# 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:** 8
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/141 "2011-04-04T03:29:56Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Take it up with Rand Rover. His position is that there is nothing wrong with applying the word “race” to any of several different ways to categorize, lump, or split humanity. In the real world, the use of the word “race” conjures up the specific notions of “Caucasian,” “Negro,” and “Mongoloid” or “white” and “all those others.” If there is supposed to be some reality to “race” in regards to humanity, then throwing the word around to identify different groups at different levels of division is not accurate and if there is no such legitimate category in biology, then claiming that we can use the word to mean different things to different people when the reality is that it will invoke a specific (erroneous) meaning is dishonest. > Those are the options. I did not make the argument, Rand Rover did, so you need to be addressing him. I think people realise that those broad categories exist, but also that within those groups you get more specific populations (ie. Japanese, Korean, Chinese etc within the East Asian group, Swede, vs Italian in the caucasion group, or west african, east african, yoruba, bantu, etc in the african group). ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/142 "2011-04-04T04:25:05Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Is there such an astronomical thing as a “planet”? > > Here’s a quote from the wikipedia entry on Pluto: > > So, a “planet” is a category of objects with subjective criteria. I guess John Mace and orcenio et al would say “the concept of a planet is not scientific, it’s only a social construct. Therefore, scientists can’t study planets.” Of course scientists can study individual planets, but as a class distinct from sub-planetary bodies, you’re right. There’s pretty much nothing to study about planets. There’s lots of interesting things to study about bodies too small to sustain fusion reactions. There’s lots of interesting things to study about bodies massive enough that their gravitational fields overwhelm the structure of the matter they’re comprised of (i.e., squish themselves into spheres). The problem is some objects within these two bounds are planets, and some are dwarf planets, and some are moons, and some are asteroids. And there’s really nothing you can say about planets as a group that’s specifically true of all and only planets. You might suggest that the additional criterion “have swept their orbit clean” distinguishes planets, but that feature is historical happenstance. Is Neptune not a planet because Pluto’s orbit crosses Neptune’s? Would Jupiter cease to be a planet if there were asteroids parked at the Jovian LeGrange Points? It’s actually quite analogous to racial categories. Planet is an arbitrary and scientifically nearly useless category. It’s only real currency is due to our history of giving it weight. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/143 "2011-04-04T05:26:49Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > I think people realise that those broad categories exist… No, people believe that they exist. Objectively such categories do not exist. People from India are almost all Caucasoid, despite hundreds of millions of them [looking like this](http://southasia.oneworld.net/ImageCatalog/human-rights-lanka.jpg). People from Indonesia are almost all Mongoloid, despite hundreds of millions of them[looking like this](http://www.easttimorwomen.org/timorese_women.jpg). And people from Ethiopia are nearly all Negroid, despite hundreds of thousands of them [looking like this](http://www.dukemrestaurant.com/Entertainment/Entertainers/Ethiopian_Music_Artist%5B1%5D.jpg). Now the simple fact is that the Caucasoids and Mongoloids in those pictures, which are typical images drawn from Google Image search, will be identified as Negroid far more often than the actual Negroids. And we are not talking small groups here. We are talking billions of people who simply do not fit into the broad categories that you claim exist. So no, those categories do not exist. People like you think they exist, you want them to exist, but objectively they do not exist at all. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/144 "2011-04-04T05:31:10Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > No, people believe that they exist. Objectively such categories do not exist. > > People from India are almost all Caucasoid, despite hundreds of millions of them [looking like this](http://southasia.oneworld.net/ImageCatalog/human-rights-lanka.jpg). People from Indonesia are almost all Mongoloid, despite hundreds of millions of them[looking like this](http://www.easttimorwomen.org/timorese_women.jpg). And people from Ethiopia are nearly all Negroid, despite hundreds of thousands of them [looking like this](http://www.dukemrestaurant.com/Entertainment/Entertainers/Ethiopian_Music_Artist%5B1%5D.jpg). > > Now the simple fact is that the Caucasoids and Mongoloids in those pictures, which are typical images drawn from Google Image search, will be identified as Negroid far more often than the actual Negroids. And we are not talking small groups here. We are talking billions of people who simply