What is this:
These groups coincide with whats was called "races"
based on?
Who says they coincide with what was called races? That statement is simply a paraphrasing of your original assertion. Restating it doesn’t make it any more true. Again you are using an apparently groundless assertion to back up an apparently equally worthless statement. I hate to say it again, but can I have a reference for that?
Excuse me?
The whole reason that we have even discussed the HLA typing is that you insisted that races were real and that HLA typing was strong evidence of that reality.
So, now, groups coincide with what is (culturally) called “races” with overlaps and exclusions? So the markers cannot be used to identify/place/ascertain/define/limit/resolve/restrict/settle/specify “race”? Only to predict that some persons of culturally identified “races” might have a higher percentage of common HLA types?
If you do not even have HLA typing as a racial marker, we find ourselves at the starting point: that there are no biological races; that races are a cultural construct; and that your earlier claim that races were a biological reality is, simply, wrong.
That works for me.
"Merriam-Webster online dictionary:
race :a division of mankind possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type
char·ac·ter·ize 2 : to be a characteristic of : distinguish”
dis·tin·guish a : to mark as separate or different
These traits are therefore insufficient to characterise the Andeans as a distinct human type. I could not use these traits to mark the division “Andeans” as separate from the division “Ainu”. I could not even percieve a difference between Andean from an Ainu using this trait on its own. It is entirely possible that an Andean would fall outside the spectrum for his actual division, and that an Ainu would fall within the Andean division.
Therefore this statement alone cancels any chance of applying this to the definition of race as used here.
Question is now answered (unless you want to say what you said about ‘ancestor’, that you are using ‘the other’ definition and then refuse to provide that definition despite being asked several times).
y’know, for a guy with a limited grasp of English, he sure knows a whole bunch of synonyms for “determine”.
unless, of course, he went to a thesaurus and then ran his post through his Mis-Spell Check (which doesn’t seem all that unlikely either- hell, it would explain a lot of things, wouldn’t it, Gaspole?)
correction-
that should have read "Gaspoge "
apologies to all,
jb
No worries
CU_Farley.
Quoth you know who
chalk another one up for the all-too apt sig line!!!
booo-yaw,
jb
Qo: If you do not even have HLA typing as a racial marker, we find ourselves at the starting point:
HLA-phenotype (or anything else) is not a racial marker. There are NO racial markers. A antigen in AB system marks for A+ blood group, nothing else; a person with this marker and a dozen of others is more likely to belong to a group of people called, e.g., “XYZ race”, or ABC subrace, or “MNO subsubrace”.
Qo: that there are no biological races; that races are a cultural construct; and that your earlier claim that races were a biological reality is, simply, wrong.
You are right, if the following are right:
“cultural”: is like religion, exists only in human mind, can be changed, etc.
“biological”: exists objectively, will exist independently of human mind.
I confabulated: there are no biological races, we all look the same, of average height, with average hair, etc. Sorry. We differ only culturally, according to the current government regulations: some are eligible for the Affirmative Action, some may own casinos, etc. I got it now.
Save your sarcasm for a time when you have facts on your side.
No one has claimed that we all look identical.
The point is that if one starts with any specific localized groups in distant parts of the world and tries to identify races, there are enough locally distinct features that such a perception can be defended. (Culturally defined races)
In biology, however, perception counts for a lot less when determining categories. When we begin to categorize traits to allow us to define a race, we find that the traits (whether melanin concentrations or HLA types) vary widely within each culturally predetermined group. We also find that as we move from a geographic region of one culturally defined “race” to the geographic region of another culturally defined “race” we cannot find any borders (barring an ocean). There is no place where we can say the people in this town are “race” A and the people in the next town are “race” B. Whether it is melanin or HLA, the “borders” are too fuzzy to be real.
To the immediate claim that this simply indicates “racial mixing” we can reply (see Collounsbury’s many citations) that not only do we not find a sudden mixture at the “borders” but that we cannot truly even find the borders. The whole of humanity displays “racial” characteristics on a continuum that does not ever allow us to biologically say “here is where the groups are distinct.”
Any group that is sufficiently distinct from one’s own group can be named a “race” but walking from one’s home to the other side of the world, it would be impossible to find a place where the racial change takes place. Using genetic tests, the ability to find a border between the groups actually drops.
I’m sorry that this seems to offend your neatly preconceived beliefs, but this is the Straight Dope and we prefer to deal in facts.
Qo:Save your sarcasm for a time when you have facts on your side.
