# Is there such a biological thing as a racial group? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 3, 2011, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007 "2011-04-03T03:39:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/361 "2011-04-07T17:42:12Z")
> [@A\_Forest\_Lady](#): > > There are, as you say, “shared characteristics”, and they are shared characteristics due to evolution. All humans have shared characteristics due to evolution. The people that are right handed can point to evolution as a factor in their shared characteristics. It’s also much easier and objective to measure which people are right handed, and which are left handed. If you are only interested in dividing up humans into categories that seems like a much better one. Neither it nor skin color is a good indicator of geographical origin so it should work just as well for your purposes, right? ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/362 "2011-04-07T17:45:22Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Sure, no one here is arguing that race doesn’t exist. The point we are trying to make is that race is a social construct that doesn’t match anything significant about underlying biology. I admit that I’ve mostly checked out of this thread due to sheer exhaustion, but I more or less agree with this statement as long as the qualifier “significant” is in there. All that I object to is the claim that race has absolutely ZERO connection to underlying biology, which I believe to be an overstatement, and this thread has not changed my mind on that point. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/363 "2011-04-07T17:46:47Z")
> [@A\_Forest\_Lady](#): > > But I also know that when I look at Paris Hilton, I can bet that most of her ancesters had a significant period of evolution in Europe, whereas Chris Rock had more ancesters evoling for a longer period in Africa. Am I absolutely 100% certain of this? No. But if you’re foolish enough to put money on it, I’m game. After all, American slavery was based on the difference. Or maybe there’s a new definition for “slavery” too. 🙂 And if you didn’t know who Chris Rock was, how would you know if his recent ancestors were from Senegal, Paupa New Guinea, Egypt, or the Australian Outback? Those groups aren’t particularly biologically similar. So his physical appearance doesn’t really give you much information, does it? If it weren’t for the context of a popular entertainer in the US the concept of race wouldn’t work. It’s almost as if the concept of race is a social construct, with little underlying basis in biology. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/364 "2011-04-07T17:55:25Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > All that I object to is the claim that race has absolutely ZERO connection to underlying biology, which I believe to be an overstatement, and this thread has not changed my mind on that point. As I just mentioned above, if you concede that black skin might just as well mean someone from Senegal or Paupa New Guinea, populations that are not biologically close, I agree. In the context of the US, due to the founder effect mentioned by Tom earlier, it gives you some information. But the term race can’t be applied to all humans since superficial characteristics don’t map to populations in a meaningful way. You’d end up saying that someone of the black race could be from any one of a dozen fairly well defined but unrelated populations, or possibly just someone with a skin coloration gene from one or more ancestors, or someone with a random mutation. In what context is that useful? ---
**Author:** ![A\_Forest\_Lady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/da6949/32.png) [@A\_Forest\_Lady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Forest_Lady)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/365 "2011-04-07T18:13:36Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > And if you didn’t know who Chris Rock was, how would you know if his recent ancestors were from Senegal, Paupa New Guinea, Egypt, or the Australian Outback? Those groups aren’t particularly biologically similar. So his physical appearance doesn’t really give you much information, does it? If it weren’t for the context of a popular entertainer in the US the concept of race wouldn’t work. It’s almost as if the concept of race is a social construct, with little underlying basis in biology. So, what made Chris Rock dark and Paris Hilton light? What factors went into that? If you answer “no factors” you win, provided that there are, in fact, no factors. See, your argument is based on the notion that scientists cannot adequate define race, therefore “race” does not exist. I argue that whatever term you want to put on “race”, environmental factors in our ancestors have produced visible, and some not-so-visible differences in humankind globally. Whether there are dark people in Senegal _and_ the Australian Outback is irrelevant. Evolution has simply made them similarly darker while making those with Finnish ancestry lighter. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/366 "2011-04-07T18:20:28Z")
> [@A\_Forest\_Lady](#): > > So, what made Chris Rock dark and Paris Hilton light? What factors went into that? If you answer “no factors” you win, provided that there are, in fact, no factors. See, your argument is based on the notion that scientists cannot adequate define race, therefore “race” does not exist. I argue that whatever term you want to put on “race”, environmental factors in our ancestors have produced visible, and some not-so-visible differences in humankind globally. Whether there are dark people in Senegal _and_ the Australian Outback is irrelevant. Evolution has simply made them similarly darker while making those with Finnish ancestry lighter. And what about the continuum of people who live between Finland and Senegal? Can you tell me where you draw the boundary between white people and black people? And to keep things simple, let’s just focus on the area that we call Europe, the Middle East and Africa. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/367 "2011-04-07T18:41:33Z")