do not fit into the broad categories that you claim exist. > > So no, those categories do not exist. People like you think they exist, you want them to exist, but objectively they do not exist at all. The existence of mixed populations, such as ethiopians, does not mean those groups don’t exist, any more than some colours don’t exist because you can mix them. As Neil Risch comments: > [@](#): > > Caucasians include those with ancestry in Europe and West Asia, including the Indian subcontinent and Middle East; North Africans typically also are included in this group as their ancestry derives largely from the Middle East rather than sub-Saharan Africa. ‘Asians’ are those from eastern Asia including China, Indochina, Japan, the Philippines and Siberia. By contrast, Pacific Islanders are those with indigenous ancestry from Australia, Papua New Guinea, Melanesia and Micronesia, as well as other Pacific Island groups further east. Native Americans are those that have indigenous ancestry in North and South America. > > Populations that exist at the boundaries of these continental divisions are sometimes the most difficult to categorize simply. For example, east African groups, such as Ethiopians and Somalis, have great genetic resemblance to Caucasians and are clearly intermediate between sub-Saharan Africans and Caucasians [5]. The existence of such intermediate groups should not, however, overshadow the fact that the greatest genetic structure that exists in the human population occurs at the racial level. [http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007](http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007) ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/145 "2011-04-04T05:45:55Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > The existence of mixed populations, such as ethiopians, does not mean those groups don’t exist, any more than some colours don’t exist because you can mix them. :rolleyes: Ethiopioans, Indonesians and Indians are all mixed populations? Indonesia: population 2.3 billion India: population 1.2 billion Ethiopia: population 82 million And we also have to add in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia and other nations that have equally “mixed” populations. So that means that about 4 billion humans are part of mixed populations that do not fall into any of your racial groups. When over half of the entire species fails to map onto your racial grouping, that rather proves that the groupings have no objective existence. Thank you for demolishing your own nonsense argument. Of course if you want to play a game whereby I post pictures of random people from those regions and other regions, and you attempt to place them into one of your racial groupings, then let;s have at it. Because of course if you can not assign random Indonmalayans or Indics to any racial group at better than chance, then clearly they do not meet any racial grouping standard. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/146 "2011-04-04T05:50:11Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > I can only conclude at this point that you are willfully missing the point. The idea of a “race” is subjective, and that’s OK, it doesn’t mean the idea is “not science” or “only a social construct and not biological.” One can create as many races as they want to. Other people can then ask why not one less or one more. No, you are the one not getting the point. Your definition of race makes the question brought up in this thread unfalsifiable. If race doesn’t fit biological observations, we just change what we call a race. That is unscientific. Science is about obtaining objective truth through experimental conensus. For a statement to be scientific, it must be testable, and for it to be a scientific truth, it must have repeatedly been tested and confirmed. Your wishy-washy definition of race can’t fit because you haven’t defined the parameters. Sure, scientists can make arbitrary classifications and attempt to find a difference. But that isn’t race, and that isn’t science. Only the results are scientific. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/147 "2011-04-04T06:40:00Z")
I’m going to take another tack entirely. Suppose someone submits to a peer-reviewed journal of medicine or biology or something a paper whose thesis is that Asian Americans near a toxic waste dump in New Jersey are contracting Lyme Disease at a rate 10 times higher than other residents. Now, it’s entirely reasonable for the reviewing journal to have several responses… asking for methodology, double checking statistics, etc. They might ask for follow up investigations to see whether diet (which likely varies between ethnic groups) is involved. It’s also entirely reasonable for someone to say "well, we do know that Asian Americans comprise various different genetically distinct populations… do you have sufficient data to break down your findings between Chinese American, Japanese Americans, etc. However, what it seems that a lot of you in this thread are saying is that the peer reviewed journal should respond by saying “What is this ‘Asian Americans’ you speak of? That sounds like a ‘race’… and that has no biological meaning! And this is a serious journal of biology! You quack! You fraud! This isn’t the 1970’s! A pox on your paper, you mountebank!!!”