# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/61 "2011-04-03T21:59:13Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Yes, but remember the OP, IMHO if you do want to press the issue, just drop the use of the “biological” part in a different thread. Sorry, I’ve lost track of what you’re saying. ---
**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 3, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/62 "2011-04-03T22:06:31Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Sorry, I’ve lost track of what you’re saying. Well the OP refer to “Is there such a biological thing as a racial group?” The answer from biology is: [No](http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-07.htm). Now, some would want to use race divisions in other settings, I don’t see much of a problem there, the problem is that once again, when some people get the wrong conclusions and attempt to impose their political solutions. ---
**Author:** ![RaleighRally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@RaleighRally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaleighRally)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/63 "2011-04-03T22:07:08Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > What the heck are you talking about? The “third world” is not suffering from any particular glut of genetic disease. I imagine some malaria drugs and improved sanitation infrastructure would go a long ways, however. So you don’t see a problem with new medications being tested primarily on whites? It seems like you rather protect non-whites from stereotypes than diseases. ---
**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 3, 2011, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/64 "2011-04-03T22:10:14Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And here is what you missed quoting: One thing non-biologists don’t understand is that if you’re going to talk about a taxonomic classification below the species level, you’re talking about subspecies. That’s what a “race” is, in scientific terms. And a subspecies is distinguished by clear, morphological differences and genetic isolation. Populations that could interbreed successfully if they weren’t prevented from doing so by (usually) some physical barrier. That’s not us. We’re not the green frogs of species X in one river that don’t interbreed with the green and red frogs of species X in the other river. ---
**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 3, 2011, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/65 "2011-04-03T22:15:18Z")
> [@RaleighRally](#): > > So you don’t see a problem with new medications being tested primarily on whites? It seems like you rather protect non-whites from stereotypes than diseases. There is a certain problem there, but it’s not like there’s some “black medicine” for Africans since there is more genetic diversity in Africa than there is in the all the rest of the world. Even if they all look alike to some people. IOW, just because you find some sort of medicine that is particularly effective with one population of Africans, that wouldn’t make it effective with other groups. Not to mention that much of the 3rd world is not in Africa, and consists of genetically diverse populations, and the best way to improve the health of those in the 3rd world isn’t through some “race-based medicine”, but by simple preventative measures like having clean water, healthy food, mosquito nets, and vaccines that work even in the 3rd world as well as they in the 1st. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/66 "2011-04-03T22:17:03Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > That definition is (I actually should say “those definitions are”) useless. Race, according to that cite, can mean almost anything. > > No one disputes that you can’t divide humans into certain groups based on physical or genetic traits. It’s just that there isn’t any one objective way to do it, and any system that divides people up more finely is going to be more precise than one that doesn’t. > Well, yeah. That’s what we call “populations”, and there are any number of such “barriers” that can be used to divide people up into any number of different groups. You can say this about many things in nature. Whenever you continuously distributed variables you get boundary issues. Humans perceive a phenomenon, name it and categorize it according to some Whenever you try to categorize using some taxonomical rules. It doesn’t mean those categories are meaningless or lack empirical referents. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/67 "2011-04-03T22:19:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Populations that could interbreed successfully if they weren’t prevented from doing so by (usually) some physical barrier. > > That’s not us. We’re not the green frogs of species X in one river that don’t interbreed with the green and red frogs of species X in the other river. Again, look at the Rosenberg paper above for why the clusters arose. They arose because of relative isolation due to geographic separation. ---
**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 3, 2011, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/68 "2011-04-03T22:21:11Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > You can say this about many things in nature. Whenever you continuously distributed variables you get boundary issues. Humans perceive a phenomenon, name it and categorize it according to some Whenever you try to categorize using some taxonomical rules. It doesn’t mean those categories are meaningless or lack empirical referents. Except that when biologists group animal populations into subspecies, they do it on the basis that there isn’t a continuum. They do so when there is an abrupt change in morphology and very little, if any, gene flow. Why don’t you tell us where these physical barriers are from humans and where these genetically isolated populations are. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/69 "2011-04-03T22:38:55Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Except that when biologists group animal populations into subspecies, they do it on the basis that there isn’t a continuum. They do so when there is an abrupt change in morphology and very little, if any, gene flow. > > Why don’t you tell us where these physical barriers are from humans and where these genetically isolated populations are. Well, for thousands of years, there was a barrier between the old world and the new world, and a barrier between Hawaii and most places, and a barrier between Australia and most places. Are you saying that race was a meaningful biological term in the year 1400 AD but isn’t anymore? ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/70 "2011-04-03T22:42:47Z")
> [@Hank\_Beecher](#): > > Who’s to say that if an alien life form even had what we call intelligence, and that it then conceived of the world in the same object oriented manner in which we do, that it would not put humans in 6 billion and some different categories along a male-female continuum? Well, obviously these hypothetical aliens think in a vaguely humanly comprehensible fashion, that’s the point of the thought exercise. And while it’s certainly true that male and female are not a 100% clearcut dichotomy, part of being intelligent is knowing when to put things into groups and when not to… in fact that’s a very key underlying point of this entire thread. Are you seriously claiming that “male” and “female” are not objectively useful categories for dividing humans? (Not stating that every single human can fit easily into one of them, of course.) ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/71 "2011-04-03T22:50:11Z")
[quote=“John\_Mace, post:46, topic:577007”] The aliens would be much more objective and would realize that “pureblooded” Native Americans in Alaska are genetically distinct from “pureblooded” Native Americans in Patagonia or Brazil. [/'quote] True. But are Native Americans in (present day) Mexico more closely related to native Americans in Texas than they are to Vikings or Australian Aborigines? If so, then you have a hierarchical group organization (I want to say “taxonomy” but I might be using that word wrong), in which case it can be useful to look at different levels of that hierarchical chart at different times, and different levels will have different numbers of groupings. Which doesn’t mean that you can (or should) pick one and say “ahh, the one and only one actual number of meaningful groupings of humans is n”, but not should you claim that it’s never useful or valid or accurate or meaningful to have some fixed n and group people into n gropus. > [@](#): > > They’d conclude that there is considerable variation between different populations of humans, but that it’s clinal in nature, and it’s impossible to draw objective boundaries between them. Which still doesn’t mean that grouping is meaningless. It’s very very difficult if not impossible to draw objective boundaries between male and female, but we use them all the time. There are times when it’s useful/meaningful to categorize things, and times when it’s not, but “some things are right on the boundary between the two proposed categories” does not render the proposed categorization meaningless. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/72 "2011-04-03T22:51:15Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > Anthropologists don’t usually use traditional “European/Asian/African” groupings not because those groups aren’t distinct populations, but because they’re often the wrong _level of analysis_ for their academic work, which usually involves finer gradations and detailed study of subpopulations - like say comparing two Polynesian tribes. Much in the same way that an engineer wouldn’t use quantum dynamics to model an airplane wing, or a biologist wouldn’t use the animal vs. plant dichotomy to classify species of bacteria. Doesn’t mean those concepts do not describe reality, or even that they’re useless in scientific research. Precisely the point I’m trying to make. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/73 "2011-04-03T22:54:33Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Of course, if you want to make your case for the existence of biological races, go ahead. How many are there and where do you draw the lines? And why are those lines better than another set of lines that divide humans even further? That’s like asking a scientist who studies light how many colors there are, where the boundaries are between them, and why one way to count colors is better than another. There are obviously a really large number of colors… but it’s very useful to talk about “red things”, rather than talking about stopsign-colored-things and my-blood-colored-things and your-blood-colored-things, etc. And of course sometimes it’s NOT useful to talk about red things… I’m sure that fashion designers would sneer if I misidentified crimson as red, or what have you. That doesn’t make “red” a meaningless concept, or even an arbitrary concept. (That is, it’s somewhat arbitrary what boundaries we put around red, but all of the shades that we call red are related to each other in a scientifically describable way.) ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/74 "2011-04-03T22:54:36Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > The OP asks about “biological” races. And unless you are calling most biologists “idiots”, it would seem to me that you’d want to know what actual biologists think about their subject. And the vast consensus is that biological races do not exist. > > You can go ahead and classify people any way you want. But you can’t do it in a biologically objective way. You might as well talk about tall races or short races, hairy races or not-so-hairy races. But there isn’t any one scientifically objective way to divide populations up biologically. > > We are one large interbreeding population with genes flowing in and out of any subgroup you can imagine. The mistake you (and a lot of people in this thread) are making is in thinking that a race is either a biologically objective category or doesn’t exist. It could also be a biologically subjective category (to which people are assigned or not based on objective factors). In that way, one could speak of any number of races they felt was interesting to speak about, from 1 (all humans are the same race) to the number of humans that have ever existed (all humans are their own race). ---