> [@A\_Forest\_Lady](#): > > Well, you missed the analogy. Pluto might not fit the criteria for planethood, but it’s still very much there Yes, very much out there, but not really a planet. > [@A\_Forest\_Lady](#): > > I agree that the definition of “race” does not fit the most recent scientific criteria. But I also know that when I look at Paris Hilton, I can bet that most of her ancesters had a significant period of evolution in Europe, whereas Chris Rock had more ancesters evoling for a longer period in Africa. Am I absolutely 100% certain of this? No. But if you’re foolish enough to put money on it, I’m game. After all, American slavery was based on the difference. Or maybe there’s a new definition for “slavery” too. 🙂 Actually there was, Slavery was not related to skin color until modern times when the peculiar institution made it a short hand for what a slave (and according to the defenders of that institution in America, the inferior people) was supposed to be. Slavs (where the word slave comes from as many Slavs in ancient times were sold to) were almost for sure not dark skinned. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/368 "2011-04-07T18:49:34Z")
Not to mention that many slaves in the US, like Sally Hemmings, were more white than black (she had 3 white grandparents, and one black grandparent). Even today, someone like Tiger Woods is considered black, when he’s more Asian (Thai) than anything else. His father was maybe 50% black, but also part white and part Native American. Part of the problem we Europeans have in dealing with race is the “they all look alike” syndrome that permeates a European view of the world. Spend any time in Africa, and it’s obvious there are many different ethnic groups that, while they might all have dark skin, don’t really look much like each other at all. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/369 "2011-04-07T19:04:26Z")
> [@A\_Forest\_Lady](#): > > I argue that whatever term you want to put on “race”, environmental factors in our ancestors have produced visible, and some not-so-visible differences in humankind globally. Whether there are dark people in Senegal _and_ the Australian Outback is irrelevant. Then what is the point of grouping them together? I think this is the crux of the discussion. If the only thing that connects these two groups is that they didn’t move away from sunny places (light skin is the mutation, not dark skin) then what is the point in calling them a “race”? It’s certainly not evolutionary heritage since they don’t share that except in an extremely basic way. The person from Senegal may be closer biologically to someone from Greece, but they would never be grouped as such under any racial scheme based on superficial characteristics like skin tone. Height is even easier to determine superficially than skin tone and definitely has environmental factors. Why not base your racial characterizations on that? ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/370 "2011-04-07T21:11:07Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > You’d end up saying that someone of the black race could be from any one of a dozen fairly well defined but unrelated populations, or possibly just someone with a skin coloration gene from one or more ancestors, or someone with a random mutation. In what context is that useful? Very very few, if any. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/371 "2011-04-07T21:11:13Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Then what is the point of grouping them together? I think this is the crux of the discussion. If the only thing that connects these two groups is that they didn’t move away from sunny places (light skin is the mutation, not dark skin) then what is the point in calling them a “race”? It’s certainly not evolutionary heritage since they don’t share that except in an extremely basic way. The person from Senegal may be closer biologically to someone from Greece, but they would never be grouped as such under any racial scheme based on superficial characteristics like skin tone. > > Height is even easier to determine superficially than skin tone and definitely has environmental factors. Why not base your racial characterizations on that? I provided you with some reasons here [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13659210&postcount=305) and [here](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb025007) Also, you seem to think you’re just looking at skin colour. There is a reasonable explanation here: > [@](#): > > But this is not true when the features are taken together. Certain skin colors tend to go with certain kinds of eyes, noses, skulls and bodies. When we glance at a stranger’s face we use those associations to infer what continent, or even what country, he or his ancestors came from - and we usually get it right. To put it more abstractly, human physical variation is correlated; and correlations contain information… > > Genetic variants that aren’t written on our faces, but that can be detected only in the genome, show similar correlations. It is these correlations that Dr. Lewontin seems to have ignored. In essence, he looked at one gene at a time and failed to see races. But if many - a few hundred - variable genes are considered simultaneously, then it is very easy to do so. Indeed, a 2002 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Stanford showed that if a sample of people from around the world are sorted by computer into five groups on the basis of genetic similarity, the groups that emerge are native to Europe, East Asia, Africa, America and Australasia - more or less the major races of traditional anthropology… > > Yet there is nothing very fundamental about the concept of the major continental races; they’re just the easiest way to divide things up. Study enough genes in enough people and one could sort the world’s population into 10, 100, perhaps 1,000 groups, each located somewhere on the map. This has not yet been done with any precision, but it will be. Soon it may be possible to identify your ancestors not merely as African or European, but Ibo or Yoruba, perhaps even Celt or Castilian, or all of the above. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html?\_r=1&pagewanted=2](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2) ---
