Peace, you utter twit, getting angry at someone does not indicate that they are in the right. In the circumcision threads where people started yelling at JDT for being <insert derogatory comment>, that did not elevate the tripe he was spewing in the slightest.
The same thing goes for you. When people become frustrated at your arguements, it does absolutely nothing to strengthen your so-called points. This is a defense that you have fallen back on numerous times, and it’s pathetic.
Wow. This thread has come a long way since the intensive discussion of scrota I left more than a week ago.
I’ve just caught up and I want to thank some of you and especially Tom for some very well-crafted explanations of a difficult subject.
To be generous to Peace, whether that is justified or not, this must be incredibly mind-blowing for him.
For people as well-versed as Tom and Coll. in recent scientific research, it’s easy to accept that racial difference is a cultural construct without a reliable biological foundation. But for most people that’s tantamount to turning the world upside down.
The truth is that in this case cultural reality is the reigning reality–in other words, the dominant social reality. In spite of all the arguments that genetic research can provide, books like The Bell Curve still get written, perpetuating the belief that race is biology and biology is destiny. The reality is that half of the people in jail today are not white. Racial profiling is a reality.
It’s both comforting and conventional for people to believe that realities of this kind are predicated on some biological basis–however tenuous–because if they weren’t then one would have to take responsibility for tolerating them. For most people, at least in the US, race is very much a reality: not only in spite of but precisely because of its primarily cultural, historical and social foundations.
To be generous to Peace, what Tom has called the “human need for lumping and boxing” is pervasive and much more prominent than any of the arguments that have been offered here to contradict it.
It’s not easy to see the world upside down all at once. For Peace, observable racial difference (which I would call phenotypical difference) is as prominent as it is because he’s been taught to think that way. He would never stop to think that he hasn’t tended classify people according to other observable differences such as the color of their teeth, the shape of their noses, or the size of their toes, all of which have as much of a genetic basis as skin color.
But maybe he will now.
ohmigod, I can’t believe I read the WHOLE thing!
Wow, you guys crack me up. This whole thread reminds me of my brother continually picking on me when we were kids. I’d go crying to Mom, and she’d say, “just ignore him and he’ll go away.”
You all could learn a lot from my Mom.
Merry Christmas
I do not want to form factions here. I think that anybody can have a personal point of view and can defend it. So, let me say that a few posts here encourage me, although the overall Orwellian decay of the society is evident.
I am so frustrated: I ask a bright person a simple* question, and instead of a plain answer get a small treatise on unrelated topic. Apparently, I am too obtuse to understand how blue color relates to the discussed. I could be accused myself for introducing unrelated “diurnal cycles” here, but I did so very reluctantly, just to illustrate my point. I was very embarrassed, as I thought that such tactics offend the intelligence of my opponents, and I tried to keep the analogy to the minimum. At least, I did not ask questions.
I will repeat two arguments which I has made in passing and which were never addressed by my opponents, whether because they were unnoticed (sic!) or because it was more convenient to ignore them.
If you, guys, have any objections to these two points, you can post them here. I’d be interested to look at them and see how far a denial can go.
The denial of biological basis for the race surprises me as such, but even more I am surprised by the possible reasons for this denial. I would understand it if I promoted some kind of weird racist theory, but I am the first one to agree that biological features of race have only very limited significance. Most of the prisoners in this country are probably lactose-intolerant. I said “probably”, because I do not know for sure, nobody is ever going to test them and lactose-intolerance has nothing to do with crime. Lactose-intolerance is a biological factor, can reasonably well but unreliably predict one’s racial belonging, can be used for dieting research/food distribution, can be studied, etc. But as soon as I group it with other genetic markers and use it to predict race more reliably, I am told that it must not be done, because…
Peace
It’s tempting to say: Replace the words “biological features of race” with “utterly superficial appearance” and no-one would have a problem here, but the rest of your post makes me think this is pointless, peace and instead tempts me to say this:
You are talking out of your arse at speeds for which your sphincter is not engineered . In daytime television terms, you are in danger of losing the support of the “mildlessly unreflective support of those who are don’t know what they are talking about, don’t care and don’t understand support group support group” group. Give it a rest.