. Which seems just ridiculous to me. But seems to me that either they should basically have that response, or else they’re tacitly admitting that race is in at least some contexts meaningful. (Or is the claim that Asian Americans are such a genetically diverse group that in fact no such data could ever reasonably be found?) And finally, because I love me some thought experiments, here are two more: (1) We take two distinct groups of Americans, and take DNA samples from a million of each of them. We send those samples to some lab with a big computer, but without any prior knowledge of the human genome, and say “here are a million from group A, and here are a million from group B” without telling them anything about the groups. They then sequence all the strands of DNA and run them through their big computer which looks for patterns. We then send them 1000 more, 500 from group A and 500 from group B, and ask them to see if any patterns they saw during the first big run will let them sort these 1000 as best they can. Now, I’m pretty sure we all agree there are some groupings that the lab ought to be able to do very very well on… men vs women, people with down syndrome vs people without down syndrome. And there are some that the lab ought to fail on entirely (ie, do no better than chance)… people whose SSN end with an odd digit vs people whose SSN end with an even digit, or 1 year olds vs 2 year olds. But what if group A was white Americans and group B was black Americans? Remember, I’m not saying that the lab needs to be able to succeed with 100% accuracy, just do better than chance. (2) We go back in time to the year 1400 and grab 100 infants each from two ethnic groups that are as ancestrally distinct as we possibly can, say Maori and some very isolated group of South Americans. We raise them in identical Skinnerian boxes. We then decide which traits are purely superficial ones that we already know are associated with race… skin color, height, facial hair distribution, nose shape, and so forth. We then come up with a battery of tests that test every other trait we can possibly think of… acuity of smell, pain tolerance, reflex speed, memory, ability to hold breath for a long time, etc. We run all those test on both groups. Will they perform, on the average, identically on all of them? Or will there be differences? And btw, please no responses of the sort “ahh, I see what you’re trying to prove with this thought experiment (jump ahead jump ahead jump ahead)…” I swear once again I have no hidden agenda here, just trying to raise some potentially thought-worthy points. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/148 "2011-04-04T08:04:24Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > I’m going to take another tack entirely. Suppose someone submits to a peer-reviewed journal of medicine or biology or something a paper whose thesis is that Asian Americans near a toxic waste dump in New Jersey are contracting Lyme Disease at a rate 10 times higher than other residents. > > Now, it’s entirely reasonable for the reviewing journal to have several responses… asking for methodology, double checking statistics, etc. They might ask for follow up investigations to see whether diet (which likely varies between ethnic groups) is involved. It’s also entirely reasonable for someone to say "well, we do know that Asian Americans comprise various different genetically distinct populations… do you have sufficient data to break down your findings between Chinese American, Japanese Americans, etc. > > However, what it seems that a lot of you in this thread are saying is that the peer reviewed journal should respond by saying “What is this ‘Asian Americans’ you speak of? That sounds like a ‘race’… and that has no biological meaning! And this is a serious journal of biology! You quack! You fraud! This isn’t the 1970’s! A pox on your paper, you mountebank!!!”. Which seems just ridiculous to me. But seems to me that either they should basically have that response, or else they’re tacitly admitting that race is in at least some contexts meaningful. (Or is the claim that Asian Americans are such a genetically diverse group that in fact no such data could ever reasonably be found?) The first thing you need to tell us is what you mean by “Asian American”. To help us understand what you mean by the term, tell us which of the following Asian nationalities is included: Israeli Saudi Arabian Turkish Nepalese Indian Sri Lankan Malaysian Indonesian Chinese Korean Then the next step is that you tell us how you assigned people to the group “Asian American”. Because if it was done subjectively then of course it is not biological. Journals routinely publish studies on self-assigned groups such as “cyclists” or “regular cinema goers”. Of course the use of such self-assigned groups is not indicative that the authors or editors believe that people are biologically cyclists or biologically cinema goers. So you will then need to explain why you believe that this is indicative that “Asian American” has a biological basis yet “cyclist” does not. Then you can provide examples of where anyone has ever defined “Asian American” as a race. Because I don’t believe it has ever been considered to be a race by anyone in the whole world. As such your example would seem to be totally irrelevant to a debate on the issue of race. > [@](#): > > But what if group A was white Americans and group B was black Americans? Remember, I’m not saying that the lab needs to be able to succeed with 100% accuracy, just do better than chance. 