Given how clear the genetics is, how often I have seen the same baseless arguments put forth? As you like.
I comment on genetics. That’s it. When people talk about another topic, and make some hypothesis which depends on certain genetics being so, and they are wrong, I comment. Race requires genetics, if one is talking about biological differences. Conclusions based on false ideas need to be corrected. I don’t argue whether QB require intelligence or whatnot, that’s sports. I simply point out the lack of scientific support for biological generalizations about ‘races’ re supposed qualities for X, Y, Z. My knowledge or lack thereof of sports really is irrelevant. As for my tone, it’s how I am and how I write. I really could care less if I impress you or not.
This is GD. In general it would appear that the rules here are science rules, uninformed observations are critiqued. If you want to shoot the shit, I think the MPSIMS and other forums are the right ones. Otherwise, get used to it.
No. I respect the data. I am unaware of “untold numbers of respected international authorities” with a relevant knowledge of genetics who support the idea of race as a biologically useful tool.
The data is the data. If you’ve got a critique of the data, come on out with it. I’ll happily discredit any so called authority which makes assertions in direct contradiction with our best knowledge to-date without providing a critique or rebuttal.
Respect data, critique sources? Yes. Whine and bitch when vague and factually suspect “kicking the ball around” is held up to the light, no.
As for your follow up question, I fail to see the relevance.
I’m not Collounsbury, nor am I any sort of expert on genetics, but even I am sick of seeing this one. The physical traits you list are not found in all African-Americans. They are, however, found among many other groups of people. I’ve known Sri Lankans with “kinky hair”, “broad noses”, and “dark skin”. Most Australian Aboriginies fit that description as well. And yet my pasty white self is more closely related to the average African-American, or even the average African, than any Aboriginie.
Well aside from white Africans who emigrated to America, Michael Jackson, and all those who either shave or straighten their hair I would be hard pressed to believe that these characteristics do not predominate among African Americans.
No argument here
I would have no idea, but you seem fairly certain. I have read that Euro Asians have common ancestry going back 60,000 years or thereabouts, and all of us can trace back genetic ancestry to 120 to 160,000 years ago in Africa, which might suggest that you are wrong.
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*Originally posted by grienspace *
3. Kinky hair, broad noses, dark skin. Does this not suggest a genetic coherence among African Americans?[/qyote]
OK, in all fairness I can see where this misconception comes from. It’s so ingrained by societal and possibly genetic forces that it’s hard to overcome. This has been addressed more than once in the linked threads, but I’d like to give it one more shot in laymans language.
There are four main points to this.
1)None of those traits are caused by one gene or even one set combination of genes to the best of my knowledge. Kinky hair, broad noses and dark skin can each be produced by many combibnations of genes. Think of it like mixing paints. I can get the same colour purple by mixing blue and red and black as I can from mixing brown and pink, or by taking grey and removing some of the red pigment. Just because two paints are the same or similar colour purple does not mean that they were made in the same way. They just look the same. Similarly just becasue two people have curly hair it does not mean it was caused by the same genes/proteins.
2)Not all African-Americans have those traits. If you only define the African-American ‘race’ as ‘those people with kinky hair, broad noses and dark skin’ they will, but this will be totally arbitrary, and you will sometimes categorise two brothers as totally separate races. There is no way that you can then go on to say that these traits somehow correspond to muscular functioning, bone density, aggressiveness or anything else that could possibly contribute to sporting prowess. You have used a phenotypic (physical) expression as a category for a race without an reference to genotype (actual genetic makeup). Many of those rejected on the basis of phenotype will have 50% or better of the same genes. Many included will have 50% or less.
Maybe those traits do predominate amongst African-Americans, but that is because you have defined an ‘African-American’ as those people who have these traits, or whose parents have those traits. This is circular reasoning. Many people of African heritage express some or none of these characteristics, or express them to lesser extents. There is a whole range of expression that intergrades between whatever you define as ‘kinky’ hair’ and the dead straight hair that I have. This fact alone renders these factors useless as a phenotypic marker for a genetic cause simply because you have to draw an arbitrary line in the sand and say ‘Any hair that doesn’t have X folds per inch is not African American’.
Added to this many people who have lived in Africa for many generations do not express those traits in the least. Many of the San bushmen have honey-coloured, not black, skin and are thought to be ‘primitive’ Africans for this reason. They are very definitely African and have been as long as any people on Earth. Numerous peoples from Northern Africa show very ‘caucasian’ traits. People from Libya and Egypt spring to mind immediately.
