Race is a human/social construct.

[Pup]

A Dalmatian and a German Shepard are two subspecies of dogs. We keep them artificially segregated. Put a bunch of bred dogs together for a few generations and the subspecies begin to revert back to a single species of mutt. Or, put a number of different mixes into isolated but different environments and you'll get subspecies of mutts out of each group.

That's almost exactly what I said, only using breeds of cattle rather than dogs. Or one could use people. The isolation could be cultural and geographic rather than due to AKC regulations, but the result is the same.

We're all mutts.

Define "mutt."

Before easy transportation and artificial insemination, one way that new "purebred cattle" would be introduced into some local area of America from overseas, was to bring in just a handful of cattle, maybe even just a couple of bulls, and breed them with the native cattle (the local "mutts") that best matched the type wanted, say good milkers, if the goal was a better milk cow.

The offspring that most closely matched the bull's breed were bred to related but hopefully not-too-closely related cattle, maybe by the other bull. Then the best first cousins were bred, and after several generations, people called it good enough, and declared they now had purebred cattle, because their cattle looked, bred and performed similarly to the original imported bulls. But of course, by other definitions, they were mutts.

Go back far enough, every breed is a mutt. All dogs are wolves. But that doesn't mean that Great Danes and Fox Terriers don't exist. And it doesn't mean that black people and white people don't exist, even if they're well on their way to becoming a new race where they intermarry. Or, thousands of years ago, even if they had just barely transitioned into what we'd recognize as black and white from their previous races.

I think we're running head-on into the fallacy of the heap, with all the usual arguments that brings.

 

[Kahalachan]

Just about everything is a human or social construct. Saying race is, doesn't mean much. Base 10 mathematics is a construct. For no good reason, we are doing math in base 10. Grouping by domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, is also a construct. And so on. It's just a form of categorization and grouping that helps us.

Race is helpful as a description. If I say "black guy at work" one conjures up images of someone with darker skin, rougher hair, wider nose, larger lips, and so on. Just as if I say "British guy at work" we have mental images of mannerisms and various ways of speaking.

However, nationality is helpful in terms of politics. So referring to someone by their nation of origin does have legal significance.

Referring to someone by their continent of origin x-many years ago, would have some anthropological significance or be an issue of ancestral interest.


But usually this is asked in terms of biological significance, and unless biologists come out and feel like adding race as a sub species of humans, then I see it being of little value in any biological sense.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

That's almost exactly what I said, only using breeds of cattle rather than dogs. Or one could use people. The isolation could be cultural and geographic rather than due to AKC regulations, but the result is the same.

People aren't isolated. They have not been isolated long enough to divide into subspecies.

I think we're running head-on into the fallacy of the heap, with all the usual arguments that brings.

From my perspective the problem isn't that fallacy, it's the problem people have dropping old concepts when the evidence supports new ones.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I think the most obvious evidence of social construction is the treatment of "mixed" versus "one-drop" (versus "so mixed there isn't much of a starting point").

But like I said in another thread, just because there are social constructs does not mean there is nothing there.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'd classify them as mixed race.

Which essentially says the division of race is no longer useful. Ethnic groups, family lineage are both useful groups. A black African is different from a black Australian Aboriginal. They look similar, are the two the same race? A person of African descent doesn't look like a person of Mediterranean descent. If I'm seeing a patient and I care about Sickle Cell Disease or GP6D, two genetically inherited diseases with different prevalence by so called 'race', prevalence doesn't match up. Instead familial groups are much more useful to determine who I should screen or consider on the differential for these genetic problems. Each results from the interaction of malaria in the population, but the pattern still differs with one being more prevalent in Central America as well as Africa while the other spread further across Asia.


Sickle Cell Trait Prevalence

Sickle cell trait prevalence is highest in West Africa (25% of the population). It also has a high prevalence in South and Central Americans, especially those in Panama. However, it also very infrequently appears in Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Greece, and Spain, where it most likely expanded via the selective pressure of malaria, a disease that was endemic to the region.[1] It has been described in Indians, Middle Easterners (such as Arabs and Iranians), Native American peoples, North Africans, and Turks.

GP6D Epidemiology

G6PDH is the most common human enzyme defect, being present in more than 400 million people worldwide.[10] African, Middle Eastern and South Asian people are affected the most along with those who are mixed with any of the above.[11] A side effect of this disease is that it confers protection against malaria,[12] in particular the form of malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly form of malaria. A similar relationship exists between malaria and sickle-cell disease. One theory to explain this, is that cells infected with the Plasmodium parasite are cleared more rapidly by the spleen. This phenomenon might give G6PDH deficiency carriers an evolutionary advantage by increasing their fitness in malarial endemic environments.

