Race: Yea or nay?

[John_Mace]

@Malthus

@John_Mace

We might be getting there. It is noted that different groups of chimps and different groups of orangs have different “cultural” practices. But I don’t know that we, as humans, can detect the different physical traits that chimps might consider important. It might even be different smells.

That is indeed interesting, but I am also interested if the term “ethnicity” has some sort of meaning to a biologist that would differ from that known to an anthropologist.

Don’t know, but I doubt that “ethnicity” has lost it’s exclusive tie to humans in biology. We’re still getting used to the term “culture” as applied to non-human animals. I could see “ethnicity” being used sometime in the future for non-human animals in the same way.

[orcenio]

@Damuri_Ajashi

What I hear is /fingers in ears “lalalalala, I CAN"T HEAR YOU BECAUSE THERE ARE NO SUCH THING AS RACES”

You know it’s funny 'cause in the other thread (and this one), we have had many examples of people writing posts that brag about plugging their own ears and running away. I’m sure you seen a few:[

@A Monkey With a Gun

This is not about whatever “race” is better, it is an attempt to discuss human genetics in a rational way.

I think I’m going to give up on GD again. The forum is pathetic. This is a hard subject to talk about, granted, but if even if I broach the subject of genetic variation in humans I get the same bullshit as if I told some damn creationist that maybe, just maybe, humans and monkeys have a common ancestor.

](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12897260&postcount=34)[

@Starving Artist

You might as well look for some other message board where you can discuss this in the spirit in which it’s intended. This board has way too many posters who are completely unwilling to acknowledge the obvious and admit that differences of any kind exist between the races. That way they can pat themselves on the back for being PC and opposing bigotry, even where no bigotry exists.

It is ludicrous to the point of laughability to look at (and even admit, as some around here will actually do on occasion) the differing physical characteristics of the various races and then attempt to claim that these physical differences make absolutely no difference whatsoever in athletic performance.

PC liberalism requires that we acknowledge absolutely no difference whatsoever in performance between men and women, or between the races, and to do otherwise is incontrovertible evidence of racism, sexism and bigotry most vile. No, in the fight against racism and sexism we are supposed to believe that the average Korean can run just as fast as the average West African, and that women are just as strong as men. The proponents of this type of thinking all know that it isn’t really true, but it’s a fiction they insist upon maintaining in the apparent belief that whenever reality does not have a liberal bias, then reality must be denied and the liberal bias it does not support must be proclaimed and shouted to the rooftops anyway.

So again, I’m afraid that if you’re really out to fight your own ignorance and get to the real truth of this matter, whatever that may be, you’re simply going to have to look elsewhere.

](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12897463&postcount=44)[

@Chief Pedant

It is much safer to take a position (as most do here) that “race” is too inchoate a category to be a meaningful grouping, and that nurturing variables are so complex as to permanently render any other explanation suspect.

I have essentially given up on the SDMB, not because I did not enjoy my time here, but because the default assumption of biologic egalitarianism is so permanently ingrained it becomes offensive to many posters here to post otherwise.

](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12899023&postcount=52)It’s also common to just to wholly dismiss the SDMB (and the majority of biological/anthropological scientists) as ‘peecee’ while plugging one’s ears to the opposing arguments and citations:

@DanBlather

I tend towards the left side of the political persuasion, but this is a true example of the dreaded “political correctness” Like people who wanted to pretend that there were no differences aside from genitalia between men and women, Liberals have take up the cause that there is no such thing as race.

@Krokodil

1. Do you believe in biologically determined races? Yes.
2. Why/why not? When my Sociology professor explained to me that there was only one race in the human species, he exuded all the credibility of a small child shouting “La la la I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Blacks and East Asians have consistent and observable physical differences from, say, me and my extended family, and all Blacks and Asians I’ve met seem to feel there’s such a thing as race.

[

@magellan01

A Monkey With a Gun, save your breath. As SA said, too many posters here are simply unable to entertain a reality where everyone race is equal in every way., ignoring some very obvious physical differences.

](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12898918&postcount=50)

[Blake]

@Damuri_Ajashi

If two Asians have a kid, how likely is that child to be what racists would call black?

