Race is a human/social construct.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't know enough about blood types to answer. I imagine some type of factor or cluster analysis on traits and genetic markers could offer evidence for or including it as a defining characteristic.

We can identify both fuzzy and distinct characteristics of cocker spaniels that makes the label, cocker spaniel, useful. We can do the same for Shih Tzus.

Is your argument: If these dogs bred, we wouldn't be able to label the pups as cockers or as shih's. Therefore cockers and shihs can't exist?

If you want to change the term from human races to human breeds, we might reach an agreement. But I'm guessing race and breed are not synonymous and breed doesn't apply to humans.

The thing is, race has an historical connotation. Genetic science discoveries require we re-think what is meant by race. It's like thinking different colored boxes correlate to something different inside then finding out they don't.

In the mean time as you tried to sort the boxes by color, you couldn't decide if the orange one was in the yellow or red category. So you make an orange category. Now you have an orange-red box. Where do you put it? With the red or orange boxes or do you start a new category? After a while, yes you can see the blue box is different from the red one, but when does the light blue one become a new 'race'.

Then it turns out the outside of the box doesn't correlate well to what is inside the box. Inside you find all sorts of other things you could categorize the boxes by. And the insides sometimes, but not always, bear some correlation to the outer color. Now how do you divide up the categories?

You can make any categories you want. But the outside color and the inside contents are not readily conducive to natural categories, rather, they are more of a continuum. Categories you chose are by nature, arbitrary. I.e. they are human constructs, not natural biologic divisions.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Note that I specifically omitted subspecies from my definition. I'm defining race as the same as breed or variety in animals or plants. I don't believe that Angus cattle and Jersey cattle are considered subspecies either. However, I do think that human populations have been isolated at various times, long enough to produce distinct homogenous populations, similar to the difference between Angus and Jersey cattle, thoroughbreds and quarter horses, etc.

What else can account for the visible differences between American Indians and Europeans when the latter first arrived in the Americas, for example?

The fact that the two groups were originally not separate, and are no longer separated, doesn't change the fact that they were for a while, and therefore developed characteristics identifiable to the two populations.

My family has characteristics one might recognize as a related group. Are we our own race?

I have to backpedal on the animal breeds and human subspecies. I've learned a couple things here. I believe Lomiller is correct:

Every person alive in the world today is a member of the homo sapiens sapiens sub-species.

And I've already noted I was wrong about dog breeds being subspecies.

 

[bpesta22]

SG

I lack the expertise to get into fine-level debates with you on this. Have you, though, read the book by Wade?

Seems mdna the y chromosome stuff do a good job mapping-- even identifying-- race as a genetic construct.

I'm happy to loan you my electronic copy of the book.

bpesta22@cs.com

 

[lomiller]

Infrasubspcific classifications like “breed” have no real standardization. The can be defined ad-hoc and put to use, but consider the following.

When a dog breeder defines a breed it’s done with a specific purpose and use, but what specific use is there for a biological classification of race? Furthermore since anthropologists already define race as in non-biological terms how it seems ti me any biological definition would need to be more useful than the existing cultural definition of race if we are going to use it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

SG

I lack the expertise to get into fine-level debates with you on this. Have you, though, read the book by Wade?

Seems mdna the y chromosome stuff do a good job mapping-- even identifying-- race as a genetic construct.

I'm happy to loan you my electronic copy of the book.

bpesta22@cs.com

I am in the infectious disease field. I've studied genetic science for the last 20 years as part of keeping up in my field. I have a very good handle on the race debate. I've also been in more than one of these discussions and watched the controversy evolve from, there are no race divisions (See the Mary-Claire King lecture I linked to above), to someone discovered there are clusters of genetic identifiers which can predict race. Yeah, we can do the same with blood type or blondes vs brunettes, that doesn't mean biologic 'race' was identified.

We had a long thread on this before and the statement by the Anthropological Association was brought into it.

I am fascinated by the genetic tracing of human migration waves. That's why I know a little about the Aussie Aboriginals. There is also genetic evidence for the Polynesians settling parts of S. America.

So I know a lot about Y chromosome and mitochondrial lineages and how markers can be used to follow a migration.

So I don't think there'll be more in Wade's book than I've already been exposed to.


The bottom line, it takes a very very long time for human speciation (more than tens of thousands of years). We started down that path but before speciation was anywhere near enough along to create true divisions we started mixing again. There are body types, skin color, hair, and blood group differences. But there are also family differences.

Is green a distinct color? What about turquoise? What about teal? What about lime green? How much yellow can you add to green before you call the resulting color a shade of yellow rather than a shade of green?