It's not race that matters here. It's your familial heritage.

Race doesn't matter if one is from Africa. Which country or culture you're from matters. Social cultural divisions are very important. Familial heritage is important. Whether you are a black from the poor area of Detroit or one from parents that went to Harvard matters. Being black is not the thing that matters, except in terms of how people treat those same two blacks.

And when you go the biological route, genetics just doesn't support subspecies divisions. It supports family heritage, a very much mixed genetic line for all of us. Everyone is of mixed race. That's the point!

Those who stayed in Africa versus those who left-- and then faced different selection pressures?

Yes, but evolution in humans is too slow for subspecies to have developed before we started mixing our genes again. As humans evolved dark skin, or light skin depending on the latitude the lineage is from, they started to become sub-speciated. But they didn't. Because humans began mixing almost as soon as they separated.

I'll leave it up to taxonomists to decide whether there's three or four races and then map the hierarchy down from there.

While this is one of those sciences where divisions are not always clean, I'm pretty sure the trend in genetics is no subspecies divisions in humans. Familial lineages, yes, racial subgroups, only to the extent one's lineage is tied to a continent when the sub-speciation started.

I admit outward appearance is a crude and indirect proxy for the genetics of race, but the former and later are highly correlated (the magnitude of the correlation dictates exactly how valid appearance is for classifying race).

The more we remix, the less the current population will cluster into traditional / now-existing race groups. So what (I don't see how this invalidates the past or present states in terms of categorizing people)?

Just because you can find the genetic mutation for albinism doesn't make albinism a race. Just because you can find the group of genetic markers that result in brown eyes, does not mean that genetic group is a racial division.

No one has addressed my question. Why skin color and why not blood groups?


Further reading - links from the Tree of Life Web Project:

Race, Genes & Anthropology

One of the most astonishing features of the contemporary discussion of race is the fact that anthropology, the science that deals with human biological and cultural variation, has managed to be marginalized.(1)
Regardless of reason, it is clear that there is no consensus and great confusion exists in the discipline [biological anthropology] with regards to race.(2)

The biological concept of race . . . has no basis in science.
Dr. Harold Freeman, Celera Genomics Corp., quoted in the SJ Mercury, "Race not seen as factor in variation of genetic code," Feb. 20, 2001, G1.

This is very revealing:
DNA Studies Challenge the Meaning of Race

According to geneticists and anthropologists, genetic diversity appears to fall along a continuum, with no clear breaks delineating different groups. But, ironically, researchers studying genetic diversity are being stymied by the intense sensitivity surrounding the topic. A major international project to survey genetic diversity around the globe has been opposed by activists, and a planned database of genetic polymorphisms is being constructed so as to prevent comparisons between population groups, making it useless for exploring the gene frequency variations that do exist, according to researchers.

IMO, this is so typical of major scientific paradigm shifts: people resist but the evidence will always prevail eventually.

 

[Puppycow]

Also, differences between two seperate species of gorillas (G. berengi and G. Gorilla) are on the order of six times less than between african Bantu people and anglo-saxon british (drafted from here and here).

Are these separate species of gorilla capable of interbreeding?

 

[bpesta22]

People aren't isolated. They have not been isolated long enough to divide into subspecies.

From my perspective the problem isn't that fallacy, it's the problem people have dropping old concepts when the evidence supports new ones.

From both the book I referenced and from Dawkin's greatest show on earth, I think I disagree. Both sources show that significant evolution can occur across very small time scales.

 

[bpesta22]

Evolution is not too slow to produce salient changes among animals in a species (skin color; facial characteristics; bones; all have evolved in relative short time). Really, would be interested in you reading just Wade's chapter on race, to see if you can debunk it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

From both the book I referenced and from Dawkin's greatest show on earth, I think I disagree. Both sources show that significant evolution can occur across very small time scales.

Yeah, a person can develop 6 toes or 6 fingers. An albino can evolve. None of that changes the fact there are not distinct human sub-species.

Answer my question. Why skin color, why not blood type?

 

[mike3]

It was, and is, a situation I had not previously been aware of at all since I had assumed their mixed racial ancestry would not make them less viable for parent-to-child donation. In a very real yet saddening way though, it does put Gould/Kamin/Lewontin's "race is just a social construct"-meme into further questioning.

So does this mean that it is a better idea only to marry and reproduce within one's own race?

 

[mike3]

There is a lot less in some, but not in others. However, I was talking about what it would take for the existence of subspecies/breeds/varieties/races/whatever to be universally admitted and not argued. And based on the complete lack of argument about it in those cases with less variation than between human races, it certainly seems that that wouldn't have been a problem for any of the rest. Just for humans.