1. Do you think the lab could do better than chance at assigning someone as being East Timorese vs being Bosnian? If so, does that mean that you consider that being Timorese and Bosnian is biologically defined? And if you do believe that, can you explain why the test would still have worked 30 years ago, when the nation of East Timor did not exist? After all if something has a biological cause, then it won’t change over time. You evaded this question last time I asked. I hope you will be able to respond this time. 2. Do you think a biological laboratory might also be able to do some sorts of tests to determine if someone was a cigarette smoker or a marathon runner with better than chance accuracy? (Hint: the answer is yes). If this is the case, does that mean that you believe that being a smoker or a marathon runner has a biological basis? If not then please explain why biological tests that map to race indicate a biological basis while tests that map to smoking do not. No special pleading allowed. > [@](#): > > We go back in time to the year 1400 and grab 100 infants each from two ethnic groups that are as ancestrally distinct as we possibly can, say Maori and some very isolated group of South Americans. We raise them in identical Skinnerian boxes. We then decide which traits are purely superficial ones that we already know are associated with race… skin color, height, facial hair distribution, nose shape, and so forth. We then come up with a battery of tests that test every other trait we can possibly think of… acuity of smell, pain tolerance, reflex speed, memory, ability to hold breath for a long time, etc. We run all those test on both groups. Will they perform, on the average, identically on all of them? Or will there be differences? Are you trying to argue that “Maori” and “isolated group of South Americans” are races? If so then please provide references to support such an assertion. If not then please explain what the relevance is of such groups is to a discussion on race. When you have done that, then we can discuss this. ATM it seems like either a Red Herring or Begging the Question. > [@](#): > > And btw, please no responses of the sort “ahh, I see what you’re trying to prove with this thought experiment (jump ahead jump ahead jump ahead)…” I swear once again I have no hidden agenda here, just trying to raise some potentially thought-worthy points. They may be thought worthy, but since none of them seem to address any group that has ever been considered a race by anybody in the history of the world, I don’t think they have any place in this thread on **race**. I suspect that the problem is that you don’t know yourself what you mean by the word “race”. It might help if you can define it for us and for yourself. ---
**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 4, 2011, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/149 "2011-04-04T13:15:37Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > (2) We go back in time to the year 1400 and grab 100 infants each from two ethnic groups that are as ancestrally distinct as we possibly can, say Maori and some very isolated group of South Americans. We raise them in identical Skinnerian boxes. We then decide which traits are purely superficial ones that we already know are associated with race… skin color, height, facial hair distribution, nose shape, and so forth. We then come up with a battery of tests that test every other trait we can possibly think of… acuity of smell, pain tolerance, reflex speed, memory, ability to hold breath for a long time, etc. We run all those test on both groups. Will they perform, on the average, identically on all of them? Or will there be differences? Since that entire process is beyond impossible to do, how can anyone answer that question? Seems to me you want to provide a thought experiment and then just say you know what the answer is going to be. BTW, Maori and SA Indians are hardly the most distantly related groups on the planet. Not even close. ---
**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 4, 2011, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/150 "2011-04-04T14:47:45Z")
If a categorization scheme cannot be reliably applied (as in different evaluators will generally categorize people in the same way) then it is not useful. Again, I give you [Beyonce](http://stupidcelebrities.net/2008/10/13/beyonces-new-video-single-ladies-put-a-ring-on-it/) and invite you to ponder how absurd Cameroons thought I was for insisting she is black. If you find some good use for “race” categories and manage to achieve reliability regarding who belongs where, I promise you that what you find will not corrospond particularly well to our current image of “race.” To begin with, “black” is nearly completely meaningless. Check out this [map](http://www.breakingnewskenya.