**Author:** ![A\_Forest\_Lady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/da6949/32.png) [@A\_Forest\_Lady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Forest_Lady)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/372 "2011-04-07T22:05:21Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Then what is the point of grouping them together? I think this is the crux of the discussion. If the only thing that connects these two groups is that they didn’t move away from sunny places (light skin is the mutation, not dark skin) then what is the point in calling them a “race”? It’s certainly not evolutionary heritage since they don’t share that except in an extremely basic way. The person from Senegal may be closer biologically to someone from Greece, but they would never be grouped as such under any racial scheme based on superficial characteristics like skin tone. > > Height is even easier to determine superficially than skin tone and definitely has environmental factors. Why not base your racial characterizations on that? Height? With that logic, why not classify animals by the number of legs? See, there are going to be far more similarities than differences, but it’s the differences that, well, make the difference. But getting back to height, height could in fact be part of it. If Asians are in fact smaller on average than those people of European descent, then height is possibly a byproduct of evolution. So no, it isn’t just about skin color. Simply, it’s about differences in people due to enviromental differences that evolved over many tens thousands of years. I’ll go back to my original point, and that is there are two different discussions that are being intertwined and confused with each other. One is that the term “race” cannot be applied to humans because of the many complications of classification. And I agree with that, the human specie has become too complicated an animal to classify by races. “Race” has become a layman’s term, at best. The other discussion has to do with the process that made those people who have a long ancestrial line in Japan (for example) different from those who have a long ancestrial line in Ethiopia (for example). The argument I’m getting seems to be that there are no differences whatsoever. None. Obviously that isn’t true. The other argument I’m getting is that there are “dark” and “Asian” people who have evolved in other regions besides Japan and Ethiopia. I agree. So what? It’s still evolution at work. But getting back to the Japanese and the Ethiopians, if their physical differences does not constitute “race”, then what do you want to call it? While I’ve got my fingers limber, I’ll continue… I’ve heard that “race” is a social construct. Yes, so is Homo sapien sapien. So is the state of Kansas. “Social construct”… that sounds good but it doesn’t really mean anything. I’ve heard that “there are more differences within a race than between two races”. Okay, for the sake of discussion we’ll cheat and say that races in humans do exist. There are brilliant, strong, healthy people who are deemed “white”. There are also severely deformed, chronically ill “white” people. The genetic differences between the two could be relatively large. In fact, the differences could easily be greater than the average differences between two “races”. So the original statement is true. But again, we’re talking about regional similarities through evolution. So obviously the statement is really pointless. I’ll finish by saying that I’m an ardent opponent to any form of racism. But I don’t think it does our (U.S.) culture any good to simply say “race doesn’t exist” and then do a semantics tapdance to try to make it fly. It’s kind of a fun debate, but in the end it’s mostly a time wasting effort (assuming the idea is to battle racism) that could be better spent attacking the problem head-on. Race has too fierce a devil to fall for wordplay. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/373 "2011-04-07T22:09:50Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > I provided you with some reasons here [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13659210&postcount=305) and [here](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb025007) > > Also, you seem to think you’re just looking at skin colour. There is a reasonable explanation here: > > [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html?\_r=1&pagewanted=2](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2) Nope, not reasonable. > [@](#): > > A Racialized Medical Genomics: Shiny, Bright and Wrong > By Robert Wallace > > Armand Marie Leroi announces in his Times op-ed that race is biologically real (New York Times, March 14, 2005). The crusty trope that race is a social artifact crumbles in the face of the bright new genomics, he asserts. Genetic variation may be greater within groups than between groups, as Richard Lewontin pointed out back in the dark ages of the 1970s, but only for single genes. Taken together, across genetic loci allelic distributions correlate into clusters long recognized as the five races: European, East Asian, African, Amerindian, and Australasian. So suck it up, constructionists, race is biologically intrinsic. > > Moreover, get out of the way. The recognition that race is inherently biological, Leroi writes, can