Question for the Racers in the thread:
What are the qualifications that make a group a race?
If I am congeniality Deaf and I marry another Deaf person and our descendants all keep marrying other Deaf and so forth until we have our own Deaf Martha’s Vineyard, does that make us a racial group?
edit - sorry, I got reply happy there
Those who sign from birth also use significantly more of their right hemisphere when signing than non-native signers = a different cognitive process. (This is similar to native Chinese character readers.) This is not an inherited trait, but a sort of “nurture” function in cognitive development. Over the course of thousands of years, would it be biologically possible for this group of people to be *naturally *wired to process language in this way? Because, you know, according to plenty of people on this board, some “racial” groups are just less cognitively apt.
You’re not actually contending that “Blacks” (a.k.a “African Americans”) are just grouped on the basis of pigmentations, are you (as opposed to, oh, say geographic ancestry)? (Here is the US census classification “Black, African Am., or Negro”).
There are certainly times when that’s the grouping that’s made. Which is not to say that every person with dark skin would be viewed as “black”, but in a normal everyday conversation about race, something like
“Oh, who’s that guy over there?”
“You mean, the guy with the red sweatshirt”
“No, the black guy with the hat”
Then physical appearance is certainly the relevant factor. Not like the next line in that little dialog is usually going to be “well, given that I do not know the genetic or ancestral origin of each of the ‘guys over there’, I find your question impossible to answer with the information I currently have”.
To clarify, do you mean “again, the majority of physical scientists are acknowledging that the old concept of race qua subspecies was imposed”? Or do you mean that the majority of physical scientists are acknowledging that the old concept of race qua population cluster was imposed"?
Either way, the statement is incorrect and rather ethnoocentric. There is substantial global variation with regards to what physical anthropologists think. See: Lieberman, 2004. The race concept in six regions: variation without consensus
As for the majority opinion in the Anglosphere, it’s not at all clear to me. To quote one leading biological anthropologist:
‘‘Slightly over half of all biological/physical anthropologists today believe in the traditional view that human races are biologically valid and real. Furthermore, they tend to see nothing wrong in defining and naming the different populations of Homo sapiens. The other half of the biological anthropology community believes either that the traditional racial categories for humankind are arbitrary and meaningless, or that at a minimum there are better ways to look at human variation than through the “racial lens.”…At the beginning of the twenty-first century, even as a majority of biological anthropologists favor the reality of the race perspective, not one introductory
textbook of physical anthropology even presents that perspective as a possibility. In a case as flagrant as this, we are not dealing with science but rather with blatant, politically motivated censorship’’
Gill, 2000. Does race exist? A proponent’s perspective. PB
Edit. My previous comment wasn’t well thought out and it was based on a sloppy reading of your comment. Apologies.
To clarify, do you mean “the majority of physical scientists [e.g physical anthropologists, genetics, and biologists] are acknowledging that the old concept of race qua subspecies was imposed”? Or do you mean that the majority of physical scientists are acknowledging that the old concept of race qua population cluster was imposed"?
Either way, the statement (“majority of physical scientists are acknowledging” is misleading. (Are you saying they do acknowledge or don’t?) As it is, there is substantial global variation with regards to what physical anthropologists etc. think. See: Lieberman, 2004. The race concept in six regions: variation without consensus
As for the majority opinion in the Anglosphere, it’s not at all clear to me. To quote one leading biological anthropologist:
‘‘Slightly over half of all biological/physical anthropologists today believe in the traditional view that human races are biologically valid and real. Furthermore, they tend to see nothing wrong in defining and naming the different populations of Homo sapiens. The other half of the biological anthropology community believes either that the traditional racial categories for humankind are arbitrary and meaningless, or that at a minimum there are better ways to look at human variation than through the “racial lens.”…At the beginning of the twenty-first century, even as a majority of biological anthropologists favor the reality of the race perspective, not one introductory textbook of physical anthropology even presents that perspective as a possibility. In a case as flagrant as this, we are not dealing with science but rather with blatant, politically motivated censorship’’
Gill, 2000. Does race exist? A proponent’s perspective. PB
The last poll taken (granted it’s 20 years old) showed that more physical anthropologists supported the biological reality of race position (To be candid, I’m never sure what that means since, as I noted, races could be “biologically real” without them being subspecies.)
