# What does this mean? - "Race didn't create racism, but racism created race." **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 12, 2016, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-this-mean-race-didnt-create-racism-but-racism-created-race/752005 "2016-04-12T16:00:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2016, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-this-mean-race-didnt-create-racism-but-racism-created-race/752005/61 "2016-04-20T19:10:11Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Ethnicity isn’t the same as race, is it? By “broad ethnic groups” you mean African, European, and Asian, right? Except by genetics you’d have to lump all Eurasians into one group and split Africans into a dozen. If we’re quibbling about how humans should be split into subspecies that pretty much negates your statement about it being a fact humans don’t have subspecies. > [@Lemur866](#): > > Thing is, I get it. Here in the United States, the divisions that historically mattered were if you were White, Black, or Red. And these divisions were pretty clear because this was a time when people from three continents were intermixing. So it wasn’t like determining whether a Kazakh is Asian or European, these were populations that had been fairly isolated from each other for thousands of years. > > Except of course that if you had any known African ancestry you were Black. 1/2 European? Black. 3/4 European? Black. 7/8 European? Black. > > Because “Black” wasn’t a genetic difference, it was a social difference. So it was absolutely the case that you couldn’t tell someone was black just by looking at them. The way racists classified people into different races was/is stupid and without any legitimate basis. As you say, it was primarily a social construct. That doesn’t mean that a rational biological construct doesn’t exist. It just means that it was never really used. ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2016, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-this-mean-race-didnt-create-racism-but-racism-created-race/752005/62 "2016-04-20T19:30:18Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > No. It makes it useless. What is the “use” in which one would employ it? What’s the use of classifying Tigers as Siberian or Bengal? Or hell, what’s the use of Biology at all? There really isn’t any. It’s mostly an endeavor to gain knowledge simply to have that knowledge. So dividing humans into subspecies isn’t supposed to be useful. It’s simply interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2016, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-this-mean-race-didnt-create-racism-but-racism-created-race/752005/63 "2016-04-20T20:34:32Z")
> [@treis](#): > > If we’re quibbling about how humans should be split into subspecies that pretty much negates your statement about it being a fact humans don’t have subspecies. > > The way racists classified people into different races was/is stupid and without any legitimate basis. As you say, it was primarily a social construct. That doesn’t mean that a rational biological construct doesn’t exist. It just means that it was never really used. Except there’s a difference between distinguishing between populations–which is an ad-hoc grouping of organisms–and subspecies, which is supposed to represent some sort of natural biological reality. And human beings don’t have subspecies in the way the word “subspecies” is used by biologists. Human populations just aren’t reproductively isolated the way populations of other species can be. Again, this isn’t because this would be impossible. It’s easy to imagine a world where there were still populations of Neadertals or Denisovans or what have you, and those people could easily be seen to be valid subspecies or even species. But those people do not actually exist today, which means that there’s only one human subspecies. Yes, of course the way racists classified people wasn’t really scientific. And yes, a rational biological tree could be constructed, but it wouldn’t include subspecies, because all living humans are too closely related to have subspecies. In the past we certainly had subspecies, but all except _Homo sapiens sapiens_ are now gone, either extinct or merged into the main subspecies. You can construct various biological trees for various human groups, but such things are generally ad hoc. We can trace mitochondrial lineages, or Y chromosome lineages, or various alleles. But these things don’t map on to skin color very well, and we don’t find various alleles to be tightly correlated with each other. So yes, some people have curly hair and dark skin and beta-S hemoglobin. But if you made a map of frequency of alleles for curly hair, and one for dark skin, and one for sickle-cell trait, you couldn’t overlay them and find they all line up on top of each other. It is possible to use the word “race” to define any population you like. Of course the word originally was used to refer to particular human lineages, like the descendants of Abraham. You could use race this way, which would mean thousands of human races. If you try to define races more broadly the only sensible factual answer is that you’d end up with only one, which all modern humans are members of. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2016, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-this-mean-race-didnt-create-racism-but-racism-created-race/752005/64 "2016-04-21T16:37:45Z")
> [@treis](#): > > They use race or ethnicity but it’s a different word for what is essentially the same thing. Ermm, nope. Especially not ethnicity, since that’s not necessarily got anything to do with genetics. > [@](#): > > And I’m not sure why you think humans were not reproductively isolated. To use an example, how often would you say the Sioux and Masai reproduced together before the advent of modern transportation? Errm, if _those_ two groups never got it on, it doesn’t prove reproductive isolation - did Massai get it on with Kikiyu? Did Sioux get it on with Pawnee? > [@](#): > > I’d imagine that would be never and I’d consider them reproductively isolated from each other. That’s not how reproductive isolation works. If you want to claim the Masai and Sioux are reproductively isolated, then you have to prove Masai only get it on with Masai, and Sioux with Sioux. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-this-mean-race-didnt-create-racism-but-racism-created-race/752005.md?page=3)