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High school biotech class challenges ideas about race

That's cool!

Considering that the "African Eve" existed about 125 000 years ago (as identified by similar analysis of mitochondrial DNA passed solely through the mother), this gives the Multi Regional Evolutionists a bit of ammunition against the Out Of Africa camp (two differing theories on where modern Homo Sapiens developed)

I find this stuff facinating, and can't wait to see what else is discovered as Anthropology advances!
 
Interesting article. But I dont understand this:


"It's kind of mind-blowing," said Alan Goodman, president-elect of the American Anthropological Association, who likens the discovery to "what it must have been like to understand that the world isn't flat. The majority of individuals, if you asked them if race is based on biology, they would say yes."
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If a person's blackness or whiteness isn't based on biology, what is it based on?
 
Tony said:

If a person's blackness or whiteness isn't based on biology, what is it based on?
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You have just redefined the argument.

Perhaps "race" is not just about "blackness or whiteness"?

When I took human anthro in college, we learned that human characteristics were better described by clines instead of races.
 
Tony, the trend now is to think of race as a more-or-less meaningless term, because the differences between people of supposedly different races are no greater than the differences between people of the same race. And as time goes by and we all interbreed more freely, the trend continues in that direction.

That said, there are certainly clusters of genetic traits that certain groups of people share. But those traits aren't of greater significance than other traits, they are simply clustered. Even those traits are getting all intertwingled as time goes on.

A good example is Tay-Sachs disease. Originally considered a disease of Eskanazi Jews, significant clusters of other people with the disease have been found by Genzyme, the pharmaceutical company that sells a drug for the disease. The biggest nonEuropean cluster? In Japan.

~~ Paul
 
Well, so you can base race on diseases, or eye color, or skin color, or regions, or etc.

But basically it's pointless to do so.

Genetically we are so similar it doesn't matter. It was funny how the students found out they were more closely related to people that they figured were different races than to their own.
 
Modern humans vary by only 0.2 percent of their genetic material, and none of those variations corresponds with definitions of race.
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If skin color is in our genes, and skin color is 'a definition of race', how come 'none of those variations correspond with definition of race'?
:confused:
 
Bjorn said:
If skin color is in our genes, and skin color is 'a definition of race', how come 'none of those variations correspond with definition of race'?
:confused:
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Dunno, maybe what they're saying is that the degree of genetic difference between two people who are judged superficially to be of the same race (same colouring, overall facial form, cultural background) can be greater that that between people who are not "of the same race".

Or maybe what they're saying is that one's racial background is determined these days by primarily cultural means. I may be "racially" British because I'm white (although I suspect that I may be of Scottish descent on the grounds that I'm actually very pale blue) but I'm actually from an initial gene pool which is Chinese, Sub-continental or African in origin.

Of course I'm sure that almost all of us are some kind of mixture of "races" but please remember that "The English, the English, the English are best - so hoorah for the English and boo to the rest"
 
Bjorn said:
If skin color is in our genes, and skin color is 'a definition of race', how come 'none of those variations correspond with definition of race'?
:confused:
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How about if one looks at "race" similar to how one looks at "family"?

You look similar to other members of your family. You have similar builds, colouring, features, etc. because you all share similar genetic code. Does that mean your family is a race? I don't think so.

In my opinion, "race" is just another and broader form of family. There are genetic differences, but they're not really that big.
 
Bjorn said:
If skin color is in our genes, and skin color is 'a definition of race', how come 'none of those variations correspond with definition of race'?
:confused:
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At the end of the day, the differences in the due to the 'differences of race' are just too small. You've got genetic variations for a whole bunch of things. Height, build, structure of the eye [farsightedness, nearsightedness], range of hearing, whether your earlobes are attatched or not, brain chemistry, and more. Much more, variations for things like your lungs and your heart and your nervous system. So many things, that we don't see or notice but can vary.

Take a stock analogy. Take ten or a hundred different portfolios of a few million dollars, and then give them each a single share of a penny-stock. Does it really make sense to classify the differences in those portfolios by which penny-stock they have? Or is more logical to classify them by the differences in their weightier stocks, whether or not they have a million dollars invested in IBM?

Things like skin and eye and hair color, while quite noticible, are penny-stocks in the genetic code. Just not significant.
 