About 99.999%. That is if the two Asians look like this or thisor this.

I’ll make a wager that if I had asked you to racially group the people in those photos you would have identified them as Black in every instance. If you would like to take that wager I’m sure we can arrange a simple test to tell if you can really distinguish people who are sub-Saharan African from people who are Asian, as you claim you can.

And now, if you are like every other race proponent I’ve encountered, you are going to tell us that those people, whose ancestors have lived in Asia for >40, 000 years, are not Asian because they are quite clearly Black.

Is that what you are going to do? You are going to attempt to put a kilt on your Asians so you don’t have to admit that races really don’t correspond to any sort of geographic boundaries.

And before you ask, no, those people are not atypical. There are literally thousands of millions, probably over a billion, people in Asia who would be classified as Black by any observer.

Which kind of destroys your position, no? Asian clearly isn’t a race at all, it’s a continental locator. Many Asian are White, many more are Black, many are Mongoloid and most don’t easily fit into any category at all. Two Asians are almost certain to have children who are visually identifiable as Black.

[Chen019]

@Blake

@Damuri_Ajashi

If two Asians have a kid, how likely is that child to be what racists would call black?

About 99.999%. That is if the two Asians look like this or thisor this.

I’ll make a wager that if I had asked you to racially group the people in those photos you would have identified them as Black in every instance. If you would like to take that wager I’m sure we can arrange a simple test to tell if you can really distinguish people who are sub-Saharan African from people who are Asian, as you claim you can.

And now, if you are like every other race proponent I’ve encountered, you are going to tell us that those people, whose ancestors have lived in Asia for >40, 000 years, are not Asian because they are quite clearly Black.

Is that what you are going to do? You are going to attempt to put a kilt on your Asians so you don’t have to admit that races really don’t correspond to any sort of geographic boundaries.

And before you ask, no, those people are not atypical. There are literally thousands of millions, probably over a billion, people in Asia who would be classified as Black by any observer.

Which kind of destroys your position, no? Asian clearly isn’t a race at all, it’s a continental locator. Many Asian are White, many more are Black, many are Mongoloid and most don’t easily fit into any category at all. Two Asians are almost certain to have children who are visually identifiable as Black.

Isn’t this a strawman? There are mixed or smaller indigenous populations. Indonesia for instance has a large melanesian population.

By Asian, I suspect people are referring to east asians (Japanese, Korean, Chinese ancestry).

[TriPolar]

@Chen019

Isn’t this a strawman? There are mixed or smaller indigenous populations. Indonesia for instance has a large melanesian population.

By Asian, I suspect people are referring to east asians (Japanese, Korean, Chinese ancestry).

Yes, all those people look alike. Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese people can’t tell each other apart. And there must be a black race too because all those people look alike. And those Mexicans who are all over South America look alike too. Only white people look different from each other.:rolleyes:

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

@TriPolar

@Chen019

Isn’t this a strawman? There are mixed or smaller indigenous populations. Indonesia for instance has a large melanesian population.

By Asian, I suspect people are referring to east asians (Japanese, Korean, Chinese ancestry).

Yes, all those people look alike. Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese people can’t tell each other apart. And there must be a black race too because all those people look alike. And those Mexicans who are all over South America look alike too. Only white people look different from each other.:rolleyes:

White people are different ?

[Chen019]

@TriPolar

@Chen019

Isn’t this a strawman? There are mixed or smaller indigenous populations. Indonesia for instance has a large melanesian population.

By Asian, I suspect people are referring to east asians (Japanese, Korean, Chinese ancestry).

Yes, all those people look alike. Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese people can’t tell each other apart. And there must be a black race too because all those people look alike. And those Mexicans who are all over South America look alike too. Only white people look different from each other.:rolleyes:

Nice snark, well done. However, you need to go back and read what they were arguing about - whether two asians would have a kid that would be considered black (or white for that matter).

[MrDibble]

[quote=“Malthus, post:133, topic:553699”]

@MrDibble;12926225Hell if I know. There's *a* "Jewish ethnicity"

I recommend that you read my subsequent email, on the anthropological definition of “ethnicity”.