improve medical care, “as different races are prone to different diseases.” African Americans, for example, suffer greater prevalences of heart disease and prostate cancer. Even if such differences arise from socioeconomic causes, Leroi argues, we should–ignoring the man behind the curtain–embrace geneticists’ very important mission, “searching for racial differences in the frequencies of genetic variants that cause diseases.” > > And yet much of Leroi’s article unravels his own argument. Leroi takes population geneticists to task for caving into political correctness by investigating “ethnic groups,” a euphemism that conflates human differences across scale. Never mind that population geneticists prefer the term less out of deference to present sensibilities than to the data themselves. Work by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza’s group (Cavalli-Sforza 2001, Underhill 2003), among others, show human history–back to our species’ origins–to be marked by layers of migration sweeping back and forth across the continents, gurgling here and there into local pools of idiosyncratic admixture. While the resulting genetic frequencies do not embody a homogenous mush, neither does a stark black and white favored by the new racialists result. Instead, genetic maps are marked by fine-scaled and functionally important population gradients. > > Leroi recognizes these complications, but still asks us to ignore them in favor of, ironically enough, a social construct. Just as it is difficult to talk of the world’s physical topography in terms of multiple contour lines and elevations and easier to do so in general terms, such as grouping a variety of tall peaks as “mountain ranges,” “so, too, it is with the genetic topography of our species.” Grouping the billion people of European descent together as a race is easier, “a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly…about genetic rather than cultural or political differences.” So, it would appear that bleaching out complications when discussing human variation makes life easier. Of course, as those dastardly social constructionists are apt to ask, easier for whom? > > For one, according to Leroi, the pharmaceutical companies. As race can affect medical treatment, “many new drugs are now labeled with warnings that they may not work in some ethnic or racial groups.” That such effects need not be predominantly biological in origin apparently matters little. Leroi admits differences among races arise from population averages alone. But as we are unlikely to have individuals’ genomes sequenced any time soon, and presumably won’t be able to individualize medical treatment that way, we’ll just have to accept a racialized medical genetics. Nothing like an argument of expediency to convince a crowd. The pharmaceutical companies are doing it, so get with it, baby! > [@](#): > > Leroi and the new racialists are trying to get around population thinking by correlating aggregations across loci, as a set of emergent essentialisms. Funny, though, that within the very medical framework they are attempting to define, as they live by the sword of correlation, so must they die by that sword. When we correlate putative racial continua across diseases, the same groups are time and again imputed the most susceptible alleles. African Americans suffer not only greater prevalence of and/or lesser survivorship from heart disease (Andrews et al. 2001) and prostate cancer (Reddy et al. 2003), as Leroi notes, but the same for kidney cancer (Vaishampayan et al. 2003), breast cancer (Ghafoor et al. 2003), cervical cancer (Jemal et al. 2004), oral cancers (Shavers et al. 2003), lung cancer (Stellman et al. 2003), colorectal cancer (Baquet and Commiskey 1999), pancreatic cancer (Silverman et al. 2003), endometrical cancer (Randall and Armstrong 2003), lymphomas (Briggs et al. 2003), tooth loss (Gilbert et al. 2003), obesity and diabetes (Cossrow and Faulkner 2004), chronic asthma (Boudreaux et al. 2003), Lupus nephritis (Lea 2002), HIV (Torian et al. 2002), hepatitis B and syphilis (Schrag et al. 2003), gonorrhea (Dombrowski et al. 2004), arthritis (Dunlop et al. 2001), stroke (Ruland and Gorelick 2005), and so on. > > Are we to assume that African Americans and other minority groups carry the most susceptible alleles for every one of these diseases? Can we pretend that the vagaries of mutational chance just happened to deal African Americans the greatest susceptibilities for every ailment on our awful list? While there are indeed well-documented examples of illness with important genetic roots, for a framework addressing health disparities we’d exert greater impact by placing our attention back on the man behind the curtain. Racism and other sources of population-level stress have, by way of their emotional and material deprivations, definitional effect on individuals as early as conception, as well as on the populations of which they are a part. Racism shapes ontogeny, regardless of allelic frequencies. And it’s to that relationship and its overdetermination of the correlation of diseases where research and social action need to be directed. > > For most geneticists, then, there appear two unpleasant paths. One involves accepting population disparities in health outcomes are largely driven by social constructs such as racism, rendering genetics’ role ancillary. A second path, the one Leroi has taken, means pushing back and declaring race genetic. Given the country’s political economy this second one may indeed be the road many will choose, a choice for which it is fast becoming apparent they will be greatly rewarded. > > There may be a third path. Biologists and social scientists can work together under the umbrella of history. Health outcomes emerge out of layers of historical processes–some ancient, others more immediate. While it may jump to mind that evolutionary processes are the ancient ones, evolution