Race is a human/social construct.

[Croydon Bob]

Be kind if someone else has already mentioned it.

It is my understanding that "race" scientifically speaking when applied to animals is used for different subspecies of a single species. The criteria is that there is greater genetic variability between the subspecies than within each subspecies.

It is my understanding that however you classify human "races" there is always greater genatic variability, (average difference) with the "racial" group than between racial groups. What this means is not only are humans one species we are one subspecies also.

Where I would disagree with what you have said is that using "race" isn't "scientifically speaking" at all. It has no useful scientific meaning when describing any sort of animal, including humans.

When racists insist on using "race" to describe humans they are still missing the point. If "Cocker Spaniel" is a dog race (it isn't), then they are still one race; black, golden or white. Pigment colour does not matter.

As you said: There is literally just one human "race".

 

[Pup]

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.

It never occurred to me we were limiting the use of race to biological definitions, because I agree it may not be particularly useful for that.

What it's particularly useful for is describing people in ordinary circumstances. A white male. A black female. An Asian child. Most people get a mental picture when they read those words, just like when they read a tall man or a muscular woman or a chubby child.

We could apply the same fallacy of the heap to "prove" that there's no such thing as a group called "tall" or "muscular" or "chubby" because there's no sharp dividing line and it depends on comparison with others and one person who's muscular naturally will have different genetics than one who got that way through steroids, but the words still are a quick and easy way to communicate.

Saying that race doesn't exist sounds to me as if one is saying that the following sentences therefore can have no meaning, and that just seems silly: "We need to cast three teenage black males for a film about the underground railroad," or "The robber was a white female but I don't remember what she was wearing." People understand them; they communicate. Therefore, the concepts exist and are useful.

I know that biologists struggle with categorizing finer groups than species or even subspecies in other animals, with concepts like ecotypes, clines, etc., but not being a biologist, I can't comment any further on that.

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

Questions like that, and especially the orange-red example before it, are why I keep coming back to the fallacy of the heap.

What it boils down to is: how many similar animals/plants does it take to be a breed and how similar do they need to be? The anti-race argument seems to be that if one can't give a precise number, then race doesn't exist.

It's similar to the Tiger Woods question, which people seem to think is a stumper. Yet it's not, because races are fluid and fuzzy, by definition. At any given point, not everyone can be categorized by race, or if they are, it will be at the fuzzy fringes of a race.

Maybe 1000 years from now Obama and Tiger Woods will both have the characteristic look of some race we'll call Earthian and we'll only be aware that there were significantly darker and lighter skinned people from history books. But right now, we can't predict what characteristics will become typical enough to be worth categorizing as a race.

 

[lomiller]

Ok, but why must groups of life in the same species need to be classified as sub-species before any meaningful genetic variation between the groups can exist?

What meaningful genetic variation are you referring to? Your concepts of what the “races” are predate genetics and serve no function in its study. In fact as I pointed out above the most genetically divergent human populations don’t even qualify. How can race represent meaningful genetic variation under such conditions?

 

[lomiller]

Wow, I just re-read Wade's chapter on race and found it compelling with ample citations to scientific literature supporting his claims.

Says more about confirmation bias of the reader than any value in the work.

 

[lomiller]

It never occurred to me we were limiting the use of race to biological definitions, because I agree it may not be particularly useful for that.

I’m not sure what you are trying to say. Read the thread title, it’s not a matter of “limiting to” biological meaning it’s about whether there is biological meaning.

Since humans are too genetically similar to each other for social/cultural factors to track with biology it’s an either or question. Either race is cultural social in nature or it’s biological. Since there is no evidence for this being a meaningful biological classification and plenty to show it’s meaningful as a cultural/social classification we can pretty easily conclude the latter makes more sense.

What it boils down to is: how many similar animals/plants does it take to be a breed and how similar do they need to be? The anti-race argument seems to be that if one can't give a precise number, then race doesn't exist.

As I said above, infrasubspcific categories like breed are ad-hoc. It doesn’t take any number of animals or traits to qualify, people can use it however they like. Breeders of miniature cattle for example routinely assign their own names to their creations.

 

[Pacal]

OK so far, but then where do you go with that? It's true of a lot of ways that groups of things can be divided into smaller groups. There are more ways to distinguish one car from another car, or one truck from another truck, than to distinguish between cars and trucks. There are more ways to distinguish among canines and among felines than between canines and felines. There's more variation among soft maples and among hard maples than there is between hard and soft maples. There are more traits distinguishing one couch from another or distinguishing one chair from another than there are differences between a couch and a chair.