They are (and were) on my side.
Qo:No one has claimed that we all look identical.
You can’t have it both ways, Tom. Either we all look similar, or you have to say why we look dissimilar(you do?). You say, for instance, that there are races. Or groups. Or something. You may say: “ I have no idea. Perhaps, because the government said so.”
Qo: When we begin to categorize traits to allow us to define a race, we find that the traits (whether melanin concentrations or HLA types) vary widely within each culturally predetermined group.
Wrong premise. (Skin color is a trait. Melanin concentration could be called a trait. HLA types are NOT traits. Do not put them in the same basket) They do not vary widely. They do not vary at all. They are discreet. They are either present or absent. Even in the first generation offspring. If the father had antigen “A”, the mother – “B”, the child may be only A, B, or AB. It can not be ½ A and ½ B. Similar laws apply to your beloved melanin. Its inheritance is governed by many genes, but each of them is either present or absent. If not all of them can be counted today, it’s because we can’t yet count them. We will be able tomorrow. But the laws of discreet inheritance will exist intact.
Qo:We also find that as we move from a geographic region of one culturally defined “race” to the geographic region of another culturally defined “race” we cannot find any borders (barring an ocean).
I do not now why you are looking for borders. And I am not talking about culturally defined races. If you have certain markers and I do not, this is our “border”. These particular markers do not separate us racially, but their absence or presence confers some probability.
Qo: There is no place where we can say the people in this town are “race” A and the people in the next town are “race” B.
There is. If people in town A do not have the marker most prevalent in people from town B, they probably belong to a different race.
**Qo: Whether it is melanin or HLA, the “borders” are too fuzzy to be real.[/a]
Again, although I do not understand your fixation on borders, the borders are very distinct and real. Either your have a marker, or you do not. Nothing fuzzy.
Qo: To the immediate claim that this simply indicates “racial mixing” we can reply (see Collounsbury’s many citations) that not only do we not find a sudden mixture at the “borders” but that we cannot truly even find the borders. The whole of humanity displays “racial” characteristics on a continuum that does not ever allow us to biologically say "here is where the groups are distinct.
These “indistinction” is perceived, not real. See the melanin explanation above. The trait, for instance, the hair color, can be indistinct. But the genes responsible for the hair color, are either present, or absent.
QoAny group that is sufficiently distinct from one’s own group can be named a “race” but walking from one’s home to the other side of the world, it would be impossible to find a place where the racial change takes place.
Impossinle for a government observer . A lab tech with the proper equipment can. Exactly.
Qo:Using genetic tests, the ability to find a border between the groups actually drops.
Again, I do not know what is meant by “border” (barbed wire?). But by doing what’s you call “genetic tests”, markers can be found. Their presence/absence can not place anyone within a race, but the “constellation” of them can suggest race. So, nothing “drops”.
Qo: I’m sorry that this seems to offend your neatly preconceived beliefs, but this is the Straight Dope and we prefer to deal in facts
I am not offended. I like “good” discussions. Biological races objectively exist, it’s not my belief. There is no specific marker for any race. But a group of markers can be more prevalent for a particular race. At some point, in the distant future, all known markers will be, probably, uniformly distributed in all organisms, and we all will look similar (ain’t it boring?). But now, distinct subpopulations can be easily determined. They may have similar or dissimilar looks, depending on the expression of the markers.
In the different thread, our points of view differed at the beginning, became almost the same at the end. It happened, in part, because you knew more of the subject and ultimately convinced me with the facts, and because the subject was cultural. In this case, I persist because there are objective facts, which do not require our interpretation, not because I have “preconceived beliefs”
Say Hi to Debb.
Peace
THEN PROVIDE EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THAT ASSERTION.
You are the one who “wants it both ways.” You want to claim that races are biological realities that can be identified genetically, (“Exactly.” in your own word), but you only provide evidence of traits that appear in all groups in varying levels where the varying levels are more different within the groups than they are between the groups.
You have provided no evidence that any scientist can create any such constellation of markers that will successfully delineate even half of the human population. What is the point of claiming a biological reality for race when it is no more than a cultural delineation moved to a different arena?
Your taxonomic/forensic examples fall short in several areas that we have already discussed. Now your HLA types are so widely scattered that they can only be used by imposing the cultural pattern on the biological data. None of this provides a working definition for race. So what is the point?