generates novelty daily, as HIV quasispecies show. Human social processes, on the other hand, have been operating in one form or another since the origin of the species, even as they have undergone fundamental changes across history. So there are likely interactions occurring across scales of biocultural organization worth study by researchers of a variety of disciplines. > > In that context social scientists can comfortably assimilate the idea that genes exist and may have effect on an individual’s pathologies. Biologists, in turn, should come to terms with public health data that clearly indicate the means by which to incur the greatest impact on population health involve altering social circumstances, with dividends for all. End racist practices, end economic exploitation, and everybody’s health improves. For the benefit of those who don’t believe it we should run the experiment for a few generations and see what results. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/374 "2011-04-07T22:19:38Z")
> [@A\_Forest\_Lady](#): > > I’ll finish by saying that I’m an ardent opponent to any form of racism. But I don’t think it does our (U.S.) culture any good to simply say “race doesn’t exist” and then do a semantics tapdance to try to make it fly. The thing is, most of the biologists and anthropologists and sociologists accept that, while it is ok to dumb down concepts for regular folks to gain understanding, the reality is that in the end lines like the one here are an attempt to justify ignorance. > **[Retired Site | PBS](https://www.pbs.org/retired-site/)** > > This Content is No Longer Available > [@](#): > > TEN THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT RACE > > Our eyes tell us that people look different. No one has trouble distinguishing a Czech from a Chinese. But what do those differences mean? Are they biological? Has race always been with us? How does race affect people today? > > There’s less - and more - to race than meets the eye: > > 1. Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn’t even have the word ‘race’ until it turns up in 1508 in a poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings. > > 2. Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait or even gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race. > > 3. Human subspecies don’t exist. Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven’t been around long enough or isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appearances, we are one of the most similar of all species. > > 4. Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone’s skin color doesn’t necessarily tell you anything else about him or her. > > 5. Most variation is within, not between, “races.” Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian. > [@A\_Forest\_Lady](#): > > It’s kind of a fun debate, but in the end it’s mostly a time wasting effort (assuming the idea is to battle racism) that could be better spent attacking the problem head-on. Race has too fierce a devil to fall for wordplay. I wish that was the case, what I have seen on several threads already is that indeed wordplay is the tool that many racists and followers of crackpot ideas are using nowadays. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/375 "2011-04-07T22:31:36Z")
> [@A\_Forest\_Lady](#): > > I’ll finish by saying that I’m an ardent opponent to any form of racism. But I don’t think it does our (U.S.) culture any good to simply say “race doesn’t exist” and then do a semantics tapdance to try to make it fly. It’s kind of a fun debate, but in the end it’s mostly a time wasting effort (assuming the idea is to battle racism) that could be better spent attacking the problem head-on. Race has too fierce a devil to fall for wordplay. No one is saying race doesn’t exist. It exists, as a social construct. That doesn’t make it any less real, it just makes it not scientific. We made it up because we like to categorize things, but when we try to pin it down in a biological manner, it proves itself illusive. You can try to chop up a continuum, but you shouldn’t pretend that your chopped-up segments have any special significance. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/376 "2011-04-07T22:35:48Z")
> [@A\_Forest\_Lady](#): > > The other discussion has to do with the process that made those people who have a long ancestrial line in Japan (for example) different from those who have a long ancestrial line in Ethiopia (for example). The argument I’m getting seems to be that there are no differences whatsoever. None. Find someone who has claimed that in this thread. Everyone agrees that thre are differences in populations that have been geographically isolated to some degree. This is a strawman. > [@](#): > > The other argument I’m getting is that there are “dark” and “Asian” people who have evolved in other regions besides Japan and Ethiopia. I agree. So what? It’s still evolution at work. And so what? The same can be said about all human traits. The fact that there are populations that are taller than average all around the globe doesn’t make height a characteristic of any particular “race.” What’s the point of grouping Australian Aborigines and Ethiopians together simply because of skin color when they are not especially closely related? Isn’t that the whole point of the term? > [@](#): > > But getting back to the Japanese and the Ethiopians, if their physical differences does not constitute “race”, then what do you want to call it? Populations. That’s the term biologists use. If you want to claim that populations is just another word for race then fine, but that’s not how people use race. If you wanted to go with that definition for race there would be dozens if not 100’s of races, and you might find the divisions are much more complex and varied then you imagine. And it doesn’t match the way biologists use the term race so there’s really no point in making that