I’m not sure that the position you propose is terribly new compared to the three positions I outlined in my FAQ. But let’s test your position a little, ok?
What “scientific backing” would convince you that “race is a myth” is incorrect?
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Ok, so is it your position that any statement of the form “members of race X are naturally more likely to have characteristic Y than non-members” is “ridiculous”?
(Assuming of course, that characteristic Y has nothing to do with skin color, eye color, etc.)
Let’s look at it this way:
The closest known species to Homo sapiens is Homo neanderthalensis. Let’s accept for the sake of argument that we can clearly define those two as seperate species. Genetic evidence indicates that those two species started to split apart about 600k years ago. Now, we don’t know at what point in time the two groups actually became seperate species, but let’s say it’s about 200k yrs ago-- about the time when Homo sapiens began to emerge.
Let’s use that 400k yr time seperation as a benchmark. So let’s make a judgement call as to how long it would take for two groups of humans to split into two seperate races (or subspecies, if you want to call it that). Let’s say it’s about 1/4 of the time that it took to form two seperate species. That would mean that a group of humans would have to been in almost complete genetic isolation from other human populations for 100k years before it could be identified as a “race”, genetically.
Since we can be pretty darned certain that no group has been isolated for anywhere near that amount of time, it’s a pretty reasonable assumption that seperate (genetic) races do not exist.
Of course we can divide people into what visually appear to be races, and as long as we ignore the large number of people who live in the “intermediate zones”, we might be satisfied. But where you start and what groups you end up with is entirely subjective.
I think the best we can say at this point, given our knowledge of human genetics, is that certain markers can point with a certain probability that a given individual’s ancestors originated in a certain part of the globe. But we probably only need to go back 75k yrs before we all originated in Africa, so what’s the difference?
When I was studying physical anthropology in grad school, this was a hot topic, and I assumed that it was a case of PC run rampant (you’ll never see a more PC group than anthropologists). I mean after all, you can see race, right?
Actually, what the “there’s no such thing as race” concept means is that race is not a very useful variable to study. First, racial characteristics are almost impossible to define phenotypically. What is “negroid?” Fuzzy hair, wide nose, etc.? How wide is wide? What if someone has dark skin, fuzzy hair, but a narrow nose? And if you finally do define race with precise characteristic (the nose must be at least such-and-such wide, the skin must have such-and-such albedo, etc.), then you’ve just created a category with no point and no use biologically. What do you do with it?
Also, particular traits that are considered phenotypic markers of race generally show more variation within a race than between races, which makes you wonder about its biological validity as defining anything at all.
This does not mean that “race” doesn’t exist. Of course it does; it just happens to be however we define it, such as the “Jewish” race defined by the Nazis. It’s a cultural construct, and a cultural constructs are real. They’re just generally not useful biologically. An example of race as a useful construct is forensic anthropology. It’s important for police to know whether someone is white, black, native American, indeterminate, or whatever. However, anthropologists often get around this by calling it “geographic ancestry.”
I admit I’m over simplifying here. I’m not really getting into the microbiology of it, or the concept of race as clines, but I understand some peoples’ confusion about being told something doesn’t exist when it seems so obvious that it does.
Interesting question, though it would be better phrased in terms of “nationality”–there probably isn’t going to be genetic basis for that either.
So, strictly speaking, to say that “race is a myth” would be rather flippant. But one could probably say more accurately that a physical scientific basis for differentiating race is, for the most part, mythical–much as it is for nationality.
Perhaps a better phrase would really be “race is socially arbitrary,” but it doesn’t quite roll of the tongue…
The dim thing about “race” is that it is not distinguished by means of biology or of culture. Instead, it is merely done by “look”. If one looks at US Supreme Court rulings on who could and could qualify as “white” back when only “whites” were permitted to become US citizens, one quickly sees that it was entirely arbitrary and inconsistent.
Please tell the people who have been accusing me of being less than PC that I must be more PC than they because of my anthropology degree. 
Which, basically, it is.
As a cultural construct, yes, but it is only obvious at the extremes. However, society has seen fit in the past to atempt to define the fringes of race, thus Louisiana’s notorious “one-thirty second or less” law and the “one-drop-contaminant” legal decisions of the 19th century.
We are all one species/Race, that is Humanity. We as humans come in all shapes, colors, sizes etc. A friend of mine once told me that he sees the different types of people, like Europeans, Native North & South Americans, Polynesians, Africans, Asians and all the other wonderful variants of our race like different breeds of domestic cat. They are all one species, just have different furr patterns and colors. But they are all cats.
Same with us, we are all human, same species, same race. But because of isolation of great distances, minor mutations here and there, we all look different. Even with in our own ethnic groups the variations are extraordinary.
Frankly it would be a rather boring place if we all looked the same.
Isn’t that what we have Nordstroms and The Gap for?
It seems to me that your definition gives us a bit of a bait and switch. “there’s no such thing as race” sounds like a powerful and absolute statement. “race is not a very useful variable to study” is much more modest.
Which is one of the points that I was so clumsily trying to make. “Race” is in the eyes of the beholder, and so is generally scientifically useless. Thanks for the clarification.
My understanding (from the reading of copious topics on it right here on the SMDB) of “Race is a myth is:”
To the extent that race is a sociologically or demographically useful category/variable it has no genetic or biological basis.
To the extent that races (“populations”) exist in a biological or genetic sense they do not map into sociologically or demographically useful categories and are generally too small to be useful for sweeping generalizations.
The guy who did the DNA testing was on the Stern show today. Here’s the company’s Web site: http://www.ancestrybydna.com.
Heck, since all humans can interbreed, the notion of race seems at best trivial from a genetic viewpoint.
Yep, Bryan. Very true. As is what MMI said.