However, you said "True, for most other species, a whole lot less will do. " -- seeming to suggest that the differences between "races" in most other species is a lot smaller than that in humans. Or did I get this wrong, and you're just referring to how low the bar is set with regards to other species, and how high it is set with regards to humans?

 

[ponderingturtle]

I don't rightly agree or perhaps even understand the above. Why is race not a notably biological reality, in light of the more notable groups that consistently are categorized as the genetic marker hubs being main biogeographical groups of ancestry/heritage? It still just appears to me as if the rejection of 'race' is on a semantic level, about the fine convention of it and not about the empirically observed groupings/dna-hubs that in turn branch out to which there are shades/spectrums (as with all animals more or less, like I noted on earlier).

The thing is race is a social construct, there was a report on the genetic underpinnings of race where the authors mother was surprised to learn that genetically she was not black, despite growing up thinking she was and everyone around her thinking she was.

So by social race she was black but not genetically.

 

[ponderingturtle]

People aren't isolated. They have not been isolated long enough to divide into subspecies..

You say that like there are clear non subjective definitions of species and subspecies.

 

[Zelenius]

Well that's just not true unless you are claiming you haven't encountered me. If you want to call a few inherited traits race, then you might as well call a family a unique race. Why not blondes and brunettes being different races? How about making blood groups different races?

When you use the term, race, for a few centuries or more to indicate different blood lines, and you find out now that definition is seriously problematic then it is not a semantics argument, it is a problem in definitions.

Define 'race' and see what you come up with.

I have encountered you before, but for reasons I'll leave unsaid, you don't count. I'll go with Jono's definition of race: "Basic hereditary breeds within a species whose geographical, genetic as well as historical isolations can account for their genetic distances inbetween each other. In a much simpler, conventional way, we do the same with dog breeds et al. As Templeton wrote in 'Human races: a genetic and evolutionary perspective':". So that means you won't be making the argument that blood type can be used to define a race... oh no but you did!

Delvo and others have already countered the nonsensical argument that you can take one trait like blood type or hair color and call people with this trait a "race". I really do not know what more needs to be said about this, since it has nothing to do with the definition of race, which is never about one trait. I am actually surprised this poor argument is still being used.

As far as the semantic nature of this argument, you didn't even bother to challenge what I said about Cavalli-Sforza's work. Can you not see that how he uses the phrase "human population" is practically the same thing as "race"? Do you have a problem with how he uses "human population"?

This is taken from Race: a social destruction of a biological concept by
Neven Sesardic

"Speaking about Cavalli-Sforza, it is interesting that he tried to defuse potential
political attacks on his research by a simple and sometimes surprisingly effective
rhetorical ploy. At one point he just stopped using the term ‘‘race’’ and replaced it
with a much less loaded expression ‘‘human population’’, which in many contexts
he actually used more or less with the same meaning as ‘‘race’’. On one occasion
this terminological switch gave rise to an amusingly ironic development, as
described in the following episode involving Cavalli-Sforza’s collaborator,
Edwards:
'When in the 1960s I started working on the problem of reconstructing the
course of human evolution from data on the frequencies of blood-group genes
my colleague Luca Cavalli-Sforza and I sometimes unconsciously used the
word ‘race’ interchangeably with ‘population’ in our publications. In one
popular account, I wrote naturally of ‘the present races of man’. Quite recently
I quoted the passage in an Italian publication, so it needed translating.
Sensitive to the modern misgivings over the use of the word ‘race’, Cavalli-
Sforza suggested I change it to ‘population’. At first I was reluctant to do so on
the grounds that quotations should be accurate and not altered to meet
contemporary sensibilities. But he pointed out that, as the original author, I
was the only person who could possibly object. I changed ‘present races of
man’ to ‘present populations of man’ and sent the paper to be translated into
Italian. When it was published the translator had rendered the phrase as
‘le razze umane moderne’. (Edwards undated, unpublished manuscript)'
So, the whole process unfolded in three stages. First, it began with the original
text containing the word ‘‘race’’. Then with time the term started to sound
unacceptable or jarring to some people, and consequently the pressure of the new
linguistic practice transformed it into ‘‘population’’. Finally, an easygoing and
politically unconcerned Italian translator just went ahead and turned it back into
‘‘razza’’."

I highly recommend reading all of Neven Sesardic's essay. Everything you are saying has already been countered and exposed as nonsense or irrelevant, even without considering Sesardic's essay.

I still see no direct challenges to the fact that geneticists can tell what someone's race is from a DNA sample(and often tell what mixture they are) and do so with over 90% accuracy, or how forensic anthropologists can tell what race a person belonged to just from skeletal remains, with a level of accuracy almost as good as DNA testing.