The fact that the characteristics chosen predominate does not in any way detract from Lamia’s comment that the traits you list are not found in all African Americans, nor in all Africans.
3)Not all with those traits are African-American. Australoids, who are thought to be the original ‘black’ humans, Polynesians, who are possibly of modern Mongoloid descent, Melanesians, whose ancestry is mixed but certainly contains no Negroid heritage, Negritos, who are also ancient black people possibly with some Mongoloid heritage, San bushmen who have varying degrees of black skin and may be the oldest human ‘type’ still in existence, numerous African ‘races’ resulting from countless invasions and recolonisations, Indic peoples throughout the subcontinent, ‘Asia minor’ and SE Asaia, and numerous other ‘races’ all have black skin, broad noses and curly hair. While it has been hypothesised that all black people are descended from Australoid stock it has also been hypothesised that all white people are also descended from this ‘Negroid’ stock. So the idea that sharing the ‘African-American’ traits you list is evidence for a shared genetic history is probably no more based in fact than the idea that having males over 5’6" is evidence for shared history. Both are the result of environmental, genetic, cultural and ‘other’ factors.
4)Chances are any two people with those traits, even if we know they are from Africa, will be more dissimilar from each other on genetic grounds than they will be from someone from northern Europe. Unless two African people are recently related there is no reason to believe they will have any more genetic commonality with each other than someone from China or someone from South America. (Correct me if I’m wrong here Collounsbury).
Basically using the traits you listed is like putting pearls, eggs and carrots into a sack and saying ‘Hey, the pearls and eggs are both white and round, they must both be from the same source’. I could just as easily say ‘Hey, the eggs and carrots are both edible, they must be from the same source.’ There is no genetic evidence these things are related except in that they are all living organisms.
The human mind wants to be able to lump things. It’s a survival trait that we have acquired over millenia. It’s very hard to accept it when somebody says ‘Nope, they look identical but they don’t belong in the same group’. We want evidence, but in this case the evidence isn’t something we can see.
We all came out of Africa, so there isn’t anyone on earth who is completely “un-African”. But due to the lengthy isolation of the Australia from the rest of the world I am much more likely to share a recent common ancestor with a random African-American or African than is an Aboriginie. This is especially true in the case of me and the random African-American, since our people have been interbreeding for centuries here in the New World.
That, if nothing else, should be enough to prove that African-Americans are not a genetically coherent group. Even if the people of Africa were genetically coherent (and they aren’t; they are the most genetically diverse people on earth) then African-Americans would not be, since most have European and Native American ancestors as well.
You have unwittingly hit the nail on the head.
Sure, those phenotypic characteristics are fairly common amongst people with African descent. Nobody will argue that. The point is that it isn’t homogenous. Any “racial” group that you can draw a circle around is not homogenous.
It appears all of these characteristics that you mentioned are adaptive and arose independently. The problem is that a similar environment led to beneficial adaptations in many parts of Africa at many different times. There was no “Original Black Guy”. Populations intermingled, and those carrying the mutations having increased fitness, etc. What we are left with after a hodge-podge of intermingling is a diverse group of people with no consistent genetic background who predominantly carry a few adaptive mutations over a few dozens of genes out of 30,000.
No scientific evidence can group these people into a race – the genetic background between different African peoples is as diverse as the differences between Africans and Europeans. They just happen to share some adaptations that Europenas don’t have. No scientific evidence has shown that athletic ability is amongst these adaptations. No scientific evidence ever will. Ask yourself – has the lifestyle of a human been all that different in Africa versus Europe over the last 50,000 years, except for the increased temperature and UV radiation?
I don’t think so. There is no white in your first mixture, but there is white in pink
Isn’t any classification for race arbitrary?
I’ve heard of the throwback due to earlier miscegenation. Otherwise, I think this claim is a bit of a stretch.
I generally agree. You must realize that my own take on all of this suggests that the high probability that a NBA player is African-American is due to his genome. It does not follow that the African American is generally better than a pure Caucasian in basketball, by nature or nurture.
Just because everything fits together in my argument does not detract from the “logic”. I think you and Collounsbury read much more into your debating opponents claims than really exists.
That just may be valid. In any event, forensic analysts are able to recognize African American hair I’m told.
Absolutely correct. You forgot to mention the white tribe, the Afrikaaners.
