If you can find more matches among Russian Jews than among Russians at large, are Russian Jews a race? If you can find more matches among Russian Jews than among Sephardic Jews, have we identified two separate races?
What biological definition of race applies equally to every member of that race? A statistical likelihood of similar halpotypes? Does this mean that everyone with whom you are able to share organ or marrow donations is your “real” race (which might preclude your own family)?
I would say whatever definition makes this statement true: “it’s much harder to find a marrow match outside ones race”. I still don’t know what that is…thus the purpose of this thread.
Well, if you start with the assumption that there is no such thing as race, then that ends the discussion right there. I’ll agree that race is a very tricky thing and extremely dificult to define. There are many people who don’t fit neatly into most racial classifications. But it is pretty easy to fit the great majority if people into 5 or 6 races. So I guess you can have it both ways.
BTW, Biggirl, the next time we talk about Affirmative Action, are you going to deny that people can be categorized by race? Anyway, I guess I’m straying off topic on that…
Race is a social construct, based on a lumping of superficial characteristics. Those characteristics tend to indicate geographic origin. Geographic origin indicates a higher percentage of people who have intermarried. Thus, the NMDP can include “Hispanic” as a “race” when seeking to expand their donor pool–a purely social, not biological, category that they use to seek donors.
JM:I’ll agree that race is a very tricky thing and extremely dificult to define. There are many people who don’t fit neatly into most racial classifications. But it is pretty easy to fit the great majority [of] people into 5 or 6 races.
Well, it’s pretty easy to fit the great majority of people into one category in just about any set of a few physical categories. Consider a set consisting of “tallest”, “medium-tall”, “medium”, “medium-short”, and “shortest”, say. In “tallest” would go some Africans and some Scandinavians, in “shortest” would go some Africans and some Asians, etc. etc. Some people would be borderline and hard to classify, but most people would fall pretty squarely in one group or another.
Same for a classification system based on hirsuteness or abundance of facial and body hair: “furriest” would have some Europeans and some West and South Asians, “smoothest” would have some Asians, some Africans, and some Europeans, etc. Again, some folks would be difficult to classify but most would be pretty easy.
The question is: what would that tell us about the extent of common genetic heritage within each category? The answer would be: something, but not everything. For example, many Africans in the “tallest” category would be more closely related genetically to other Africans in that category than to some Africans in the “shortest” category. But that wouldn’t mean that tall Africans are equally closely related to tall Scandinavians. Superficial physical similarities sometimes indicate close genetic relationship, and sometimes don’t.
And that also applies to the conventional categories of “race”. Many dark-skinned, broad-nosed, curly-haired Africans (whom most racial systems would classify as members of the “black” or, archaically, “Negroid” race) are actually less closely related to dark-skinned, broad-nosed, curly-haired Australian Aborigines or South Indian Tamils than to, say, pale-skinned thin-nosed straight-haired Europeans. Shared “racial” characteristics sometimes indicate close genetic relationship, and sometimes don’t.
That is what people mean when they say “there is no such thing as race.” There simply isn’t any set of “racial” physiological characteristics that consistently correlates with closeness of genetic relationship. We already know that from the existing evidence. We don’t need the HGP to prove it. So you can stop being all fussed about how the HGP is being subverted to some kind of “political agenda”. Biologically speaking, there are no “races”; there is just a huge spectrum and interconnected web of human populations, with many different kinds of superficial resemblances and genetic relationships.
Socially and ethnically (and even medically) speaking, race can be a useful concept, insofar as the superficial resemblances often (though by no means always) do correlate to shared heritage—just as your physical resemblance (presumably) to the other Maces accompanies not only genetic kinship but shared language and culture, family history, etc. But that doesn’t mean that if you met somebody else who looked a lot like you, he would have to be a member of the Mace family. Similarly, no given “Caucasian” can be safely assumed to be more closely related to another “Caucasian” than to a “black” or “Asian” person. The odds often tend that way, but it is not a scientifically reliable indicator.
**
Scientist and geneticist started off with the assumption that there were definitely such a thing as race, just as you are. Did you read any of the links I provided?