switch. > [@](#): > > While I’ve got my fingers limber, I’ll continue… I’ve heard that “race” is a social construct. Yes, so is Homo sapien sapien. So is the state of Kansas. “Social construct”… that sounds good but it doesn’t really mean anything. I can show you biological definition of human based on DNA. I can show you the physical boundaries of the state of Kansas. Show me the boundaries of any race definition and we’ll talk. No one has ever come up with a definition that has withstood even the most cursory critical examination. That is why race is a social construct. > [@](#): > > I’ll finish by saying that I’m an ardent opponent to any form of racism. But I don’t think it does our (U.S.) culture any good to simply say “race doesn’t exist” and then do a semantics tapdance to try to make it fly. Strawman. No one says race doesn’t exist. What people are saying in this thread is that race, as a biological system for classifying humans, doesn’t exist. On Preview - **John Mace** and **GIGObuster** beat me to all the good points. ---
**Author:** ![A\_Forest\_Lady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/da6949/32.png) [@A\_Forest\_Lady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Forest_Lady)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/377 "2011-04-07T22:54:33Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > I provided you with some reasons here [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13659210&postcount=305) and [here](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb025007) > > Also, you seem to think you’re just looking at skin colour. There is a reasonable explanation here: > > [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html?\_r=1&pagewanted=2](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2) I read the NY Times piece and though it’s mostly matter-of-fact in its approach, I do get a chuckle out of the idea that a European-American (for example) who has been in the U.S. for two hundred years could theoretically use DNA to locate some single European origin of his forefathers. The humor has to do with all the various European immigration into the U.S. and all the many generations of ancestors over a two hundred year period. The number of “grandparents” grow exponentially with each previous generation. One European location can be picked out (sort of) but there are literally hundreds more. I think if you go back eight generations you’ll have over 500 great (x8) grandparents. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/378 "2011-04-07T22:55:31Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Find someone who has claimed that in this thread. Everyone agrees that thre are differences in populations that have been geographically isolated to some degree. This is a strawman. > And so what? The same can be said about all human traits. The fact that there are populations that are taller than average all around the globe doesn’t make height a characteristic of any particular “race.” What’s the point of grouping Australian Aborigines and Ethiopians together simply because of skin color when they are not especially closely related? Isn’t that the whole point of the term? > . Except that aborigines and ethiopians are not grouped together. Go back and read my responses above. You still seem to think that you’re just looking at skin colour. Look at the NY Times editorial I linked [above](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html). Maybe even read a paper which discusses group categorization in [biomedical research](http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007). ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/379 "2011-04-07T23:03:25Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait or even gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race. Right, but as the biological definition indicates - there are heritable sets of features and traits. These allow forensic anthropologists to identify race from a set of skeletal features. This is why when you look at over 1000 loci people fall into identifiable clusters. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone’s skin color doesn’t necessarily tell you anything else about him or her. Race differences reflect ancestral differences so there are different correlations of genes - not just a single [gene](http://www.google.co.nz/url?q=http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/01/race-current-consensus.php&sa=U&ei=qEKeTaryOIGitgee3In1Ag&ved=0CBIQFjAB&sig2=KnUw2WgOk_bKBegkiKASag&usg=AFQjCNGIcnll3PGjjfEbZReiZZC4SrvSiA). > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Most variation is within, not between, “races.” Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian. . Not true. Two random Koreans would [never](http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/genetics;176/1/351) be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian. Genetics, Vol. 176, 351-359, May 2007, ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/380 "2011-04-07T23:05:12Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Except that aborigines and ethiopians are not grouped together. Go back and read my responses above. You still seem to think that you’re just looking at skin colour. Look at the NY Times editorial I linked [above](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html). Maybe even read a paper which discusses group categorization in [biomedical research](http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007). I did forget to link to the reply to that NY times editorial. > **[Retired Site | PBS](https://www.pbs.org/retired-site/)** > > This Content is No Longer Available Suffice to say, the writer of that editorial said that “The idea that human races are only social constructs has been the consensus for at least 30 years. But now, perhaps, that is about to change”, Not much, sorry. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007.md?page=20)