Since you included the Khoisan, northern Africans, etc. you are correct by circular reasoning. I suggest that the term African American is generally based on those people in America who claim origins from the negroid tribes of Africa.
Lets go back to kinky hair. That will certainly eliminate many of the groups you previously mentioned.
I believe the latest information is that we are all out of Africa.
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Of course I never said that. What I will say is that there is a very high probability that a Zulu has black skin, kinky hair, and a broad nose. I wouldn’t want to bet on how tall he is though.
We are presently using DNA evidence to sort out the paths that various modern peoples took historically and building a family tree. Today we know the Khoisan are most likely the original people. If you were correct then we might as well not bother with this research.
The concept of using the three physical traits I described as exclusionary of other people is something you made up Gaspode. To repeat, all I ever said was that an African American as we know him today is most likely to have kinky hair, dark skin, and a broad nose.
Where o where has anyone had difficulty with looking at identical appearing people and erroneously lumped them together. In fact you are the only one here who has suggested a specific link between Aborigines and Africans.
Now my point is simply this
If I am on the phone talking to someone who has identified himself as African American, I will 100% assume he is dark, has kinky hair if not bald, shaved , or straightened, and has a much broader nose than mine.
If I see someone on the streets of America who is dark, has kinky hair and a broad nose I will 99% assume he is African American.
If I see someone on the streets of Paris who is dark, has kinky hair and a broad nose, I wouldn’t venture a guess.
I know very little about genetics, but I am told that there is a gene for example that 20% of Khoisans share, and 3 % of Subsaharan Africans share which is virtually non existent in people of exclusive recent origin outside of Africa. This was in a documentary on TV several weeks ago, but I can’t recall the exact program. Can not genetic diversity coexist with a specific genetic commonality?
I hope I have made it clear that I do not believe that African Americans are genetically predisposed toward superior athletic ability. What I do presume to postulate is that due to the fresh mix of genes between Caucasions and Africans, an anomalous portion of African Americans can demonstrate superior athletic ability. However this small relative portion is still significantly higher than occurs in the parent populations.
greinspace
You seem to be saying that if you artificially define a group of people (in this case African American) based on an arbitrary group of characters (in this case external nasal structures, melanin distribution in the skin and hair protein conformation), then within this group there will be a statistically significant expression of other factors that predispose the group to being good athletes. If you accept that any and all of the said characters have evolved multiple times, are based on multiple genes, occur in people all over the world with no recent shared history and display a range of expression even within a population over time then the statement seems a bit odd. You could have chosen any three characteristics, such as blood type, presence of hair on the middle knuckle and eye colour as your arbitrary dividers. They are every bit as valid.
If I said that all people with hairy fingers, AB blood and brown eyes are going to make up my group (arbitrarily called zaxo-americans), and then said that there were traits that made zaxo-americans better at algebra you would have to agree it would be odd. Obviously my zaxo-american group could have come form anywhere in the world, at any time and have absolutely no common history. The same is true with the group you define a African-Americans. There is no reason for supposing any more common heritage or genetic homogeneity amongst your African Americans than amongst my zaxo-americans. They are a totally arbitrary group with no physical basis for grouping them at all. Yes they can be grouped based on cultural factors such as language and point of geographic spread, but that’s it.
Yes, and that is why going on to say that belonging to an arbitrary race will make you more likely to possess other characteristics aside from those used to define the race is odd. I could define races based on hair colour alone. That’s how arbitrary it is. To say that people with brown hair have a statistically more significant chance of possessing a certain muscle enzyme seems silly to me.
But you must at some point. If someone is ‘pure’ ‘African-American’ and has children with someone who is ‘pure’ ‘Caucasian’ then the children will only display some ‘African-American’ traits. If those children have children with a ‘pure’ ‘Caucasian’ then the traits will be diluted still further. If we continue then at some stage a child will be born in that line that will not fit into your ‘African-American’ grouping. Genetics being what it is it is almost certain that if two children are born to those parents one will just scrape into your ‘African-American’ grouping and the sibling will not. I don’t see why this would be considered a stretch. Genetics being what it is, and your classification being admittedly arbitrary, it is almost a certainty.
