CollyB, I hope this BB and this thread in particular helps you kill time on you flights and in lonely hotel rooms. I wish our mods would build a fireplace here, so we can relax and chat friendly.
PCC lately was at my throat. If I visited somebody and said: “It’s rather cloudy today”, I’m accused of being insensetive, of implying that they couldn’t afford a house in a better neighborhood, with blue skies.
Q.Good nutrition, especially for young, can have substantial effects. I know this. But you seem to overestimate it. In this country, the young become fat on “good nutrition”. You can feed an 80 pound genetically small-breasted girl ice cream and brownies till she becomes 200lbs. She still will have small breasts. A race horse will not run well without good nutrition, but any nutrition will not cause him to break records, if he does not have good muscles, inherited from the parents.
About the influence (or, rather, lack of influence) of nutrition on longevity, read below. It’s a pilot article, but it shows that one will live long in feast and famine if the parents lived long.
Monday November 6 6:35 PM ET
Extreme Old Age May Run in Families
By Alan Mozes
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Contrary to conventional scientific wisdom that nurture, not nature, determines whether a person will live to an extremely old age, researchers have now amassed circumstantial evidence that some families seem to have a genetic predisposition towards living 100 years or more… {Edited for copyright infringement. Do not post the full text of copyrighted articles. --Gaudere}
Q.**Peace, I have repeatedly referred you to the literature in human population genetics which indicates that race is quite simply not a valid biological category.**IAMR, I know, CollyB, that race is quite simply a valid biological category, and will not read “to the contrary”. It is not a political category. Racists are. But as the existence of astrologers and alchemists does not cancel astronomy and chemistry, the existence of racists does not cancel race. Race always existed in nature, long before racists.
Q.**Races do NOT differ in genetic make up, there are no genetic markers by which one can identify someone by race. ** Races do differ in genetic make up, significanly. See Edwino posts. Beside “invisible” HLA types, blood group types, etc., there are very visible genetically determined and inherited traits, such as skin, hair, and eye color, nose and eye shape, etc. Yoy probably noticed. By distictive, univesrally accepted characteristics, anthropologists diagnose race of fossil and contemporary skulls. A single hair found at the crime scene can reliably discriminate between a Black and a White person.True, no single genetic marker can now identify someone by race, but the combination of them reliably places a peson within a racial/ethnic group. This is widely used, e.g., in organ transplantation and forensic science.
But even if a race could be identifyied by a single gene, I see nothing wrong with it. What if a person says: “Hi, I’m Jane, I’m Black and I have a gene to prove it”. Do you prefer “…and I have papers to prove it”? We have genes by Nature. Papers are issued by the authorities. Some authorities cut the paperwork and placed tatoos on forearms.
In short, race was, is, and will be in Nature. Racists are a sociological/political phenomenon, not a natural one. Race can and should be used as discriminating factor in forensic science or organ transplantation. It must never enter politics, like the weather does not. We can help population suffered from bad weather; to help or not to help is a political decision. But once the decision was made, everybody is equally helped, the Blacks, the Whites, the Greens and the In-betweens. If some victims need organ transplantation, we will use our knowlege of racial genetics to find donors.
Peace, that is not ‘good nutrition’ – that’s bad nutrition. We’re not talking about the same thigns here. In any event, getting fat from eating too much is not relevant to the issue (which is getting a certain minimal caloric intake, vitamins at key periods of development etc.)Your example is fairly irrelevant.
I’d have to take a look at the actual article – we have to control for a lot a factors in this but I do have one comment on the article: it reflects the typical journalistic misunderstanding these are either or questions. Scientific wisdom has not been nurture rather than nature determines longevity but rather there is a balance with feedback between environment (which is NOT SYNONYMOUS with environment as it implies a focus on human actions) and the underlying genetic template. In any case, the examination of family trees of four families strikes me as having severe issues in terms of generizability and control for extraneous factors (such as, surprise, their environment).
Precisely the problem, not that anyone has ever doubted that one’s genetic heritage provides the underlying basis for how long one lives. The question is the range of play which environmental influences provide.
Not surprising or news really: let me emphasize that journalistic reporting on these issues is just horrible, always in the horse race, either or mentality.
You mean that you refuse to red the discussion or the (online) articles I provided regarding the non-coherence of racial groups at a genetic level?
I guess then there is no basis for a rational discussion of the science as opposed to the mythology, as you refuse to engage the data. Pity…
Rubbish, race is defined by culture.
They do not. There are no private alleles. Please look up the online articles from the original literature. I did see the Edwino posts and you apparently have misunderstood them.
There are no HLA types restricted to one “racial” group, nor blood group types nor etc. There are different patterns of distribution but genetic data indicate they do not map onto the big races. If you look into the literature and population genetics you do not find one can charecterize that all “blacks”
I dealt with this mythology in the cited thread, please read it since I find it a bit boring to explain the same thing over and over. Skin, hair and eye color are not diagnostic for relatedness. That has been amply proven, if you read the other thread you will find the detials.
I’m afraid you are simply 100% wrong. There are not universally accepted characteristics: quite the contrary anthropologists abandoned racial topologies because they turned out to be incoherent. I recall reading a one Chamla (I hope I am spelling that correctly, its been a while) a French anthropologist working in the Sahara. She found going back to 40000 years ago a range of typologies in both North Africa (usually characterized as caucasian) through Saharan Africa into sub-Saharan Africa with no underlying coherence. Her conclusion: it was impossible for her to establish “race” based on skeletal charecteristics – this in the early 1960s. Nothing to do with politics or the like, rather quite simply the data does not hold up.
There have always been bordering types (in other words Africa south of the Sahara has “black” populations, by skin and hair with caucasian features, and this feature dates back to the most ancient times.)
Moreover, as I noted in the other thread there are “negro” populations in south (east) Asia with precisely the same skin and skeletal features as the stereotypical “black” features, but whose descent is the same as other Asians.
I’m afraid you are wrong. Please consult the other thread as I don’t have the time to retype the entire discussion.
F***: It’s not a question of wrong or right its a question of f’ing data! In the other thread I provided ample citations, many to online articles referring the reader to the latest original research --not half-digested journalistic accounts.
???
The mythologies of race do nothing to help us understand human populations and much to hold us back.
We can argue about nutrition here, but “good” or “bad”, it has no influebce on genetic characteristics. Some genes may be “programmed” to respond to nutrition, but this can’t change the height or eye color.