This is also interesting - Genes Explain Race Disparity in Response to a Heart Drug

But what are they talking about? This makes no sense! I thought "race" had no biological reality, yet "blacks"(whatever that is)respond differently to this type of drug compared to people from other ______(what can I call this, I am lost!). There wasn't enough time for genetic differences to evolve, "race" is bunk!

 

[Zelenius]

Steven Pinker gets it. In the Blank Slate(page 144), he says:

"Nowadays it is popular to say that races do not exist but are purely social constructions. Though that is certainly true of bureaucratic pigeonholes such as "colored," "Hispanic," "Asian/Pacific Islander," and the one-drop rule for being "black," it is an overstatement when it comes to human differences in general. The biological anthropologist Vincent Sarich points out that a race is just a very large and partly inbred family. Some racial distinctions thus may have a degree of biological reality, even though they are not exact boundaries between fixed categories. Humans, having recently evolved from a single founder population, are all related, but Europeans, having mostly bred with other Europeans for millennia, are on average more closely related to other Europeans than they are to Africans or Asians, and vice versa. Because oceans, deserts, and mountain ranges have prevented people from choosing mates at random in the past, the large inbred families we call races are still discernible, each with a somewhat different distribution of gene frequencies. In theory, some of the varying genes could affect personality or intelligence (though any such differences would at most apply to averages, with vast overlap between the group members). This is not to say that such genetic differences are expected or that we have evidence for them, only that they are biologically possible."

 

[Jono]

From the FreeDictionary:
Pick one. What do you mean by race? Are you talking biology or ethnic heritage?

Start there and I might be better able to explain.

Well in my experience, which isn't alltogether encompassive perhaps, and argued point would basically be a combination of 1 and 3. I found Vincent Sarich's and Miele's book "Race: The Reality of Human Differences" gave a good survey of the history of anthropology in this context, related genetics, the political and academic controversies, and the definitions of race. As Sarich noted on in this article:
"I am not aware of any other mammalian species where the constituent races are as strongly marked as they are in ours… except those few races heavily modified by recent human selection; in particular, dogs." [allthough, as previously noted, according to this study humans are more genetically diversed than dogs with the heterozygosity being 0.776 for humans and 0.401 for dogs].

Personally I don't fundamentally care what 'terms' we use to call X-variance, when X-variance is for all intents and purposes the same darn, concistently and empirically, observed groupings that come out from even "ethnic lineage/biogeographical population" ventures like the human genome project and Sforsa n Co's less controversial choice of labeling (more of a mouthful than 'race' but a bit potatoe potato in the end).

Australian Aboriginals were isolated for 40-60 thousand years (I believe). When do they become 'not a race' now that they've been mixing genetically with Europeans for a few hundred years? What race would the offspring be of an Aussie Aboriginal who married a European of the above mix of ancestors?

I know this wasn't addressed to me but this just confuses me. The fact that more distinct human groups can blend, and such offspring would provide a mix of two notably distant groups, somehow nullifies race? For me, and I admit I might be misinterprating you, it sounds similar to saying that a mix between red and black somehow nullifies the concept or classification-systems of colours.

 

[Jono]

So does this mean that it is a better idea only to marry and reproduce within one's own race?

There's no 'ought' in it, it is 'what is' regardless of what we may call it or how we choose to act on it. Ironically perhaps, Pinker once said he was glad he had not chosen to have children, in part because he and his wife were both ashkenazi jews and thus the chance for any of the more frequent ailments thereof being passed on would be circumvented. Obviously, he wasn't arguing that jews should not produce children, but only noted on a hindsight benifit of his own preference for being childless. A bit snickeringly at the same time, he also added how it would be odd for people to bring a document of their genetic record to a date... and demand one in return, heh.

 

[Jono]

Steven Pinker gets it. In the Blank Slate(page 144), he says:

Yes, I included that quote in a previous post. Allthough I gave the chapter I forgot to include the page number.

 

[Jono]

The thing is race is a social construct, there was a report on the genetic underpinnings of race where the authors mother was surprised to learn that genetically she was not black, despite growing up thinking she was and everyone around her thinking she was.

So by social race she was black but not genetically.

There's certainly something to be said about the colloqual usage and broadness of its historical application within different domains, as well as our own free-willed or pressured aquiring of identity. In a sense I suppose a 'hadron' can be argued being a social construct too.

 

[DC]

amazing its 2012 and some people are still trying to make the Social construct of race into a scientific concept. decades of fail in that regard should have been a clear indication that it has nothing to do with science.