Well you can have that take, but the fact of the matter is that there is no gene and no set of genes that is more common in African-Americans than it is in Irishmen. Pure and simple. Africans are a geographic grouping, not a biological one and African-Americans doubly so. Saying what you just have makes no more sense than saying “the high probability that an NBA player lives in a high rise is due to his genome.” People don’t live in high rises because of genetics, they don’t come from Africa because of genetics. People living in high-rises don’t have any shared genetic traits, people from Africa don’t have any shared genetic traits. The distinction is articficial, it’s geographic, it’s cultural, it’s got no bearing on gentics. Nix, None, Zip.
I never intended to imply it detracted from the logic, merely that the logic exists independently of the facts. African-American is a grouping based on where people lived. You could just as easily say that all people who live in high-rises are African-Americans, and then further narrow it down to those with black skin, broad noses and crinkly hair. You’d get rid of all those who don’t meet the required criteria, you’d get the same grouping with the same characteristics and as much validity.
I’d be highly surprised considering that you’ve just said the grouping itself is entirely arbitrary. Believe it or not virtually the same question was posed by Peace/Bluish in one of the linked threads. Basically what forensics do is narrow suspects down to likely profiles. In areas like New York where most people with that hair type are ‘African-Americans’ it’s probably fairly accurate. If an Aboriginal hair was discovered odds are it would show up as African-American. Similarly defining a hair as African-American if it was found in Sydney would probably be a bit of a leap of logic.
If you define African-American are those people of Negroid descent that express negroid features then of course that’s what they will be according to your definition. The trouble is that Negroid is a completely artificial term with no genetic, cultural, linguistic, geographical or other basis. So you’ll have to define negroid.
Actually it won’t eliminate one of them. All those groups display kinky hair. They all display all three of the features you mentioned. That’s my point. I meant it when I said all have black skin, broad noses and kinky hair.
We are all out of Africa but what I said stands. One of the current theories is that all black people are descended from Australoid peoples from SE Asia who swept back through Africa. This sort of thing is why trying to define ‘African’ or ‘Negro’ as a race is so hopeless.
I accept you never said it, but by referring to an ‘African-American genome’ that enhances someone’s athletic prowess you imply that there is shared genetic history unless there is some other way a significant proportion of African-Americans could share this genetic makeup. This shared genetics among African-Americans has no more factual basis than a shared genetics amongst short people, Zulu or not.
Please read the links Collounsbury provided. It’s not about whether I’m right, it’s about what has been published in peer-reviewed journals. DNA evidence allows us to trace peoples or animals migrations not by grouping genes that are shared between individuals of a race, but by allowing us follow how these have been gained, lost added to and mutated compared to neighbouring groups. It is the way genes have split and changed that are being mapped, not the common genes that are found within any one group. 10 years ago this work was started with proteins , now it’s moved onto genes. It doesn’t in any way demonstrate that any race has any genetic basis, simply that some groups share some genes in common with their neighbours. Invariably there are a lot more genes they don’t share and many more genes they share with unrelated people on the other side of the world. The work you mentioned only concentrates on the shared genes so groups can be traced.
And as I said, that will only hold if you define an African-American as someone from a negroid race that has negroid features. Now all you need to do is either define negro or re-define African-American. The fact that the traits don’t exclude other people only highlights the impossibility of defining negro biologically. You can say “that an African American as we know him today is most likely to have kinky hair, dark skin, and a broad nose” quite justifiably, but only is your definition of African-American includes “A person most likely to have kinky hair, dark skin, and a broad nose”. Any other definition used, including the one that precludes non-negros, will immediately cause the definition to lose any biological basis.
The whole ‘three races’ concept was based on lumping similar appearing people together erroneously. Your use of the term Negro above is a classic case in point. There is no group ‘Negro’ that can be lumped together. Follow Collounsbury’s links and you will find many, many more. Any attempt to lump any large group of people into a ‘race’ is an example of this.
Of course you will. That is because ‘African-American’ is a valid cultural grouping. The problem comes when you start trying to attribute biological/genetic attributes to this group as you have above.
You can make that assumption too. That also does not give it any biological validity. Even if you are 100% correct your probability of being able to predict any genetic attributes of that individual as opposed to one chosen at random with no knowledge of skin colour etc. is <.05. Therefore attributing any genetic cause to anything he or any other member of his arbitrary group may or may not be able to achieve has a chance of being wrong of >.95.
But your probability of correctly assigning him any genetic makeup, and your probability of correctly assigning a genetic reason to anything he achieves is exactly the same as the probability of doing so for Michael Jordan. ie if you try attributing anything genetic to anyone based on a racial grouping you will be out and out wrong better than 95% of the time.
