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Race is a human/social construct.

RandFan

Mormon Atheist
RandFan
Joined
Dec 18, 2001
Messages
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This post is in response to a PM that questioned if I still held to the notion that race is largely a human construct with little basis in fact to justify dividing people by race.

I've posted the thread here, in the social issues forum, because race is simply, by and large, a social issue. Scientific consensus: While there are some identifiable traits like color of skin, eyes and other phenotypes these simply do not justify classifications of race beyond the superficial. Had humans remained isolated in groups there might be an argument for race stronger than there is now. However, the fact is that we have shuffled our genetic decks so much since humans began exploring, conquering and mixing with the rest of world that the idea is beyond any redemption (And I'm happy to have that argument also, humans were not particularly distinct before exploration).

But I will leave it at that for the moment and invite arguments to rebut the idea that race is anything more than human based classifications for the purpose of anthropological understanding of genetics/health/populations or plain old garden variety racism.

Now, please, I'm not poisoning the well here. If you disagree with me it does not make you a racist. However, you are going to have to make some compelling arguments in favor of race that isn't simply bigotry, bias or prejudice.

So, your mission, race realists, if you are going to rebut the proposition please provide a definition for race and stick to logically valid argument and premises that you can justify through source.

Good luck.

:)
 
Almost forgot the impetus for the thread. I said:

"There is no statistical genetic difference between humans based on class, race, etc"
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That should read "There is no statistically significant genetic difference between humans based on class, race, etc."

I'm sorry if it is moving the goal posts but the questioner proposed that perhaps my statement was poorly worded and perhaps it was. In any event I stand by the former but I am much more confident that I can defend the later.
 
Human traits fall on a spectrum, so if you select a series of traits (say, five) and call them a race, what do you do with those who have all of those traits except one assigned to another race? One with two, three? Many of the external differences identified as racial characteristics will still get scrambled with recombination, meaning that two parents firmly inside one race will have a child who mixes those traits with that of another race. I suppose race can be used as a general identifier, but as a system it breaks down when specifics are applied.
 
It's a fascinating subject.

And it does seem to me that a person, for example, like Obama, can genuinely and legitimately have some leeway in adopting a particular racial identity for themselves.

Another example would be some of the offspring in my own family. Who on any particular day, and depending upon where in the world they happen to be, may think of themselves, and be thought of by others, as being one or another of the colours of the rainbow.

p.s. Randfan, you speak of a PM. But is there another thread somewhere on this forum where this topic was discussed in public?
 
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lane99 said:
It's a fascinating subject.

And it does seem to me that a person, for example, like Obama, can genuinely and legitimately have some leeway in adopting a particular racial identity for themselves.

Another example would be some of the offspring in my own family. Who on any particular day, and depending upon where in the world they happen to be, may think of themselves, and be thought of by others, as being one or another of the colours of the rainbow.

p.s. Randfan, you speak of a PM. But is there another thread somewhere on this forum where this topic was discussed in public?
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Yes, at least one (probably a half dozen at least. The quote above is from one of those threads. If you want to read it you will have to look for it unless the individual who sent me the PM volunteers the link. :)
 
RandFan said:
"There is no statistically significant genetic difference between humans based on class, race, etc."
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The genetic differences are a fact:
- the colour of skin gene(s)
- the hair colour and type gene(s)
- ehh, maybe something else too

Which word is best for describing the fact, iduncare. Some people use it as a pretext for thinking evil of some people. Their problem, and without one pretext they would probably invent some other.
 
****! I just accidentally deleted all that hard typed text. I'm not redoing. But to sum up what I was saying. Race is a poor and inaccurate description of a group of people unless the group itself is a nearly homogenous admixture of people. Once racial mixing (such as in blacks in the Americas) becomes the societal norm, the concept of race begins to break down. If one is to argue that Turks are anything more than (geographically) Asian, then it is a sad miscalculation on that person’s part. Turks are a complex mix of people from the Balkans, west Asian, central Asia, North Africa, and people from the Arabian and Iranian peninsulas. Genetically Turks have more in common with people in the Balkans than they do with people in the Arab peninsula. Blacks in the Americas often have more genetically in common with persons from Western Europe than they do with people from Western Africa.

Therefore, heterogeneous groups can never be considered a race. By default they can only logically be considered an ethnic group, or simply a people with the same language, customs, and cultural epithets. The same goes for Latino, there is no such “race” as Latino. They are only an ethnic group because again, they share the same language, customs, and culture. Even in black culture there are clear but not well known distinctions between blacks in the Americas and blacks in Africa. Blacks in the Americas are typically called “brown blacks”, while blacks from Africa are called “blue blacks” because their skin is often shades darker than our own. People in the middle like myself usually affirm with brown blacks more than blue blacks.

The genetic differences are a fact:
- the colour of skin gene(s)
- the hair colour and type gene(s)
- ehh, maybe something else too

Which word is best for describing the fact, iduncare. Some people use it as a pretext for thinking evil of some people. Their problem, and without one pretext they would probably invent some other.
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This concept completely breaks down when people begin to mix and become diverse. Which in most global cases, it is much more accurate to describe themselves as an ethnic group rather than a "race".
 