I have not read the referenced article myself yet. I agree that one article based on four families does not make science. But this kind of studies difficult and time consuming and we can’t expect them to have millions of families in their databases. Incidentally, these limitations slow the overall progress in biology at large. Perhaps, we knew more now if we could study people en masse, like electrons are studied in physics.
QI guess then there is no basis for a rational discussion of the science as opposed to the mythology, as you refuse to engage the data. Pity… Sorry, in all my respect, to me reading about absence of racial markers wuold be like reading about the absebce of sexual markers or about the flat Earth “data”…Sorry. Rubbish, race is defined by culture. ** Of course. Everything is defined by culture. Dictionaries are a part of culture. My Webster dictionary defines “race” as “distinct group of people, the members of which share certain inherited physical characteristics (skin color, form of hair, etc.) and trasmit them.” In biology it can be “a subdivision of species”. Another definition is: " A group of individuals having certain characteristics in common, owing to a common inheritance; * a subspecies. Of course one might say that the dictionaries (and, by extention, the rest of culture) were written by racist white people and reflect their racists views. But do you know who wrote your sources?
q**…North Africa (usually characterized as caucasian) [/b/ N. Africa became “caucasian” only after it was colonised by Ancient Greeks. Ancient Egyptians (the people who build the pyramids) were not Black Africans; they were not pure caucasians either. Probably, they were of “mixed” race, as we would say today, “multiracial”. We cannot come here to mutual understanding about three pure races; I suggest we leave mixed races for now. As to the gist of all this, any forensic anthropologist/medical examiner in the counry is supposed to identify race, approximate age and gender of a human skull (relevant questions are asked on their professional board exams). In real life (not exams), the diagnosis often worded as: “This skull belongs to a female of approximately 25 years of age of mixed Mondoloid-Caucasian race…” . Her conclusion: it was impossible for her to establish “race” based on skeletal charecteristicsDid she say “it was impossible because these characteristis did not exist?” I think, she meant “because the remains were commingled” or “because the characterictics were not sharply delineated”, which brings us back to “mixed” races.
Q**There have always been bordering types (in other words Africa south of the Sahara has “black” populations, by skin and hair with caucasian features, and this feature dates back to the most ancient times.) ** So, you agree that races can be defined by skin and hair features?
** If you look into the literature and population genetics you do not find one can charecterize that all “blacks”** Of course. Unfortunately, there is no gene showing “B” under the microscope. I do not understand why you are so intransigent, but wouldn’t the existence of genes labeled “B” and “C” make life easier? And not only for police detectives and organ donors. I mean such a gene would be detrimental to many Jews in Nazi Germany, but, as far as I know, nobody tries to conceal her/is race today (it is usually hard, antway). On the other hand, as far as I know, in this country, at least, one can declare her/himself any race they wish, the authorities (unlike with age) do not require any prove (like with gender). I can see potential problems if one “switches” her/is race allegiance, STS, but we are talking normal people here, aren’t we?
I am saddened that you clearly did not read the other thread, or simply did not understand it, or are simply ignoring it. Whichever it is, it’s sad and frustrating to address the same issues over and over and over.
Sigh. Nutrition, especially neonatal nutrition can have a substantial, indeed overriding impact on the expression of genetic traits. Your conceptualization of how genes express is sorely lacking. Environmental influences, above all in early childhood can substantially effect the extent to which your underlying genetic resources, the ‘template’ for the physical you, express themselves. There is quite a wide range for many traits.
Eye color, perhaps not, but height, yes indeed. Your adult height depends substantially on your childhood nutrition. We can clearly see this in historical population changes: substantial decreases in the average height of the population, for example in England from early Ango Saxon times until a rebound in the 20th century – all due to nutrition not any changes in the underlying genetics. Similarly we see substantial increases in the heights of Asians in the USA whose families have adopted American food, for better or worse. The same is evident in Japan, where recent generations, slowly adopting Western style food, show gains in height (albeit at the price of other effects).
In short, your idea of how genes work is simplistic and wrong and is leading you far, far astray.
Assertion from ignorance? What kind of argument is this? “I don’t want to read substantive genetic research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals because I know the answer already”? You sound like one of those creation “scientists” – the science of ignorance. I confess I am disgusted.
No, not everything is defined by culture. Discrete populations may be defined by shared traits, species are increasingly by definable genetic differences. In other words, objective, testable scientific standards. Not dictionary definitions.
The subspecies concept, arbitrary as it is, is increasingly falling out of favor as advances in the art of genetics allows us to better define species etc. Race clearly has another meaning in humans, well actually racists often try for the sub-species concept but this fails, again on the genetic evidence alone.
What are you talking about? A dictionary definition is quite simply irrelevant to the question here, which I had understood to be the biological coherency, or rather lack of, of “races.” As to my sources, well the papers of course identify the authors and insofar as they are published in respectable, peer-reviewed journals, one can count that the data is at the very least, defensible.
Assertion: false as I noted the anthropological literature clearly indicates that North Africa was inhabited by populations with “caucasian” features from the early neolithic forward, long before the Greeks ever thought of moving to Greece. It also, as the remains show, inhabited by folks with ‘black’ features. By the way it was the Phonecians not the Greeks who colonized the North African coast. However these colonies did not shift the demography of North Africa – too few people. The data is clear and you are wrong.
Precisely the problem: no such thing as races as coherent biological entities, and skirting around the non-coherence of the definition doesn’t help the case one bit. There are no definable breaks between any of these populations, only shadings.
The fact that North American forensics still attempts to shove people into incoherent categories is of little relevance to proving the categories are valid biological entities.
Speculation is not a substitute for actually reading things. Having actually read the paper in question, I repeat, Chamla’s conclusion was the paleolithic distribution of skeletal charecterstics were such that she found it impossible to reliably define race. Of course, yes, deliniation was not sharp, in fact it was not coherent. And yes, this brings us to “mixed” – which is in fact the point which indicates the incoherence of the idea of race.
No, did you not comprehend the part of my post where I noted how skin and hair features, and indeed skeletal features turn out to be non-diagnostic for genetic relatedness? The prime example of this is the “negro” populations of South East Asia --as I noted above-- who turn out not to be closely related, relatively speaking, to Africans, despite having the same in skin, hair and skeletal types. Of course this ignores that in fact one finds immense variation in Africa itself and that the racial concept relies on unsupportable stereotype of African homogeniety.