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/africa_genetic_diversity_map.jpg). Africa contains the majority of the world’s genetic diversity. “He’s black” probably actually gives you less information about that person’s genetics than “He’s not black.” Humanity is basically a whole lot of different kinds of “black” populations, with a small offshoot of “non-black” populations making up a tiny bit of the diversity. “He’s black” is like saying “He’s Euro-Asian-Native-American.” It doesn’t tell you much about their genetics at all. Africa is the human genetic rainbow, with the rest of us making up a little slice of one shade. As for [Ethiopians](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_Ethiopia), categorizing them as “mixed” is an extreme oversimplification. They are among the most genetically diverse people in the world, and include significant East Asian and Austro-Melanesian heritage in addition to Caucasian and Sub-Saharan African heritage. But regardless of “race,” a large part of their genetic heritage appears to have it’s origins in the area: [QUOTE= astudy quoted in Wikipedia] Indeed, Ethiopians do not seem to result only from a simple combination of proto–Niger-Congo and Middle Eastern genes. Their African component cannot be completely explained by that of present-day Niger-Congo speakers, and it is quite different from that of the Khoisan. Thus, a portion of the current Ethiopian gene pool may be the product of in situ differentiation from an ancestral gene pool. [/QUOTE] There are lighter skinned indigenous African populations, and not all light skin in Africa is a result of European or Middle Eastern contact. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/151 "2011-04-04T15:18:18Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Of course, there is no honest reason to do so, since using that word conjures up false images in the minds of most people of fixed groups with fixed traits that do not actually existy outside statistical analysis. To be fair, we give preferential treatment to some “populations of people that some people call race but biologists think are just socially constructed random groupings of people” through affirmative action. Some people are attempting to use IQ scores among some of those populations of people to justify the disparity of socioeconomic success between those “populations of people that some people call race but biologists think are just socially constructed random groupings of people” i.e. the preferential treatment under affirmative action can do no more to level the playing field, the remaining disparity between “populations of people that some people call race but biologists think are just socially constructed random groupings of people” are due almost entirely to differences in IQ between those “populations of people that some people call race but biologists think are just socially constructed random groupings of people” I don’t agree that the disparity between “populations of people that some people call race but biologists think are just socially constructed random groupings of people” is due entirely to differences in IQ and I think that bigotry (both present and historic) against some “populations of people that some people call race but biologists think are just socially constructed random groupings of people” Fuckit I’m just going to use the term race because everyone knows what I’m talking about when I say race. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/152 "2011-04-04T15:37:27Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Fuckit I’m just going to use the term race because everyone knows what I’m talking about when I say race. Heh, basically. On the scientific side, they correspond to genetic groupings in reality. On the social side, people everywhere know what you mean by it. The only reason for denialism is self-righteous frippery, not a concern for accuracy - and IMO willful ignorance is not something to be proud of. ---
**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 4, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/153 "2011-04-04T15:50:36Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > Heh, basically. On the scientific side, they correspond to genetic groupings in reality. On the social side, people everywhere know what you mean by it. The only reason for denialism is self-righteous frippery, not a concern for accuracy - and IMO willful ignorance is not something to be proud of. But like I said in a pit thread that deals with some dopers that do follow crackpot ideas, I would have to say that that would be just supporting plain ignorance. It seems that many seem to be just having a semantics fit because they are finding that biologists dropped the old race definition. It is not a biggie compared to the fact that just more than half of Americans still think that evolution is bonkers. (And if you think about that, it is clear that this is also related to that old fight) But just as we can call the creationists ignorant, I do think that people that do continue to ignore what the experts are telling us in biology to be just a milder form of ignorance. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/154 "2011-04-04T17:22:37Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Both obviously true. Clearly you can not currently test someone’s DNA and determine 100% whether that person was born inside the political boundaries of modern day France. But you CAN test someone’s DNA and determine there’s a fair likelihood that some percentage of their ancestry likely descends from people living in a particular region of Europe several hundred years back. And France is a pretty big region of Europe. > > This doesn’t seem controversial or surprising to me at all as long as you throw in some disclaimers about lack of certainty, etc. And the French people are decended from several ancient groups, including Ancient Romans, Germans (Franks), and Celts (Gauls). ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/155 "2011-04-04T17:56:32Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > It’s also entirely reasonable for someone to say "well, we do know that Asian Americans comprise various different genetically distinct populations… If they were _genetically distinct_, there would be a genetic measure which would reliably, objectively _distinguish_ an individual of one group from an individual of another. Can you name any two human races and any genetic test which will always work to sort them? In fact, it is impossible to do this without resorting to definitions of “race” which are themselves based directly on those genetic markers–and which, incidentally, yield results like siblings born of the same parents sometimes being different “races.” The introduction of scientific rigor rather neatly removes the concept of race both from traditional culture-oriented understandings, and from utility by pseudoscientific racists. For example, if we liked we could divide the human species (with absolute scientific validity) into exactly two “races” based on a test of the ABCC11 gene. These two races would be the Dry Earwax People and the Sticky Earwax People.\* Or we could choose to look at the ABO gene, and divide people into four races (blood types A, B, AB, and O). Or we could look at ABCC11 _and_ ABO, and have _eight_ races. These probably seem like arbitrary, ridiculous ways to decide to divide humanity racially–and they are. Here’s the point: at the genomic level, _all such divisions_ are equally arbitrary, equally ridiculous. It’s easier and more honest to just abandon the term “race” entirely when speaking of genetics. We can talk about race as ethnicity as culture, that’s fine, often very interesting. But _genetic race_ is a myth. - The Dry Earwax People would be mostly people with eastern Asian ancestry. The Stickies would be mostly people in other parts of the world. This is actually one of the _closer_ correspondences between a traditional “race” and any simple genetic marker–but it still doesn’t work. If two parents are both heterozygous (and phenotypically Sticky), their children may include both Dry and Sticky Earwax People. ---
**Author:** ![Hank\_Beecher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hank_beecher/32/7275_2.png) [@Hank\_Beecher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hank_Beecher)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/156 "2011-04-04T18:19:33Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > For example, if we liked we could divide the human species (with absolute scientific validity) into exactly two “races” based on a test of the ABCC11 gene. These two races would be the Dry Earwax People and the Sticky Earwax People.\* Or we could choose to look at the ABO gene, and divide people into four races (blood types A, B, AB, and O). Or we could look at ABCC11 _and_ ABO, and have _eight_ races. These probably seem like arbitrary, ridiculous ways to decide to divide humanity racially–and they are. Here’s the point: at the genomic level, _all such divisions_ are equally arbitrary, equally ridiculous. By this logic wouldn’t it also be equally ridiculous to classify prehistoric humans into the groupings of Neandertal, Denisovian, Floriensis, Erectus, Sapien Sapien, ect? ---
**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 4, 2011, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/157 "2011-04-04T18:35:00Z")
It may be useful in some ways (medicine, perhaps?) to group people according to genetic factors. But, you say, race is just a convient shorthand for genetics! You can tell someone’s genetics at a glance! Well, no. But beyond that, the big question is “so what?” What circumstances would be need to be able to look at somebody and get to know the probabilities of a person’s genetic make up based on a glance? I don’t think there are many medical issues where race is spectacularly useful, and in the few instances where it is we already have no problem using it. Socially, we either judge people as individuals or as part of humanity. Even if French people had an average IQ of 50, we would still want to test French children before deciding what classes to put them in. And as for the French nation, I think we’d agree they have a right to self-determination like any other nation. There just aren’t that many situations where we lump people into biological groups (as opposed to social ones). The only one I can think of are situations related to age. Even gender- which is probably a much larger and more clearcut division than race, is generally not used a lot in society on biological terms (most gender-related decisions are social ones.) We strive for human rights and freedom for all. Someone brought up Affirmative Action. Of course, the specifics of AA are a legacy of a time where “black” corresponded pretty exactly to “person who experienced the direct effects of generations of inequality.” These days, more and more black people are moving past these effects. We are also getting more African immigrants who did not go through these experiences- something I don’t think we really thought would happen in the 1960s. Probably if we wrote AA laws now, we’d look more at income or geography than race identification. But it is difficult to change now without opening it up to dismantle AA all together. So, race believes, how does your arbitrary groupings of humans improve the world? What does it bring to the table? Why would we bother? ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/158 "2011-04-04T19:06:11Z")
