Racism is baseless

[Delvo]

a graph that names no differences of anything other than superficial import

Now would be a good time to show where I've ever said that human racial differences are "of import" rather than that they exist. Failure to do so will equal admission that I haven't, and thus that your implicit accusation that I have was false.

how in the dickens is that at all related to sociopolitical issues, such as the racism that continues to factually create an uneven playing field?

That's a question for the people who bring it up in contexts like this thread where it doesn't belong. And it's the race deniers who did that, not me.

 

[Pup]

They specifically say race is not and cannot be considered equivalent to breeds in domesticated animals. This is the exact opposite of what you posted.

They rant against the old race definitions, as shown by the concluding sentence, "Racist political doctrines find no foundation in scientific knowledge concerning modern or past human populations." And I agree that those don't apply today. Obama isn't "black" anymore than most "white" people are "white," because those labels never did fit very well and they certainly don't fit now when people who lived in Africa and bred with neighboring tribe members have now bred for generations with people halfway around the globe.

That's the part I agree with.

There is no formal biological definition of race, period. None.

I don't think one can just declare that humans never have isolated populations produced by genetic drift and natural selection. Every other animal and plant species behaves that way. It's central to evolution. It happens.

If there's no formal name for it in humans, well, we need to invent a name. How do anthropologists talk about it, if there are no names with formal definitions? Or are they too scared they'll get sucked back into being called racists if they invent new names?

If people are making the claim that it really, truly never happens with humans, and that humans will never produce divisions smaller than Neandertals and Denisovans, they're nuts. We have DNA now. We can identify people more closely, in more categories.

If "race" is too ruined, then we need another name, but we can't deny that it exists, pretending that humans are special and remain all one big happy identical family no matter how they're isolated.

If you stick a bunch of humans on a continent and isolate them for x generations, they will differ from those equally isolated on another continent, due to natural selection and genetic drift. Is anyone truly arguing they won't? Then the question arises, what shall we call those differences?

 

[macdoc]

They are called subpopulations - just as there in other species.

Prey choice and diet of wolves related to ungulate communities and ...
connection.ebscohost.com/.../prey-choice-diet-wolves-related-ungulate-communities-wo...
Wolves (Canis lupus) belong to 3 genetically distinct subpopulations despite the ... We also tested if various sources of data on wolf prey (scats and kills) and ...

For instance the Torrey Islanders are a distinct subpopulation of Australian Aboriginals.

Askenazi Jews are a distinct subpopulation with a propensity to high rates of diabetes.

The Basques, while a cultural and political group also are a genetic subpopulation.

Origin of the Basques - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Basques
The origin of the Basques and the Basque language is a controversial topic that has given rise ... and Spanish Basque regions that Basques share unique genetic patterns that distinguish them from the surrounding non-Basque populations.

The Inuit are distinct even from their Arctic predecessors,

Arctic advantage: genetic traits help Inuit in harsh conditions | Reuters
www.reuters.com/article/us-science-inuit-idUSKCN0RH2WY20150917
Sep 17, 2015 - Scientists on Thursday said a study of the genomes of Inuit from Greenland revealed unique genetic variants related to fat metabolism that ward ...

Ancient DNA Sheds New Light on Arctic's Earliest People
news.nationalgeographic.com/.../140828-arctic-migration-genome-genetics-dna-eski...
Aug 28, 2014 - Today's Inuit and Native Americans of the Arctic are genetically distinct from the region's first settlers and had little interaction with them, a new ...

and in one of the coolest smallest subpopulation to be part of ( a single family ) ....sliced according to heart disease.

Italian Gene Holds Hope for Unclogging Arteries : Medicine: A mutant protein found in one family appears to ward off heart disease despite a high-fat diet. Researchers buoyed by animal trials.
October 17, 1994|From Associated Press

 

[Pup]

They are called subpopulations - just as there in other species.

Bingo! That's what I'm talking about. It would be so helpful if--when I describe what I think a race is in words and it's called a subpopulation, others would say, "That's not called a race today, it's a subpopulation," rather than saying stuff that amounts to There's no such thing as race, you bigotted 19th century racist, you!

I think that "race" with its old meaning was originally a poor attempt to identify and label such subpopulations of humans back when we had little to work with more than appearance, and then the bigotry just took over. Now that we have better ways of identifying groups of people, all the old research needs tossed out and they can be properly grouped and some real study go on.

But jeez--all these cries of humans are all alike sound so silly, because those cool little subpopulations show they're not all alike. We don't need to hate them or make up cruel fantasy traits for them, but we don't need to deny their differences exist, either.

