Races don't exist

[IzzyR]

tourbot

Did I get that right, and does it make sense?

Well, you may have gotten it right in terms of what Kimstu said, but I don’t think it makes sense. To restate my earlier response - what you are trying to defend is the idea that the concept of race has no meaning, due to the fact that there is no clear way to define the different races. I disputed this, giving an example with colors. What Kimstu is saying, and now you as well, is that some people might get it wrong in specific instances. However, a concept does not cease to exist because people sometimes err in applying it.

sqweels - No. (IOW, what’s your point?)

[Kimstu]

Right, tourbot. Izzy, my point was that defining colors as certain wavelength ranges on the visible light spectrum, though it may be purely arbitrary, does at least bear a reliable relationship to wavelength: everything you call “red” is in one continuous wavelength range, everything you call “blue” is in a different one, and so forth.

But defining races, on the other hand, as measures of biological relatedness is worse than arbitrary, it’s factually incorrect. People who share the same superficial physiological characteristics that inspire us to consider them members of the same “race” are not always more closely related to one another, in terms of true genetic kinship, than to people of different races. And this isn’t only true of “half-breeds” or people on the borders of racial categories: you can find a group of people, as in my example, that looks unmistakably “Negroid” but is actually genetically closer to a group that looks “Caucasian” than to another group that looks “Negroid”. So the problem with using race as a biological category isn’t just that people will misinterpret it; it’s that the concept is inherently unreliable. Is that a clearer explanation?

Of course, you can still define race as a purely superficial category for classifying human beings by appearance and not try to claim that it implies anything about biological kinship or genetic tendencies. But in that case, what good is it? As sqweels suggests, it would be like trying to deduce the speed and reliability of cars based on whether they’re red or blue, rather than on whether they’re made by Ford or Toyota or Porsche. No respectable auto mechanic would attempt such a thing, and no respectable geneticist would attempt to deduce the genetic attributes of human beings based on purely superficial categories of appearance.

That doesn’t mean that purely superficial categories have no use whatsoever, of course: a mechanic may know that a certain paint color is more prone to peeling than other colors irrespective of the make of the car, just as a dermatologist knows that naturally dark skin is less susceptible to skin cancer than naturally light skin, irrespective of the genetic population that the different-colored people belong to. But that doesn’t imply that color is of any use in making generalizations about other qualities of the cars or the people. Does that make sense?

Note added in preview: Poly, I don’t think there’s any dispute that there are different genetic relationships among different groups of people, and that closely related groups often have superficial similarities. The point is just that the superficial similarities often fail as reliable guides. For example, sickle-cell anemia is common in people of African descent but also in people of Saudi Arabian and Cuban descent, which we would not suspect if we were just thinking on racial lines, because the latter groups of people don’t “look black”. In fact, sickle-cell anemia is fully one-third to one-half as common among Hispanic-American newborns today as it is among African-American newborns. In other words, it isn’t really a “black disease”.

Hope that helps somewhat; I will now shut up and wait for the better-informed Collounsbury to deliver the real Straight Dope.

[tourbot]

*Originally posted by IzzyR *
**
To restate my earlier response - what you are trying to defend is the idea that the concept of race has no meaning, due to the fact that there is no clear way to define the different races. I disputed this, giving an example with colors. What Kimstu is saying, and now you as well, is that some people might get it wrong in specific instances. However, a concept does not cease to exist because people sometimes err in applying it.

**

I don’t think anyone is saying that race, as a possible concept, does not exist. What is being said is that the concept of race currently in use is wrong. And it isn’t that some people get it wrong in specific instances, it’s that, in it’s current usage, it doesn’t mean anything. Using the color example, if I know the wavelength, I know the color, and vice versa. However, under current usage, if I know the genetic makeup, I don’t neccessarily know the “race”, and vice versa.

Now, if future studies in population genetics produce meaningful categories, then you might have something. Don’t expect those categories to have much to do with what we currently think of as race, though. Whether you want to call those categories races or not is then just a matter of semantics.

[IzzyR]

Kimstu

Why do you keep on assuming that the concept of “race” requires that one use superficial similarities? As you say, these will sometimes be in error, from a genetic standpoint. So define race using genetic relationship. To this, I understood Colounsbury to be saying that there’s no clear dividing line. That gets us back to colors.

tourbot

It seems to me that numerous people in this very thread have asserted that race as a concept has no meaning. If you are reducing the discussion to “what many people classify as races are actually not valid categories from a genetic standpoint”, you will get no argument from me.