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I note in advance that my site visit today was a real pain in the ass and I am pretty cranky. Please excuse in advance the expression of frustration.
I rather wish you did have an argument becuase you have clearly not understood. Now then, think about this.
(1)
(a) The majority of human variation is between individuals and does not map coherently onto populations. This is the fact which leads to the observation, I know troublesome to accept, that I as a WASP am as likely to be as closely related to any unrelated black person as any unrelated white person if we take related to mean to share some x% of alleles alleles. One can not assume otherwise.
(b) Only a tiny percent of variation appears to be regional (i.e. West European or some such), and is not coherent to race. Again, let me repeat that for those who have trouble following, regional variation is not coherent to race! Fact. All the data available indicate this. (Nota Bene: to date we have no confirmed private alleles across large populations, meaning that every population possesses essentially all of human diversity(*) although it may not be expressed.
(2) This implies (a) there are multiple genetic pathways someone could have t he range physical appearances you assign the label “African American” : kinky hair (vague and covers a lot of ground, arrived at in different ways), dark skin (again, vague…), wide nose (Must now exclude thin nosed black Africans and African Americans! They exist you know.) Etc. (b) That someone sharing these traits is not necessarily (given the above facts) sharing any particular common package of traits in any greater degree with another person of the same morphology as compared with someone with a different morphology.
Did it have to be this way? No. But that’s the way we are.
Need cites: see prior discussions.
(*: here we can get into a little trouble since "all of human diversity is a pretty big claim, however humans are not terribly diverse
genetically speaking so the claim is not as grand as it seems.)
Why do I get the sense you do not understand the meaning of arbitrary. For humans it is. Arbitrary means point two above. Think and absorb.
God damn it does no one understand anything we write here?! Fuck. Fuck. Okay, calming down. I understand this is non-intuittive, but you gotta grapple with the science.
Okay, please reread the god damned threads. Your reply assumes (a) there were coherent races (again using the term in re classical race system) in the past. FALSE (b) utterly misunderstands the observation : this is true across all fucking races god damn it! Human variation is such that using a system of aggregate trait variation to define “populations” or races you may indeed end up classifying two brothers or even more likely members of an extended family as different races.
In a sense miscenegenation is the cause… On the level of the whole damned human race.
One last fucking time.
NO SUCH THING AS FUCKING PURE FUCKING RACES AND NEVER HAS BEEN. Sorry to have to shout but it seems folks need to be shouted at sometimes. (Although, a recent staff meeting included the expression of disapproval of my highly critical style. Non-confrontational Arab culture seems not to appreciate me…)
(a) Your take on genome is utterly wrong.
(b) your assumption of pure races is utterly wrong and senseless given the data and what we have explained. Your assumption, I know you don’t grasp this, necessarily rests on race being objective for if there were such things as pure WASPies and pure Blacks we’d be able to pin them down with coherent variation.
What one do with this? We a showing you that your definition is circular. This is an elementary element of logic. It is not a matter of reading anything into a claim, it is a matter of understanding the underlying structure of the claim, the necessary conditions upon which it depends. Can someone please, please explain logic here, I don’t have the stomach.
God damn it. Okay, Tom has nicely gone over this with our dear departed Peace/Blue. Forensic analysts can, knowing a defined population make a reasonable guess based on hair type. They know in advance there is a such and such chance that X hair type is occuring in the socially defined group Af Am. Were our forensics folks be thrown a loop and find, unbeknowst to them, an Asian from any one of the South East Asian populations who also express kinky hair, the game is blown.
Reread what we have told you about trait distribution. This is not some trivial detial which you can skip over. It is fundamental.
The purpose of the recitation was not a trivial presentation of who lives in Africa, but rather to note for you that African populations have been diverse --in fact among all African populations the most diverse in the World-- since the get go. The Afrikaaners are recent immigrants and are not terribly relevant to the equation.
God, sometimes I do think that a 2by4 might be necessary to get through to some folks.
(1) This is not a circular definition. Please look up the term before misusing it.
(2) As already explained, ad nauseum, you are assuming contra fact commonality in descent among those labelled negriod: even morphologically this breaks down. Read Chamla on ancient Saharan populations. Or look at representative samples of Saharan peoples.
(3) the term tribe itself is less-than-useful for examining African populations but we’ll drop that for the moment.