I get it, black people don't look like Irish people. A man I met in Fiji was a black man with very distinct freckles. He asked me if Indians (the American kind) were really red? It was an interesting conversation.

If you compare two very different looking people you can think they are evidence of different races. But when you put the whole pot together you find it's one big jumble and arbitrarily finding two people who look different including tracing their heritage to explain the genetic reasons they look the way they do doesn't change the fact when you put the whole pot together the divisions become a blur.

 

[bpesta22]

Infrasubspcific classifications like “breed” have no real standardization. The can be defined ad-hoc and put to use, but consider the following.

When a dog breeder defines a breed it’s done with a specific purpose and use, but what specific use is there for a biological classification of race? Furthermore since anthropologists already define race as in non-biological terms how it seems ti me any biological definition would need to be more useful than the existing cultural definition of race if we are going to use it.

I think there's a large humanitarian reason to look here. Human well-being varies strongly across at least social constructions of race. Massive social interventions aimed at fixing the differences simply haven't worked.

Knowledge gleaned from understanding the genetics of race have potential to do lots of good. I'm not at all talking about eugenics. Perhaps studying this area reveals some missing protein or nutrient-- some relatively simple fix-- that reduces disease, increases potential, decreases suffering.

Plus, I never bought the argument that discovering new knowledge must have some applied goal or use, otherwise it's not worth discovering.

 

[bpesta22]

I am in the infectious disease field. I've studied genetic science for the last 20 years as part of keeping up in my field. I have a very good handle on the race debate. I've also been in more than one of these discussions and watched the controversy evolve from, there are no race divisions (See the Mary-Claire King lecture I linked to above), to someone discovered there are clusters of genetic identifiers which can predict race. Yeah, we can do the same with blood type or blondes vs brunettes, that doesn't mean biologic 'race' was identified.

We had a long thread on this before and the statement by the Anthropological Association was brought into it.

I am fascinated by the genetic tracing of human migration waves. That's why I know a little about the Aussie Aboriginals. There is also genetic evidence for the Polynesians settling parts of S. America.

So I know a lot about Y chromosome and mitochondrial lineages and how markers can be used to follow a migration.

So I don't think there'll be more in Wade's book than I've already been exposed to.


The bottom line, it takes a very very long time for human speciation (more than tens of thousands of years). We started down that path but before speciation was anywhere near enough along to create true divisions we started mixing again. There are body types, skin color, hair, and blood group differences. But there are also family differences.

Is green a distinct color? What about turquoise? What about teal? What about lime green? How much yellow can you add to green before you call the resulting color a shade of yellow rather than a shade of green?

I get it, black people don't look like Irish people. A man I met in Fiji was a black man with very distinct freckles. He asked me if Indians (the American kind) were really red? It was an interesting conversation.

If you compare two very different looking people you can think they are evidence of different races. But when you put the whole pot together you find it's one big jumble and arbitrarily finding two people who look different including tracing their heritage to explain the genetic reasons they look the way they do doesn't change the fact when you put the whole pot together the divisions become a blur.

Again, I lack expertise here, but I wonder if many vastly under-estimate how long evolution really takes? I was struck by this after reading Wade, and then finally got around to reading "the greatest show on earth". His coverage of dog and vegetable breeding were rather striking examples of relative, over-night evolution.

So, we can now link mutations in the genome to specific points in human history, and these points map rather strongly to both social constructions of race and to very salient differences in how people of different races "look" different. The next step is to see what does and does not co-vary with these markers.

What evidence would you find compelling in order for one to conclude that, say, black, white, asian is a genetically / scientifically valid distinction?

There seems to be a nexus of traits that co-vary across races. That the traits clump together makes sorting on them non arbitrary (this is how I'd counter your "why not sort on hair color" argument).

Your color comments above illustrate only that if race exists, it's fuzzy and defined by statistics. What's wrong with that?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I think there's a large humanitarian reason to look here. Human well-being varies strongly across at least social constructions of race. Massive social interventions aimed at fixing the differences simply haven't worked.

Knowledge gleaned from understanding the genetics of race have potential to do lots of good. I'm not at all talking about eugenics. Perhaps studying this area reveal some missing protein or nutrient-- some relatively simple fix-- that reduces disease, increases potential, decreases suffering.

Plus, I never bought the argument that discovering new knowledge must have some applied goal or use, otherwise it's not worth discovering.

Are you under the misimpression we can't or aren't studying the genetic basis of disease because race is no longer a valid biological construct? If so, you couldn't be further from the truth there. The majority of current medical research is based on genetic studies.

As for the social/humanitarian thing, social/cultural/ethnic divisions are much more productive avenues of research/approaches than 'race' per se.