**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 3, 2011, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/75 "2011-04-03T23:00:27Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Well, for thousands of years, there was a barrier between the old world and the new world, and a barrier between Hawaii and most places, and a barrier between Australia and most places. Are you saying that race was a meaningful biological term in the year 1400 AD but isn’t anymore? Well, seeing that my ancestors mixed so well that Mestizos are the majority in many Latin American nations, the human race clearly had not even drifted enough in biological terms to prevent that mixing. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/76 "2011-04-03T23:02:17Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Except that when biologists group animal populations into subspecies, they do it on the basis that there isn’t a continuum. They do so when there is an abrupt change in morphology and very little, if any, gene flow. > > Why don’t you tell us where these physical barriers are from humans and where these genetically isolated populations are. If you want to use that criteria, then that would still work: > [@](#): > > Before the advent of conservation biology and modern phylogenetics, subspecies were normally delineated by morphological characteristics. The “seventy-five percent rule” goes back to 1949, stating that subspecies classification is merited if at least 75% of individuals can be correctly assigned to their group by inspection.[74] This rule isn’t in common use today, but the importance of genetically-based morphological differences is still apparent in many recent phylogenetic studies. Some biologists argue that a 70 or 75 percent rule should still be a standard criterion in taxonomy, as applied to individuals outside of hybrid zones where the ranges of subspecies overlap.[75] > > On the basis of morphology, we can compare the traditional human races (as well as some minor races) to chimpanzee subspecies. Individuals of the former can be correctly assigned at much greater than 75% accuracy,[76] while the latter are morphologically indistinct, and difficult or impossible to classify when raised in captivity.[77,78] > … > > Human FST values of 12-15% are typical not just for microsatellites, but also for classical protein polymorphisms,[102] autosomal RFLPs[103] and Alu insertions.[104] Values for mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome are substantially higher. It would seem, then, that the level of genetic differentiation among human populations is not especially small, and in fact is entirely adequate for race designation, particularly when coupled with consistent morphological differences. [http://www.goodrumj.com/RFaqHTML.html](http://www.goodrumj.com/RFaqHTML.html) ---
**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 3, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/77 "2011-04-03T23:03:45Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Well, for thousands of years, there was a barrier between the old world and the new world, and a barrier between Hawaii and most places, and a barrier between Australia and most places. Are you saying that race was a meaningful biological term in the year 1400 AD but isn’t anymore? Almost, but not quite. It takes time for a population isolate to evolve distinct morphological differences. I think that any ET scientist observing humans over the last 50k years or so would not want to classify and reclassify humans into subspecies every time we migrated to a new continent. There would be a recognition that any genetic isolation that may prop up temporarily is just that-- a temporary situation and not a reflection of what the population is doing over time frames that are relatively short in evolutionary terms. Plus, the morphological differences you see just aren’t that great between the populations you mention and other populations. A better case might be made for Neanderthals, which were genetically isolated from modern humans for at least 500k years, were morphologically distinct, and it does appear now that we could interbreed once the physical barrier was broken. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/78 "2011-04-03T23:07:20Z")
> [@RaleighRally](#): > > So you don’t see a problem with new medications being tested primarily on whites? It seems like you rather protect non-whites from stereotypes than diseases. You’re kind of flying off on a tangent here. If racially targeted medicine is found to be useful, go for it. I just don’t know what any of that has to do with “the third world.” They’ve got enough going on dealing with infectious disease (which can often be cured or prevented pretty easily), and I’m not following how whatever you are talking about it going to help much at this point. ---
**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 3, 2011, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/79 "2011-04-03T23:10:35Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > The mistake you (and a lot of people in this thread) are making is in thinking that a race is either a biologically objective category or doesn’t exist. It could also be a biologically subjective category (to which people are assigned or not based on objective factors). > > In that way, one could speak of any number of races they felt was interesting to speak about, from 1 (all humans are the same race) to the number of humans that have ever existed (all humans are their own race). Nope. Never said that. Race absolutely does exists as a social construct. But note the title of this thread. Race is very much like language, and not for nothing, either, since language and ethnicity are often correlated. I can tell when someone is speaking Russian or someone is speaking French just like I can tell when some is native to Beijing and someone is native to Berlin (native in the sense of having ancestors from there for many generations). But we can’t agree on just how many languages there are and when a dialect becomes a language because there are too many instances when a continuum exists. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/80 "2011-04-03T23:13:42Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Nope. Never said that. Race absolutely does exists as a social construct. Just because “race” is a subjective category doesn’t make it “a social construct” as opposed to something that exists “in biology.” It’s a subjective category based on biological factors, so it “exists in biology.” Also, it’s perfectly OK for different people to use a different number of races. That doesn’t make the race concept useless or something that doesn’t exist in biology. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007.md?page=5)