No, I don’t dispute it, but I just don’t believe skin color is a race, any more than hair or eye color.
And I agree with that – skin color per se is not the same thing as race. At the same time, the two things are related.
What was your point in bringing up “skin color”?
I brought it up because people use skin color as a separate race!
Can you give me an example of someone doing that, preferably from this thread?
Wrong. There are human races just as there are races in other species. It would be pretty remarkable if humans were somehow unique in this respect.
Here’s a recent paper which addresses your argument.
The Genomic Challenge to the Social Construction of Race (2012) Shiao et al
It is interesting to watch people resist the attempt to pry them away from a deeply held faith that “races” cannot possibly have any biological clumping for gene prevalences which drive disparate outcomes. A great deal of confusion persists, including the idea that greater genetic variation in ancestral clumpings somehow argues against genetically-based average differences for a specific skillset in descendant populations. When the history of human migration patterns is understood, and population genetics reveals how relatively limited gene admixture is among populations, the degree of anxiety rises as the egalitarian faith is challenged by biology.
Before the lumpers win the day, we’ll see a trend toward the splitters, with a very reluctant admission by egalitarians that a small clinal population might have a genetically-driven average performance difference from some other small cline. As the specifics of when and where that difference may have arisen along the course of human evolution and migration, the door will crack open to broader lumping. It’s easier to admit that a small sub-saharan cline might be genetically different from a small asian cline than it is to admit that “blacks” are genetically different from “asians.” But once that admission occurs, the next step would be to say, “Well, when might that difference have arisen?” If the answer turns out to be, “At mtDNA haplogroup N or M,” race-level biological lumping for gene prevalence differences of advantageous genes will rear its uncomfortable head.
It has been a lot of years since I studied Biology, but was taught that the differences of skin color came from people who moved north with lighter skin were more able to tolerate cold, hence the melatonin paled, but people who lived in warmer sunnier places stayed dark or black. I was taught that humans mostly came out of Africa and so we are all ancestors of Africans.
Perhaps I am mistaken, but I get the impression that many think a Black, Asian Indian etc. are separate races.
Perhaps, but please give me a specific example, preferably from within this thread, of somebody “using skin color as a separate race.”
Please use the quote function to do so.
That will help me to understand your point. TIA.
You’re just guessing, because there’s no evidence of this. Disparate outcomes, such as the test-score gap, exist. There is no evidence that genetics is the best explanation for the test-score gap (or other disparate outcomes). You have no evidence.
So what are the races?
From the article:
“In our view, recent research on the human genome challenges the basic assumption that human races have no biological basis (Abraham 2006; Leroi 2005; Risch et al. 2002; Rosenberg et al. 2002; Wade 2006). The increasing power of computer assisted quantitative data analysis and the growing resolution of available genetic data has enabled quantitative geneticists to identify an empirical structure within human genetic variation that at a certain scale resembles the continentally based racial classifications of the U.S. federal government.”
However, the thrust of this article is to challenge the view that SIRE-associated “race” has no biological basis more than it is to put a narrow definition around what “race” is. This is an important point to understand. Egalitarians frequently make the mistake of thinking that, if they define “race” away, they have gotten rid of the possibility that there are genetically-based differences among SIRE groups. This is a mistaken notion. Let me illustrate.
For the sake of simplicity, imagine that there are a three human populations in africa 100,000 years ago; each evolving slowly and each reasonably distinct. Let’s call them L0, L1 and L2. 75,000 years ago a point exodus occurs into Eurasia with a small subset; call it L3. At some point after the exodus, that out-of-africa population divides into an N and an M population. All of these populations are always evolving. If you want to be a splitter instead of a lumper, make as many categories as you want. Hundreds, even. It does not matter.
Now imagine that a single advantageous mutation occurs in a post-africa L-3 population, and it’s so good that positive selection pressure drives it to a prevalence of 70% of the N and M populations. However the migration patterns do not return to africa, so if you measure stayed-in-africa populations, you will not find this mutation. If you measure any N or M descendant population, the chances are 70% an individual from those descendant lines will have that gene.
Many other mutations occur in all these populations, including mutations that drive appearance differences. And of course, within the original L populations, appearance differences also occur. Now, 75K years later, along comes some Joe and creates a notion of “race” based on those phenotypic appearances. Later, Tom comes along and decides you get to self-assign to any SIRE group you want. However, the various “races” tend to self-assign to the categories which reflect their continent of origin. The SIRE “blacks” self assign to L populations; N to european; M to asian…and so on.
What happens if you look for an average difference driven by a mutation that occurred post L3, pre N-M split? Well, none of the L populations–even if they contain the most variation (being more ancestral) and even if they are quite distinct from one another–will have a very high chance of having the mutation. On the other hand, both the europeans and the asians would have a relatively high chance of having such a gene, and their average performance on any skillset it codes for would reflect that prevalence difference.