Whereas race does? As in some Lombroso-like scheme where skin color betrays an innate tendency for social deviance?
Peace, your argument is primarily with others who have already expended a great deal of effort trying to explain their views and the basis for their views.
If my post was one of those that encouraged you, let me say now, that your reply has discouraged me. My thought was that it’s very difficult to open people’s minds on a subject when they’ve been raised to think a certain way and they have lots of incentive to stay in that mindset. I don’t know you as well as the others do, as I haven’t looked at the original threads from which this sprang. I doubt that I will want to butt in again. But you strike me as incapable of consistent logical argument. Whenever the arguments get too close to the point where your mind would actually have to process, grow and change you throw in red herrings that are utterly irrelevant: “But colors are too simple an example!” “But prisoners are probably lactose-intolerant!”
The irony is that color is precisely what you are hung up on. Your thoughts about lactose-intolerance are incoherent.
This is not a PC problem in which you, The Man of Reason, fight the forces of Correct Speech. This is about your intellectual ability to adapt to the specific terms of an argument and to argue within that frame. So far you have shown precious little of that ability.
Pcmr, I do not know daytime TV terms, so I am afraid it was lost on me. In general, I believe that if my intellectual ability fails me, no support group can help.
As far as lactose-intolerance: I recon, it sounded strange out of context. Tom brought it out of the blue a few days back, and threw it into the thread. I used his example, as the one known to him.
The topic of color is in no way unrelated. It is, from one perspective, identical to your insistence on races. The entire spectrum of light exists independently of human perception. However, cultures assign names to bands within that spectrum. Some cultures have been found to identify all colors as “light” or “dark.” Other cultures add “red” giving “white,” “black,” and “red.” Other cultures add, in increasing complexity, more definitions to narrower bands of the light spectrum. The Ancient Greek language had such a paucity of “defined” colors, that a serious (if silly) proposal was put forth that humans only developed better color perception in the last 2,500 years.
This is exactly analogous to the perception of race. The nineteenth century ethnologists were able to “see” three races. Later anthropologists were able to “see” up to six races. Other people have “seen” up to 60 races. As we identify more and more characteristics (analogous to narrower and narrower bands of wavelength), we “create” more races until the concept becomes meaningless. (Before we gotto that point, however, geneticists have pointed out that true genetic differences are so scattered as to render to point moot.)
There is no problem with recognizing that different groups of people have different appearances (and realizing that those appearances are dictated by a genetic code). The problem comes when one insists that the different appearances have an innate or a priori reality.
The blue of the sky and the blue of the American flag are obviously different, and even aperson from a culture that cannot give a word to the differences can recognize that they are not the same. However, we have created a supergroup called “blue” into which we throw both colors. We can create smaller and smaller “groups” of color spectra by narrowing the number of wavelengths that we include in a named color: azure, baby blue, cornflower blue, cerulean. Those colors are not “real” except that we have identified a range of wavelengths that we, in our culture, agree to call by those names. Even so, we can, indeed, find the specific wavelengths associated with any given named color. Our culture defines what to look for, but there is an underlying, clearly defined, range of wavelengths associated with the name we have assigned. We will not find an object identified as cerulean reflecting a wavelength associated with the red range of the spectrum.
Biologists, however, have not found any “constellation” of characteristics that can be identified to the level of a “race” that are not shared with other “races” and which do not differ, widely, within any “race” that is named by our culture. Go back and actually read the references that Collounsbury provided so long ago.