Anthropology can study migration waves discovering much more specific history of humans than the archaic race definitions previously allowed. It's more accurate to speak of genetic markers than 'race'. Take, for example, recent discoveries about how the Americas were populated. You can look at Native Americans and hypothesize they are of Asian descent. Should we call them Asian? It's not nearly as useful as detecting genetic markers and mapping out the 3 waves they arrived in. And the evidence some Polynesians landed on the S Am continent tells us a lot more about where the Olmecs might have come from than wondering why they have negroid facial features.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Again, I lack expertise here, but I wonder if many vastly under-estimate how long evolution really takes?

From this PBS educational link:

1. How long does evolution take?

Even though evolution is taking place all around us, for many species the process operates so slowly that it is not observable except over thousands or hundreds of thousands of years -- much too long to witness in a human lifetime. There are cases in quickly reproducing life forms like bacteria and fruit flies, however, where evolution can be seen happening in a matter of weeks for the bacteria and many months for the flies. In these cases the relatively large number of generations in a given period of time is key, since evolutionary change occurs incrementally from one generation to the next. All else being equal, the more generations you have, the more quickly evolution happens.

We have a relatively very long generational period. I think you are misunderstanding something in Wade.

I was struck by this after reading Wade, and then finally got around to reading "the greatest show on earth". His coverage of dog and vegetable breeding were rather striking examples of relative, over-night evolution.

A dog takes one year to go from birth to being able to give birth. They have multiple offspring in their litters. People very specifically directed their evolution.

So, we can now link mutations in the genome to specific points in human history, and these points map rather strongly to both social constructions of race and to very salient differences in how people of different races "look" different. The next step is to see what does and does not co-vary with these markers.

Skin color develops due to latitude. We know that. It's not a racial division UNLESS you isolate the populations.

What evidence would you find compelling in order for one to conclude that, say, black, white, asian is a genetically / scientifically valid distinction?

Isolation with NO MIXING!!!!!

There seems to be a nexus of traits that co-vary across races. That the traits clump together makes sorting on them non arbitrary (this is how I'd counter your "why not sort on hair color" argument).

Your color comments above illustrate only that if race exists, it's fuzzy and defined by statistics. What's wrong with that?

I can see you are having a hard time telling yourself your eyes do not see what you can see they see.

Confirmation bias is preventing you from seeing what geneticists see inside the colored boxes.

Try this one: If you have a continuum, where are the divisions? Just because one side of the continuum looks very different from the other side, does that mean you have divisions?

 

[Wuglife]

I have never seen a convincing argument against the existence of races in the human species that is logically consistent with the idea that there are races in other species.

I don't understand how the lack of existence of races in the human species could be reconciled with the existence of races in honey bees or orcas, for example.

 

[bpesta22]

From this PBS educational link:We have a relatively very long generational period. I think you are misunderstanding something in Wade.

A dog takes one year to go from birth to being able to give birth. They have multiple offspring in their litters. People very specifically directed their evolution.

Agreed, and that all took place in about 1000 years? We have 50,000 years (?) for humans coming out of Africa. When Dawkins discussed the dog and plant breeding, he mentioned that natural selection can do the same, just as fast, and then gave examples).

Certainly there was enough time to evolve skin and bone deep differences across the races. That can't be denied. Add in things like lactose intolerance and malaria resistance, differences in disease prevalence across groups, then perhaps race carries enough genetic baggage to predict and explain other outcome differences?

Skin color develops due to latitude. We know that. It's not a racial division UNLESS you isolate the populations.


Isolation with NO MIXING!!!!!

Could you possibly mean white skin evolved because it gave a survival advantage to humans who migrated from hot to cold areas?

We can't seem to reach agreement on the mixing point. Would you agree we can scale people on how African they are (ranging from greater than zero to 100%). The 100% would likely come from people whose ancestors all never left Africa?

Mixing later would produce less people at 100% but would not invalidate the scale?

I can see you are having a hard time telling yourself your eyes do not see what you can see they see.

Confirmation bias is preventing you from seeing what geneticists see inside the colored boxes.

Could be confirmation bias on my part, but could it also be you not accepting the validity of a classification unless it's discrete?

There is no point, perhaps, on a % African scale where we say, eureka, you are black. So what (in terms of the scale having scientific validity).

Try this one: If you have a continuum, where are the divisions? Just because one side of the continuum looks very different from the other side, does that mean you have divisions?

Percentiles would be the divisions on a scale that measured % African.

 

[Zelenius]

I have never seen a convincing argument against the existence of races in the human species that is logically consistent with the idea that there are races in other species.

I don't understand how the lack of existence of races in the human species could be reconciled with the existence of races in honey bees or orcas, for example.