I am not interested in whether it would make life easier, that’s hardly the point. If we were all created by a benificent god with better working parts that would make life easier. But that’s not the case.
Repeating, and do try to read carefully, there is no genetic pattern which can be used to characterize a black race, or any other race. No gene or rather allele (variation of a gene) which is found in only one race. NONE.
Variation does not map ontu races, and only weakly onto localized populations. The concept of the three or whatever great races is a utter failure. Resolution at the level of localized populations is another issue, but does not give us races.
I went into this a great deal in the other thread, including, as I mentioned, providing cites to substantive literature. Unfortunately I am on the road now and don’t have access to my files or what not so I can’t indulge myself in a citation fest, but I think that for anyone with some degree of intelligence can follow what was discussed and cited there. I am sure you would find the citations interesting. Why not pull your head out of the sand and read them.
You see, CollyB,
This is the difference between us. I do not mean the fact that we belong to two different races. I mean this: I say that there are three major races in nature. I say that there is racism and racial discrimination. I say that this is wrong, as nobody should be discriminated against based on biological characteristics, such as race, gender, age, height… You say that there are no races, that races were invented. But then you say that there are racicts, etc. You can’t have it both ways. It’s like saying: “There are no cars, just traffic rules”. It does not make sense.
Yet, actually you admit that there are races: you aknowlege the existense of “multiracial” people and you aknowlege that hairs are different in different people. In the former case you ascribe great construction projects to multiracial people, in the latter you say that although hairs and people are different, they belong to one race. All this doesn’t make sense.
I had wanted to offer you a practical experiment: send me a hair. I will get it analized and will publish the results here, like: “the bearer of that hair belongs to XYZ race”. But then I realyzed the futility of the experiment: you do not believe in the existence of races, you think that they were invented by the racists and, therefore, my results are racist and invalid.
I really regret that a young bright man like you spends his life strugling against a non-existent enemy.
Believe me, your life would be better spent if you devoted it to the real, not an invented cause. It is like being an astrologer: first, they imagine that there is a connection between the position of the planets and human fate, then they study this non-existent connection.
One more thing: I’d like to give you a friendly warning: try to avoid language like this. F*: It’s not a question of wrong or right its a question of f’ing data!**.
I am a rookie, but I already noticed that the mods here do not like bad language. They would tolerate “outrageous” threads, but not the personal obsenities. I understand it. There is freedom of speech, (which, BTW, is for the government to maintain, not for them). This is a private business, http://www.blah_blah_blah.dotcom. They can run it any way they wish. If they wished, they could allow only people who are six feet tall or higher to post here. They can accept or forbid any language. I noticed several warnings from them, all about the language.
peace, you are putting words in Collounsbury’s mouth and then dismissing them. That sort of strawman argument does not fly well.
The assertion that there is no biological basis for race (backed up by actual biological evidence) is not the same as claiming that people are unable to make claims for race based on characteristics among associated populations. Of course there can be racism. As long as any individuals or groups can look at shared appearances and label those appearances a “race”, they can then discriminate against people holding those shared traits “racially” and can act in a “racist” manner.
To claim that because their conclusions (not to say their premises) are wrong is not to say that they do not act according to their faulty conclusions.
Christians and Muslims have fought great bloody wars over their beliefs. Catholics and Protestants have done the same. If there is not God (or if the Muslims view of God is more correct thanthe Christian view), would you then claim that there were no religious wars fought, because there was no reason to fight?
Racism is based on perception, not reality. It does not go away because the perception has no factual (biological) basis.
“It is not ‘race’ but a practice of racial classification that bedevils the society,” writes Yehudi Webster, an African-American sociologist at California State University, Los Angeles, and the author of
The Radicalization of America.
Tom, can you to point to the words which C. did not say and I allegedly put in his mouth? TIA.
I am afraid that we are talking about different things here. So, I’ll restate my points again.
There are three major distict groups of people, sharing identical biological characteistics which appear as visible (hair,skin) or invisible (blood groups) traits. These characteristics are inherited. There is no single gene which can serve as a definite marker for any group. But the distribution and the frequency of these characteristics may reliably identify (with 75%, 95%, 99.99999% or whatever confidence interval, depending on the traits examined and their prevalence) a group member, as visible traits can. Example: if I see a blonde, blue eyed, freckled, fair skinned, person with wide eyes, no epicanthus, narrow aquiline nose, thin lips, I am looking at a Caucasoid. The same can be done by HLA phenotype analysis and other tests. Skulls can be identified by their characteristics as well. This groups are commonly called “races”, but if this term is offensive to anyone, we can use another.
Collounsbury seems to deny this and says that the races were invented recently by racists. By then he turns around and acceps that “Blacks” (Negroid race) has a distinct hair structure*. He also says that ancient North African people has “Caucasoid” features (the quotation marks are his). Does it mean that he accepts the existence of races?
Q.Racism is based on perception, not reality. It does not go away because the perception has no factual (biological) basis.
Racism is based on erroneous believe that there are “superior” and “better” traits. In fact, there are no “bad” or “good” things in nature. There is no bad weather,for instance. The nature “decides” what’s “bad” and this traits are eliminated, in the process called “natural selection”. If you see three identical plastic balls, of white, yellow and black color, which one is better? This question cannot be answered. A nation populated by “X” race might be less developped than the one populated by “Y” race. But this is cultural, not racial difference.
Tom, your example of religious wars is not good, becase there is no biological basis for wars. There is biological basis for race. And only biological one.
*Actually, it happens, extremely rare, but I must tell you: a black (small b) hair is at times hard to identify. It may bear the characteristics of all three races. It happens if a specimen is small, poorly preserved, etc.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no dependable genetic markers for race. Yet.
While there is a lot of “gray” areas at the borders of the morphological definition of race, it is true that there are groups of polymorphisms that are more common in certain racial groups.
Eventually, with understanding of the human genome, we should be able to make some general characterizations about morphology based on polymorphic data. We should genetically be able to tell what color skin a person has, for instance, from a genetic sample.
These (and many more ethical adventures) are in the future for genetics. We should probably deal with them before we discover how to do it. That, of course, won’t happen, because ethics is always trying to catch up with dilemmas of the day.
Well, you continually (and continuously) claim that C. claims that racists invented race: he has made no such claim.