 

[Jules Galen]

Yeah...race really does make a difference, I mean, anyone who has ever taught Mexicans or Blacks knows that they are so freakin' slow compared to white and Asian kids.

Let's not delude ourselves, shall we? The truth may be shocking. The truth may hurt, but the truth is the truth.

 

[Jules Galen]

I fondly remember the most impressive student I ever met as a teacher. The kid was half Vietnamese and half white and from Louisiana post hurricane Katrina. His home had been wiped out and his Navy father sent him to Texas to live with his relatives and be educated...in Texas.

The poor kid had an IQ of 80. Naturally, he was dumb as a rock. But..the kid had this ability to STFU, remain still and listen in class. As a result, he earned very-high marks because he actually could concentrate...using his limited ability to do so (and Gawd he was Limited!). The Mexican and black kids in the class actually thought he was a genius, but they never had to teach him one-on-one...so thy could never know.

So this kid got high marks (because he STFU and listened!) and today remains an enigma to his Jr High Classmates (and their pissed-off parents). Meanwhile, Dumper-Dumb-But Vietnamese Boy is probably very happy and laughing at everyone who won't STFU and listen.

Just my 2 cents. I could be wrong.

Jules.

 

[Vortigern99]

To judge from the last few days' worth of posts, it appears that both camps in this debate agree that a subpopulation is a valid scientific term, which for the purposes of our discussion on human groups may be defined as a subset of a population of Homo sapiens that shares one or more additional traits.

Used in statistics, the term is flexible. There can be hundreds, even thousands, of subpopulations in our species, depending on how one uses the term. If a given population is "all Egyptians", for example, a subpopulation could be "all Egyptian males", or it could be "all Egyptian males with curly hair", and so on.

Once again, we see the risk of descending into a semantic argument based on how each person, group or nation chooses to use the word. If one possible subpopulation can be "individuals with African ancestry", then it's the same as saying "black is a race", and we're right back where we started.

 

[Pup]

Once again, we see the risk of descending into a semantic argument based on how each person, group or nation chooses to use the word. If one possible subpopulation can be "individuals with African ancestry", then it's the same as saying "black is a race", and we're right back where we started.

Well, a subpopulation could be "people I don't like." But I expect that scientists would be a bit more scientific than that, and say "individuals with African ancestry" is useless for their work because the white guy from South Africa and the black guy whose ancestry can be traced back for generations in the Kalihari desert won't have anything in common for anything scientists usually study.

So there would have to be a reason to define a particular subpopulation, whether it's some ability or disability, health or sickness, vitamin efficiency, even a trivial cosmetic feature that still affects the individual non-trivially (sunburn easily so what prevention is best, men's facial hair gets ingrown easily so what prevention is best).

Otherwise, we might as well define subpopulations as "people pup thinks are hot," "people pup hates," etc. If I could get scientific papers published on those subpopulations, I stand corrected, and they would be useful.

 

[macdoc]

Subpopulation is always preceded by a description of the variation....as with say Ethiopian wolves or Torrey Strait Islanders as a subpopulation of the larger genetic group of Australian Aboriginals.

Claiming it's down to sematics is ********....but you have to define your subpopulation.

Subpopulation implies "different" .....then you define it ....and that difference could be genetic, cultural or economic ...ie in South Africa the subpopulations which the apartheid crowd tried to squeeze into their little inferior to us boxes were hugely varied, from San to East Indian based on skin colour and if that wasn't quite enough ..on lineage.

Sometime cultural and genetic are coincident as with the Basques ...other times not.
Get rid of the race meme...all it does is perpetuate a Victorian ghost that needs a stake in its heart.

 

[arthwollipot]

Torres Strait.

That's the second time I've corrected someone on that. I don't think the Torres Strait Islanders are considered a subpopulation. They're considered separately from the other indigenous Australians in most ways.

Could be wrong on that, of course. When asked to identify your ancestry, for example, the question is usually "Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent?" So in a way, positive answers to this question put both into the same basket anyway.

 

[lomiller]

It doesn't mean the same thing. The guy in the Jerk identifies as black, or African American, or what ever more specific racial group his adoptive parents are from. Culturally, he is correct. Racially he isn't. The two things aren't the same.

Culturally he is, and that’s it because there is no meaningful non-cultural definition for race.

While it’s true that you could invent your own categories in a way that he’s a different “race” than his adopted parents, anyone else is just as free to define the groups so that he’s is the same “race” as his adopted parents.