…
In my experience, when people say,
“Oh, who’s that guy over there?”
“You mean, the guy with the red sweatshirt”
“No, the black guy with the hat”
They are not equating “Blacks” with “African-Americans” and are not referring to “race” but are referring to “color.” Continuing your dialogue:
“Oh, you mean the African-American guy”
“No, I mean the South Asian one”
“What’s the difference”
“What do you mean? One’s ancestors were from African and the other’s were from South Asian”
“I mean, what’s the difference in appearance”
“You can’t tell”
“No”
“Look at the hair texture and facial features – notice a difference?”
“Oh, ya, I get it”
Anyways,
Given the diversity of scientific opinion on this matter (as noted in my last comment) and given that we are debating it, it might be useful to clarify what would be needed for a given human population to be a subspecies. Since you are maintaining that there are no human subspecies (as I noted, I am agnostic), I am just inquiring about the criteria that you are using in coming to this conclusion. Hopefully the criteria is more than “what the majority of physical scientists are coming to think.”
I’ve already posted this about half a dozen times in this thread. What disqualifies us is that the morphological differences are clinal.
I posed this question to one of the new posters here, and no one answered: *Let’s restrict ourselves to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. What are the races, and where do you draw the lines so that you don’t have people on either side of the lines who don’t look just like each other.
*
Missed the edit. That was supposed to be:
.*..so that you don’t have people on either side of the lines who look just like each other. *
One obvious qualification is shared ancestry. To verify that this isn’t an arbitrary criteria, we can look at the etymological root of the term (ra), which roughly mean “ancestry” or “origin.” We can also look at the context of the debate and the questions debated "e.g. “can we meaningfully group human populations biologically (i.e genetically)?” or “are there subspecies?” These questions imply genetic = ancestral relations. Finally, we can look at the social context of the debate and the social use of the term in the countries in which it was used in. When doing so (at least up till the last decade), we get the following cluster of terms “race, breed, lineage, population, ethnicity, tribe, common stock, genetic, geneology, ancestry, descendancy, breed, subspecies, etc.” The obvious common denominator is ancestry (genetic relatedness.)
Well, at very least, the population you created would be a breed. Of course, this population would not be defined by deafness per se, but by your lineage and gene pool which frequently manifests deafness.
Whether the population would qualify as a race would depend on how exactly we are conceptualizing race (clade, population cluster, subspecies, regional ancestry) and would depend on the criteria we use for classification. By my conceptualization, your population theoretically could qualify as a race (qua clade) after a few hundred generations
That sounds rather lamarckian. If the particular type of native singing required some biological trait which was heritable (such as high pitch), and there was selection pressure for that trait, over thousands of years …
Obviously “race” can be defined a zillion different ways. Sometimes it’s super-precise-biological. Sometimes it’s perceived national/regional origin. Sometimes it’s just plain appearance. I think the latter is the most interesting because it’s arguably the one that’s caused the most problems over time. Someone who, say, has mild internalized prejudices and is subconsciously less likely to hire a black guy for a job than a white guy, is presumably making a snap judgment at a job interview, and isn’t going to be asking about ethnic origin or family history.
In a post a while back, I said:
(I also noted that the exact populations were not set – it’s an empirical question, not a philosophical one)
I take it that you don’t dispute that we could biologically divide populations. Instead, you argue that since populations are phenotypically continuous, such divisions are biologically (as opposed to socially – if you grant that distinction) arbitrary. Elsewhere, I pointed out that this is a non sequitur:
See, if there are different genetically identifiable populations/clades (these terms are not synonymous – the former referring to a genetic cluster and the latter referring to an ancestral line), individuals from those groups are more genetically/ancestrally related to each other. That’s their connection to the group (as opposed to a set of shared phenotypes). It follows, taxonomically, that all that is needed, then, are patterns of between group morphological differences.
So the common phenotype business is a non issue. The substantial issue that you bring up is: are there identifiable genetically different populations or clades, say as opposed to a pure genetic continuum or series of clines? This is an empirical question. I would note that the question should be “were there identifiable genetically different populations or clades?” That was, if you follow my posts, my point concerning the elephants (I’m trying to cover all bases):
Now, the answer is yet undetermined. Much of the research seems to agree that there was (and is) some genetic/genealogical discontinuity between these populations. The real question is: how much?