One funny thing about race is that as soon as you interbreed you start to lose any genetic uniqueness there might be. And there’s plenty of evidence of interbreeding all through human history & prehistory.
From a social point of view, it always seems to be that race is marked by the appearance of the lower social standard. In apartheid era South Africa you could be “black” with one black grandparent and three white ones. Similar Nazi germany - was it one great-grandparent that was the qualifier to be officially jewish? Or only one grandparent?
Another funny thing is that it’s different in different countries and different times. In Britain, “Asian” is a catch all for the entire Asian continent plus the Indian subcontinent; in Australia we consider Indian and Asian to be different; in Japan you’d never consider Korean and Japanese and Chinese to be the same race; and personally I find that northern asians differ from south-east asians very markedly,but that isn;t a category I’ve seen used. And I was amazed to dicover the concept of a “Hispanic” race in America - a touch reminiscent of the old days in Aus when southern Europeans were considered to be different (“wogs”) but a distinction we wouldn’t do now - they’re all European.
I suppose my take is that biologically race is a myth, socially it’s a reality.
This is the sort of vague statement that I object to. What do you mean by “trivial”? Is the notion of “family” trivial from a genetic viewpoint? Is the notion of “ethnicity” trivial from a genetic viewpoint?
I mean “trivial” in the sense that the superficial physical traits that are largely used to define racial characteristics (skin colour, eye shape, etc.) are minor window dressing and only slightly more significant to the human biology as paint colour is to a motor vehicle.
Is “family” trivial? Well, having good parents gives you a better shot at suriviving to adulthood, and being a good parent gives your own children a better shot at reaching their adulthoods. I don’t see how this is relevant to a discussion about race.
You’ll have to provide a working definition of “ethnicity”, though. What relevance does it have in this discussion? If a baby born of Native American parents was raised in Japan, wouldn’t that baby take on cultural traits typical of Japanese, depite any genetic legacy?
As for a genetic viewpoint, if a dark-skinned human can successfully mate with a light-skinned human and produce offspring that can also reproduce (i.e. without the sterility common among hybrids), then skin colour is not a reliable indicator of major genetic difference. If you could find two humans from different parts of Earth who couldn’t successfully interbreed, then you’d have an argument for divergent human species and “race” might become a useful term.
Bryan:
Don’t confuse race and species. It is common to talk of different races of domestic dogs. If there were scientifically defined races of humans, it would be expected that members of these different races could interbreed successfully.
Ok
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It seems to me that the concept of “family” is not “trivial from a genetic viewpoint.” For example, it is not unheard of for certain health issues that have a genetic component to “run in families.”
Similarly, it is not unheard of for certain ethnicities to have a high incidence of certain genes.
The triviality of these issues is of course a matter of degree, but they are certainly significant enough to merit special attention, testing etc.
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Yes, I probably should since I mentioned the concept. I’ll try to come up with one.
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Well, are you claiming that “ethnicity” is “trivial from a genetic viewpoint”? (for now, use whatever understanding you have of the concept of “ethnicity”)
I’ve never heard the term “race” used to describe breeds of dogs. Actually, I just don’t see the need for an extra sorting category for humanity. Either it’s one species (and can interbreed freely) or it isn’t. I don’t see the taxonomy value of “race” which suggests there is a difference but can’t demonstrate it in any way other than by superficial physical traits.
So? Does that mean, for example, a family with a high rate of hemophilia or colourblindness is of a different race than a family without such ailments?
Yes, but no one ethnicity has an exclusive claim on a particular malfunctioning gene. There have been random mutations throughout human evolution, when a new gene comes into existence in a particular individual and his/her descendants, but does that family group suddenly constitute a new ethnicity or race?
They may be useful as tools, i.e. an individual who has genes typical of Jews might also be at increased risk for the genes causing Tay-Sachs, but being Jewish doesn’t gaurantee Tay-Sachs. For the purposes of medical treatements, I’d like to see an each individual get a list of the most likely diseases to hit a person of their particular genetic profile, and the warning signs for each.
Okay, I’ll make that claim. Possibly, a Tasmanian Aboriginal is about as far removed from my own ethnicity as possible, but I don’t doubt I could conceive a healthy child with someone from Tasmania. Along similar lines, there are people from my own ethnic group who are at far greater risk for certain diseases than I’ll ever be. If I may use another vast simplification, as I understand it:
[ul][li]1% of our DNA determines superficial physical “racial” characteristics, as well as the possibilities of various inherited diseases;[/li][li]2% or so is the standard human pattern, defining characteristic shared by all humans;[/li][li]7% is the standard primate pattern, defining characteristics shared by all primates;[/li][li]20% is the standard mammal pattern (how we are similar to other mammals);[/li][li]30% is the standard animal pattern; and[/li][li]40% is the standard Terran lifeform pattern (how we are similar to all life on Earth).[/li][/ul]
I’m sure I have all the terminology wrong, but I’ve never seen any evidence suggesting other than all humans share some huge percentage of DNA and the arbitrary definitions used for “race” are trivial and inconsistent.
You can be as black as the ace of spades or as white as snow, but your hearts, lungs and liver will all be in the same place and your reproductive system will operate along a fairly strict and universal standard. “Race” as a concept is arbitrary and has never deserved the pseudo-science irrationally glommed onto it, invariably with political rather that scientific motivation.
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Nope, it means that “family” is not trivial from a genetic viewpoint. (Depending of course on how one defines “trivial”)
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Nope.
Ok, let’s test your position. Are you saying that if two groups share 99% of the same DNA, any difference between the groups is “trivial from a genetic viewpoint”?
Are you saying that if members of two groups can interbreed successfuly, any difference between them is “trivial from a genetic viewpoint”?