** Research has found that it isn’t easy to fit the great majority of people into 5 or 6 races. If you want to use the word “race” to mean something in biology, then you have to define what it means. I ask you: What is the scientific definition of race?
As I’ve said over and over-- race is an invalid scientific concept. I never said it was an invalid social one.
I’m not a biologist, but I am a scientist. And I know that forensic scientists routinely classify skeletal remains as belonging to a certain race. Remember the famous Kenniwick man? The furor arose because the anthropologist determined, thru cranial measurements, that the fossil did not fall into the statistical grouping of Native Americans. Sure it’s statitistical, but that doesn’t mean it’s NOT science. Lots of things can only be determined within some probability. You’d have to throw out all of modern physics if you required absolute certanty.
There are many individuals who are neither male nor female. Does that mean there is no such thing as gender? No, it just means that not ALL people fall in the designated categories.
I would agree that the term “geographic population” might be more accurate than “race”, but it’s really the same thing.
Geographical populations have definitions and they do not fit the popular definition of race. Especially not if you mean to “fit the great majority if people into 5 or 6 races.”
JM:I would agree that the term “geographic population” might be more accurate than “race”, but it’s really the same thing.
I don’t think you are quite getting the point here. It’s not the same thing. As I noted above, two “geographical populations” (e.g., some Africans and Australians) can be very similar in their “racial” characteristics—skin color, facial physiognomy, etc.—while being less closely related genetically than they are to some other population with very different “racial” characteristics.
That’s a fact, and it completely contradicts the standard notion of “race” as a reliable scientific indicator of shared genetic heritage. It is simply not true that two “black” people must necessarily have a closer genetic kinship than either of them does to a “white” person. (And I’m not talking just about “interracial” intermarriage within the last few centuries, either: I’m talking about the fact that entire populations can look “racially” more similar to more distantly related populations than they do to more closely related populations.)
No, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use statistics about physical characteristics to make a guess as to which population an individual belongs to. But in that case, you are talking about populations and genetic heritage, and you should say so instead of using the inaccurate and misleading term “race”.
The standard notion of “race” lumps many different (and often not closely related) genetic populations together into 5 or 6 superficially characterized “racial types”. That’s not scientific, and scientists have rightly given up on it.
I don’t agree that defining race as a social construct based on superficial characteristics makes this sentence true: “it’s much harder to find a marrow match outside ones race”.
Based on your definition it may be harder to find a job outside your ‘race’, intermarry, or get fair treatment from the police. But to increase the probability of a marrow match based on genetic predicators, you have to make a distinction between groups based on more than superficial characteristics or social constructs. If I can truly find more marrow matches among the broad category of ‘whites’, then you’re talking about whites as group with predictable genetics, despite exceptions based on ancestral origin. That is not a social construct. A social construct is saying ‘whites are allowed to do this, but blacks are not’. A purely social construct would mean that blacks have the same chance of finding a match among white donors as whites do.
It doesn’t cause it to be true, it just happens to be true.
The HLA types are not a “racial” characteristic that are common to everyone of one “race.” They are more like strands or strings that weave through all of humanity. Certain HLA types appear more frequently among people who marry within their own groups, so looking at people who are more likely to marry within certain groups will turn up more examples of the same strands that others within those groups carry.
For the purpose of advertising the need for broader based donor groups, the NMDP uses the social construct of race to identify groups who need more representation. (Or is there some Hispanic race that has been recently discovered of which I am unaware?)
The races are social constructs because they are not based on biological tests. They are based on appearance and geography, colored by the expectations of the people naming the groups.
For example, the Australian aborigines are identified as either of Malay or Caucasian origin (we can’t even get everyone to agree on that) based on their geography, while, by appearance, they might have been grouped with Africans (or they may not, depending on the arbitrary traits of appearance that might be used to identify them).