Now, picture yourself trying to convince someone that there are no such things as cars or trucks because of some long list you made of differences between some trucks and other trucks. Why in the world should they listen to that? Clearly, we all know that the amount of variation within a group has nothing to do with its distinctiveness from some other group. There's no magical threshold amount of between-group difference below which it somehow equals zero even though it's still greater than zero. The idea just doesn't make sense, and nobody really believes such a rule themselves, including those who assert it anyway for humans and conspicuously only humans. They couldn't possibly buy it. It's just too absurd and has not one single other attempted application anywhere else. (And that's why its inventor, Lewontin, is the only person I know of who has his own formal logical fallacy named after him.)

Thanks I needed a good laugh.

 

[Wuglife]

the point is, that also breeds are a social construct and not a scientific one. Just like race is.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this.

Two great danes will never give birth to a litter of shar peis.

There are pronounced differences between great danes and shar peis.

 

[Wuglife]

Here is a good paper on the biological fact of the existence of race in the human species.

http://www.goodrumj.com/Mayr.html

"The Biology of Race and the Concept of Equality
Ernst Mayr, 2002

There are words in our language that seem to lead inevitably to controversy. This is surely true for the words "equality" and "race." And yet among well informed people, there is little disagreement as to what these words should mean, in part because various advances in biological science have produced a better understanding of the human condition.

Let me begin with race. There is a widespread feeling that the word "race" indicates something undesirable and that it should be left out of all discussions. This leads to such statements as "there are no human races."

Those who subscribe to this opinion are obviously ignorant of modern biology. Races are not something specifically human; races occur in a large percentage of species of animals. You can read in every textbook on evolution that geographic races of animals, when isolated from other races of their species, may in due time become new species. The terms "subspecies" and "geographic race" are used interchangeably in this taxonomic literature.

This at once raises a question: are there races in the human species? After all, the characteristics of most animal races are strictly genetic, while human races have been marked by nongenetic, cultural attributes that have very much affected their overt characteristics. Performance in human activities is influenced not only by the genotype but also by culturally acquired attitudes. What would be ideal, therefore, would be to partition the phenotype of every human individual into genetic and cultural components.

Alas, so far we have not yet found any reliable technique to do this. What we can do is acknowledge that any recorded differences between human races are probably composed of cultural as well as genetic elements. Indeed, the cause of many important group differences may turn out to be entirely cultural, without any genetic component at all. Still, if I introduce you to an Eskimo and a Kalahari Bushman I won't have much trouble convincing you that they belong to different races.

In a recent textbook of taxonomy, I defined a "geographic race" or subspecies as "an aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of that species and differing taxonomically from other populations of that species." A subspecies is a geographic race that is sufficiently different taxonomically to be worthy of a separate name. What is characteristic of a geographic race is, first, that it is restricted to a geographic subdivision of the range of a species, and second, that in spite of certain diagnostic differences, it is part of a larger species.

No matter what the cause of the racial difference might be, the fact that species of organisms may have geographic races has been demonstrated so frequently that it can no longer be denied. And the geographic races of the human species - established before the voyages of European discovery and subsequent rise of a global economy - agree in most characteristics with the geographic races of animals. Recognizing races is only recognizing a biological fact."

 

[Wuglife]

Also, to equate "race" with "skin color" is ludicrous. Nearly-the-same skin color can exist in different populations...this is obvious to anyone. Interestingly, nearly-the-same skin tone can be caused by completely different genotypes, though.

It may be that our conventional understandings of race, such as "black" groups and "white" groups are somewhat flawed. This does not invalidate the concept of race itself.

Different races have different genetic makeups. They have different physical characteristics that can be reliably predicted. They have different risk factors for various diseases.

Some have formed over tens of thousands of years of isolation from other human populations.

 

[Wuglife]

One more thing...

We could just as easily argue that "species" is a human/social construct. There is no hard-and-fast line in the sand as to whether two animals are different species; whether two different populations of related creatures are distinct species or not is a FREQUENT point of scientific contention. Also, the genetic difference between one set of related species could be greater than the genetic difference between another set of related species.

We could even argue that "continent" is a human/social construct. There is no universal scientific agreement on how many continents there are (although I think no scientist will say there are no continents ).

We could argue that "oceans" are a human/social construct, because all oceans are connected, and once again, there is contention as to their number and if-and-where one ends and another begins.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... Take a black man from an upper middle class neighborhood in France and compare him to an American black man who grew up in the slums of Harlem. Do we really expect the genetics of their African heritage to be a strong factor in determining their success and social mobility?