Hexxenhammer said:
It's a cultural construct with no basis in biology.
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How can it have no basis in biology when those tribal bonds are based on biological traits? It almost seems like some people are trying to re-define the meaning of "race" to "culture".
 
Tony said:


How can it have no basis in biology when those tribal bonds are based on biological traits? It almost seems like some people are trying to re-define the meaning of "race" to "culture".
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Or are they trying to remove the term "race" from the language because it's no longer a useful term. In racial terms is someone born of a "racially pure" white person and a "racially pure" black person black, white or coloured ?

To most white people they would be considered black. To some black people they would be considered white and to their parents they would (I hope) be considered their lovely lovely child.

Tony, how black does a person need to be to be considered black ? Can you absolutely tell the difference between someone who is 1/16 black and someone who is white ?

That's why chosing to discriminate on the basis of culture is less unfair. Stereotypes of culture are, very occasionally, correct and so making judgements based upon them may be right from time to time. For example "White trash" are often bigotted against people unlike themselves. You know, blacks, asians, Jews, the educated and worst of all LIBERALS (horrible backsliding white people who betray the white race by associating with people from other races).
 
The Don said:


Or are they trying to remove the term "race" from the language because it's no longer a useful term.
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Hey, I’m all for that. But I think it's silly to use a different definition of the word "race" to achieve those goals. "Race", as I've heard it defined in the context of school and politics refers to someone's blackness of whiteness.

In racial terms is someone born of a "racially pure" white person and a "racially pure" black person black, white or coloured ?
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Good question, I dont know.

Tony, how black does a person need to be to be considered black ?
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I don’t know, but I've seen albino black people still referred to as "black". So, in some instances the "black" and "white" labels are more about skin color.

I agree that "race" in the sense of divisiveness and "us" verses them" is largely an illusion based on superficial characteristics.
 
Tony said:


How can it have no basis in biology when those tribal bonds are based on biological traits? It almost seems like some people are trying to re-define the meaning of "race" to "culture".
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Here's an example of what I was trying to say. In some Amazonian tribe (can't remember the name) the name of their tribe is the same word they use for "person". So to them any other tribe is "not people". Genetically the other tribes around them would all be very, very similar. But they based their idea of "race" on language, hair style, dress, body jewelry (earlobe plugs, lip disks and such). Now stretch that reasoning to the US. What are the superficial characteristics to base "us" and "them" on when everyone speaks the same language (mostly) and dresses the same? Skin color seems like a good way to superficially divide people. So that's what culture did.
 
Tony said:


How can it have no basis in biology when those tribal bonds are based on biological traits? It almost seems like some people are trying to re-define the meaning of "race" to "culture".
Click to expand...

Actually, I think the problem they are having is coming up with a genetically meaningful definition of race in the first place.
 
Badger said:
In my opinion, "race" is just another and broader form of family. There are genetic differences, but they're not really that big.
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Well, that's your opinion, but I think a more common definition of race is along these lines from my closest dictionary: "any one of the groups into which the world's population can be divided on the basis of physical characteristics such as skin or hair color".

My original post was based on this quote from the article:

Modern humans vary by only 0.2 percent of their genetic material, and none of those variations corresponds with definitions of race.

For that to be true, race must be defined in a way that avoids skin color. That's beyond my PCness. :p
 
This I thought was interesting:

But one need only look around the hallways of any California high school to wonder if some primordial force is at work. Like elsewhere, students segregate at Piedmont Hills, a school that draws from middle-class neighborhoods at the base of San Jose's eastern foothills.

The campus' ethnic makeup has changed dramatically in the last decade, from predominantly white to 56 percent Asian, 19 percent Latino, 19 percent white, and 5 percent African-American.

Beth hangs out mostly with white kids, though she doesn't know why. Calvin Wei, a student of Chinese heritage who discovered he shares a common ancestor with Beth, has mostly Asian friends.

"It's not that we choose to hang out specifically with Asians; it's just that we grew up together," said Juan Palma, who is of Filipino heritage.
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What's interesting about this goes back to something I heard J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5, say about his experience with that show. Before the actors got into makeup, they all mingled together in a pretty mixed-up fashion. But once the makeup was on, the Narns sat with other Narns, the Centauri sat with other Centauri, etc., even when they weren't working on scenes with each other. They just subconsciously went with the group that looked like them, even though it was only due to makeup and not genetics.

I think this has more to do with our lizard-brains than our genes.
 
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