Nothing in this thread supports your assertion. He has pointed out that there is not a valid biological basis for race. That is hardly the same as claiming that “racists” “invented” race. Straw man.
Moving on:
peace:
Why do you insist that there are three groups (and claim a biological basis for it, as well)? Those constructs were created in the nineteenth century before we even recognized that genetics existed, yet you cling to the notion that there is a biological underpinning to that culturally determined categorization. Rather than three, why not go with six? (At least you will be able to point to anthropologists–not biologists–who are willing to use “racial” groupings to identify groups of people with some physical similarities:
(From Jared Diamond’s article on How Africa Became Black in Discover Magazine, from February, 1994: You can find it searching the Archives
In other words, there are, indeed, identifiable groups (although identifying them correctly if they live near another group can be problematic). However, those “races” are simply convenient tags for discussing populations who happen to have lived near each other for a few thousand years. Even within those “races” there is so much diversity among individuals that the term is meaningless.
And if you see a dark-haired, brown eyed, dark brown skinned, person with wide eyes, no epicanthus, narrow aquiline nose, and thin lips, are you looking at a Caucasoid? What if a blonde person has a wide nose and thick lips? Do you class aboriginal Australians as biologically Negroid, even if their ancestors migrated from regions populated by Mongoloid humans? Did they revert to a “Negroid” status somehow? Why do you classify Khoisan, Pygmy, and black/Negroid into a single “race” when scientists will not? (The list of distinguishing characteristics among those groups are more definitive than the differences between “Caucasoid” and “Negroid”.) You, after all, insisted that races had “identical biological charactersitics.” If I point out groups within your “races” who do not have identical characteristics, your definition crumbles.
The issue is not one of pinning a “racist” label on you. The issue is attempting to determine why you insist on imposing a nineteenth century ethnological construct onto twenty-first century biology when there is no biological support for your contention.
BTW, my warfare analogy (not example) failed because I accidentally typed “religious” when I meant “holy”. If there is no God, there can, obviously, be no holy wars. It was not a great analogy: I was merely pointing out that there do not have to be races for racism to exist; it is only necessary that people perceive races.
I apoligize if someone has mentioned this above and it’s late and I didn’t read the entire post–my bad.
But with the map of the entire human genome nearly complete, technology may soon allow for the engineering of entire chromosomes to be inserted into gametes. For a long time it has been possible to synthesize short stretches of DNA (probes for Southerns for example). In the future, it may be technically possible to synthesize much longer sequences of DNA–up to the length of a chromosome, it might just be a matter of time.
If this is possible, why can’t genetically engineered chromasomes be used to replace sequenced and found defective chromosomes in vitro fertilization. Or, one could design a chromosome, why not modify all the desired genes in that chromosmes. Remove the chromosomes from an oocyte and insert the desired chromosomes, for example.
Designer babies, so to speak–ala GATTACA.
Maybe not now, but who knows what might be possible in the future?
Sorry, but this in incorrect. We crack down on blatant insults directed towards other posters, not bad language. If obscentities really get out of hand we may say something, but censoring “f’ing”??? Fuck no.
There is one human race, period. There are not “three major races” in nature. The genetic evidence is before us, period. Read the bloody literature or shut up. Argument by assertion when one has other data before one only reflects either stupidity or close-mindedness. Neither of which is either attractive or useful in an argument.
Irrellevant to the question. Substituting physical appearance for race, I agree, no one should be discriminated against for any such characteristics.
Sigh, you’re using a straw man argument. I note that instead of responding to the substantive data which I cited in the thread linked above (several posts above) you set up semantical games and straw men. Frankly there is nothing contradictory above.
Race is a fuzzy abstraction which attempts to describe a range of physical features (take your pick, dark skin, light skin etc.) through presumed homogenous descent and biological homogeniety. Although careful observers had noted long ago that race lacked a real coherency and that there were always people who did not fit into the categories, one has to acknowledge it was a natural attempt at classifying folks. However, it failed as an attempt at describing human populations, and the clear genetic evidence has dismissed prior assumptions of common descent (or rather has stressed a different kind of common descent for all humanity, given how genetic variation maps out.) Nonetheless, there is nothing to stop people from defining races on a pseudo-biological basis, as we do in the USA: dark skin and curly hair = black. etc. Never mind a black man from Timor would fit this category perfectly and yet be more closely related, all other things being equal, with a Vietnamese fellow. (If I had my files with me, I could dig up some more substantive things on the history of race)
So, the fact that there are racists operating on the same kind of mythology which you are, and stridently insisting there are biologically defined races is utterly irrelevant to the biological reality.
Sigh. I don’t even know how to deal with such complete misunderstanding of what I said. I suppose I should note that in noting the existance of ‘multi-racial’ people since 50k years I was noting the incoherence of racial categories, that is I was simply using your phrase to illustrate that there have never been clear dividing lines between these macro populations ever. I already dealt with the issue that hairs, skin color etc. are not diagnostic for common descent at all, apparently you did not understand that.
Why should I do this when I have already cited the substantive literature dismissing such nonesense? Why not deal with the actual data rather than making up and then dismissing the fictitional results? As I noted, we are not able to map these characteristics onto the mega races: perhaps I should send you the hair of someone from Sri Lanka or Papau and see what you do with the curly non-African hair.
Frankly, I’m not a young man, nor am I particularly bright to be quite frank and I don’t give a hoot what you regret. In any event, the enemy is willful ignorance and I’m afraid it’s a lively one.
You are lecturing me about this? Give me a f***ing break. Who here actually has read papers published in PNAS, Genome etc. on these issues? Who here has some smidgen of actual knowledge about genetics (albeit poor and merely functional for my work)? Hint, not you. If, and I do say if you can read the papers cited and have some substantive reaction or critique of them, then you have a basis to offer advice to me.
I stand by my comment and frankly don’t need your advice.
Note to 647
The HGP of course only sequenced a representative sample so we don’t know all the allelic variation in humanity, but before being ready to insert synthetic stuff into cells, we’re going to need a better understanding of the interactions. Even now, synthetic material (or derived material since pure creation is not yet viable) for plants is quite hit or miss, as well as expensive. It may be a matter of time, but I would predict quite a long time. No sooner than mid-century I would say.
I’ll try my best to explain my points. I’ll try it first in general, then I’ll shift to the particulars, if warranted. I will not quote any articles, as the facts are well known. For instance, if I say that there are people of different skin color, you got to take my word for it. If you do not believe me, do not read futher.