Regarding your two points:
Collounsbury posted the material on the “races” of the great apes over a week ago, in which it was shown that there is actually more genetic diversity among two groups of marginally separated gorillas than there is within the whole of world-scattered humanity. Races certainly could exist is humanity, but the reality is that they do not. (sorry)
I have no idea what you are claiming. If a Phoenician with no experience of Nubians or Abyssinians sailed around Africa (as one group is reported to have done), they would certainly note that the people they saw on the coasts of their journey looked different: darker skin, different hair, different facial features. The Phoenicians did not need a concept of “race” to see those differences or to see those people, collectively, as different. This sort of encounter would be the origin of the idea of race. “All those people have this appearance.” I don’t know what you are trying to say with
One does not have to be aware of another person’s culture to identify them by appearance. (Of course, appearances are deceiving.)
That is not the issue, however. People have long assumed that the races were real because of the differences in appearance. (I certainly have done so.) However, when biologists set out to categorize the races, they discovered that they did not have enough genetic diversity to allow them to assign categories. Too many “Caucasian” people had too many features (both in appearance and blood and other traits) found in “Negroid” and “Mongoloid” peoples. The same was found with each of the other groups. The “mixing” has gone on so continuously since the beginning of humanity that no races have developed (unless Neandertal was a “race” and not a cousin). The problem is not that we have a problem with the concept of race; the problem is that the biological evidence is clearly not there.
Judging by your refusal to even look at the massive amount of information presented by Collounsbury regarding actual biological investigations, I think we already know how far denial can go. We aren’t accusing you of some underlying racist agenda, we are accusing you of deliberate, willful ignorance. On the Straight Dope, that is a greater crime.
Peace
Just thought I would pop in and say why your diurnal cycle doesn’t work as an analogy. not that I have anything against you Peace, I have never really encountered you anywhere. But this thread has been entertaining and I have learnt a lot from it.
But if there is a diurnal cycle, this is understood by scientists. Give any scientist the information about the system (how fast it rotates and how far away from each other they are) and the scientist can tell you where it is dark, where it is light and a decent one could tell you the percentage of light for each point in the band where it changes. This is all simple physics. There might be some argument over when dawn starts (10% light or 20% etc) but scientists could agree on the numbers.
However, give scientists someones genetic code and they could not tell what ‘race’ someone comes from, let alone what percentage they are of which races. This is where your analogy falls down. They might be able to predict physical features, but not which race they are from.
This is also why the light spectrum is a better analogy. A scientist can say that this light has this spectrum and therfore should be around this colour. But as stated above, this doesn’t mean that scientists can say this accurately, as everyone has a different definition of colour. It is the same with races. I wouldn’t put an African in the same ‘race’ as Jamacians, but most Americans do. They are both ‘black’.
And I don’t believe cultural racism is innate. I can still remember the exact time and place when I was made aware of the fact that some people (including some of my friends) look different to me. I was 16. Otherwise I just would have gone through life not thinking about it at all. But that is for a different thread.
Please continue with the discussion.
I knew I should have gone with red.
First off, all analogies fail at some level. The point is to use the similarities to gain an understanding of points that one does not grasp in the original.
So:
What color is a tangerine, a clementine, or an (eponymous) orange?
Only two choices: is it red? or is it yellow?
(And, yes, there is a very specific point to this question.)
Peace, you are very close to agreeing with what Collunsbury, tomndebb, et. al. are trying to argue. However, you will not let go of the word "Biological."
From what I can tell, everyone agrees that you can look at a person and realize they look do not look the same. You can then place that person into a category called “Race” with fairly consistent results. For example, if you and I were asked to sort 20 different photos of people with varying physical features into groups based on “race”, we would both likely create the same piles containing the same photos. We could then name one pile as Black, one as White, one as Asian, etc. We have sorted our piles according to phenotypical traits and based our categorizations on culturally understood and agreed upon definitions of race.
