Nationality is different than race. Both are social constructs, but there is a tradition of allegiance to one’s state (to conflate nation and state for now) where there is not for one’s race. There is also a legal framework for measuring and enforcing allegiance to one’s state. For example, the US Constitution’s definition of treason: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” That’s the law of this land and it creates a strong expectation of loyalty to the nation. Other nations presumably have similar laws.
There are no similar laws creating an expectation of loyalty to one’s race.
Well, is there any species that has a mixture that is “complete”? Maybe cheetahs…
I’m still unclear what your definition of a subspecies is. It’s true that reasonable scientists can disagree on a definition, but I’m afraid your definition (from what I can gather so far) would be unmanageable if applied to all life on earth. We would have so many different categories, sliced and diced so many different ways, that we might as well just say every individual organism is a different species since there are genetic differences between us all.
I doubt many species are completely mixed. Why should we expect phylogenic structure to stop at the species level?
I would define a subspecies as a clade smaller than a species. Or something like that. I’m not sure what to use as a lower size boundary. I’m a cladist anyway, so these Linnaean classifications aren’t really that important to me. I’d be happy enough to call them “clades within Homo sapiens” or simply “human clades”.
I don’t see how that definition could work since it would mean that my immediate family, which is indisputably* a clade, is a subspecies. If you try and put an upper limit on the number required to be a “true clade”, then that number is necessarily arbitrary, and we’re back to the same problem-- arbitrariness.
*barring any unknown hanky-panky with the neighbors.
Nationalities are social contracts. I don’t particularly care for them because as far as social contracts go, they’re implicit ones. They require no explicit consent to join. We are generally forced to accept them at birth, and often don’t have good means of breaking them. Emigrating to another nation is difficult in most parts of the world. On the other hand, I can’t think of another way to do it. If everyone were given something akin to “resident alien” status upon birth and allowed to opt in to full citizenship upon majority, and proven understanding of the civics of the nation, I could get behind that. Still, as it works now a person who chooses not to emigrate is making a conscious decision to accept the rules of the nation they live in, which often include laws defining and proscribing treason. So Walker Lindh could be considered a “Traitor to the United States of America.”
One can not emigrate from the color of their skin, slant of their eyes, etc. Because of this I don’t think the same rules can apply. Nationality, as a social contract, is not the same as the social construct of “race” because, at least theoretically, one requires consent, which can be withdrawn, and the other does not.
There are clades of many sizes between species and individuals. Pick for yourself which ones you want to call subspecies. Earlier I picked some that roughly match with what many people call races. Or, you could decide to not call any of the sub-specific clades “subspecies”.
But a scientist who studies something that may depend on genetic differences within the human species would be wise keep in mind the sub-specific clades, whatever they’re called. And it would be reasonable to call sub-specific clades “subspecies”.
We were discussing scientific classification. I don’t think “pick for yourself” could be called a scientific classification scheme.
Actually, I don’t think what you picked can be called clades, due to extensive interbreeding between populations. What you picked are haplogroups. A haplogroup is not necessarily a clade. It’s entirely possible for my cousin to be grouped into a different haplogroup than I am, either by Y-chromosome analysis or more extensive genetic analysis. That might be less true with some indigenous populations, but it is still going to be a significant factor.
I hope I’m not coming off as snarky here-- I don’t mean to be. This is a subject on which I’ve done lots of research, and I honestly think you’re wrongly interpreting the data. I think you are assuming exactness when the data is statistical in nature-- ie, group X has a high frequency of genetic marker Y, not group X is composed entirely of people with genetic marker Y. But even if the latter were true, that does not necessarily make group X a clade.
I was prepared to say that I don’t consider Lindh to be a traitor in any meaningful sense, but you persuaded me otherwise with the “could emigrate” argument.
But didn’t he emigrate? I mean, was he ever planning on returning home?
I think the idea of treason is only relevant when you’re talking about a granfalloon that you’ve willingly joined. I can betray my marriage, I can betray a friendship, I can betray the Freemasons, I can betray my employer. Betraying your country is a much thornier issue, given that most folks didn’t willingly join the country of which they’re a citizen, and that it takes a lot of work to get rid of that citizenship.
Betraying a race is nonsense. You didn’t choose your race; you didn’t choose to ally with that particular group of people; acting in a way contrary to their interests has no special moral weight.
No, I’m not inferring any snark, and likewise, I’m not try to be snarky, either. Just trying to understand what things mean. I’m simply a physicist who’s done a lot of reading on genetics and evolution.
I think the labeling of clades is largely a matter of convenience. Obviously, it’s better to coordinate with the research field one is in, but I don’t see why one couldn’t pick a few clades and give them labels for convenience. It’s the phylogenic structure that’s the science; the labels are simply for labeling.
I’d take your point of haplogroups vs clades, but the phylogenic tree is based on the whole genome, not a single or even a few haplogroups. And I realize the groupings are statistical. A particular individual might not fit well in any single branch of the tree. But the populations as groups can be separated by comparing the gene frequencies. That means the interbreeding to date hasn’t been enough to disperse the statistical differences between the branches of the tree. I think that justifies calling them clades, since the relatedness between the branches can be determined with some confidence.