[eponymous]

Mods, you can move this to ATMB if more appropriate.

Collounsbury, I’d be willing to create a page and link that contains all the relevant information/sources that you’ve provided regarding this very topic. I feel bad you having to repeat yourself over and over and…

Mods - If there are copyright/propriety issues, they maybe some kind of FAQ?

There’s got to be a better way in dealing with this.

[dal_timgar]

you could call them BREEDS instead.

is that an improvement?

Dal Timgar

[Kimstu]

Izzy: Why do you keep on assuming that the concept of “race” requires that one use superficial similarities? As you say, these will sometimes be in error, from a genetic standpoint. So define race using genetic relationship.

Oh! Okay. Throwing out the superficial-similarities part and relying only on identifiable genetic relationship is definitely changing the common concept of “race”, but I have no objection to it on principle.

But I have two practical objections. The first is, why bother? Yes, it’s sometimes useful to assign an arbitrary set of categories to light wavelengths and call the result a set of “colors”, but that’s because, as I noted, our eyes and brains have some arbitrary color discrimination hard-wired. What similarly useful purpose would be served by divvying up human beings into an arbitrary set of populations based on genetic relationships? And how would we choose that arbitrary set?

The second objection is, is it even possible to get an adequate test for identifying what race a given individual belongs to? As tourbot noted, for colors it’s easy: you have your wavelength ranges and any given visible-light photon has to fall into one or another of them. But Collounsbury has pointed out how much genetic variation there is even within populations that we know to be closely genetically related. Assuming you did have a useful purpose for an arbitrary set of populations based on closeness of genetic kinship, and you did have an agreed-upon standard for how that arbitrary set should be chosen, can you guarantee that you will have a reliable way of determining which of those populations any particular individual belongs to? Or is there so much “noise” in the genetic makeup of many of us that it will simply overwhelm the racial “signal”, making classification basically pointless?

[tomndebb]

I think the concept of race can be a useful, if flawed, tool for anthropological and social/political discussions. Certainly we can find occasions where the perceptions of race have figured into the decisions and actions of of groups of people. Whether it would be beneficial to replace the word “race” with another term, I am not sure. In the interests of communicating ideas regarding the treatment and perception of groups, the word has already (for better or worse) established itself in the language.

The problem occurs when we try to apply those perceptions to biological reality. The evidence (as copiously cited by Collounsbury) indicates that we do not have any way to genetically determine any group that we would call a race (unless we break “race” down into so many tiny populations that the word becomes meaningless).

peace kept claiming that we could get to race based on a percentage of common genetic traits. When he initially claimed that we could identify race by an examination of HLA-typing in blood, several of us looked at his citations and discovered that within any given “race,” a substantial percentage of the population would actually share more characterstics with people from other “races” and that no set of characteristics could be shown to appear always and exclusively within any one group. I asked how we were supposed to identify anyone’s race by traits that occur in multiple groups and he replied that we were just supposed to look at the averages. I dunno. If I look at a characteristic “belonging” to Group A and I find that characteristic in a member of Group B, does that mean that the person on Group B is “really” an A? He never did explain how that worked except to claim that it was obvious.

There are diseases and genetic characteristics that are more prevalent among certain populations. This is simply another side to the superficial characteristics with which we are already familiar. People who intrabreed over a long period will share similar characteristics. It is possible that if a population was separated from humanity for a sufficient length of time, a “race” could emerge. The historical (genetic) record, however, indicates that interbreeding has remained sufficiently high throughout the human population that that event has not occurred.

---

Colors:

Up until roughly the Renaissance, there was no orange in Europe. No European language had a word to identify that color. Certainly, there were oak trees that changed color in the autumn and sunsets and other phenomena that we would describe as “orange.” However, prior to the introduction of the Indian fruit by Persian merchants at the end of the middle ages, Europeans never found a need to identify that color. There was red with a lot of yellow in it and yellow with a lot of red in it (even gold was described as “yellow” or, occasionally, “red”).

Had we drawn a color bar extending from the deepest red to the brightest yellow on a piece of paper, handed a Medieval scholar a pencil and asked him to draw a line separating each color, he would most likely have drawn a line halfway between the two ends, right in the middle of our “orange.” If we gave the same task to a second grader in an American school, today, the child would probably draw two lines, separating red from orange and orange from yellow.