I talk about three major races only because it’s easier (for the discussion). I know that all people belong to one species, Homo sapiens. And all dogs belong to one species, Canis familiaris. I know also that many people can’t stand the comparison. Especially if I compare breeds and races.
I do not care, how many races or subraces you distinguish or what you will call them.
If we analyse, e.g., HLA phenotypes, we’ll see that populations living over large territiries, will have different distributions of them. Let’s say that eighty percent of people living in Abada Valley, have HLA54 and only 2% of the population will have HLA75. Two percent of people living on Yzyxa mountain have HLA54 but 86% have HLA75. This patterns will make these two populations different and distinguishable. You may call them different races or different peoples or…whatever, but you have to distinguish between them somehow. Call them by different numbers, or by letters, if you wish. But saying that we are all the same, one human race, will not help, although it will sound PC. We can study then smaller and smaller areas. The distribution of HLA and other markers will be different in each one, untill we find that all people in a village XYZ are statistically homogeneous, cannot be distinguished anymore by these markers. Still, individuals will have different markers, but in statistically indistiguishable patterns. We can stop there and use the obtained data to (easier) find suitable donors for organ transplantation. Not for welfare assistance or college admission, only for biological purposes. To our surprise, we may discover that people living in East XYZ, do not understand the language of people from West XYZ, and sew differently colored quilts. Perhaps, people from East XYZ understand the language of Abada Valley. In other words, biologic/racial differenves may or may not translate into cultural differences. Flemish and Walloons in Belgium speak different languages, etc., yet they are very close (indistiguishable?) biologically.
So, I’m not trying to “make” races, three or more. All I am saying that there are biologically distinct groups of people. Often they are “mixed”. These biological distinctions are useful in biology and a few other areas (garment industry comes to mind. It would be stupid to sell basketball uniforms made to NBA standards, to Pygmies in Central Africa. Who will buy them?). These biological traits must never be used as cultural qualifiers. Holy wars have been fought over non-existent Gods. Rasists battle antiracists over non-existent “races”. Both instances are highly regrettable.
Substituting physical appearance for race I’m not substituting. (Different) physical appearance * is race*.
Race is a fuzzy abstraction which attempts to describe a range of physical features (take your pick, dark skin, light skin etc.) Objectively existing physical features cannot be described by “fuzzy abstraction” .
** presumed** homological descent and biological homogeniety Are you saying say we all have different origins? I do not think that one and the same common origin is “presumed”, it’s well established. You beat yourself again: either we are “one human race” or our homogeneity is “presumed”.
Although careful observers had noted long ago that race lacked a real coherency and that there were always people who did not fit into the categories, Correct. But the wrong conclusion: the existense of mongrels (multiracials) does not cancel races themselfes. Actually, it confirms them: multiracials come from many races.
**…and the clear genetic evidence has dismissed prior assumptions of common descent ** Exactly what evidence was dismissed and when? You still believe in separate origin of races? Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Blacks are from … where? Nonetheless, there is nothing to stop people from defining races on a pseudo-biological basis, as we do in the USA: dark skin and curly hair = black. etc. Correct. The government does this. It is wrong. Your example with a Timorese guy shows the fallacy of this government categorization. The government claims that it does so because the population demands it. This a cultural argument and I go back to biology. If you say that Timorese guy cannot be assigned to either race, give him his own, but do not cancel the other two!
You are lecturing me about this? No, I’m not lecturing. Sometimes, I felt hostility in your language, both when it was sofisticated and refined or naughty and fucking. I wanted to show that I can argue issues but remain personally friendly. The fact that this is a web encounter does not cancel my human attributes, i.e., anonymity should not be an exuse for rudeness. I’d never insult you in your face, I won’t insult you on this BB.
Tom, C. did not say verbatim that “racists invented race”. But he (and you?) says that races do not exist. Therefore(he implies and I say), they were invented. By who?
Why do you insist that there are three groups There are more, it depends on the definition; the definitinon may be arbitrary. For the purpose of this discussion, it does not matter, 3 or 3(!). I picked up the three most distint. As you and others know, there are many more, sometimes they are hard to pigeonhole (mostly because of the lack of knowledge), but this fact does not cancel the existence of races.
Those constructs were created in the nineteenth century before we even recognized that genetics existed Exactly. We do not need genetics to define races, they objectively exist in nature, with or withot genetics (although the latter helps to find more traits invisible to humans. Again, the fact that they are invisible, does not render them non-existsnt).
**However, those “races” are simply convenient tags for discussing populations who happen to have lived near each other for a few thousand years. Even within those “races” there is so much diversity among individuals that the term is meaningless. ** Correct. We have to have “convenient tags” to keep books on, say, organ donors. So, if a young Black woman is in urgent need of an organ, you do not look for a likely donor in a wrong book. Is “diversity” racial term or a cultural one? There are more cultural similarities between racially different American Blacks and Whites than between racially similar Anerican Blacks and African Blacks. The existense of biological races does not negate cultural diversity. On the other hand, we may be racially divese but very alike culturally. The team and the audience in an NBA game is a good example of the latter. And if you see a dark-haired, brown eyed, dark brown skinned, person with wide eyes, no epicanthus, narrow aquiline nose, and thin lips, are you looking at a Caucasoid? I do not know. But by itself, this only shows difficulties in determining “race”. This is why genetic analysis is so helpful. Do you class aboriginal Australians as biologically Negroid, even if their ancestors migrated from regions populated by Mongoloid humans? Precise classificasion is desirable, for academic reasons, but is not important. As long as I can find an Astralian in my records, he can be pigeoholed with either “major” group. In general, though, biological characteristics determine race, not where one lives or lived.
In short, and again: there are difficulties of assigning people to distict groups, three or more. (It is so in cultural categories, too. E.g., nobody knows where the Japanese language came from The fact that we cannot properly classify it, like we cannot classify Aborigenes, does not mean, that languages do not exist. When we know better, we pigeohole the language and the Aborigenes). Perhaps, some people will never fit well into any single major category. It only means that we shall create more categories. An analogy: there were only four major blood groups known at the beginning of the century. People were transfused “identical” blood, but transfusion reactions still occurred. This led to more research, and hundreds of new subgroups, types, etc., were discovered. So, today if a person needs A(+)M+Le(-) blood, it will be looked for on shelf A(+) only. The fact that something is complicated should be no exuse to abandon a useful concept. Nor the fact that it can be misused.
