# Meaningfull Biological Definition of Race **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 19, 2011, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472 "2011-05-19T17:11:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/121 "2011-05-22T20:59:05Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > So, what are the races then? Is there a Swedish race and an Ethiopian race? > > What happens if you do your little experiment with Sweden and Germany, then Germany and Austria, then Austria and Northern Italy, then Northern Italy and Central Italy, then Central Italy with Southern Italy, the Southern Italy and Greece, then Greece and Bulgaria, then Bulgaria and Turkey, then Turkey and Syria, then Syria and Palestine, then Palestine and Egypt, then Egypt and Sudan… > > What are the races, and where do you draws the lines? > > I can line up 100 people by height, pick the 5 shortest and the 10 tallest and then ask you which group those 10 people belong in. You will get it right 100% of the time. But that doesn’t mean there is an objective way to divide the group up in subgroups by height. Can’t you say this about almost all classification systems? How many languages or cultures are there? You always get boundary issues. Still, you can identify languages by region of origin, and race by lineage or continental ancesty. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/122 "2011-05-22T21:24:42Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Can’t you say this about almost all classification systems? No. Some classifications are cladistic, some are clinal. The key is knowing which one you’re supposed to be using. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/123 "2011-05-23T00:40:54Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > And that’s exactly what people are talking about when they say that race is a social phenomenon, not a biological one. Yeah, but when people say this they often think it means there is no underlying biological meaning either. As indicated in that article, people tend to have no problem understanding that something like adolescence is a social construct but also has a biological component. ---
**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:** [May 23, 2011, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/124 "2011-05-23T01:01:56Z")
> [@GalileoSmith](#): > > The phenomenon, whatever term you may put upon it, is often used by medical community, as well as many societies, resulting in the creation of such things as Affirmative Action and other social programs. No. This is demonstrably wrong. Affirmative Action and other social programs are not created by the medical community. For all intents and purposes, it relies on self reporting. The medical and biological community discuss populations _which isn’t the same as race._ Sometimes in the context of the US or other subsets of humans doctors can talk about races but in reality it is shorthand for populations. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/125 "2011-05-23T01:26:58Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > No. This is demonstrably wrong. > > Affirmative Action and other social programs are not created by the medical community. For all intents and purposes, it relies on self reporting. > > The medical and biological community discuss populations _which isn’t the same as race._ Sometimes in the context of the US or other subsets of humans doctors can talk about races but in reality it is shorthand for populations. Are they really that [different](http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/getfile.php?file=Race.pdf)? > [@](#): > > Speaking about Cavalli-Sforza, it is interesting that he tried to defuse potential political attacks on his research by a simple and sometimes surprisingly effective rhetorical ploy. At one point he just stopped using the term ‘‘race’’ and replaced it with a much less loaded expression ‘‘human population’’, which in many contexts he actually used more or less with the same meaning as ‘‘race’’. On one occasion this terminological switch gave rise to an amusingly ironic development, as described in the following episode involving Cavalli-Sforza’s collaborator, Edwards: > > \*When in the 1960s I started working on the problem of reconstructing the course of human evolution from data on the frequencies of blood-group genes my colleague Luca Cavalli-Sforza and I sometimes unconsciously used the word ‘race’ interchangeably with ‘population’ in our publications. In one popular account, I wrote naturally of ‘the present races of man’. Quite recently I quoted the passage in an Italian publication, so it needed translating. > > Sensitive to the modern misgivings over the use of the word ‘race’, Cavalli- Sforza suggested I change it to ‘population’. At first I was reluctant to do so on the grounds that quotations should be accurate and not altered to meet contemporary sensibilities. But he pointed out that, as the original author, I was the only person who could possibly object. I changed ‘present races of man’ to ‘present populations of man’ and sent the paper to be translated into Italian. When it was published the translator had rendered the phrase as ‘le razze umane moderne’. \*(Edwards undated, unpublished manuscript) > > So, the whole process unfolded in three stages. First, it began with the original text containing the word ‘‘race’’. Then with time the term started to sound unacceptable or jarring to some people, and consequently the pressure of the new linguistic practice transformed it into ‘‘population’’. Finally, an easygoing and politically unconcerned Italian translator just went ahead and turned it back into ‘‘razza’’. ---