The fact that there isn’t a good way to define any of those populations against a strict genetic marker becomes completely irrelevant. The difference in performance is simply a reflection of evolution and migration.
A splitter could make a thousand races. A lumper might have three. Or five. Or two. Or none.
The real argument is not about how to define race. We have arbitrarily decided that is a social construct, and even arbitrarily decided to allow any given individual to self-assign to a single race even if they have a parent from each of two races. Or self-assign to two races even if they are a single race. And so on.
It’s all about averages; all about evolution and migration patterns; all about the simple biological fact that this self assignment gives the average self-assigner individual a higher or lower chance of getting any particular gene, because that gene is relatively more or less prevalent in the ancestral population correlating with the self-assignment. If I self-assign to ‘black’ in the US, my chance of having genes that give me higher testosterone is higher than self-assigning to ‘white’ even if I can’t otherwise define ‘black’ or ‘white’ genetically in any strict way.
Of course this is 100% correct. One could even define races in an intentionally absurd and arbitrary way; still (potentially) observe differences between the races, so defined; and still reasonably conclude that the observed differences are primarily genetic in origin.
I must not have made myself clear, I wasn’t just referring to the people on this thread but it was my understanding that the idea of race itself means different colored skin, and most people I know who discriminate do so by a person’s skin color.Of course they add the other features,but go by a person’s looks. To me looks do not mean a separate Race, weither it is color, different eyes etc. To me there is just one race, with people who look different than others (Or me). When I fill out a form that asks for Race I write in Human!
Please give me an example, preferably from within this thread, but if it has not occurred in this thread, then from outside the thread.
I am asking for an example of someone "“using skin color as a separate race.”
This is the last time I will ask you.
You are a good example of the notion of “self-assignment.” The term “race” as used for these sorts of forms is a self-assigned category. You could also put all available categories if you want to have fun, and still be fully compliant with the US Federal guidelines. These categories are intended to reflect “cultural” origins for the “Hispanic or Latino” category, and physical ancestral origin for the other categories. For example, if you put “white” you are self-assigning to “the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.” If you put “black” you are self-assigning to “origins in any of the Black racial groups of
Africa.”
Because of the history of human migration and the way genes evolve, it turns out that there are average gene prevalence differences among these various broad self-assigned groups. Skin color does vary, but so do many many other genes. You probably know how DNA copy errors lead to mutations, and you are aware this is pretty common, given that we have 3 billion base pairs to get copied correctly. Most mutations are bad, but a tiny handful are advantageous, and over time two broadly separated groups will contain lots of different genes; some coding for advantageous mutations and some simply trivially different.
OK; back to races and human history. The first breakpoints for ancestrally modern humans are somewhere between 100K and 200K years ago, if we use mitochondrial DNA as a way to estimate how old these lines are. All of thes populations remained in africa, and modern self-assignment of “black” lumps them all into one “race.” Somewhere around 75K years ago, a very small subset population made it out of africa, and it is the descendants of that one small population that is considered to have populated the rest of the entire world (again; according to DNA studies). Migratory patterns and evolution combine to give us a story of all these different groups and their genetic ancestry, and most commonly either mitochondrial or Y-chromosome lines are used to identify ancestral lineages.
It is the geography of the world that has tended to clump migrating populations, and for this reason, much of the “race” definition debate swirls around whether or not these crude “continental” categories are good biologically-definable constructs.
They are not. Most critically, what is missing from the biological usefulness of “race” is a specific marker. What is used to identify populations in population genetics are a whole series of markers, generally derived against statistical prevalences for certain molecular sequences. And of course, since monavis can self-assign to no category, or all categories, it’s not as if anyone tested the actual genes monavis owned.
The US government uses “race” as a mechanism to track outcomes, with a good intention. They want to make sure the “black” patients at my hospital are treated as well as the “white” patients, for example. They want to make sure black students are as well-educated as white students.
Their underlying assumption is that all racial groups–since race by definition is a “social” construct–should have equivalent outcomes unless there is a social reason (for example, discrimination based on skin color).
This is where the reasoning fails.
Even though “race” is a social, self-defined construct, self assignment to a continental origin has genetic implications because of the way humans have evolved and migrated.
Suppose, for example, we have 6 sub-saharan populations from ancestral groups that never left africa. Perhaps they should be 6 “races,” and within africa, all those groups might consider themselves as distinct as we consider “races” in the US. Suppose further, that an advantageous mutation occurs in a population descended from the original population that left africa. Such an advantageous mutation would not be found in africans, but it would be found a non-african descendant population. And so on for any other large migration pattern. The reverse is also true; an advantageous mutation might occur in an african line, and that advantage would be passed only to descendants within africa.
The fundamental debate from a biological perspective isn’t whether “race” means anything as a biological definition. That is, it’s not a question of whether or not you can put a strictly-defined genetic boundary around the term.