I read it, I disagree that it is an “anthropological definition” as much as it is one author’s opinion. From 17 years ago (backed by even more outdated cites). Anthropology isn’t some monolithic discipline like engineering or chemistry. There are different schools of thought, with different opinions on how much weight to give people’s own definitions of self vs objective measurements of heritage. You’re arguing the emic approach, I’m advocating the etic. You’re also advocating macroethnicity, and I hold that only works as a loose social construct, but the more you examine it, the more full of holes macroethnicity becomes.

No. You are simply wrong. An Ethiopian Jew who was an athiest would be an “ethnic Jew”, and there are some in Israel right now. Being an “ethnic Jew” has nothing whatsoever to do with being “White”.

So there’s no controversy whatsoever about the status of Falash Mura, I take it?

Ancestry can be fictive, assumed, adopted. Just because you have never heard of it being done, doesn’t mean it isn’t done - I’ve given not one but two real-life examples.

I’m not arguing against the existence of fictive ancestry (I’m still waiting for an example of an adopted one), merely its validity. For instance, we know the ancestry of the Beta Israel. They are as genetically Ethiopian as their neighbours. Hell, the Lemba of South Africa have more claim to Jewish ancestry.

We aren’t discussing “common usage”. In this very thread, you are insisting on using the term “race” in its consensus scientific meaning. I approve of that - but you are now asserting that “ethnicity” must mean what *you * think it means in “common usage”, and not what the consensus of scientific opinion believes it to mean? Where’s the logic in that?

Quoting one outdated paper is hardly proof of scientific consensus.

By the same token, I could announce “I think Blacks are a race and I’m right because it’s the common usage”. I won’t, because common usage (whatever that means) isn’t determinative of what either “race” or “ethnicity” really means.

I agree with you.

Jews believe they are a “nation”. Anthropologists believe they are an “ethnicity”. You don’t.

Some anthropologists do. Some don’t. Some see “Jewish” as a class descriptor for a set of ethnicities. Jewish “ethnic divisions” crop up all the time in the discussion.

And even by the most general definition of ethnicity, the Beta Israel do not share an ethnicity with Ashkenazim or Sephardim- they do not share a language, culture or ancestry.

This supports my thesis. Jews believe in a common, though partly fictive, descent from the Hebrews of the Bible. Whether they appear Black or White, they claim a common ancestry - ask any Eheopian Jew.

Baah. I don’t care what the Ethiopian Jews think of their own ancestry, I care about what they can prove. Any Ethiopian Jew still believing they are descended from has already been shown to be mistaken. You may advocate for the Imagined Community sense of ethnicity, I do not.

What has being a “biological population” have to do with ethnicity?

Common descent

Being a Jew, like being Lue, is a matter of self-reference and belief, not biology.

In one view. I disagree. Yes, self-identified ethnicities exist, but they are not what I concern myself with.

Like the Lue, Jews may in fact appear to share more in culture with those non-Jews with whom they live, than with each other - and yet be an ethnic group.

To you. To me, an ethnic group has to have a shared culture. And language.

Maybe after a few millennia of blending in Israel, you could call the amalgamation of Ethiopian and Sephardic Jews an ethnicity, but now? No way.
do. There’s no such thing as a Jewish “race”.

You are conflating “ethnicity” with “race”. Although they share some characteristics in common, they are not the same thing. Whatever definition one is using, everyone agrees 'race" has something to do with biology. Ethnicity does not - necessarily.

Man, frigging post-modernists really did a number on the social sciences in the 70s, didn’t they? I’m OK with the existence of self-identified ethnicities, as long as their fictive accounts don’t contradict reality. As soon as that happens, I’m quite happy to throw self-defined ethic groupings out the window. Such groups serve only as barriers to advancement. They impede the Human Project and must be done away with for the good of humanity.

[Horatio_Hellpop]

@orcenio

@Krokodil

1. Do you believe in biologically determined races? Yes.
2. Why/why not? When my Sociology professor explained to me that there was only one race in the human species, he exuded all the credibility of a small child shouting “La la la I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Blacks and East Asians have consistent and observable physical differences from, say, me and my extended family, and all Blacks and Asians I’ve met seem to feel there’s such a thing as race.