**Author:** ![GalileoSmith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f9ae1b/32.png) [@GalileoSmith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GalileoSmith)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/126 "2011-05-23T01:44:03Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > No. This is demonstrably wrong. > > Affirmative Action and other social programs are not created by the medical community. For all intents and purposes, it relies on self reporting. > > The medical and biological community discuss populations _which isn’t the same as race._ Sometimes in the context of the US or other subsets of humans doctors can talk about races but in reality it is shorthand for populations. I never said that the medical community created Affirmative Action. You misread what I said. But what you are talking about, i.e. “populations”, is still what I’m talking about, and that is, physical differences in people whose ancestries are from different geographical regions. You can play with word definitions until the end of time, but I’m sorry to say that you’re not going to escape that fact. ---
**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:** [May 23, 2011, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/127 "2011-05-23T02:55:12Z")
> [@GalileoSmith](#): > > and that is, physical differences in people whose ancestries are from different geographical regions. All biologists accept this and in fact rely on it. [QUOTE=GalileoSmith; 13830464] You can play with word definitions until the end of time, but I’m sorry to say that you’re not going to escape that fact. [/QUOTE] But the fact remains that Populations =/= Races no matter how you slice it. They are different things, and it makes no sense to confuse the terms. Race carries centuries of baggage that has no biological meaning and is already being used as a social construct that doesn’t map to any biological underpinnings. It’s not playing with word definitions - it’s science. And science requires precision. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/128 "2011-05-23T03:04:13Z")
> [@heatmiserfl](#): > > I’m not avoiding answering your question, I honestly don’t understand it. There is a biological explanation for wall climbing as there would be for every aspect of living organisms. However, since peas are extremely horrible at climbing walls, wouldn’t the average data show that peas-and-gekkos are not good at climbing walls? No, they’d be half great at climbing walls and half terrible, so on the average, ok/good at climbing walls. The average wall-climbing ability of a pea-and-gekko is much higher than that of a banana-and-canary, it just has a very high variation, it’s a bunch of 1’s and a bunch of 0’s averaging out to 0.5. And, key point, this is undeniably due to genetics/biology as opposed to any societal issue. It’s clearly nature, not nurture. So in that universe, you can make a statements saying “on average, group X is significantly better at skill Y than other groups, and for reasons of nature, not nurture”. It’s a wildly imprecise statement that is clearly based on a massive misunderstanding, but it’s still TRUE. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/129 "2011-05-23T03:29:59Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > All biologists accept this and in fact rely on it. > > But the fact remains that Populations =/= Races no matter how you slice it. They are different things, and it makes no sense to confuse the terms. Race carries centuries of baggage that has no biological meaning and is already being used as a social construct that doesn’t map to any biological underpinnings. > > It’s not playing with word definitions - it’s science. And science requires precision. I take it you missed my comments above regarding the use of the term [population](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13830401&postcount=125) and that things can be socially defined but also have a [biological component](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13830229&postcount=123) - such as adolescence? Clearly it does map to [biological underpinnings](http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007): > [@](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/130 "2011-05-23T05:31:26Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I guess you’re saying my points are true 🆒 but obvious. ☹ OK, granted. > > But then I’m not sure what the debate is about. 😕 > > Are the typical American distinctions for “race” unsound? Sure, but we all agree on that already. > (I know someone of pure Portuguese ancestry who gets special treatment, when available, for his “Spanish” surname. :smack: ) I didn’t really think this is a topic worth a GD type of debate at all. I believe there is a factual answer. But a debate broke out in a GQ thread, and I followed the mod’s suggestion to continue the topic here. I thought that was a good idea because the mods are known for flying off the handle and banning people simply for repeated violations of the rules 🙂 It’s easy to end up with the race argument descending into a re-definition of race as populations. But the conventional concept of race isn’t based on genetics at all. It’s based on observation of superficial characteristics. And those observations tend to be very poor. Anyone observing the most common factor, skin color, will see a continuum of skin colors across mankind, and great similarities between genetically distinct people. I don’t see any reason to use the term ‘race’, thoroughly disqualified in its conventional form, as a term in biology. It simply confuses things. There seems to be a never ending effort for people to find a biological definition of race that conforms to the conventional definitions, and they keep failing, or once again resort to redefining race as populations. Although I find a little bit of meaning in the concept of population, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, they are arbitrary too. Populations are accidents of history. Australian aborigine is a well defined