If our culture continues to expand its uses of color (in advertising, pedagogy, or screen design, etc.) it is possible that future generations will recognize as distinct, colors that we now place in the red-orange or yellow-orange bands of the spectrum.

Race appears in the same fashion between anthropology and biology. We can “see” the “distinct” races at the middle of any band, but any line we draw to identify the separations between those races fails on the biological level.

The obvious reason for this is that genetics, unlike light, is not a two-dimensional spectrum. We can plot light according to wavelengths, but genetics will always have so many overlapping and intermixed markers that no line is truly possible.

Light and color make a decent analogy, but all analogies are imperfect.

[eponymous]

*Originally posted by tomndebb *

I think the concept of race can be a useful, if flawed, tool for anthropological and social/political discussions. Certainly we can find occasions where the perceptions of race have figured into the decisions and actions of of groups of people. Whether it would be beneficial to replace the word “race” with another term, I am not sure. In the interests of communicating ideas regarding the treatment and perception of groups, the word has already (for better or worse) established itself in the language.

tomndebb, I agree the concept can be quite useful in a social science context. I’m a human geographer, and I tend to use “ethnicity”, “culture”, or “population” rather than race (the whole genetic/biological thing). However, race is often used to look at such things as differences in economic status, education, health care, etc. It’s a social/cultural construct and can be used/examined in that context. Of which, I’m sure your aware, you being tomndebb and all

It is possible that if a population was separated from humanity for a sufficient length of time, a “race” could emerge.

Wouldn’t species be a more appropriate term? I don’t know. What genetic/biological differences distinguish, say, Homo sapiens from Homo erectus? Or is there any meaningful difference?

[tomndebb]

Well, to get to species, we generally start talking about losing the ability to interbreed. Had one group or another become totally separated from the rest of humanity long enough to develop a group-wide unique genetic “fingerprint” but not long enough to become infertile with the rest of the crowd (or able to produce only hybrids), then I would think that they would qualify as a race rather than a species. With the current state of the world, we won’t have to worry about that unless we get a group to go off-planet.

[eponymous]

tomndebb,

Thanks for the clarification.

[system]

*Originally posted by Kimstu *
So in terms of actual biological kinship, this definition of “race” is not only an
arbitrary categorization, it’s a miscategorization. (Have I got that factually correct, Collounsbury?) **

Precisely.

Re Race as a non-biological descriptor. It is indeed useful because it’s an ingrained way folks ID themselves, above all in English speaking contexts. The only problem is too many folks think it has the biological meaning I keep critiquing.

Epon: Re the ref. page. I have no problems from my POV, in fact, I’d be happy to contribute more references, given time.

Izzy, as usual, I think Tomndebb has achieved a clarity which I am apparently incapable of. I hope this helps you more than my responses.

[London_Calling]

I’m a little surprised here by tomdebb and Coll’s position on vocabulary. Let me run this by you:
I’m still thinking about this but it does seem to me (now) that ‘race’ is little more than a misnomer borne of (pre ?) Victorian misconceptions.

That being so, I’m wondering if it’s continued use serves no greater purpose than to perpetuate the myth of ‘race’ for those less well informed or those happy to indulge their ignorance.

We don’t actually need to use it – ‘ethnicity’ is more than accurate – except (possibly) as an academic descriptor. As an aside, it seems curious to me that what I thought was a dated and derogatory name like the NCCP is, in fact (I think !) now more accurate and reasonable that the name of a similar UK body (albeit Government funded) i.e. The Campaign for Racial Equality.

Believe me, I’m far from being a PC Nazi but this terminology issue appears even more significant than the gender/ social grouping stuff of the past 20 years: You can actually see a ‘Policeman’ is a ‘Police Officer’ whereas you can’t see the near identical genetic composition of ‘races’/ethnic groups i.e. evidence to the contrary is manifest in the former but not the latter.

In common with the PC argument, I find it hard to believe ingrained thinking can be nudged to greater enlightenment (and accuracy) by continuing to support falsehoods and, if we continue to use the language of ignorance, we are helping to perpetuate ignorance.

And above anything else, it doesn’t help the kids.

Going to take a while before calling someone an ‘ethnicist’ rolls off the tongue, though.

Any thoughts ?