 

[lomiller]

The real issue IMO.
The original concepts and categories “race” was intended to encapsule have been disproved but some people can’t let go and want to keep the term around and repurpose it even though we already have all the terminology we need. Given the baggage and colloquial use of the term (most of which still stems from those original incorrect concepts) this is generally just a bad idea.

I don't think one can just declare that humans never have isolated populations produced by genetic drift

But race isn’t defined as “populations that have experienced genetic drift” (because it’s not formally defined at all) and we have other terminology more suitable to use for such groups.

and natural selection.

While there are no doubt a few alleles who’s frequency is impacted by natural selection, this number is small and doesn’t match on any of the groupings proposed thus far.

If there's no formal name for it in humans, well, we need to invent a name

We do? What gaps are there that existing better defined terms like population group ethnic group, Haplogroup, etc don’t already cover?

How do anthropologists talk about it, if there are no names with formal definitions

You have it backwards. They have all the names and definitions they need. You just can’t live with the fact that none of these line up with your preconceived understanding of race.

If "race" is too ruined, then we need another name

Why?

but we can't deny that it exists,

What exists? What are you trying to describe that isn’t already accounted for in the existing terminology?

If you stick a bunch of humans on a continent and isolate

Such isolation doesn’t exist, and for most populations never existed.

they will differ from those equally isolated on another continent, due to natural selection and genetic drift.

Again, the “differences” that actually exist are almost all related to frequency of alleles due to drift and founder effect. Nearly all alleles are still present in all human populations, the so called clusters are in the frequency with which they are present not the presence of the genes themselves.

Is anyone truly arguing they won't

Again what differences are you looking to describe? All humans descend from a relatively small number of individuals in the relatively recent past. We have relatively little genetic diversity as large or midsized mammals go.

Just because populations can evolve in different directions if isolated long enough, doesn’t mean anything that comes even close to that degree and length of isolation exists within humans.

 

[lomiller]

Bingo! That's what I'm talking about. It would be so helpful if--when I describe what I think a race is in words and it's called a subpopulation,.

We already have a word for subpopulation. We don’t need another, certainly not one that already has historical and colloquial use that differs from what a subpopulation is.

"That's not called a race today, it's a subpopulation,"

What we used to call races are not equivalent to a subpopulations. They were groupings of a large number of sub-populations where the methodology used to define those groups of subpopulations were fatally flawed.

cries of humans are all alike sound so silly, because those cool little subpopulations show they're not all alike.

Sub-populations are by definition to similar to other sub-populations to demand formal distinction between the groups and there is no set granularity. Your immediate family could be defined as a subpopulation for a given study if the need arises.

To judge from the last few days' worth of posts, it appears that both camps in this debate agree that a subpopulation is a valid scientific term, which for the purposes of our discussion on human groups may be defined as a subset of a population of Homo sapiens that shares one or more additional traits.

Used in statistics, the term is flexible. There can be hundreds, even thousands, of subpopulations in our species, depending on how one uses the term. If a given population is "all Egyptians", for example, a subpopulation could be "all Egyptian males", or it could be "all Egyptian males with curly hair", and so on.

A point I had previously made is that race is similar in that it’s an infra-subspecific term and therefore not formally defined. As such it could be adapted to mean almost anything the person using it want. The real question is whether we should.

The term that maps the closest to how “race” has been used traditionally is ethnic group, but that’s been rejected by some because it’s a cultural grouping not a biological one they are looking for. Subpopulation is brought up only after they say “I want to use race to describe X” and others have suggested it just be called a sub-population.

 

[shuttlt]

Culturally he is, and that’s it because there is no meaningful non-cultural definition for race.

There is no non-cultural definition of anything. This isn't a flaw with race. You could apply the same argument to any category system that I can think of.

While it’s true that you could invent your own categories in a way that he’s a different “race” than his adopted parents, anyone else is just as free to define the groups so that he’s is the same “race” as his adopted parents.

This is true for ANY category system. I could decide that capri pants were shorts, or trousers. None of these categories are given to us by God. They are all made up. Further, it isn't me that made up these categories, which clearly carry information about peoples ancestory with some degree of reliability. Hence the physical anthropologists still being more in favour of race than not, despite accusations of a politically driven attempt to repudiate it within physical anthropology.

 

[shuttlt]

The real issue IMO.
The original concepts and categories “race” was intended to encapsule have been disproved but some people can’t let go and want to keep the term around and repurpose it even though we already have all the terminology we need. Given the baggage and colloquial use of the term (most of which still stems from those original incorrect concepts) this is generally just a bad idea.