> [@Hank\_Beecher](#): > > By this logic wouldn’t it also be equally ridiculous to classify prehistoric humans into the groupings of Neandertal, Denisovian, Floriensis, Erectus, Sapien Sapien, ect? A full and fair answer to that would be pretty complicated, honestly. I’m not sure even the researchers and theorists–whose books I only read–are _entirely_ qualified to speak to that. Without tackling it fully or fairly, and taking “classify” to mean the _distinct_, objective genetic sorting I was speaking of… I’d say yes for Neanderthals (who are _H. sapiens_), no for _Homo erectus_, maybe for Denisovans and _H. floriensis_, about whom we really have very little to go on. (We, of course, are _H. sapiens sapiens_.) But I reserve the right to think about that some more. Also, I don’t know if you realize, but this question introduces a whole different dimension of definitional fuzziness around the concept of _species_. Our conventions of zoological nomenclature inevitably break down as we look back through time. So take my answer above in the context of, _if all these populations lived among us today_. ---
**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 4, 2011, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/159 "2011-04-04T19:21:56Z")
> [@Hank\_Beecher](#): > > By this logic wouldn’t it also be equally ridiculous to classify prehistoric humans into the groupings of Neandertal, Denisovian, Floriensis, Erectus, Sapien Sapien, ect? Yes and no. It’s always problematic to use the species definition of extinct populations since the definition involves whether or not the population regularly interbred with other populations. For Neanderthals, for instant, the original thought was that they were the ancestors of modern Europeans and it was common to classify them as _H. sapiens neanderthalensis._ Then, it seemed like they were not ancestral to modern Europeans and that they were a genetically isolated population (for hundred of thousands of years) and had morphological distinctions that fell outside the observed ranges of all modern peoples. It became common to give them their own species: _H. neanderthalensis_. And now, it seems that they were genetically isolated for hundreds of thousands of years, but hybridized with modern humans for maybe 5-10k years. Which leaves us in somewhat of a predicament because they don’t neatly fit into either the species or subspecies categories. It would be as if, suddenly bonobos and chimps broke through the barrier that separates them and started to interbreed. After a some time, the larger, more aggressive chimps wiped out the bonobos but not without interbreeding with them to some extent. What do we do with the classification of these species now? When it comes down to it, our whole taxonomic scheme is a human construct. Nature doesn’t care that we put two populations into different species boxes. If conditions change, and the populations can interbreed, they will do so and create a new population. Some scientists think that’s what happened with some gray wolf and coyote populations-- they interbred and created what we call the red wolf. But you have to keep this in perspective, and do what makes sense. I can’t find the cite now, but there is a nice diagram showing the extent of human variation compared to that of chimps. Chimps are divided into 3 or 4 subspecies (call them races), and the total human genetic variation is less than what you see in any one subspecies of chimps. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007/160 "2011-04-04T20:51:28Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > To be fair, we give preferential treatment to some “populations of people that some people call race but biologists think are just socially constructed random groupings of people” through affirmative action. So what? Some people have suffered discrimination due to rather silly ideas that “race” is a real aspect of a person’s character and we have laws that seek to remedy that discrimination. That is hardly the same thing as claiming that the original false ideas were accurate. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Fuckit I’m just going to use the term race because everyone knows what I’m talking about when I say race. And if you are discussing a socially recognized group in a political or societal situation, you probably will be understood correctly. If you try to claim that anyone has some inherent biological quality merely for belonging to some “race,” you will simply be promoting ignorance. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-biological-thing-as-a-racial-group/577007.md?page=9)