You are going to have to trot out the specifics, peace. I have never seen any reliable evidence that “race” can be determined by any biological test (which is what you asserted on multiple occasions and repeat, by inference, in your last post). If the three “classic” races are purely social constructs, why have you insisted on talking about their biological reality?
You are the one who boldly proclaimed that race was an objective reality:
Simply described, race is not an objective biological reality. The presence of a higher percentage of HLA distributions within certain populations becomes meaningless the moment you lump persons from Angola, East Timor, and the Australian bush into a single category (based on cultural perceptions) because people from those three groups will not have the common HLA distribution that you claim. A doctor seeking a transfusion does not grab people off the street based on their appearance, he selects a previously donated sample from a blood bank that has already been typed by an HLA test, regardless who the donor was. Discovering that Sickle-cell is common among “Negroids” is medically interesting, but when it is then discovered that it is limited to only those people from specific regions of Africa where malaria was pandemic and is not found among “Negroids” from dryer climates on the African continent or among any of the non-African groups who are sometimes called “Negroes” it is apparent that it is not a racial trait, but an inherited trait for specific geographically determined populations. (It’s prevalence among the entire population of blacks in the U.S. is determined by the easily recognized point that over 90% of the slaves imported to this country were taken from a fairly limited region of Africa. Had slave-takers ranged farther afield in Africa, the prevalence of sickle-cell would be lower.)
When the government addresses the issues of race, it is in response to people having their rights trampled by other people who have chosen to deny fair treatment based on appearance. To protect the oppressed, the government is forced to define the abused groups according to the traits that will be used to deny them their rights. This does not become a physical or biological reality, it is simply a method to measure the success or failure of efforts to prevent abuse.
In your most recent post, you have backed away from the “three races” to which you held so adamantly for three days. How? If it was biologically true on Tuesday, it should still be biologically true today.
As I noted at the beginning of this post, I would be very interested in seeing actual specific evidence that race is a biological reality. Your assertion that a doctor will go to a “book” of organ donors to look for a good match by race seems unlikely, at best. Organ donors appear through accidental death and are typed by blood. Their apparent race may be noted, but it has no bearing on whether an individual organ donor has the appropriate body chemistry to a needy recipient. Do you have a citation for your “book” procedure? The only occasions where I recall anything similar occurring was in the early panic in the U.S. over AIDS, when cultural decisions (that were amply disproven with follow-up studies) caused certain blood banks to reject donors based on race.
I find the following exchange almost impenetrable:
The definition is arbitrary, but the existence is real? We can’t identify who is in a “race” because we don’t have the “knowledge” to correctly define a race, but races have an independent reality despite their ability to ebb and flow into different numbers of different groups?
I’m sorry, but that appears to be an almost Blavatskyan philosophy. Race is whatever someone needs it to be on any different occasion despite having no objective criteria to define it.
That is why *I insist that it is cultural, not biological. It is a construct based on appearance that changes according to who needs to describe an event or a population. Since it changes with each observer, it is useful only as a mirror to identify the notions and preconceptions of the observer.
If you can cite an actual occasion in which scientists have been able to distinguish the race of an individual based on body tissue samples, I would really like to see it. Forensic pathologists do identify some crime victims by “race” based on a convergence of evidence, but they are basing their information on the prevalence of certain traits within a certain population in a geographic location. (Dark skin and curly hair on a decomposing body in the Bronx is more likely to belong to a black person–and if that person was from the Australian bush, his Bronx neighbors probably thought of him as “black” anyway. However, if the same body was found on Fiji, no scientist would identify him as having migrated from Africa.)
I don’t know why I am bothering. Let me note for the record that you have failed to deal with any direct evidence cited in the prior thread cited for you, but continue to build straw men.
Ahh, no need for citations or any data, facts are well known? Translation: I have no facts, I do not want to confront facts and I shall continue to resist facts with all my being. Any remaining respect I may have had for you intellectually has now utterly disappeared.
Are these facts along the lines of your assertion that North Africa was not caucasian until the Greeks settled there. As you might recall, this was utterly false.
Do you still not understand that this is not the point? Rather, skin color does not indicate common ancestry (except insofar as in our highly homogenous species that we all are closely related.)?
Compare all you want, I’ve seen the comparison before, mostly from racists scrambling to protect their feeble ideas but what the hell. Breeds are of course artificially maintained so we would really have to look at the genetics of Canis and possibly its close cousins. I don’t know much about the genetics of Canis to be frank, however it is more diverse than humanity. Indeed, we are a quite homogenous species. But wait, I went through these very same arguments before in the other thread? And you wonder why I asked you to read it.
As Tomndebb have already noted HLA distributional differences do not give us race. Why, because the patterns do not map onto race. In the USA we have a single major African derived population, of heterogenous origin but with strong roots in coastal West Africa. It will reflect an amalgam of its sources plus the post-American arrival mixing. Does this reflect HLA distribution patterns for all of Africa (by which I mean ‘black’ Africa)? Emphatically not. I get tired of asking you to read the articles I cited, which actually deal with this kind of data.
Oh yeah, you don’t need actual data, the “facts” are “well-known”.
PC has nothing to do with it, other than it seems to be one of your flags to wave when you wish to distract from your lack of data. Indeed that’s why I’ve come to have utter disdain for the term. Like fascist and commie before it, it is largely now without any intellectual meaning at all.
But to return to the data, I noted above that HLA distributions will not describe races
Yeah, so? My black colleague speak English and French and are indistinguishable from me in terms of work. Is this news?
Perhaps you actually decided to peek at the thread I cited for you where I noted that one might be able to distinguish micro-populations? Biologically distinct? No. Distinguishable, yes to an unknown extent.
Always mixed. Only explanation for our homogeneity and the transitionals we see in the archaeological record. Pure groups is nothing more than a mythological construct.
Your logic escapes me. Race is absolutely not useful in biology as it does not accurately describe real distributions of traits nor actual underlying variation.
If physical appearance is race, then we have round to the same point as the beginning: its non- coherence. If physical appearance is race than South Asian “Negroids” are the same race as Central Africans, despite the fact they are descended from the same stock as other “South Asians” and thus relatively speaking distant from Africans.