Ah, what is the latin term for argument from ignorance?
(a) Who will kinky hair eliminate?
(i) Not North AFricans. Some have it , some don’t
(ii) Not Khoi-San
(iii) Not Australian Aborigines
(iv) Not some groups of South East Asians nor Indians
Do think we came to these conclusions without looking at the data?
Your posting clearly implies that you have reached incorrect conclusions about the genetics behind this relatively trivial observation on morphology.
(a) GAspode was attempting to illustrate the point
(b) you are falling into exactely the trap Gaspode describes by assuming Black Africans, hell African Americans, represent a coherent genetic unit.
There are 30,000 genes in the genome. Each gene can be changed in innumerable ways. Each of these changes are called alleles.
Take the allele which carries a single mutation in the middle of the beta globin gene. This allele confers a partial resistance to malaria when in a heterozygous state, but gives sickle cell anemia in a homozygous state. 1 in 6 African Americans carry this trait. I don’t know the allelic frequency in Africa, but I assume in some parts of West Africa with high incidence of malaria, it is higher. Let’s use this as an example because it is a simple, monogenic trait which I happen to know more about than the dark skin/curly hair/nose shape traits.
The mutation is advantageous. Due to reasons explored elsewhere (in threads about eugenics) the heterozygous advantage is of greater benefit than the homozygous deficit. This mutation arose once (probably) and spread itself through numerous populations. This happened because none of the African populations are isolated, and there is a constant, varying intermingling. The genetic exchange ensures that advantageous mutations are kept.
But this in no way defines a closed population. It just demonstrates genetic flow. You can say the same thing about curly hair and broad noses (more efficient to radiate heat) or dark skin (better protection from UV light). This is equivalent in Caucasians – we have mutations which let us retain heat and absorb more energy from the sun.
Back to your question. A closed population which starts from a small set of individuals is always characterized by something called founder effect. This basically means that large segments of the genome remain similar (similar genetic backgrounds with many similar alleles) over many generations, as opposed to one advantage-imparting allele. This is what you would propose if all African peoples descended from a “protoblack” race or my above “Original Black Guy”. We do not see this in Africans. Their genetics are more compatible with an open population with genetic flow. This is your specific genetic commonality co-existing with a diverse genetic background. It does exist, and says basically that at no point was this an isolated population. It shatters the concept of race.
If you look carefully, this point is debunked by the affirmative answer for your first point. Since there appears to be little commonality in African Americans beyond appearance, and the same is true about Caucasians, the hybrid between the two are not gaining anything more or losing anything (how many idioms can you plug in here – don’t judge a book by its cover, differences are only skin deep, etc.). You are basically promoting an anti “racial purity” stance, but it has as much validity as the “racial purity” one. There is no such thing as genetic racial purity, therefore mixing races does not matter one bit genetically.
At this point I realize you have twisted my original premise in order to facilitate the perception of error in my argument. Other than the fact I don’t even know how to atificially define anything, I most certainly did not say that any recognized group/race is predisposed towards athletics.
I understand that introducing a gene for a specific trait can result in other expressions as well.
almost a certainty isn’t certain, therefore a stretch
Are you suggesting that forensic scientists using DNA can’t tell the difference between Aborigine hair and any other hair using DNA?
I only referred to one individuals genome. Whatever genes are responsible for Michael Jordon’s ability, are not neccessarily responsible for Wilt Chamberlain’s abilities. What I am suggesting that the miscegenation of long isolated gene pools may be responsible for a few exceptional traits in a very few people.
Please, I’m sure the brothers are having a big laugh here.A purely cultural bond can only be verified by communication of speech and dress and art. The brothers have no problem recognizing one of their own. In fact they had to rebuild their culture and used their physical characteristics in order to identify those who are entitled to claim membership.
I don’t understand how you could say that after I repeatedly point out that only a very few African Americans possess superior athletic ability, far less than the 1 in 6 Africans which possess the common allele which you previously pointed out. A claim for a few superior athletes inheriting their abilities,does not suggest that I advocate wiping out Caucasians or Africans.
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Oaky, I’m getting a bit sick of this. Frankly, grienspace, you’re being fucking dense.
YES Now, what part of the information re there being no goddamned coherency by race did you not understand. Do you not understand that DNA extracted from hair is not going to tell you anything different from any other source?
Problems: well first of all this comment is incoherent. You focus on Af Am and make comments implying coherency of the genome then you scurry back with this kind of comment.