However, if we gave two scientists 20 different books containing the complete genetic code of 20 different people with varying physical features and asked them to group them, they would come up with vastly different results. First, their own piles may not even agree with each other. Scientist A may group his/hers according to the presence of genes that code for Cystic Fibrosis and other genetic diseases. Scientist B may group his/hers according to an entirely different criteria. Second, neither of these Scientists piles is likely to match our piles based on phenotypical traits. This is because biologically, members of the group called “Black” may be closer to members of the group called “White” than they appear to be when classified by their outwardly observable physical appearance.
If “races” were biologically valid categoires, we would expect that Scientist A and Scientist B would reliably and independently produce the same results.
This is one of the longest threads here and I do not understand where it is going. We already went from races to diurnal cycles to colors… I brought the diurnal cycles in order to demonstrate the lack of logic, not to illustrate races. Tom brought short wave colors first, and now he makes his second try with long wave colors. I am answering his indirect questions about colors, while he is not answering my direct questions about race…
The irony of the situation is that we all agree, as Tevya said: Peace, you are very close to agreeing with what Collunsbury, tomndebb, et. al. are trying to argue. However, you will not let go of the word “Biological.”
So, I explain what I mean by “biological” again: all race attributes with which the person was born, will die and will pass to his progeny (in accordance with some laws, of course). Features and traits, such as hair structure and skeletal peculiarities, antigenic markers are included. Religion, education and such acquired traits are excluded, they are cultural. Biological markers are objective, i.e. they exist whether they are determined in the blood or not.
My opponents seem to acknowledge that individuals can be grouped based on their genetic markers. We all agree that many individuals cannot be grouped, because they posses markers common to several groups. We all agree that no group (race) has unique markers, i.e. not seen in other groups. I acknowledge these limitations and say that their existence does not make the whole thing untrue. My opponents (because the got used to deal with computers or for whatever reason) say that because of these limitations, because the races are not “useful” any more and because of …, the races do not exist. Then they go one step further and say that despite the fact that there are no biological races, there are cultural races.
This logic kills me dead. I’ll give you only one example, and I’ll borrow it from Tom. Ninety percent of Asian-Americans are lactose-intolerant http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health/digest/pubs/lactose/lactose.htm
So, if I am asked: “If this person is lactose-intolerant, what is his race?”, I’ll answer: “I do not know. Nine chances out of ten that he is Oriental. But he could be something else. If you give me several more markers, for instance, that he has straight black hair and epicanthal fold, I’ll be more certain. If he is blond and has no epicanthal fold, I do not know.” My opponents say that this (90%, or 99.9% probability) is not good. That it’s easier to ask the person about his race. I agree, it is easier (at least, less expensive). My opponents triumph. “You see”, they say, “the races outlived themselves. We do not need them.” This last part I do not understand. “We do not need them” is arguable, because the need or lack thereof in the eyes of the beholder. “They(races) do not exist” does not follow.
Several factual errors, as I saw them.
<< FloChi: They might be able to predict physical features, but not which race they are from.>>
I think “predict physical features” was unfortunate phrase: physical features are observed, not predicted.
The race can be “predicted”, with above limitations.
If I asked you to guess a person’s race, based on his blue eyes, blond hair and “white” skin, what would be your guess? And you would be right 99.999% of the time. The fact that many times you would be unable to “raciolize” a person does not cancel the whole concept.
And I don’t believe cultural racism is innate
I do not know what you mean by “innate”, but I believe that if an individual is perceived as “different than me”, there is a biologically built in awareness. It is only my belief, though, I cannot give any quotes and I’d be interested to learn.
Tom: What color is a tangerine, a clementine, or an (eponymous) orange?
You are not testing my color vision, Tom? What’s behind it?
Tevya :However, if we gave two scientists 20 different books containing the complete genetic code of 20 different people with varying physical features and asked them to group them, they would come up with vastly different results
Not necessarily. It depends on the features by which you had asked them to group people.