Oh yes it is. What is dark skin, relative to what. Curly hair? At what point given that ** there are no clear dividing lines** in populations does one say this person is black and this one is Caucasian? North East African populations are the perfect example of this, as are Saharan populations and the archaeological evidence clearly shows that this is not a new phenomena. And of course if the surface morphologies which you are so obsessed with are truly diagnostic of race, then wee have to include the otherwise genetically distant ‘negros’ of South Asia (and why not Australoids for good measure?) Not this is only an African phenomena, we find the same issue when regarding the division --or rather lack thereof— between “mongoloid” and “Caucasian.”
In all three cases it is easy to find that what we have is three “ideal types” which attempt to describe populations throughout the word, but we find that this is not successful on objective, scientific standards. Mere stereotyping.
You need to work on reading comprehension: in this case we are referring to the presumed relative homogeneity of Africans (for example) or Blacks vis-a-vis the rest of the world or other so-called-races. Or in the case of the context of the quote which you nicely removed, the presumed common descent
In short, humans are homogenous and most of what genetic variation we have occurs between individuals at rates which far exceed inter-group variation. Ergo at the human level, we are homogenous, and at the level of “race” we can not ascribe greater homogeneity to the race within itself than not. Ergo, races as you would like to use them, fail to describe variation at sub-population levels. That is clearly indicated in the cites I provided in the other thread.
[quote Although careful observers had noted long ago that race lacked a real coherency and that there were always people who did not fit into the categories, Correct. But the wrong conclusion: the existense of mongrels (multiracials) does not cancel races themselfes. Actually, it confirms them: multiracials come from many races.
[/quote]
One needs objective boundaries for a category to be useful. Given that transition types clearly exist from the earliest time this does not confirm that they come from “many races” (which would lead one to conclude in any event that the concept is not terribly useful) but rather human populations were never describable by race — rather
(1) I write assumptions, you write evidence. You do know the difference between the words, no?
(2) For the data: Read the f***ing papers I cited and you’ll see where the evidence comes from. Whatta…sorry mods this is beginning to look farcical at best. Refuses to cite his own evidence, snips up my quotes to attempt to take them out of context and then asks for the very evidence I’ve practically waving at him since three days ago?
(3) Separate origin or races is disproven by this evidence, stop trying to erect strawmen --I can only hope your stunning misreading and misquoting is deliberate rather than indicative of lack of reading comprehension.
(a) The common descent noted, as you have snipped the context, was in terms of the Negroids (aka Negritos etc.) of South East Asia who, except insofar as we all are closely related, are relatively distant from Africans. Note the word relative. Their closest relations are other South Asian groups.
Government? What the f***: people id themselves, not any government entity in the USA. Of course we have the prime example of how the race concept broke down — so many races emerged from just your reasoning that it quickly became apparent the concept had no internal coherence.
Gould’s the mismeasure of man has some of the history of race. There are a number of works describing the slow evolution of the concept of race, which really took off in the 19th century as part of early attempts to describe human populations. To an extent one could say racists invented race, but that’s not really the point. The point is the data indicate its not a useful tool for understanding biological populations.
Ahhh, the old shifting races game. And here of course we get into the bankruptcy of the concept. Precisely why race is discarded.
This is utterly incoherent. If races are distinguishable human populations, I should be able to find genetic means to describe them. If not, then they are not. You’re waving your hands to attempt to hide the bankruptcy of the position.
Tom dealt with the rest of this nonsense quite well, so I will leave off here, well except for two more gems:.
I suppose Peace is blissfully unaware of how he has contradicted himself as compared with his above statements. Genetic analysis of course will be of little help to his position.
Oh, precise classification is not really necessary? Goggle. You clearly indicate the bankruptcy of the concept here.
??? Firstly, there are indeed some theories for classifying the origins of the Japanese language, and insofar as linguistics operates on a scientific basis and insofar as linguistic studies of Asian and Central Asian languages are developed, we will see better data in the future. Leaving that aside, you’re not even talking about similar kinds of phenomena.
That’s utterly correct, and has nothing to do with why race has been discarded. Quite simply the idea of race has failed to help describe population data. So we now look to different tools.
** A note on sickle cell **
I thought it would be useful to add to Tomndebbs reply by noting that not only does sickle cell trait(s) not map onto “negroid” populations but it also maps onto some Caucasian populations. It is in short diagnostic of long-term historical exposure to malaria. Thus sickle cell traits are found through wet, tropical Africa, through parts of the Mediterranean basin and through parts of the Middle East into India.
In the USA it has been ascribed to “blacks” out of a certain ignorance of this historical distribution: US medicine encounters it almost exclusively through African descended populations — an artefact of how North America was populated. The generalization reached, “sickle cell is a black disease” does not hold up and comes from improperly founded generalization. The same can be said for most ‘racial’ ideas held in North America.
Everybody lost interest in this thread. So did I. My
reason(s):
C. and T. are impenetrable to any arguments, are full of hate and do not follow formal logic, so no amount of information will help them. If I state that “Genders are different”, they would demand the proof of that racist statement.
I can explain facts, but only to people who are willing to listen and learn. The problem is not with race or biology. They do not understand basic concepts of science, such as classification or categorization. E.g., the fact that if an item cannot be categorized, it does not cancel the system per se. Or that a series of markers can reliably identify an object, and that a single marker is not necessary. Or if A does not equal B, the opposite is true. Or that a single origination point does not imply homogeneity. Or that some characteristics are mutually exclusive. Etc.
I also feel that I am treated as if I am trying to extort money from them. Or something. I have no personal interest. Genetic markers objectively exist. Sometimes C. & T. accept it, sometimes they require “proof”, after I present the “proof”, they dismiss it as racist. I’m not responsible for observed unequal frequencies of any genetic marker or a group of them. Yet they demand “proof”. They both appear as capable individuals, at least, capable to operate a computer. They can use search engines and find anything they are willing to find. I do not think they are. But, more interestingly, they would accept only what they want, and I can’t change this.
I would like to point only, for interested ones, that “data” and “phenomena ” are plural forms of “datum” and phenomenon”, respectfully.
Pretty broad brush you’re using to spread that tar, buddy.
“Full of hate”? I don’t recall having expressed even anger, much less hatred, toward you.