You can’t have it both ways. Also please do pay attention to the terminology, we’re talking, as Edwino pointed out, about distribution of alleles, variations on genes. Conceptually once you start developing a more accurate picture of the mechanics, clarity will be easier to achieve.
Your suggestion does not strike one as terribly sensible, or rather it strikes me as irrelevant. Again, you presume in your use of miscenegenation some group based coherency (one has to conclude Af Am bec. of your comments, although your clinging to vagueness and retreats into ‘individual’ examples make this hard to pin down.)
In any case, regardless of the incoherence of the suggestion it is also irrelevant bec. we don’t have “long isolated gene pools” in question.
Frankly, I don’t think any of us fucking care if anyone is laughing about the data. However, your assertion is wrong on the facts. Insofar as culture takes a phenotype and imbues it with a certain cultural meaning then it is really no different than clothes. Albeit ones which one can not change.
As for your assertion “the brothers have not problem reconizing one of their own,” well in that case we’re in the same basket as the North American forensics worker. Were the brothers to encounter large numbers of say North Africans matching their phenotype but not adhering to the cultural standard… Well there’s the whole problem.
So, again, you are clearly attempting to sneak some kind of biological commonality into the Af Am- Black equation. Try to grapple with the actual data.
Because you keep trying to import the idea of racial coherency on a biological leve.
The issue is NOT whether superior athletes inherited some advantageous genetic template upon which they sucessfully built their careers. That is not in question. We could haggle about the relative impact of the underlying genetic heritage with the evironmental heritage and subsequent expression. But that’s not relevant.
What is relevant is the role of the concept of race and group level inheritance. Variation is not mapping onto race, ergo, their inheritance of advantageous traits depends on the individual heritage, not to their appartenance to a supposed “black” race.
I’ve given up on this nutty line of thought. What this OP has done is to convince me, a newbie to SDMB, that since college, I’ve become intellectually lazy.
My only purpose of being here now is to apologize to Wendell Wagner for having been a jerk. Sorry, man.
Then could you please state exactly what you are saying?
Yes it certainly can, the trouble with your reasoning here is that there is no gene or set of genes for the specific traits of kinky hair, black skin or broad nose. Period. The traits probably evolved multiple times in multiple places amongst multiple people and have since mutated, changed, transformed and intermingled. No way that a gene for a specific trait can be introduced because there is no specific trait and no specific gene. Therefore there can’t be any other expressions from a gene that doesn’t exist. This is why the brown hair analogy was used and that is why it was silly.
So to you anything that isn’t completely certain is a stretch.
Someone (anyone) winning the lottery next week is a stretch.
Not being hit by an asteroid today is a stretch.
The entire United States maintaining a functioning electrical grid is a stretch.
Fair enough it’s your definition, but not exactly common usage.
Not suggesting, stating outright and beyond any shadow of a doubt. Collounsbury has covered this but allow me to repeat “Chances are any two people with those traits, even if we know they are from Africa, will be more dissimilar from each other on genetic grounds than they will be from someone from northern Europe. Unless two African people are recently related there is no reason to believe they will have any more genetic commonality with each other than someone from China or someone from South America. “
Feel free to substitute any racial or geographic grouping you like at any point. Aboriginal, Eskimo Elephant Hunter, it doesn’t matter.
OK, this has got me tricked. The genes responsible for the success of two African-American players have no correlation, no racial group has a genetic predisposition to be better athletes, yet somehow there remains within this population “a combination of characteristics more common to Caucasians” along with some “African specific characteristics” that “would undoubted result in specific small groups that are superior”. I’m lost Grienspace but suffice it to say that there are purely and simply no ‘characteristics more common to Caucasians’ that do not result from an arbitrary definition of Caucasians. No genetic or biological basis here. Equally there are no “African specific characteristics” that don’t result from a narrow arbitrary definition of African. No genetic or biological basis here either.
Could you please explain exactly what you mean Grienspace.
No one mentioned a cultural bond. I said it was a cultural grouping. Our culture defines and groups people as African-American based on a hodge-podge of phenotypic traits, ancestry, linguistics, heritage and a range of other arbitrary factors. People within our culture know what African-American means in the same way we know what ‘The Partridge Family’ means but that doesn’t give either group a valid biological basis.
I was going to continue, but Collounsbury has covered the other points very well if somewhat brusquely.