There is no biological test that will identify any person by race. The forensics studies to which John Mace referred provide only general averages against which individuals might be compared, but do not establish a way to inerrantly determine race. Similarly, the Rosenberg study to which I referred can show the probability of geographic origin, but only by comparing clusters of markers appearing in proportion to other markers, since all groups of peoples carry all the markers.
The tissue typing passes down the generations in ways similar to Y chromosome and mtDNA markers. They are passed down from parent to child, generation after generation, with little to no changes from generation to generation. The populations will continue to mix and differentiate over the years, but that thread of parental markers continues to be passed along relatively unscathed.
For an example (using Y chromosomes), the Lemba of Southern Africa are clearly “African” according to appearance and geography. They have obviously intermarried with the peoples around them to the point where their “race” would clearly be identified as African. Yet, prompted by traditions that indicated some vague connection to ancient Jewish practices, studies were made on Lemba Y chromosomes and a strong link was discovered between the Lemba and the kohanim of the Jewish people. (In reconstructing their migration, it seems that they originated as a Jewish merchant community in Yemen who migrated to Africa and then moved south, losing contact with the Jews to the North, allowing their religious beliefs to change, and intermarrying with the local peoples. Yet, one strand of DNA continues to make itself known in their population.) Similarly, the British geneticist Bryan Sykes has discovered African mtDNA among a family in Britain who have genealogical records going back several hundred years, indicating that some maternal ancestor was probably brought into Britain with the Romans from Africa. Certainly, the majority of their genetic makeup is British, not African, even though we find an African marker.
The tissue types are grouped along the lines of people who have most frequently intermarried, and that will be most easily identified by the ethnic group among whom they have lived. In the shorthand of the NMDP, that is “races and ethnic groups.”
And when did Hispanic became a race? I really doubt that the NMDP is putting a lot of biology into their campaign. They are seeking to broaden the donor pool, and they are using familiar terms to get their message across without carefully explaining what those terms mean.
What with some of the posters here already, I’ll not add to the usual discussion about the non-zero but small statistical value of the sociologic construct of “race” as a correlate for biologically significant markers … thinking here of medical significance.
I’m more interested this time in this quote:
I heartily endorse that the data shows that biologically “race” is a concept of extremely little value. I am certainly against racism in all its forms. But this is science as religion; science to created in order to suppport a socio-political belief/end. It will fail. Racists do not care about science. But moreso it is a bastardazation of science. To quote from a recent Science (March 7, 23) “Is Evolution a Secular Religion?”, in which the author bemoans the creation of a
So the definition of race in that statement would be “grouping based on visible characteristics or reported lineage that increases the chance of common ancestral origin”?
I’d say it is identification, either by self or by others, as a member of a group that has been called “race” by society at large. Such identification is usually based on external superficial features and/or reported/perceived lineage. It might be correlated with “common ancestral origin” or not. Nothing more. Sure it is tautologic; that’s sort of the point. That’s why it is not a scientific concept even if it happens to overlap with some meaningful biologic markers.
I don’t know how HGDP is going to contribute to the end of racism since we’ve had a good 30 years of solid scientific evidence against the classic scientific race classifications and it doesn’t seem to have made much of a dent, as evidenced by this and countless other race threads.
I think that HGD is trying to play to the feelings of the many aboriginal peoples who are dead-set against the project. Much of what they hope to find out about prehistoric migrations hinges on what the DNA of these long isolated populations.
So Biggirl, you are saying that such a statement was an insincere ploy, trying to placate those who wouldn’t understand the scientific importance of the work (or are afraid that the results might be used to justify racist constructs) with empty reassurances that such work would accomplish a greater social good dear to an aboriginal heart?
If so, then the cynic in me suspects that you are correct. And then too, this packaging is unbecoming for a scientific endevour.
And don’t misunderstand me: I already accept that race is of little (but not “no”) value as a scientific concept - mainly because it declares an answer as to which groupings are biologically meaningful in advance of any data other than superficial characteristics, because it makes sharp edged groupings where almost all data show that biologic differences are much blurrier; I already accept that the HGDP is of great importance to the understanding of human migration patterns, and to the understanding of what population groupings do have meaningful biologic/medical significance.