The question is, “Does the group self-assigned to the social construct of “black” have the same genetic pool as the group self-assigned to the social construct of “white” or “asian” or whatever?” That answer is a resounding, “No.” There is no population geneticist who would answer it otherwise. It may well be that “black” encompasses 10 races, and “white” encompasses 3. Or maybe the reverse, since you can’t put a strict genetic definition. But at the current broad level, those self-assigning to “black” continental ancestry put themselves in a group whose gene pool has been largely separated from the rest of the world for 75K years.
We did not all come out of africa, genetically speaking. Some groups never came out. We did not all go to the rest of the world. Some groups went one place; some another. To the extent that any given grouping reflects those migratory patterns, its gene pool will reflect the underlying mutations which have occurred over the time the groups have been separated.
Our genetic differences are a great more than skin color; a great more than appearance. That appearance is different for continental groupings is simply a reflection that every gene is subject to mutation, as is every separated population–within or outside–of continental groupings.
There is, of course, excellent evidence that SES disparity does not explain the difference.
There is, of course, excellent evidence that parental education does not explain the difference.
There is, of course, excellent evidence that test-score gaps exist for the same general SIRE groupings across all political systems, and that where exceptions exist, they exist in minor sub-populations (say; for instance, a small sub-group of immigrants) and not in the general source populations.
If the topic were anything but humans, the default assumption would be that the difference is genetics.
Raising the bar to “show me the exact gene and a prevalence difference for it” is proof of how tenuous are the arguments against biological differences driving outcomes differences.
Were the differences not genetic, the most efficient way to stamp out the argument that they are genetic would simply be to give the disadvantaged (but genetically equal) group the same advantages, and prove that outcomes are now normalized.
Unfortunately, this approach has not worked, and test-score gaps (or NBA and sprinting gaps) have remained stubbornly immutable.
This suggests that genetic differences at the group level is, in fact, the best explanation.
The statement, “There is no genetic evidence” is formulated to create a pretense that “There is no evidence the difference is genetic” when it actually means “A specific geneset has not been identified.”
That’s the sort of tricky wording meant to obfuscate, and not clarify. No one expects me to name the exact geneset making St Bernard’s different from Chihuauas in order to prove the differences are genetic. They just expect that I show that no matter how much I change the circumstances of them being raised, the differences persist, leaving genetic differences as the explanation. While no human populations are purebred the way dogs are, it’s easy to show that there are many many gene prevalence differences among various human grouping schemes, creating different gene pools for those different groupings because of historic migration and evolutionary patterns.
This lends significant credence to the idea that any outcome differences resistant to environmental equalization are genetically driven.
It’s a matter of faith that environmental variables haven’t been normalized. It’s a matter of ordinary science that gene pools are different from one population grouping to the next, and that mother nature has no interest in excepting genes which drive any given skillset from advantageous mutation.
One of these things is not like the other… (it’s the third one). No, there’s not “excellent evidence” for the gaps across “all political systems”. But it doesn’t matter, because eliminating one explanation (or three) is not evidence for any particular other explanation.
So what? Human behavior and intelligence is different in many, many ways from other animals. It should be expected that it would be much harder to scientifically determine many of the intricacies of human behavior and intelligence.
Says the guy with no genetic evidence. How convenient for you that you don’t need any evidence to support your claim.
Fine. Find a society with the exact same media and cultural representation for all ethnic groups, eliminate all day-to-day racism in this society (including things like lower teacher expectations), and raise some kids in it. Let me know how it turns out.
Yes, it hasn’t worked because it’s not possible, short of making a few biospheres or moon colonies.
It also means “There is no evidence the difference is genetic”, because there isn’t.
Ok, you’ve successfully proved that different populations have some differences in their gene pools. This says nothing about intelligence.
Ridiculous. It’s a matter of faith to think that they have been normalized.
Which says nothing about intelligence.
I suspect you’ll be considering the persistent performance gap differences as quite the little mystery for some time, given the stringency of your requirement. I don’t think Ogbu’s cultural explanations have withstood examination. Here, e.g..
I have an image of you sitting there watching the Olympics (or the NBA) and wondering what secret cultural difference drives the disproportionate representation for the black SIRE group when so many white classmates had track (or NBA) dreams that never got fulfilled. Or maybe sitting there reviewing asian test scores and wondering how we can get whites a little less lazy (or fix the white culture) so they are more motivated (or maybe get rid of racism against whites so they can compete with asians?). Maybe those teachers just expect whites to underperform…
Is a puzzlement, for sure.
Note to self: Get letter off to local white suburban high schools telling them they are losing to local black high schools because of low expectations on the part of their coaches for the white players. Turns out it’s not a talent problem at all.
You really don’t know anything at all about basketball, do you? 