[system]

*Originally posted by London_Calling *
I’m a little surprised here by tomdebb and Coll’s position on vocabulary. Let me run this by you:

Well, I don’t want to be too demanding, but…

I’m still thinking about this but it does seem to me (now) that ‘race’ is little more than a misnomer borne of (pre ?) Victorian misconceptions.

Absolutely agree, Victorian by the way is the era where these things got solidified it appears.

That being so, I’m wondering if it’s continued use serves no greater purpose than to perpetuate the myth of ‘race’ for those less well informed or those happy to indulge their ignorance.

True enough.

We don’t actually need to use it – ‘ethnicity’ is more than accurate – except (possibly) as an academic descriptor. As an aside, it seems curious to me that what I thought was a dated and derogatory name like the NCCP is, in fact (I think !) now more accurate and reasonable that the name of a similar UK body (albeit Government funded) i.e. The Campaign for Racial Equality.

Agreed, but I seem to have a hard enough time getting people to grasp the biology, let alone change their vocabulary.

Believe me, I’m far from being a PC Nazi but this terminology issue appears even more significant than the gender/ social grouping stuff of the past 20 years: You can actually see a ‘Policeman’ is a ‘Police Officer’ whereas you can’t see the near identical genetic composition of ‘races’/ethnic groups i.e. evidence to the contrary is manifest in the former but not the latter.

I’d greatly prefer the world drop out of usage. Ethnicity is really my prefered term, but I’d prefer it drop out without campaigns against the usage of the word, but rather from the realization it’s just not accurate.

[IzzyR]

So I take it that we are all in agreement that the concept of race can exist after all, both from a social/political and genetic standpoint. However, there are objections to using it from a genetic standpoint, because racial divisions do not map onto popular conceptions of race, will be arbitrarily drawn, and are likely to be misleading. If I have this wrong, feel free to object.

One further question for our genetic experts (and you know who you are): You have stated that there are no clear-cut divisions that one might use to define different races. Is it fair to say, however, that if one lined up all the people in the world and tried to sort them by genetic “race”, that though there would be no dividing lines, and much overlap, there would still be clusters at certain points?

[system]

*Originally posted by IzzyR *
So I take it that we are all in agreement that the concept of race can exist after all, both from a social/political and genetic standpoint.

Ah, no. First, let’s leave out cultural definitions. That’s anyone’s game. Biology: What do mean by race? If you mean a coherent, structured population with a defined set of common genetic traits? Yes, but the preferred term is populations bec. (1) race has all that baggage we all know very well (2) populations is a bit more accurate anyway since race, even without the human baggage, contains inaccurte connotations of seperation. Similarly I have read that in animal biology (and to an extent generally) the sub-species concept is falling out of favor as genetics allows us greater precision (and reveals some divisions to have been false – see its not just human biology which has been revolutionized).

However, there are objections to using it from a genetic standpoint, because racial divisions do not map onto popular conceptions of race, will be arbitrarily drawn, and are likely to be misleading.

More or less. Essentially we all know that the popular meaning will trump all, so its better to use another term.

One further question for our genetic experts (and you know who you are):

Well, I’m not an expert, only barely literate, but I’ll take a crack at this.

You have stated that there are no clear-cut divisions that one might use to define different races. Is it fair to say, however, that if one lined up all the people in the world and tried to sort them by genetic “race”, that though there would be no dividing lines, and much overlap, there would still be clusters at certain points?

Sure, but the problem is the clusters don’t line up coherently. Choose one set of traits you get groups X, Y and Z. Choose another set of traits (equally valid) and you get X1 Y1 and Z1 which now contain members of each of the former groups (i.e. X one contains members of the X, Y and Z grouping.). Cavalli-Sforza deals with this in depth. I have a number of on-line citations I’ve collected which should be helpful, although a little dense. Once I get a chance to organize them I will post them.

[Freedom]

Thanks for the effort Colllunsbury. I skimmed through the other threads, but damned they are long. If you guys go on much longer, you will be giving the gun threads and the Bush threads some competition:)
As a white guy getting ready to marry a Filipino woman and looking forward to having kids, I realize that this is a topic I never thought that much about, but I need to learn more about. I appreciate the cites and book recomendations, I have written them down and will check them out next time I’m at Barnes and Noble.

If these questions come out sounding ignorant, please forgive me. Feel free to knock some sense into my head.
Ok.