It can’t be based on the entire genome-- there aren’t that many people who have had their entire genome sequenced. Those articles are a bit misleading because what they call “whole-genome” sequencing isn’t “whole”. As you read closely, you find their talking about haplogroups. For example, in the Scientific American article, they say:
But in the next paragraph, they say:
And these researchers are careful to select people who they think have been living in a given area for a very long time. For example, no American (who is not Indian) would qualify for this study, and few would fit into any of their groupings. If you look at the groupings in the family tree, you’ll see that there are “Tuscan” and “Sardinian” groupings. You cannot seriously posit that there is a Tuscan or a Sardinian race. People have been moving in and out of Tuscany for, well, forever (or at least as long as people have been living there).
One other thing to keep in mind is that statistical analysis has shown that we all share the exact same set of common ancestors if you go back only about 10,000 years. IOW, everyone living at that time was either an ancestor of everyone alive today or an ancestor of no one alive today. So you can’t have human clades that go back much further than 10,000 years.
It’s hard to say. I couldn’t find anything which said he had filed any paperwork requesting revocation of his American citizenship, or applying for an Afghani citizenship. Of course given the chaotic nature of Afghanistan during the timeframe it’s entirely possible the immigration process required no paperwork or was broken down completely. I would have been fine with asking Lindh whether he preferred to be tried as a US citizen who had committed treason or as a foreign national engaged in acts of war against the US. If he chose the latter, revoke his citizenship and treat him as a PoW according to the Geneva Conventions. When the conflict is over, ship him off to Afghanistan. His obligations to pay US taxes are gone as are his privileges as a US citizen.
My argument has nothing to do with the legalese behind perdity. Rather, I’m saying that if the you believe the “race traitor” concept to be meaningless because race isn’t an objectively, biologically determined thing, you must extend that to all social groupings that aren’t “objectively, biologically determined”. Including nationality.
But clade has a very specific, concrete definition; it’s not so much a matter of arguing for justification. A clade has to be closed under all descendants of most recent common ancestors. If two people in group A have a most recent common ancestor whose descendants also include person X from group B, then groups A and B cannot be kept distinct. Do you think your system stands up to this scrutiny? If not, perhaps you shouldn’t call your categories clades…
That was not my only objection to the term “race traitor.” I believe the “race” part makes it fall flat when trying to talk about biological “races” of H. sapiens. I believe the “traitor” part falls flat when talking about an amorphous grouping with no defined obligations and involuntary membership. If one is forced into a group without their consent then they owe no obligations to the group.
Good point. But they did call it “whole genome”. I can’t imagine they’d use that phrase without it meaning something significant. Perhaps they mean something more like “a number of haplogroups of sufficient size that we don’t statistically expect a whole genome analysis to be different”. I’ll have to think more about it.
Why not? A subspecific clade does not rule out out-crossing. See below. Of course, I probably wouldn’t call such a small clade a race.
Yes, but that doesn’t effect the results that they’ve found genetically distinct human populations that can be placed in a phylogenic tree.
Uh, where are getting the closure requirement? From your cite: “A clade is a taxonomic group comprising a single common ancestor and all the descendants of that ancestor.” No mention of closure. As long as the clade contains all descendants from the clade’s ancestor, then it’s a proper clade.
It’s true that clades at the species level and higher do not cross. But that comes from the definition of species, not the definition of clade. Clades below the species level must (by definition of species) have out-crosses. If they didn’t, the clades would be species, not sub-species.
As an easy example, take my grandfather and define the clade of all descendants of that person. My father out-crossed from the clade when he had children with my mother (no inbreeding here ). Yet my grandfather’s grandchildrens are still members of his clade.
There is nothing in those articles that indicates the groups are clades. There is no “Tuscan clade”. There is no “Sardinian clade”. The very idea is ludicrous. I’m sorry, but you are extrapolating the data beyond what it can support.
Really? Presumably the individuals they sampled for each group are more closely related to each other than they are to those in other groups. And the groups nest together exactly how clades stack together. Yes, that is not definitive evidence of the groups being clades, but it is consistent with it. In fact, I don’t see anything in the article that is inconsistent with the groups being clades.
I can’t imagine that my buddy who has one grandparent from Tuscany would fit into the “Tuscan clade”, but his grandfather might very well fit in. Multiply that by millions, and the clades fall apart. They are looking at a tiny sample of people who can trace their lineage back a long time in a particular geographic area and deliberately ignoring all the people who have ancestors from that area but no longer live there.
I agree with everything here, if by “the clades fall apart” you mean they are becoming less distinct because of out-crossing. (Obviously, a grandchild is always in the clades that their grandparents are in.) Actually, more like the “clades merge together”.
Just to reiterate, I’m not saying any or every individual is genetically similar to the other members of their clades. I’m saying that the populations as groups are statistically distinct enough for them to be distinguished and a phylogeny constructed, despite out-crossings continually reducing the differences. I’m not claiming that the sub-specific clades of the human species are useful for any particular purpose, but there’s is apparently enough value for the article’s authors to publish a phylogeny of sub-specific groups of humans.
And whether or not we want to call some sub-specific human clades “races” or “sub-species”, there do in fact exist statistically, genetically distinct groups within the human species.
). Yet my grandfather’s grandchildrens are still members of his clade.