The borders are obviously not “barbed wire”. The borders (which do not exist) are those geographic lines that indicate where characteristics will be found always in one group and never in another group. Leaving aside the future, there is no evidence that those borders existed prior to 1492. (Collounsbury’s data went back over 20,000 years without finding any borders–no places where humans did not share more traits (generally bone structure) outside their immediate population and more variation within their own population.) If there is simply a continuum of traits scattered across the human population, then there can be no biological races.
(Or you can have a few widely scattered races making up some minority of the human population and a majority of humanity “raceless” I suppose.)
To claim that a biological “race” includes (some) Ibos, (some) Ainus, and (some) Celts is to demonstrate that there is nothing holding the concept together except a desire on the part of the observer to enforce order where there is none. Following that logic, we should identify the two races of humanity as those who are lactose tolerant and those who are lactose-intolerant. That is a clear biological identifier (although it includes people from widely distant parts of the world who are clearly less-closely related than other people who have the opposite lactose trait).
As to your government worker: a government worker can see that a person with dark skin and a broad nose is likely to be denied housing or a job based on that person’s appearance despite the fact that the person might be descended from such unrelated groups as those who lived in western Africa and those who live on the islands along the Indian ocean east of the Indian subcontinent. The discrimination that that person will suffer is directly related to that person’s appearance regardless of biology. The government worker can then identify a culturally imposed definition of race (with no biological support) on people from disparate parts of the world because those different people will suffer discrimination based on the false clue of appearance.
You have still never provided any evidence that races exist biologically. You have also never explained why you believe that races exist: demonstrate a race.
I was summoned. I haven’t read the thread. I will read it in the next day and make an answer.
Hardly worth it really.
I grow tired of peacism, but will try to do the little of the HLa distributions analysis promised earlier.
But to cover a prior defect which came to mind after Tom’s message (great work with the stupid one): I have never provided the Chamla cites. I went digging around to turn them up and give you the following regarding ancient populations of the Sahara and their ‘racial affilitions’ or rather the problems of:
Chamla, Marie-Claude. Les Populations anciennes du Sahara et des régions limitrophes, étude des restes osseux humains néolithiques et protohistoriques Paris, Laboratoires d’anthropologie du Musée de l’homme et de l’Institut de paléontologie humaine, 1968.
Chamla, Marie-Claude. Les Hommes épipaléolithiques de Columnata (Algérie occidentale), étude anthropologique, Paris, Arts et métiers graphiques, 1970
Plus as I recall these were relevant:
G. Aumassip et al eds Milieux, hommes et techniques du Sahara préhistorique : problèmes actuels Paris : Harmattan, 1994.
Ginette Aumassip, John Desmond Clark, Fabrizio Mori. eds. The prehistory of Africa Forli : A.B.A.C.O. edizioni, 1996.
Anyways, I think its pretty clear to us all that Peace has some a priori assumptions which he uses to distort any and all data. How many times do Tom and I have to note the non-coherence of the distributions or do I have to ask him to provide a substantive analysis of the distributions (as opposed to him simply providing links to data I am well familiar with and asserting a priori and without the slightest pretension of analysis that they have some racial coherence.)?
Does anyone reading this have any questions? It probably be more productive than exchanges with this intellectually and socially impoverished liar.
I just can’t wait to hear your explanation of this…
More doe snot…
We shall overco-oo-ome, we shall overco-oo-ome, we shall overcome some day-ay-ay-ay-ay…
Qo: Impossible for a government observer . A lab tech with the proper equipment can. Exactly.
THEN PROVIDE EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THAT ASSERTION.
What evidence? That there is lab equipment and trained personnel to do that? The phrase was a figure of speech, I am not sure that HLA analysis can be made in the field. But do you know that a few cc of blood can be drawn in the field and mailed to a lab? That is sort of common knowledge to me, I refuse to provide on line reference. Where do you live? My impression was that you are familiar with far more obscure things.
Qo: You are the one who “wants it both ways.” You want to claim that races are biological realities that can be identified genetically
Do not twist my words. Races can not be identified genetically as you understand it, by a single marker. Individuals can be placed within a certain race based on a constellation of biological markers.
Qo:… but you only provide evidence of traits
markers, not traits. We can talk about traits, but several genes with different expressions usually determine them. It will be more complicated.
Qo: that appear in all groups in varying levels where the varying levels are more different within the groups than they are between the groups.
Levels within the groups have nothing to do with anything. Markers and their constellations will have discriminatory values between the groups only if they differ significantly. Their absolute values are irrelevant.
Qu: You have provided no evidence that any scientist can create any such constellation of markers that will successfully delineate even half of the human population.