population due to thousands of years of isolation, but I’ve never seen any evidence that a population of these people existed somewhere else once upon a time, and they all got up and left for Australia one day. The idea of a population or genetic cluster being anything but a statistical anomaly in a snapshot of time doesn’t make sense. > [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Ok I admit such classifications exist. Zillions in fact. Off the top of my head Blood type would be a good example of this. Now are you saying that blood type is equivalent to race? If so I’ll let you have your victory since I can’t argue that it’s not genetic, but don’t go using it as support for the bell curve. > > This actually exactly illustrates our problem. Suppose we live in a society that naturally divides organisms according to color, so Bananas and canaries go in one group, blue berries and Blue birds go in a second group, peas and gekko’s go in a third group. Further we observe that the green group tends to have more organisms with cell walls. Therefore conclude that dividing organisms by color is biologically meaningful. In fact it’s a really crappy way of doing so and is largely meaningless. > > This is pretty much exactly what we are doing with race. I’ll add my thanks for that excellent illustration. > [@Chen019](#): > > I take it you missed my comments above regarding the use of the term [population](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13830401&postcount=125) and that things can be socially defined but also have a [biological component](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13830229&postcount=123) - such as adolescence? Clearly it does map to [biological underpinnings](http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007): While you are using outlying scientific opinions, at least you have provided cites. I think there is confusion here from the use of ‘race’ being defined as ‘population’, or ‘genetic cluster’, and in some cases disproving mistaken conclusions about genetics that didn’t recognize ‘populations’ or ‘genetic clusters’. As I mentioned to **Septimus** above, I don’t see any reason to use the term ‘race’ which has different meanings unrelated to biology, to define biological phenomena which already have unambiguous definitions. You could redefine ‘aether’ as ‘vacuum’ and claim that some rejected physical theories are actually true, but it won’t help science much. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/131 "2011-05-23T10:41:02Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I didn’t really think this is a topic worth a GD type of debate at all. I believe there is a factual answer. But a debate broke out in a GQ thread, and I followed the mod’s suggestion to continue the topic here. I thought that was a good idea because the mods are known for flying off the handle and banning people simply for repeated violations of the rules 🙂 > > It’s easy to end up with the race argument descending into a re-definition of race as populations. But the conventional concept of race isn’t based on genetics at all. It’s based on observation of superficial characteristics. And those observations tend to be very poor. Anyone observing the most common factor, skin color, will see a continuum of skin colors across mankind, and great similarities between genetically distinct people. I don’t see any reason to use the term ‘race’, thoroughly disqualified in its conventional form, as a term in biology. It simply confuses things. > > There seems to be a never ending effort for people to find a biological definition of race that conforms to the conventional definitions, and they keep failing, or once again resort to redefining race as populations. > > Although I find a little bit of meaning in the concept of population, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, they are arbitrary too. Populations are accidents of history. Australian aborigine is a well defined population due to thousands of years of isolation, but I’ve never seen any evidence that a population of these people existed somewhere else once upon a time, and they all got up and left for Australia one day. The idea of a population or genetic cluster being anything but a statistical anomaly in a snapshot of time doesn’t make sense. > > While you are using outlying scientific opinions, at least you have provided cites. I think there is confusion here from the use of ‘race’ being defined as ‘population’, or ‘genetic cluster’, and in some cases disproving mistaken conclusions about genetics that didn’t recognize ‘populations’ or ‘genetic clusters’. As I mentioned to **Septimus** above, I don’t see any reason to use the term ‘race’ which has different meanings unrelated to biology, to define biological phenomena which already have unambiguous definitions. You could redefine ‘aether’ as ‘vacuum’ and claim that some rejected physical theories are actually true, but it won’t help science much. The point I was making, and that the [Edwards & Cavalli-Sforza example](http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/getfile.php?file=Race.pdf) shows, is that population is often simply used as a euphemism for race. Also, I disagree with **Buck Godot’s** comment that race is simply a color based division. In fact, the [Neil Risch article](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/) I linked above addresses that fallacy: > [@](#): > > **Racial categorizations have never been based on skin pigment, but on indigenous continent of origin.** For example, none of the population genetic studies cited above, including the study of Wilson et al. [2], used skin pigment of the study subjects, or genetic loci related to skin pigment, as predictive variables. Yet the various racial groups were easily distinguishable on the basis of even a modest number of random genetic markers; furthermore, categorization is extremely resistant to variation according to the type of markers used (for example, RFLPs, microsatellites or SNPs). You may also find this NY Time [op-ed](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html) piece useful. > [@](#): > > The error is easily illustrated. If one were asked to judge the ancestry of 100 New Yorkers, one could look at the color of their skin. That would do much to single out the Europeans, but little to distinguish the Senegalese from the Solomon Islanders. The same is true for any other feature of our bodies. The shapes of our eyes, noses and skulls; the color of our eyes and our hair; the heaviness, height and hairiness of our bodies are all, individually, poor guides to ancestry. > > 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… > > 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. ---