“Do not follow formal logic”? The single incident in which I have expressed anything resembling emotion was when I noted the “impenetrable” nature of one of your paragraphs in which you contradicted yourself between your opening and closing sentences. ::: shrug :::
Here, you are on much shakier ground (from the perspective of personal honesty). Collounsbury and I have each noted that at least three separate groups can be identified as “Negroid” based on multiple markers (skin color, hair texture, facial features, etc.) while two of them are clearly descended from the outmoded “Mongoloid” group. You have failed or refused to address the issue of how this can occur if race is a biological reality.
Excuse me? In which post have you provided so much as evidence much less “proof” of your continued assertions? And, again, your tar brush is far too broad, as I have not accused you of racism at any point and I do not recall Collounsbury doing so either. In fact, a cursory review of this thread indicates that you are the one who cries “racism!” with the most frequency.
My point throughout has simply been to request evidence of biological races when the evidence presented has always tied back to culturally imposed preconceptions.
After your next paragraph of petty sneering, you have finally provided something more than your own personal assertions. Fine. Let’s look at them:
[quote]
Criteria for Racial Determination from the Human Skull
[quote]
This site identifies ways in which a police department for a 200,000 population county would attempt to identify skeletal remains. They are working in a defined area with a known population and are using characteristics which will aid them in a rough study to further an investigation. (Gee, not unlike my previous analogy of finding a decomposing body in the Bronx!) Since a person of African descent and person of aboriginal Australian descent would, in that region of Texas, both be identified as “black”, coming up with that level of identity is perfectly acceptable in attempting to identify the person whose remains have been discovered. This confirms the cultural definition of race, and does nothing to establish a biological basis for race.
A UU declaration that racism is bad. OK. I think we all agree on that. (?)
I went through nearly this whole site and found a single reference on the U.S. page that “minorities” do better for cross-matching within their own groups. There was no information that I saw indicating a specific discussion of race in the context of bone marrow. There was no identification of the “minorities,” either.
At last, some data! Let’s look. OK. It provides a rather cryptic chart of relative probability that a person of one “race” in the U.S. will find a successful match from a pool of 500,000 donors of any specific “race”.
Of course, the “races” include “Hispanic” (Which Hispanic? The mostly Caucasian with strong Negroid and minimal Indian (originally Mongoloid?) Cubans and Puerto Ricans? Or the mostly Indian (Mongoloid?) with substantial Caucasian Mexicans and Central Americans?
Setting those issues aside, what do the numbers say? Basically, they say that each group has the highest matching from within their own group. (That’s a surprise!) But wait, the numbers, although not very regular, do have some interesting features. For example, we know that for a number of reasons, there is a lot more “white” blood intermingled among American blacks (who nearly all arrived in this country before 1820) than there is among American Asians (who arrived mostly after 1860 and were more rigidly sexually segregated from whites), yet the Asian group has a higher matching rate with whites than blacks do. In fact whites match better with every single group than any other groups match (even the Indians and Asians who are probably closer cousins). On the other hand, blacks match more poorly with every group than any other groups among each other.
Hmmm…
Well, it has been reported on numerous occasions that blacks (put off by the Tuskeegee incident and other things) are far more reluctant to donate blood, organs, or tissue than the rest of the population. Whites, on the other hand, have fewer cultural tabus against blood and organ donations than any other group.
You don’t suppose that the numbers are reflective of the number of actual donors, projected out against a hypothetical “500,000” figure that no one has actually measured?
I do not insist that my guess is true. However, the site you provided does have a couple of interesting comments:
Italics mine.
I’d say those boys made some huge assumptions. I do not believe that any racist agenda was intended (or even understood), but they have made some fairly blithe assumptions without any other effort to test them. We are left, however, with the group that has the highest number of donors having the highest number of cross-“race” matches and the group with the lowest number of donors having the lowest "cross-“race” matches. That would need some explaining before we accepted this as an indication of “race”. (And just who are those Hispanics, anyway?)
http://web2.po.com/html/www_pol_main/c.htm
The two preceding sites looked interesting, but I was unwilling to lie that I was a med student to register. I have not yet found anything on the web, based on the keywords in the titles.
[quote]
Racial identification research
[quote]
This site presents the work of a group attempting to identify “racial recognition” (in the cultural, not biological sphere). I would like to see their work completed, but they are irrelevant to a discussion of race as a biological reality.
I’m sorry that you have chosen to go off in a huff, particularly with your presentation in its current state. However, it is probably just as well. I have found frustrating your insistence on “received truth” that has been debunked by actual science.
Tom, neither you, nor C. (I’d call him by his full “name” but I can’t spell his long handle) ever accused me of “being a racist”. C., indeed, called the assertions “racist”.
Below, I post a few statements. You (and/or) C. say Yes or know.
There is one species Homo sapiens…YES
This species originated from one predecessor…
This species is homogenious…
This species is heterogenious, i.e.,groups of individuals having different bilogical markers, such as HLA phenotypes and different features, such as eye color, hair structure, exist…
Biological markers are randomly distributed; certain markers may be more prevalent in some populations…
No single marker is unique for any given group …
I already put YES on the first line as an example. My idea: you put YES or NO on the rest. Then I will put my yes or no (in small letters, so they are distiguishable from yours). Then we compare the answers. If they are the same, we were beating dead horse here. If the answers are different on a particular line, we’ll discuss it.
I think I have come up with a possible solution for the problem with “unclassifiable” Australian Aborigenes. If you are interested, let me know.
I am going to make a substantive response, later when I have some time, to your first posting of actual data to respond to, to supplement Tom’s able response
I noted that some assertions you have made and your style of argument I have seen coming from racists desperately scrambling to defend their agenda from actual data. Factual observation. That’s not the same as calling you racist. But it is interesting you whingingly cry that Tom and I called you racist and then quickly back off when Tom points out this is false. Like how many other assertions you’ve made here, only to scuttle back when called on them? I’m frankly tired of this whiny little game of yours.
What’s the point of this?
Why not read the data I posted in the other thread instead of playing these little games?
Our species is homogenous. That’s what the comparative genetic data tells us.
I’m not going to play this round and round the bush game, the point was dealt with already. You either did not understand the critique or refuse to.
Since you have never responded to the argument or critique but rather have resorted to dodging it and restating the same position over and over, I assume you have no actual response.
Why would your idea be interesting? Do you think population genetics is just sitting around with a thumb up its butt waiting for your insights? What are you bringing to the table besides your readily apparent refusal to deal with actual genetic data. Instead you prefer to play with hypotheticals.
I’m honestly thinking of taking this to the Pit to express my real feelings about your “method” of argument.