So your definition of race is: a set of “observable physical differences.” Do you not see that this is a highly subjective and social definition?

Highly subjective? Yes. You feel personally tortured by this, I do not. Social? Certainly. All Black people in America–whether their ancestors are from the Guinea coast, the Red Sea coast, the Kalahari or Rwanda or some combination thereof–have something in common with one another that I do not have, something that inspires cops to pull them over at traffic stops at a tenfold rate to what I endure or compels Korean shopkeepers to follow them around to make sure they don’t steal anything. This is the social component. The biological component is the cause of an almost entirely cosmetic result, but it exists nonetheless. It’s why Black people in Minnesota have Black babies, even though the environment alone seems to favor paler skin, and white couples in Pretoria tend to have white babies. I’m sure many Maoris and Bengalis have been mistaken for African Americans (I actually have a funny story about an Indian woman I know whose resemblance to Black women got her into some sticky situations, but that’s for another day). A lot of people seem to think I’m German. I’m not.

3. If yes…
   a) What are they (the number)?* I don’t know. I believe there are over a thousand species of fish and insects, most of them yet undiscovered, but no credible individual can put an exact number on those either.
   b) What are the parameters of the groups? Hard to say. The phrasing of the OP seems to discount sociological or cultural parameters and I don’t feel personally qualified to discuss biological ones. Fortunately, not even the OP gets to dictate the parameters of how people are allowed to disagree with him.*You seem to be unable to define, number, and name the very race categories that you are pleading are bio-genetically deliminated. Why is that?

I am not a biologist or anthropologist and have never tried to pass myself off as one. And if you’ll reread my post that you have quoted above, you’ll see that I already covered why I am unable to define or number the races or race categories. I made an analogy to fish and insect species. Do you believe there are more than one of each? Can you give me an exact number for each? No? Well, there are still plenty. Not sure where the controversy is here.

If you only want to hear from bio or anthro degree holders, you really should have said so in the OP. And if you think there’s no such thing as race, ask some people whom Troglodytes like myself might consider “non-white.” Their views on the subject might enlighten you. Mine apparently do not.

[DSeid]

This nature of the discussion in this thread truly illustrates a very basic point.

Resolved: “Race” and “ethnicity” are ill–equipped words to be used in discussions about the biology and science of human sub-populations. When possibly the word “sub-population” should be used instead and the group(s) being discussed precisely defined as much as possible.

Of course they both exist as extant and easily observable methods of identifying group membership, both by individuals categorizing themselves, and by others categorizing them, and most often those two will equal each other. And as they are a non-random method categorization it is likely that some some biological markers other than the superficial ones used by the method will have a non-random distribution as well. But non-random must not be confused for scientifically meaningful or significant.

Use of these words gets the self-described “Troglodytes” (an ethnicity?) like Krok confused, mistakenly believing that the reality that “race” is functional group membership descriptor somehow has relevance to a discussion about whether or not the word has utility scientifically and if so what sort of utility. And mistaking a desire to correct that confusion with being “tortured”.

Use of these words confounds the effects of sociocultural factors that correlate moderately highly with the sociologic categorization with those that may or may not be true biologic risk differences between very particular human subpopulations, the margins of which we cannot know in advance, scientifically.

Use of these words inevitably leads to more arguing over what they mean than they lead to discussion or understanding about the genetic heritage and shared and divergent and reconnecting and intermixing family history of humanity.

Put most succinctly, these words have too much baggage.

[jackdavinci]

Standard answer: There are racial clines but not racial groups.

Just like real life has a continuous spectrum of color, for which the Crayola box of 64 colors is a nearly completely arbitrary selection of representative points.

[John_Mace]

There is no such things as a “racial cline”. That’s like saying there is a discrete continuum.

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

@jackdavinci

Standard answer: There are racial clines but not racial groups.

Just like real life has a continuous spectrum of color, for which the Crayola box of 64 colors is a nearly completely arbitrary selection of representative points.