It originally just meant a people, like "the English" and such, no? How has this been disproved?

But race isn’t defined as “populations that have experienced genetic drift” (because it’s not formally defined at all) and we have other terminology more suitable to use for such groups.

Clearly though the entities that it is talking about though are populations that have sufficiently clear physical differences that they can be distinguished, for what ever purpose.

While there are no doubt a few alleles who’s frequency is impacted by natural selection, this number is small and doesn’t match on any of the groupings proposed thus far.

Not sure how this matters. If one can tell two groups apart based on physical characteristics dependent on their heritage, then we can clearly meaningfully call them races. That seems to be broadly the modern meaning of the term.

We do? What gaps are there that existing better defined terms like population group ethnic group, Haplogroup, etc don’t already cover?

Good luck getting Haplogroup into daily usage. It would need to be have a more intuitive meaning than race, and clearly children can understand race without having to understand genetics and physical anthropology, and it would need to be based on externally visible characteristics, or it wouldn't fill the void left by "race".

You have it backwards. They have all the names and definitions they need. You just can’t live with the fact that none of these line up with your preconceived understanding of race.

To the best of my knowledge, more physical anthropologists answer "yes" to "there are biological races within the species Homo Sapiens" than "no". In any case, whether or not they find it useful or not is hardly the final arbiter of whether socially we find it useful to have a somewhat different classification system.

Why?

If people want to talk about the classifications they are currently referring to using the word "race" then they need a word to do it. Otherwise we are engaged in an Orwellian project to control thought by controlling language.

What exists? What are you trying to describe that isn’t already accounted for in the existing terminology?

As the physical anthropologists who answered "yes". For myself, it is clearly possible to look at somebody and make a good guess that they or their ancestors came from Scandinavia, or North Africa, or East Asia. Informal classification systems based around that observations divide people into races. It is clearly possible to build such classification systems. Such classification systems clearly work in so far as people one assigns to those categories by sight are more likely to be correctly assigned to their familial origins than chance alone. Given that such classification systems work, then races exist to the same extent as any categorical system calls categories into being. This category system is doing a different job to the category systems in physical anthropology, so I am not remotely troubled that there isn't a 1-1 correspondence.

 

[shuttlt]

A point I had previously made is that race is similar in that it’s an infra-subspecific term and therefore not formally defined. As such it could be adapted to mean almost anything the person using it want. The real question is whether we should.

Personally, I think this is the real argument. It's not that race doesn't exist. It's that you think we shouldn't use it for ethical reasons. I think you'd have a much easier argument and hit far less flack arguing that.

 

[seayakin]

Wouldn't this being racist depend on Jews being cheap and loving money being false? It is the contention of the OP that the racist he describes is entirely correct and justified in the negative characteristics he attributes to the indigenous people. As a group they are uneducated, underemployed, poor and tend towards substance abuse. It's equivalent to the situation where one had actually demonstrated that the Jews were overwhelmingly cheap and money loving, said so, and was accused of being racist on the basis of the unexplained assumption that they viewed those negative characteristics as being genetic in origin.

The OPs definition of racism essentially agrees with your racists definition of racism.

Maybe I missed it but what would you use as a definition of racism?

 

[shuttlt]

Maybe I missed it but what would you use as a definition of racism?

Interesting question. It seems to me as if there are several definitions in play, all of which carry meaning. I'm not sure that I necessarily have one of my own, and it seems to me almost a contradiction in terms to have ones own private definition of a word. I don't think good communication in the thread will be improved by adding another definition into the conversation. Having said that, I think that when one calls somebody "racist" then it generally implies some kind of moral wrong has been committed. In relation to the post that I think you are reacting to, it strikes me as undesirable to claim that describing some aspects of the true state of the world is in and of itself a moral wrong. Personally I regard this as an area on the traditional definition of "racism" that isn't well defined. It feels like the kind of ambiguity that inevitably leads to arguments utilising equivocation..... a motte and bailey strategy.

[Another thought ->]
I should add, an idea that there is some single scale upon which we can rank races seems sometimes to be included in the definition of racism and sometimes not. If that is included, then one might say quite properly that one race or another is better at, say endurance running, without being racist, but not say that one one race or another is better absent from this context.