I've never seen any convincing arguments either. Interestingly enough, the arguments I see tend to be getting more ridiculous. I do see endless use of strawmen, and continuum fallacy, against any notion of race, and ignoring posts that contain information about forensic anthropology and DNA testing accurately revealing people's racial ancestry.

Note how my posts containing this information(and informative posts by Delvo) plus some commentary by Steven Pinker, an essay about race by Neven Sesardić, and Cavalli-Sforza's use of "human population" as a substitute for "race", go unchallenged.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Someone brought up dogs, which is a bit of an odd thing. With the different breeds the history usually goes that a group had some work that they pressured the dogs to specialise in, and then later on we looked at those dogs and decided they were Breed A. But there were also purposefully created breeds. And it is fuzzier than one might think. The breeds are pretty much what a group of old guys got together and wrote down. And then we go by parentage. And the features of the same breed with the same standard have changed over time because us humans changed our interpretation. And dog breeds go from quite inbred to severely inbred.

Anyway, an interesting case was the Dalmatian with a fixed uric acid gene. A lot of breeders said she wasn't a REAL Dalmatian, because so many steps back in her lineage was a non-Dalmatian who gave the correcting gene. And those breeding "worker" dogs often conform more to the original view, which breeders today will say doesn't fit the standard and they aren't TRUE what have you.

Not sure what my point is, but I always find that topic interesting .

 

[bpesta22]

I've used handedness as a counter-example before.

It's not all or none. Some people can't do anything unless it's with their dominant hand; others are ambidextrous.

Are the no left-handed people, then?

Where on the continuum specifically does one turn from right to left handed? I'd say nowhere, and yet handedness is a useful classification scheme.

 

[bpesta22]

Someone brought up dogs, which is a bit of an odd thing. With the different breeds the history usually goes that a group had some work that they pressured the dogs to specialise in, and then later on we looked at those dogs and decided they were Breed A. But there were also purposefully created breeds. And it is fuzzier than one might think. The breeds are pretty much what a group of old guys got together and wrote down. And then we go by parentage. And the features of the same breed with the same standard have changed over time because us humans changed our interpretation. And dog breeds go from quite inbred to severely inbred.

I thought this too, until I read the "greatest show". Unless I mis-read it, Dawkin's point was that natural selection does the same thing. Surviving in cold versus tropical environments is no different than old dudes selecting dogs for floppy ears. Am I misinterpreting ?!

 

[Zelenius]

Why not argue against "regions"? They are probably even fuzzier than "race". How many regions do I live in? Think of how many you live in. It depends on who you ask. Geologists may answer the question differently from zoologists. This doesn't make the word "region" scientifically useless. I live in eastern North America in the north-east U.S. Scientists may use the word "region"(or "bio-region" in particular) with more precision than laypersons, but there is still a lot of overlap.

How many "regions" are there in the world? How small can a region be? How large?

Age exists on a continuum like the handedness continuum Bpesta just mentioned. When does old age begin? 60? 70? It's impossible to say when exactly, and some people age faster than others. This doesn't make age biologically meaningless. Age is still important to scientists and doctors.

This is why I think this entire discussion is inherently ridiculous and ultimately over semantics.

 

[lomiller]

I think there's a large humanitarian reason to look here. Human well-being varies strongly across at least social constructions of race. Massive social interventions aimed at fixing the differences simply haven't worked.

There are good reasons to consider race as a cultural/social construct, and indeed this is how anthropologists generally treat it.

Where people get themselves into trouble confusing it with a biological classification. I can assure you there is no evidence for any biological/genetic cause for the disparity of human well-being in different parts of the world.

 

[bpesta22]

I can assure you there is no evidence for any biological/genetic cause for the disparity of human well-being in different parts of the world.

https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/haprinderm.pdf

 

[lomiller]

I have never seen a convincing argument against the existence of races in the human species that is logically consistent with the idea that there are races in other species.

I don't understand how the lack of existence of races in the human species could be reconciled with the existence of races in honey bees or orcas, for example.

Would you care to give some examples of races in other species? (Race is not a biological categorization)

 

[AlBell]

I've never encountered a person who doesn't believe in "race". They just use different words for describing essentially the same thing. I've read a lot of Cavalli-Sforza, and it is obvious to me that his work often focuses on "race", but he's smart enough not to call it that. I often chuckle when I read things like "Cavalli-Sforza's work challenges the assumption that there are significant genetic differences between human races, and indeed, the idea that 'race' has any useful biological meaning at all". It's hilarious because if you actually bother to read his works, he doesn't challenge "race", he simply renames it.

I really don't care what anyone calls it any more, it's just semantics.

My google-fu failed; what different 'human populations' did he recognize?

The usual 4 or 5?