**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:** [May 23, 2011, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/132 "2011-05-23T12:48:37Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I haven’t read your cites yet (unless I saw them in a previous thread). But otherwise you’re presenting the reality of genetics. Our characteristics are inherited, genetic clusters form, one way or another, and the results will be characteristics that are shared by people based on their lineage. I don’t think that really aligns well with any conventional definition of race, and those concepts exist in science with other names and contexts unrelated to conventional definitions of race. Which you seem to be facing as you respond. 🙂 Le sigh. All septimus is saying is the exact same thing that Maxthevool and I have been saying, yet you seem fine with septimus and are all over my and mtv’s ass. Basically this thread boils down to you having a hang-up about the word “race.” If we use the words “genetic cluster” then you are fine with everything we say. ---
**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:** [May 23, 2011, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/133 "2011-05-23T12:55:39Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I didn’t really think this is a topic worth a GD type of debate at all. I believe there is a factual answer. But a debate broke out in a GQ thread, and I followed the mod’s suggestion to continue the topic here. I thought that was a good idea because the mods are known for flying off the handle and banning people simply for repeated violations of the rules 🙂 > > It’s easy to end up with the race argument descending into a re-definition of race as populations. But the conventional concept of race isn’t based on genetics at all. It’s based on observation of superficial characteristics. And those observations tend to be very poor. Anyone observing the most common factor, skin color, will see a continuum of skin colors across mankind, and great similarities between genetically distinct people. I don’t see any reason to use the term ‘race’, thoroughly disqualified in its conventional form, as a term in biology. It simply confuses things. > > There seems to be a never ending effort for people to find a biological definition of race that conforms to the conventional definitions, and they keep failing, or once again resort to redefining race as populations. > > Although I find a little bit of meaning in the concept of population, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, they are arbitrary too. Populations are accidents of history. Australian aborigine is a well defined population due to thousands of years of isolation, but I’ve never seen any evidence that a population of these people existed somewhere else once upon a time, and they all got up and left for Australia one day. The idea of a population or genetic cluster being anything but a statistical anomaly in a snapshot of time doesn’t make sense. > > I’ll add my thanks for that excellent illustration. > > While you are using outlying scientific opinions, at least you have provided cites. I think there is confusion here from the use of ‘race’ being defined as ‘population’, or ‘genetic cluster’, and in some cases disproving mistaken conclusions about genetics that didn’t recognize ‘populations’ or ‘genetic clusters’. As I mentioned to **Septimus** above, I don’t see any reason to use the term ‘race’ which has different meanings unrelated to biology, to define biological phenomena which already have unambiguous definitions. You could redefine ‘aether’ as ‘vacuum’ and claim that some rejected physical theories are actually true, but it won’t help science much. You are acting like the word “race” has a singke precise meaning like the words “kilogram” or “electron,” but that’s simply not the case. People can use “race” to refer to different things. One thing they could use it for is to draw circles of various sizes around genetic clusters and call everyone withing that circle a member of a race. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/134 "2011-05-23T13:41:29Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > You are acting like the word “race” has a singke precise meaning like the words “kilogram” or “electron,” but that’s simply not the case. People can use “race” to refer to different things. One thing they could use it for is to draw circles of various sizes around genetic clusters and call everyone withing that circle a member of a race. This would be fine, if pointless, if those same people didn’t always “happen” to \*only \*choose clusters that map to skin colour and call it race (or “geographic origin”, same difference). As opposed to the near-infinite other possible clustering mechanism that don’t map to skin colour. No-one goes on about the O, A and AB races, for example. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/135 "2011-05-23T13:43:40Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > In fact, the [Neil Risch article](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/) I linked above addresses that fallacy Yeah, his words say one thing, his cladogram says another. ---
**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:** [May 23, 2011, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/136 "2011-05-23T13:46:14Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Basically this thread boils down to you having a hang-up about the word “race.” If we use the words “genetic cluster” then you are fine with everything we say. Because the word “race” has social meaning that doesn’t correspond to biology. Genetic clusters and populations are more appropriate terms because they are more precise and don’t have the baggage that race does. It’s not a hang-up, it’s about precision. Race is imprecise to the point of being wrong. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/137 "2011-05-23T14:04:22Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > I take it you missed my comments above regarding the use of the term [population](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13830401&postcount=125) and that things can be socially defined but also have a [biological component](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13830229&postcount=123) - such as adolescence? Clearly it does map to [biological underpinnings](http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007): Actually, you are simnply repeating what you have done in the past–rely on the ways in which social definitions of “race” are useful in American medicine, where founder effects in immigration have set up clearer lines. Note that the authors do not suggest that we test every patient to discover the “race” to which they belong, instead they note the relative effectiveness of self-identified “race” to indicate the biological population to which an individual in the U.S. is most closely associated. This makes no legitimate argument for claims that “race” has some genuine reality that is useful in world-wide applications. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/138 "2011-05-23T14:10:52Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > You are acting like the word “race” has a singke precise meaning like the words “kilogram” or “electron,” but that’s simply not the case. People can use “race” to refer to different things. One thing they could use it for is to draw circles of various sizes around genetic clusters and call everyone withing that circle a member of a race. And its lack of precision and accuracy is exactly why we should be avoiding its use in discussions of biology. Claims that “race X” have certain traits in one context lead to stupid claims that “race X” is defined by some trait in a totally separate context. It is the sort of nonsense that leads to people making the absurd claim that Sickle Cell Anemia is a “black” disease when it affects large numbers of whites and is absent in a large number of black populations. Your need to cling to the misleading word “race” when it actually causes confusion seems like an odd position to hold. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/139 "2011-05-23T15:04:16Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Halle Berry has a Caucasian mother and African-American father. **You could safely say that Chelsea Clinton would be genetically more similar to the Caucasian.** You can say that about any [two members](http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/getfile.php?file=Race.pdf) of a population or racial group. But Halle Berry is also considered african american, and her father also probably has some caucasian blood in him as well. Further The ancestors of Halle and Chelsea for the last several generations come from this mix we call America so from that point of view may have more in common (such as a great deal of englsih and irish blood) than they would be a person from Russia. So this is exactly the point I’m making. We call Halle Berry black, we call Putin and Chelsea white, but ti may well be that Chelsea has more similar genetics to Berry than Putin. ---
**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:** [May 23, 2011, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/140 "2011-05-23T15:14:50Z")
> [@GalileoSmith](#): > > In scientific terms there is no such thing as race. However there does exist a phenomenon which has people native to diffferent lands having different appearances. Often considered “race”, but by strict scientific terms, not “race”. OK. > [@](#): > > The phenomenon, whatever term you may put upon it, is often used by medical community, as well as many societies, resulting in the creation of such things as Affirmative Action and other social programs. I don’t think the medical community uses race to diagnose disease all that much, but I’m open to being convinced otherwise. > [@Chen019](#): > > Can’t you say this about almost all classification systems? How many languages or cultures are there? Well, that’s not a bad analogy. There are many “language continuums” around the world where we artificially (ie, socially) impose a boundary that doesn’t exist. One Example would be German-Dutch. It’s convenient to say that people in Germany speak German and people in the Netherlands speak Dutch, but the reality is that the language changes from one to the other in a continuum. > [@](#): > > You always get boundary issues. Still, you can identify languages by region of origin, and race by lineage or continental ancesty. No, you don’t. Not in the animal kingdom when we assign subspecies status to populations that have abrupt morphological and genetic changes that correspond to geographic barriers. Populations that would interbreed easily if those boundaries didn’t exist. You don’t find that with _H. sapiens._ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472.md?page=8)