I disagree. If “race qua appearance” was the real problem, why would there be so much controversy about population genetics, subspecies, heritable differences, etc. ? Why would we even be discussing this topic ["Is there such a biological (i.e genetic) thing as a racial groups?]. Phenotypic differences are manifest – if race meant “looks different,” how could the other bloggers on this thread (most of whom make rather sophisticated arguments) argue that “races are social constructs”, etc.
Someone who needs to avoid adverse impact lawsuits and who needs to discriminate for Blacks (in the sense of African Americans) in order to fill their ethnoracial quotas, will be concerned with ethnic origin or family history. Since, adverse impact is a big-big thing, many people are quite interested in race as ancestry – the government is, the media is always discussing it. As a result of the current legal situation, this type of racial discrimination is the most prevalent type.
IMHO that diversity of opinion has to be taken in the context that originally the old concept of race was imposed on science and widely used, that is the consensus was that the old race concepts could be used in science. That now we have a mixed view among researchers shows how far this change has gone and continues.
What I have seen is that now there are no official positions pro or against the continuing usage of old race terms applied to humans among scientific groups, what it is clear is that many that investigate the issue are correct in the affirmation that there is a retreat among scientific groups on using the common race terms of the past.
First of all, you don’t know what “non sequitur” means. But that’s another issue.
The chart from C-F are not clades. I mean, seriously, are you telling us that “Europeans” are clade? Where’s the boundary? Who is a “European” and who is a “non-European”?
You are taking some general conclusion about the ancestry of certain populations and making claims about the reproductive isolation of those populations that simply aren’t correct.
Thanks for the reply, but this seems to be a clear acknowledgment that there is no such biological thing as a racial group, to use the language of your thread title.
If people can’t agree on who is “black” and who isn’t, and if there’s no shared trait that defines a race, then what objective meaning could it possibly have? It’s just a label applied arbitrarily to people based on appearance.
Well, that’s kind of what the whole thread is about, or at least a lot of what I said in it. The claim I keep trying to make is that it’s not an absolute… There’s a scale of how biologically meaningful a division is. Last digit of SSN is 0 on that scale. Male/Female is 99. Traditional “I know it what I see it” race is > 0. It might be pretty damn low, but it’s not 0. I’ve gone over my argument for this way too many times in this thread to want to repeat it all, however.
Do you have a shared trait that defines the family you come from? Go back to the biological definition. You’re not looking at a single trait. Also, as pointed out here:
I’m not sure how much of the thread you’ve read, but you can identify someones race with remarkable precision from their dna. You can see some of the familiar clusters that show up here.
You may think this has no objective meaning, but tell that to someone seeking a bone marrow donor. The importance in medical treatment & research is discussed here.
I don’t know what you mean by “imposed on science.” Race, in the taxonomic sense, was first used by taxonomists who were trying to make sense of the world (e.g Linnaeus). Taxonomy, of course, is a human ordering imposed on the world. “Racial” divisions of mankind were just part and parcel of that human imposition.
When it comes to the subspecies question, the questions is: are human racial (subspecies) classifications consistent with the other taxonomic classifications that we use for other organisms? (i.e. Are we consistently imposing on the world or are we scientifically gerrymandering when it comes to humans).
The article that you cite suggests some clear scientific gerrymandering:
The author is quite clear. He argues that, given sociopolitical concerns, the race concept should not be used to characterize “human variation” even though it would be scientifically clearer (or something) to do otherwise. Perhaps doing so is socially wise. Whatever the case, some here are interested in the question I mentioned, (which is logically Independent of what the scientific community chooses to do given the social concern): “Are (human) racial (subspecies) classifications consistent with the other taxonomic classifications that we use for other organisms?”
That question can only be answered by looking up the criteria for zoological subspecies classifications in addition to the data on “human variation” and seeing if different human populations fit the criteria for being subspecies. Now, last I checked there were 26 independent species concepts. So I would guess that there are as many independent subspecies concepts. As a result, this is not a clear cut issue.
Why don’t we start by seeing if we would get human subspecies, given what we know of the variation, if we consistently applied every one of these model. If so, we can evaluate the models and then debate whether of not those models are meaningful.