Racism?

OK, everybody, what’s the deal with racism?

I mean, isn’t it possible that some athletic or mental qualities are influenced by race? Obviously, the most common example of this is the black athlete.

And, if race does have an effect on someone, excluding society’s influence, or whatever, is it wrong to acknowledge this?

I tried to post this already, so there might be two…Thanks everyone.

There is no such thing as race from a biological standpoint. Someone more qualified than I will be along to explain this in more detail, but I thought I’d state it up front.

This is a poor terminology. It is conceivable that some aspects of athletic or mental qualities differ ON AVERAGE. That’s quite different from saying that these qualities are “influenced by race.”

If certain qualities do differ on average, the cause is most likely cultural. E.g., 80 years ago there were quite a few Jewish prize-fighters in the U.S. I doubt that Jews are genetically better at boxing. Rather, many other occupations were closed to them of them were recent immigrants and other occupations were not easily available, due to lack of education, prejudice, etc.

Ok, well, I apologize, I definitely meant on the average. I was just trying to avoid saying that all black people are better athletes than all white people, or something like that. Obviously, that’s offensive, stupid, and wrong. I’m not much of a statistician, however, so my questions definitely aren’t phrased precisely.

OK Mcstain, welcome to the SDMB, and welcome to a much loved topic in GD. Normally our own resident Sysyiphus, the ever popular Collounsbury, would take up the cudgel on this topic, with a supporting cast of Edwino, Tomndebb and occasionally yours truly and others. However for personal reasons Col can’t post these days, so I guess the extras have to do the dirty work.

Well yes, it is. The problem is that the influence is due to social differences imposed upon races, not due to biological differences.

And again, be certain that you understand that the difference between black and white athletes is due 99.999999999999% to cultural differences. The remaining area of uncertainty is probably cultural as well, but I’ll allow that much influence of ‘biological’ race.

No, it’s not. The problem is that there is absolutely no evidence that race does have an effect on anyone excluding society’s influence. Ignoring the obvious (black people don’t get sunburnt as readily) race has no effect on anybody. There is no biological basis for race. It’s an entirely subjective social construct.

I now suggest that you read through the links on this page before continuing this debate. The subject has been done to death on these borads. Please read these links and the linked references that prove that there is no genetic or biological basis for race or differences between races before continuing. In reference to race and athletics particularly please read the appropriate thread on the page above, as well as relevant sections of this trainwreck.
Please.
Any queries or genuine arguments will be thoughfully adressed.

Not again!

Gee, Gaspode; you seem to think the OP here isn’t a sock puppet.

We just did this in a thread that lived for three months and collected 333 replies:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=73536

OK, I apologize and rescind the question. Thanks for being so kind, everyone.

Seeing, however, as it will take hours and hours to go through the information, though, i thought i might ask one more, much less contentious, semi-fact-based question. How long have the major race groups existed? African, Middle Eastern, European, Asian, (subcontinental?)? I’m sure I missed many, and dramatically overgeneralized, again. Sorry. And thank you, everyone who read my post and didn’t shoot back with some angry response about the question having been done to death. Especial thanks to the two guys with the links.

  1. I believe in giving everyone the benefit of the doubt.
  2. (And more importantly) Just letting tripe go with a few sarcastic replies is bad form. A newbie lurker could wander in here and assume that we accept what’s been posted. So much better to link to where it’s all been beaten to death so many times before. Then if anyone makes silly coments we can hound them mercilessly without needing to rehash the same old stuff. SO much simpler an cleaner and still in keeping with the spirit of the boards.

Attrayant
Beat ya to it with that link. :slight_smile:
Almost makes you think someone wants to keep the debate going doesn’t it?

This is all pure speculation.

Anyhow, I don’t see how there could be any notion of “race” until people of sufficiently different ethnicities encountered each other. When this places the development of the idea historically is not for me to guess, though.

This refers to the rest of my post.

Re the age of all of the races.

This is a hard question to put a finger on. Europe was colonized many times over the past 50,000 years, with Ice Ages pushing humans out of the interior of Europe several times. Linguistically and genetically, it looks like these migrations were from the Middle East. One of these migrations was thought to seed the Siberian population which eventually went to colonize the New World (based on Y chromosome haplotypes). The colonization of the Middle East and Near Asia is far more complex, as it has been repopulated and depopulated since the beginning of humanity. I will admit to cluelessness about China, though, except that the same Siberian population that crossed the land bridge IIRC existed before the “Asian” people that we see now repopulated Asia from the Southeast. These peoples are represented presently by the Ainu in Japan and the native Taiwanese. My time frames on these are a little fuzzy and I have no access to the primary literature from home.

The short of it is that we use very imprecise criteria for separating races. These criteria are strictly morphologic and dependent on genes scattered throughout the genome. We characterize peoples together into races because they look the same. They still may be totally genetically distinct. This is one of the wonders of evolution – advantageous mutations (like skin color or nose shape) may propogate themselves through many distinct populations without carrying any other genetic material. The simplest analogy I can come up with is classifying a caesar salad and a BLT as the same food group because they both have lettuce. We all know that lettuce is good and is therefore used in lots of food, but its presence in lots of different kinds of food doesn’t mean that the foods are somehow related or necessarily share another magical ingredient.

Although it might have happened independently, the notion of races (as the word tends to be used) appears to have begun with Linnaeus, himself. Fascinated by the concept of applying order to the natural world, when he had delineated humans, he kept going to divide that group/species into sub-categories:
“Scientific Racism” in Enlightened Europe: Linnaeus, Darwin, and Galton

Um, is this some sort of insult directed at me? I’d understand if it is, but I’m new here, and it’s sort of vague (to me, at least). I really just sort of would like it if someone would explain what it means. Thanks again.

A sock puppet is an old user using a new name. As in “when I was FartBoy_86, people all thought I was an ass and yelled at me. In my new identity of Pixelicious, they’ll like me.”
Or
“I’ll use 6 new usernames to make it look like people agree with me.”

The strong policing of socks is, IMO, one of the things that keeps these boards so good.

As furt has explained a sockpuppet is used here for someone posting under a handle other than their usual. Commonly this happens around here after someone has been banned. I aplogise on behalf of the other board members since it appears you’re not a sock. It’s just that people who have driven the race argument into the ground in the past have had a tendencey of getting banned. They also have a tendency of reincarnating. When your second post is on topic like this the immediate reaction is to assume that you’re a sock. Apologies once again.

<Mangetout adds ‘sock puppet’ to list of new smiley wants>

I hope you all don’t mind a small question after the many threads on this topic. Just in case someone feels like answering it. Aren’t some groups of people taller or shorter, on average, than others? Would anyone object to that or is the objection just that those groups be called “races”?

There are a few groups that tend toward the extremes of the normal population in terms of height. Some of these groups may well have a genetic component to their height limit (although, as has been pretty well documented since WWII, a lot of height is driven by diet–several groups who were “known” to be “short” have begun producing “average” and even “tall” children when they switched their diet to one more closely resembling that of Europe and North America).

However, across broad groups of people, height varies so widely within each culturally identified group, that generalizations from height to “race” simply cannot be substantiated.

There are groups of people who are sufficiently closely related that some physical traits have become a genetic norm for that group. Such groups are called populations in the literature of biology. No population is large enough to be identified as a race. No collection of populations have enough similar characteristics to justify calling them a race, either.

We could use the word race instead of the word population, but we would have to have several hundred races to identify them all–and most people would fall into some “mixed” category outside those several hundred races, anyway. Using the word race for population, therefore, is not a good idea because it causes more confusion (by evoking older meanings of the word) without bringing any clarity or meaning to the discussion.