So, how do the primary colours fit in with this anology.

[jackdavinci]

@John_Mace

There is no such things as a “racial cline”. That’s like saying there is a discrete continuum.

How so? Cline means continuous gradient. If it were discrete, it would be more like a series of stripes.

@The_Flying_Dutchman

So, how do the primary colours fit in with this anology.

Since primary colors are also somewhat arbitrary, I suppose they would be like the “black white yellow red” model of racial groups.

See which

[Der_Trihs]

@The_Flying_Dutchman

@jackdavinci

Standard answer: There are racial clines but not racial groups.

Just like real life has a continuous spectrum of color, for which the Crayola box of 64 colors is a nearly completely arbitrary selection of representative points.

So, how do the primary colours fit in with this anology.

As things of illusionary importance because our eyes see them as, well, primary colors and not just another frequency of light. Just as for cultural and perceptual reasons we give skin color a higher value for classifying people than eye color or the major histocompatibility complex.

[Chen019]

@jackdavinci

Standard answer: There are racial clines but not racial groups.

Just like real life has a continuous spectrum of color, for which the Crayola box of 64 colors is a nearly completely arbitrary selection of representative points.

Well, the Rosenberg paper I mentioned earlier shows clinal theory works well within a continental region, but but doesn’t work as well across the continental (“cluster”) boundaries:

For population pairs from the same cluster, as geographic distance increases, genetic distance increases in a linear manner, consistent with a clinal population structure. However, for pairs from different clusters, genetic distance is generally larger than that between intracluster pairs that have the same geographic distance. For example, genetic distances for population pairs with one population in Eurasia and the other in East Asia are greater than those for pairs at equivalent geographic distance within Eurasia or within East Asia. Loosely speaking, it is these small discontinuous jumps in genetic distance—across oceans, the Himalayas, and the Sahara—that provide the basis for the ability of STRUCTURE to identify clusters that correspond to geographic regions.

http://genetics.plosjournals.org/archive/1553-7404/1/6/pdf/10.1371_journal.pgen.0010070-S.pdf

[MrDibble]

Yeah, no. See the discussion about endpoint selection bias in that paper I linked to in the other thread. It nicely lays out what’s wrong with Rosenberg’s “clusters”.

[John_Mace]

@jackdavinci

@John_Mace

There is no such things as a “racial cline”. That’s like saying there is a discrete continuum.

How so? Cline means continuous gradient. If it were discrete, it would be more like a series of stripes.

“Race” is not a continuous gradient. A racial cline is an oxymoron.

[Chen019]

@MrDibble

Yeah, no. See the discussion about endpoint selection bias in that paper I linked to in the other thread. It nicely lays out what’s wrong with Rosenberg’s “clusters”.

Did you read the paper I linked? It is written in response to the paper by Paabo that you cited. Also, see Dienekes discussion here.

But, as I have explained before, the results obtained by S&P are an artefact of greatly reducing their sample size (to obtain a geographically uniform sample, as opposed to little “chunks” of individuals from different populations). Moreover, the assumption of uncorrelated alleles is no better than the assumption of linked alleles used by Rosenberg. In human populations alleles tend to co-occur, and are thus correlated to some degree.

Clusters emerge when one uses a sufficiently intelligent clustering technique, has a sufficient sample size, and a large number of informative markers. Absence of clusters does not prove absence of structure. [1]

Clusters strike back (II)

[jackdavinci]

@John_Mace

“Race” is not a continuous gradient. A racial cline is an oxymoron.

Well, it’s definitely not an oxymoron, because 1) even if you are right, and racial characteristics are somehow not a gradient, there is nothing inherently anti-gradient about the term “race” to make it oxymoronic and 2) “racial” (the term I used) has a slightly different meaning than “race” (the term you used)

Anyway, you just keep contradicting me without explaining your reasoning. Is your objection related to the ‘clustering’ idea that someone brought up, or do you actually believe that racial characteristics strictly divide humans into discretely identifiable populations in a non arbitrary way? Or are you objecting to “continuous”? I’m not saying that the gradients are perfectly smooth.