No scientist is needed to “create” nothing. They exist, objectively. For instance, 85% of humans have Rh factor, 15% do not. By itself, it serves no useful value, it’s transracial, beyond blood transfusions and some pregnancy complications.
** What is the point of claiming a biological reality for race when it is no more than a cultural delineation moved to a different arena?**
I do not know, who moved what where, but I think, it was the other way around.
Qo: Now your HLA types are so widely scattered that they can only be used by imposing the cultural pattern on the biological data.
Watch your language now. HLA types and culture are unrelated; should not be in the same sentence. Unless you manage to mention height and culture together.
Qo: None of this provides a working definition for race. So what is the point?
I do not need races, nor definitions. You, the racists and the government needs them.
Qo: The borders are obviously not “barbed wire”. The borders (which do not exist) are those geographic lines that indicate where characteristics will be found always in one group and never in another group.
From the top of my head I can not think of any single marker which can be found in one group only. It would amount to the “race marker” which we already discussed.
Qo:Leaving aside the future, there is no evidence that those borders existed prior to 1492.
You still talking culture. Get off.
**Qo: To claim that a biological “race” includes (some) Ibos, (some) Ainus, and (some) Celts is… **
I do not claim anything of the sort. A big race can include subraces which may or may not coincide with peoples or nations.
Qo: Following that logic, we should identify the two races of humanity as those who are lactose tolerant and those who are lactose-intolerant.
Lactose intolerance is one marker. It identifies lactose intolerance only. It does not identify race. Or anything else. Only lactose intolerance. Is this concept so difficult to understand?
Qo: That is a clear biological identifier (although it includes people from widely distant parts of the world who are clearly less-closely related than other people who have the opposite lactose trait).
The same fallacy.
Qo: As to your government worker: a government worker can see that a person with dark skin and a broad nose and so forth…
That is cultural. Whatever.
QoYou have still never provided any evidence that races exist biologically. You have also never explained why you believe that races exist: demonstrate a race.
Races do not exist. I obtained all my data from classified sources. They are not available on line. I can not demonstrate a race, if you do not want to see it.
A suggestion: go out. If you live in a big enough place, you will notice that some people have curly black hair, darkly pigmented skin, wide noses and prominent lips. In general, they look like Martin Luther King, Jr. Other people have fair skin, less curly hair, etc., in general, they look like Bill Clinton and his wife. Still other people have straight black hair, narrow eye openings, small upturned noses, prominent cheekbones. In general, they look like Ho Chi Ming. Their facial features (traits) are determined by set of genes, which are shared in different proportions by all groups, and which are independently inherited, so they can be mixed and result in different traits. There are other peculiarities, which are apparent only by blood tests.
Is it a fair demonstration? If you live in a small place and have no chance to see other two races, I will provide you refs to web sites where you can see pics.
Edwino: Do whatever if you are not interested, you do not have to do anything. I can imagine how busy you are in your M.D./Ph.D. program.
These people here will probably say that you manipulated your figures anyway and that they do not prove anything.
ColB already suggested not to bother.
ColB, all your refs are absolutely correct. But they do not address what I am saying. Modern data complement these works, they do not contradict each other.
Reprise, I hope that you do not pull my leg.
I am surprised that your son do not know the reason either.
If you are serious, I will tell you, of course, there are no tricks. And I do not remember, how it came about…
** peace writes
"I obtained all my data from classified sources. They are not
available on line. "
**
how just too convenient. ::snicker::. In what sense are you using ‘classified’?
You can still cite sources without them being online. Some of us even take off line sources more seriously than online sources.
Wanker
Fuck me dead - you are the person who has argued across very many threads that “race” is a scientifically provable concept. Now you want to start talking the ABO blood classification system? There are very many blood classification systems, and I didn’t note you referring to Rhesus or Kell factors when you talked about antigens. Do you really think that we are all so fucking stupid on this board that we don’t understand the ABO concept? Apparently you do.
Just give me your addy and I’ll send you some money so that you can buy a clue.
“here in my heart, I do believe, that we shall overcome some day”
Let me guess…you were formerlly an agent?
[/quote]
If you live in a small place and have no chance to see other two races, I will provide you refs to web sites where you can see pics.
[/quote]
He’s good, I’ll hand it to him. He can provide ‘refs’ to websites where I can see pictures of things that he admits don’t exist. Can anyone give me a ‘ref’ to a website with pics of the Invisible Pink Unicorn?