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RandFan said:
This post is in response to a PM that questioned if I still held to the notion that race is largely a human construct with little basis in fact to justify dividing people by race.
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I was under the impression that genetic testing could determine a person's ancestry, particularly whether they have Asiatic, African, Caucasian, Hispanic, and multiple lineages. Is this true? If so, isn't this equivalent to saying race is a genetic trait or traits?
 
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L.Y.S. said:
This concept complex breaks down when people begin to mix and become diverse. Which in most global cases, it is much more accurate to describe themselves as an ethnic group rather than a "race".
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I had just started to think about a better term than "race" to describe a particular group of physical characteristics common to people in a certain area of the globe, and L.Y.S posts this. I can let my brain go back to sleep now. Thanks, L.Y.S.
 
Dessi said:
I was under the impression that genetic testing could determine a person's ancestry, particularly whether they have Asiatic, African, Caucasian, Hispanic, and multiple lineages. Is this true? If so, isn't this equivalent to saying race is a genetic trait or traits?
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On a long enough time-scale, every human is of African ancestry. Check out the video I posted, it deals with this issue. :)
 
I agree with the OP, but while on the topic of genetics, would simply add that there are some interesting, yet non-racial (ie not tied to appearance), medically meaningful genetic subcategorizations of the human race. Apparently, many of us have inherited stronger immune systems from the Neanderthals, and perhaps as well from the recently discovered Denisovans.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with racism as discussed in the OP, and hopefully never will, although I wouldn't put it past a nut case or two to make the attempt.
 
Steve said:
I had just started to think about a better term than "race" to describe a particular group of physical characteristics common to people in a certain area of the globe, and L.Y.S posts this. I can let my brain go back to sleep now. Thanks, L.Y.S.
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And actually, if we really look at the concept of race it is a recent social construct. Born out of chattel slavery as a distinctive marker between slave owners and their slaves. Most slaves pre-1500 were almost exclusively from Eastern Europe. But Slavs proved to be unreliable slaves and they often killed their masters. Western Europeans were looking for very stable supplies of slaves. Once they found the gold mine in Africa, they were able to find the stable labor they needed in order to colonize the Americas. It was really the founding of the Americas that brought about the modern concept of race. Before that, most humans only prescribed themselves to an ethnic group. I.E. I am Spanish, or I am Portuguese. Not I am white, or I am black. All of this is a recent invention.

This is partially why I chuckled when blacks and Arabs wage verbal wars against one another about the race of the Egyptians. It is almost certain that Egypt was a racially diverse group of people with blacks, whites, and Arabs all equally ranked in the society. There were almost certainly black pharaohs, white pharaohs, and pharaohs of Middle Eastern descent. Race was almost worthless in ancient Egypt. And it is almost certain that ancient Egyptians were racially blind. They viewed skin color with nothing more contempt. The same could be said about Romans, Persians, and even the Ancient Chinese (to an extent). The funny thing is there are almost certainly people in the Middle East and North Africa with recent black ancestry. There was a time during the Mali Empire where blacks where Sudanic blacks were the foremost dominate group in the entire Muslim world. Not to mention the many pilgrimages of black kings to the Middle East. To suggest that these people did not have sex with or sleep with Arab women or that none of them took Arab wives is damn near foolish.

Race is almost certainly worthless.
 
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Hlafordlaes said:
I agree with the OP, but while on the topic of genetics, would simply add that there are some interesting, yet non-racial (ie not tied to appearance), medically meaningful genetic subcategorizations of the human race. Apparently, many of us have inherited stronger immune systems from the Neanderthals, and perhaps as well from the recently discovered Denisovans.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with racism as discussed in the OP, and hopefully never will, although I wouldn't put it past a nut case or two to make the attempt.
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It is discussed in the video Tony posted though.
 
Exactly, human populations have rarely been static. Those that are tend to be very small isolated groups. The broadest wide scale genetic isolation existed between the Western and Eastern Hemisphere for appproximately 10,000 years (there may have been some migrations I am overlooking of course) and that maps very poorly with the current social concept of race.

As the video says there is some overlap between Haplogroup lineages and races, but it shows that races is more a social construct based on rather cosmetic differences rather than the more meaningful differences that do exist.
 
Tony said:
On a long enough time-scale, every human is of African ancestry. Check out the video I posted, it deals with this issue. :)
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Very informative video :)

Follow up question: if race is a social construct, wouldn't that imply that the differences between races are culturally relative, vary by place and time, in the same way that beauty in gender roles culturally relative?
 
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Dessi said:
Very informative video :)

Follow up question: if race is a social construct, wouldn't that imply that the differences between races are culturally relative, vary by place and time, in the same way that beauty in gender roles culturally relative?
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To a large extent, yes. Of course there are superficial phenotypes that very between populations that are not culturally relative. Thing is, even though we can generalize there are few if any groups that are so cut off from the rest of the world that some if not many of the individuals in the population share alleles for phenotypes outside of their group.

Phenotype was never a good argument and now it is an irrelevant one.
 
Humans are all one species. We can interbreed freely. We are all one variety; We have fewer dissimilarities than many species in which only one variety is recognized. All that separates people from different parts of the world are groups of particular genes that have higher distributions in some places than others, but which are never found only in one group of similar appearance.
 
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