Tevya: **We have sorted our piles according to phenotypical traits and based our categorizations on culturally understood and agreed upon definitions of race. **
We can agree on cultural definitions, although I think it is wrong to assign the same religion or the same holidays or the same political beliefs to members of one race. But that would be an entirely different discussion.
Bzzt. Wrong, try again. Just because Asian-Americans have a 90% chance of being LO, doesn’t mean that out of 10 LO people, nine of them are Asian-American.
Actually, we did address this issue a long time ago; I simply have been refraining from repeating it.
-You asserted that one’s genetic makeup ultimately determines one’s appearance.
~I agree this is true.
-You then claimed that we are able to find sufficient genetic information (the genes to control melanin production + HLA types + bone structure + numerous other categories), to identify the races.
~This is not true. We have already mapped enough of the genetic makeup of people to know that we will not be able to put enough people in any category to make race “discrete” and if it is not discrete, it is not real. The concept of those categories is imposed from the outside, by the observer. It is not inherent in the observed phenomenon.
We are left with the “x% of this population is available as organ donors” that I noted a long time ago.
We never find enough genetic information to define boundaries on “race” because all people share too many characteristics (and genes) of any other group that we would call a “race.”
I note you ducked the color question again. I already pointed out that it was the basis of an analogy that I hoped would improve your perception, so I’ll try it anyway.
I asked whether the three fruits named were red or yellow. I specifically stated that those were the only options. Why? Because in Europe prior to the thirteenth century, there was no such color as orange.
There were certainly objects in Europe that reflected the correct wavelengths of light that we would call orange, but (perhaps due to the relative rarity of monarch butterflies and pumpkins, I dunno), no Western European language had a word for orange. If you drew a colorbar beginning at “pure red” and extended it out to “pure yellow” and asked a person from that time and place to draw lines between the colors, they would have drawn a single line halfway between the red and the yellow. They would have easily agreed that there was more yellow in some reds closer to their line and that there was more red in some yellows closer to the line they drew. However, they would have told you that there were only two colors on the page. They “decided” what was red or yellow and imposed that order on the color bar. The orange fruit was brought to Europe from India by Persian traders in the thirteenth century. By the late sixteenth century, the fruit was sufficiently common that people began to assign the name of the fruit to the color of the fruit. The very first citation of “orange” used as a color in English does not occur until 1600. Prior to that time, any color between red and yellow was identified as either red or yellow.
If you gave the same color bar to a second-grader in an American school, today, and asked that child to draw lines between the colors, the child would draw two lines, one between red and orange and one between orange and yellow.
Has the light changed? No. What has changed is the human cultural imposition of categories on the spectrum of color.
In the same way, humans imposed cultural categories on the appearance of other people and called them races.
The color spectrum is a continuum that we arbitrarily divide. Humans choose to decide what wavelengths we will identify as a discrete color.
The genetic database is a continuum that we arbitrarily divide. Humans choose to decide what physical characteristics we will identify as a discrete race.
This means that any collection of characteristics can be selected and used to identify a race. There is, therefore, no outside, objective reality of any race.
Your assertion that the genetic database is not a continuum is not supported by the facts that Collounsbury has presented. Had the HLA charts that you finally provided showed discrete breaks between specific groups, you would have an argument for biological race. Unfortunately, there were massive overlaps among the “races,” leaving us with my “probable donor pool” assertion. There was no constellation of features that provided a discrete race. There were only loose collections of features on which humans imposed “meaning” in a cultural setting.
Peace
Lactose-intolerant, you nitwit.
I meant LI in my original post, not LO. Hence your confusion.
Of course, based on the context, you should’ve known what I was talking about.
Or is that assuming too much?
Montfort, I know what I am talking about, I do not assume anyting about you. SDopers will decide who is nitwit:
Peace
Peace, you’re not only a nitwit, your pathetic attempts at sarcasm only succeed in reinforcing it. Nine chances out of ten and 90% chance are exactly the same thing.
Niwit, Fucknut and Wanker!!