approximate median. I’m not sure how twins of different races is covered by your analysis. My take is that if people treat one twin like they are black and another like they are white, then that’s the way it is. If I have my nomenclature correct, race is a social construct grounded on phenotype and ancestral reputation. Those relate to ancestry. But they are not ancestry per se.
As for the OP, Shaun King is claiming to be of bi-racial. Having racial slurs thrown at him as a kid pretty much establishes his claim. My take is that if they did a genetic test and he was found to have Philippine ancestry that would be interesting, but it wouldn’t change the way strangers treat him now or in the past.
I had an xgf with European and Okinawan ancestry who got “Hispanic” and “Native American” a fair amount. I doubt whether Jeb Bush gets that too much, though apparently that didn’t stop him from registering to vote as an Hispanic one time. That may have been a slip of the hand. But if he was sticking to that claim (he isn’t) I’d ask what the basis for it would be. I’d be dubious if he presented his spouse as evidence. But if he looked Hispanic, received racial slurs as a kid, and believed himself to have an Hispanic birth father I might cut him some slack. Even if his birth father turned out to be Okinawan.
Yeah, but everyone knows that your “Persian” ancestors were really refugees from Andalusia after the Reconquista. 
Pictures alone. 
I didn’t make that claim.
Setting that clause aside, you answered your own question. The Daily Caller and other parts of the conservative media cast doubt both pronounced and dubious about King’s claim to be biracial. You can see modern conservative interpretations of it on the top of this very page.** Gent **makes constant assertions of these sorts without backing them up with quotes or links despite repeated requests. This tells us nothing about external reality: it only validly references his internal mindspace and the mentality of the modern conservative. Because he offers no links or quotes. His posts are helpful though in a way: they exemplify a popular argumentive structure in modern conservative circles. It works like this:
I wish that P were true.
Therefore P is true. Without substantiated evidence, that’s all we have.
That one. That’s not the definition, that’s the methodology that is accepted for using the definition. The definition is, oddly enough, found in the US Census info under “definition of race”:
See the box at the top, left of page 3 in this US Census publication (warning: PDF).
The methodology is “self-report”, the definitions are given in the document.
Interesting graph. The twins in question probably derive about 25% of their ancestry from Africa, and so fall pretty much right at the 50/50 point of self-identifying as either black or white. Since they are not identical twins, it’s not too surprising that they have different phenotypes.
BTW, if anyone is interested in reading more about the stuff I was talking about, above, this link will be useful.
From John’s link: [INDENT]Definition of Race Categories Used in the 2010 Census
“White” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicated their race(s) as “White” or reported entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Arab, Moroccan, or Caucasian.
“Black or African American” refers to a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicated their race(s) as “Black, African Am., or Negro” or reported entries such as African American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.
…
“Some Other Race” includes all other responses not included in the White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander race categories described above. Respondents reporting entries such as multiracial, mixed, interracial, or a Hispanic or Latino group (for example, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, or Spanish) in response to the race question are included in this category. [/INDENT] This is difficult to parse, but ISTM that the definition of White and Black involves origins while multiracial, mixed, interracial, Hispanic or Latino is purely a matter of self-reporting.
Fotheringay-Phipps, re: previous post. I hasten to acknowledge that you and JM haven’t made dubiously definitive claims about Shaun King’s racial background. Both posters understand the concept of sorting through mixed evidence.
ETA2: JM: Thanks for the link. It’s not clear to me what the significance of “Large” blocks are, but that’s due to my lack of study of genetics. Interesting charts though: I hadn’t considered that certain genetic metrics approach zero at 10-15 generations.
Looking back at that chart, I was sloppy in saying “10 generations” where you almost certainly drop an ancestor from your genome. The correct reading would be closer to 12 or 14 generations. At 10 generation it’s about 50/50.
Interestingly, it appears that Australian Aboriginals would not be considered black under those definitions.
True. And the 3 Australian Aboriginals in the US are just going to have figure something else out. 
Well, that kind of makes DrDeth correct. Look at the definition for “white,” which is fairly similar to all the others; pay extra attention to the sentence I underlined.
So the definition includes everyone who self-identifies as white. Identify as white, and you are white according to the definition.
Again, the same thing holds true for every other race.