My fiance is Filipino. Her parents came from the island, and moved over here 35 years ago. She is Filipino.

I can walk through life and bump into Filipinos I have never met before, and know they are Filipinos just from looking at them. Same for Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Blacks, Italians, Irish and Jews. (say 90% accuracy)

So is this what you are calling ethnicity?

Now me. My ancestors moved here over 300 years ago. I would assume that we have had all types of Europeans marry into the family and contribute to who I am today. I identify with no specific racial identity except White American. I see this as a visual description and possibly a quick historical outline of my family only.

I have always gone through life thinking that there are pretty much two categories of people. One where a person meets some arbitrary requirement of purity and can easily be classified as Italian, Black, Jewish etc… and another category, (mine) where we are so mixed that definition is impossible.

It has never bothered me to think of myself as a being in the second category, especially since I see it as expanding and overwhelming the first as time goes on. Sort of a graying of the human race.

Now, am I stuck in the old way of thinking?

[system]

*Originally posted by Freedom2 *
Thanks for the effort Colllunsbury. I skimmed through the other threads, but damned they are long. If you guys go on much longer, you will be giving the gun threads and the Bush threads some competition:)

Ah, but with a difference. In this subject (race as biology) there are correct answers.

I can walk through life and bump into Filipinos I have never met before, and know they are Filipinos just from looking at them. Same for Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Blacks, Italians, Irish and Jews. (say 90% accuracy)

So is this what you are calling ethnicity?

It could be. Populations if we’re trying to pin down biology. Whatever, depending on the context.

Now me. My ancestors moved here over 300 years ago. I would assume that we have had all types of Europeans marry into the family and contribute to who I am today. I identify with no specific racial identity except White American. I see this as a visual description and possibly a quick historical outline of my family only.

I have always gone through life thinking that there are pretty much two categories of people. One where a person meets some arbitrary requirement of purity and can easily be classified as Italian, Black, Jewish etc… and another category, (mine) where we are so mixed that definition is impossible.

Okay. Hmm, how to tackle this. First, identity and biology are two different games. Identity is cultural and as well all know, can be truly whacked out. But that’s the way folks are. I favor ethnicity as a good word to capture all subjective ‘identities’ people have/make up/adopt/promot. Some of those, of course, have ostensible biological bases. Race, e.g… Appearance-wise it doesn’t work that badly, if one’s purpose is to arrange

Now, the biology. The matieral I have cited so far is pretty clear. We’re all mutts. You’re just more mutty than some. (As am I for that matter) All genetic evidence to date demonstrates that the entire species is remarkably homogenous and very little of our genetic variation maps onto populations. It (our genetic variation) is mostly an incoherent individually based soup.

As Tom mentions, our dearly departed peace claimed that we could get to race based on a percentage of common genetic traits. Quoting Tom above, with emphasis: *"within any given “race,” * [and we can add any large population of whatever definition, say Italians] a substantial percentage of the population would actually share more characterstics with people from other “races” and that no set of characteristics could be shown to appear always and exclusively within any one group." Which essentially says that despite some deceptive congruences in appearance, which arise from coherent selective pressures of the local environment and people boinking, we’re all mutts which can not meet tests of purity.

Now, this doesn’t say that much in the end. It does render ‘scientific racism’ and folks looking to explain inter-group differnces by biology 100% wrong, but we all know there are a million and one reasons to hate…

So, I hope that was a little clearer. Tom is really much better at this than I am.

It has never bothered me to think of myself as a being in the second category, especially since I see it as expanding and overwhelming the first as time goes on. Sort of a graying of the human race.

Quite right, although in practical terms its simply blurring the fairly trivial morphological differences which arose in response to environmental (and other) pressures.

[IzzyR]

Collounsbury

Suppose you have three guys whose genes you are analyzing. Two are from the continent of Africa (you have no idea which part) and one from the continent of Europe. You know nothing else about any of these three guys. You analyze Gene A from one African guy and the European guy. They differ. You are about to analyze the same gene from the second African guy. You are forced at gunpoint to predict whose gene it will most closely resemble. Your life depends on your getting the answer right. Who do you pick? (Maybe I should have become a dentist)

[zwaldd]

You are forced at gunpoint to predict whose gene it will most closely resemble.

i knew this was going to happen. the gun threads and the race threads have collided. your survival depends on having a well concealed gun of your own, or being able to predict race from genes. this could be the climax of the sdmb movie.