 

[Vortigern99]

The real issue IMO.
The original concepts and categories “race” was intended to encapsule have been disproved but some people can’t let go and want to keep the term around and repurpose it even though we already have all the terminology we need. Given the baggage and colloquial use of the term (most of which still stems from those original incorrect concepts) this is generally just a bad idea.


But race isn’t defined as “populations that have experienced genetic drift” (because it’s not formally defined at all) and we have other terminology more suitable to use for such groups.


While there are no doubt a few alleles who’s frequency is impacted by natural selection, this number is small and doesn’t match on any of the groupings proposed thus far.


We do? What gaps are there that existing better defined terms like population group ethnic group, Haplogroup, etc don’t already cover?



You have it backwards. They have all the names and definitions they need. You just can’t live with the fact that none of these line up with your preconceived understanding of race.

Why?

What exists? What are you trying to describe that isn’t already accounted for in the existing terminology?

Such isolation doesn’t exist, and for most populations never existed.


Again, the “differences” that actually exist are almost all related to frequency of alleles due to drift and founder effect. Nearly all alleles are still present in all human populations, the so called clusters are in the frequency with which they are present not the presence of the genes themselves.

Again what differences are you looking to describe? All humans descend from a relatively small number of individuals in the relatively recent past. We have relatively little genetic diversity as large or midsized mammals go.

Just because populations can evolve in different directions if isolated long enough, doesn’t mean anything that comes even close to that degree and length of isolation exists within humans.

 

[Pup]

I've combined two posts and skipped some questions, to try to keep things to a manageable length. If I've missed something important, my apologies; please repeat it.

We already have a word for subpopulation. We don’t need another, certainly not one that already has historical and colloquial use that differs from what a subpopulation is.

That's why I think subpopulation is an excellent answer. But there may be even better answers. Obviously I'm not the arbitrator of this stuff, and am not even someone who uses it in formal research. I'm just someone who casually discusses it on a computer forum.

What we used to call races are not equivalent to a subpopulations.

As I've said, we didn't used to have DNA, and barely had an understanding of natural selection and genetics, and therefore we certainly weren't understanding races. I think we need to 1) have a better understanding of humans now, without fear of being called racist and 2) come up with a good name for subpopulations without a lot of baggage that will make people scream racist.

The real issue IMO.
The original concepts and categories “race” was intended to encapsule have been disproved but some people can’t let go and want to keep the term around and repurpose it even though we already have all the terminology we need. Given the baggage and colloquial use of the term (most of which still stems from those original incorrect concepts) this is generally just a bad idea.

Surely you're not saying I'm one of those "some people." I don't want to keep the term "race" around, for exactly the reasons you said. Too much baggage.

We do? What gaps are there that existing better defined terms like population group ethnic group, Haplogroup, etc don’t already cover?
...
You have it backwards. They have all the names and definitions they need. You just can’t live with the fact that none of these line up with your preconceived understanding of race.
...
What exists? What are you trying to describe that isn’t already accounted for in the existing terminology?

My problem is with those who say that humans have no variation, and therefore they're all one big identical family. Since this isn't true for any other animal or plant that is spread over such a wide area, I think the concern is more about peoples' emotional needs to claim they're not racist, than about the actual situation.

Ironically, people are more apt to want to discover a new species or a new sub-population of penguin or salamander in an isolated location. They'll get naming rights, their name mentioned in articles, oh boy! But discovering a new species or sub-population of humans is bad, evil, racist, because only bad evil racists admit humans are like that. I'm describing the clueless general population, I hope, and not anthropologists, but it's like pulling teeth to find out what real anthropologists would say, even in a more educated forum like this, where I'd hope a few anthropologists hang out.

Such isolation doesn’t exist, and for most populations never existed.

That doesn't fit with common sense. Sub-Sahara Africans weren't breeding with the Inuit at the same rate they were breeding with other Sub-Saraha Africans. If somebody said they were, I'd laugh at them.

Again, the “differences” that actually exist are almost all related to frequency of alleles due to drift and founder effect. Nearly all alleles are still present in all human populations, the so called clusters are in the frequency with which they are present not the presence of the genes themselves.

Okay, I learned something. But what about light skin and vitamin D and being able to digest milk, though? I thought that was all tied into fitness for the environment. There are a few other things like that too.

Again what differences are you looking to describe? All humans descend from a relatively small number of individuals in the relatively recent past. We have relatively little genetic diversity as large or midsized mammals go.

Well, how come the Inuit don't win marathons? Why do some populations succeed at sprinting and others at long distances? Or why do some breed true with dark skin and others with light? Our barn cats produced random colors, but people don't.