It's not so much that ancestry doesn't matter. The nature vs nurture argument is not the same as asking if racial groups are a justifiable biological concept or, is race only a sociological concept. The question here is, do the genetics of those two black men constitute a distinct biological group?

The answer is, the distinct group only occurs when you chose arbitrary criteria. That makes race a social grouping. There are not scientifically logical reasons to group the biological features of blacks because the genetic basis for the outward appearance is no more important biologically than the genetic basis for hundreds of other inheritable things.
I think this is the point people are missing. I can group people by any number of things that are biologically determined. Outward appearance has profound social implications at times. But family lineage has far more importance biologically than outward appearance. 'Race' is only crudely predictive of family lineage. Haplogroups may be a little more than crudely predictive of 'race', but they don't correlate cleanly with racial groupings.

Here's an example from Wiki assuming it is accurate (even if the details are not accurate the concepts are):

Groups without mutation M168

Haplogroup A (M91) (Africa, especially the Khoisan, Ethiopians, and Nilotes)
Haplogroup B (M60) (Africa, especially the Pygmies and Hadzabe)​

Groups with mutation M168

(mutation M168 occurred ~50,000 bp)

Haplogroup C (M130) (Oceania, North/Central/East Asia, North America and significant presence in India)
Haplogroup F (M89) Oceania, Europe, Asia, North- and South- America
YAP+ haplogroups
Haplogroup DE (M1, M145, M203)
Haplogroup D (M174) (Tibet, Japan, the Andaman Islands)
Haplogroup E (M96)
Haplogroup E1b1a (V38) West Africa and surrounding regions; formerly known as E3a
Haplogroup E1b1b (M215) East Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, the Balkans; formerly known as E3b​

There are more groups noted in the link.

Do you see the problem there? Look at the overlap by continent. Race is typically tied to the continent one's ancestors come from. We all have ancestors from Africa (ignoring the most recent challenge to this conclusion) so right there the continental origin of race has problems. It should be obvious from this breakdown of haplotypes that the old categories of race are not going to line up well. That's why genetic research is requiring a paradigm shift in how we view biolgical divisions of race.

 

[Wuglife]

Tying race to continent may not always make sense--the very definition of what constitutes a continent is not in consensus.

Many experts consider there to be more or fewer than 7 continents. Where one continent ends and another begins is another point of contention.

 

[bpesta22]

Because there are ~3 billion nucleic acid base pairs in the human genome and dividing the population into meaningful genetic groups requires a lot more sophistication than the old category of 'races' allows.

But no it doesn't as it can/has been done, with stunning accuracy, by several scientists (sampling something like just a few 100 points), at least according to the review Wade offers.

 

[Wuglife]

Also, I get the feeling that not everyone in this thread is even having the same argument.

For those who say there are no races in the human species, is there any way you could be proved wrong? That is, is this a falsifiable position?

Edit: I could also ask the same of others who do believe there are races in the human species.

 

[bpesta22]

That's why dog breeds are more pronounced than human races. We as humans restricted dogs. Humans are much less restricted.

Take a black man from an upper middle class neighborhood in France and compare him to an American black man who grew up in the slums of Harlem. Do we really expect the genetics of their African heritage to be a strong factor in determining their success and social mobility?

Racial ancestry is a biological factor at times. Sickle cell anemia. A stronger African ancestry is going to be a higher risk factor. There was some evolutionary factor involved here. And you don't need any pure racial definition to determine risk factors. Someone who is only half black would be at greater risk. The medical science is all there and no one can argue this.

For all other factors associated with race, the scientific evidence has to be this robust to say a specific ancestry is going to be associated with certain qualities. I'll have a respect for any forthcoming scientific evidence so I won't entirely rule anything out unless we've already repeatedly tested and proven a hypothesis wrong.

So race is scientifical sometimes when used to understand disease but never scientifical when applied to social problems? How possibly could the sickle thing be tied to races since 50,000 years is just not enough time for meaningful evolution?

 

[bpesta22]

What meaningful genetic variation are you referring to? Your concepts of what the “races” are predate genetics and serve no function in its study. In fact as I pointed out above the most genetically divergent human populations don’t even qualify. How can race represent meaningful genetic variation under such conditions?

I must appeal to expertise and ask you debunk the Wade chapter on race. Given your assurances, it should be an easy thing to do.

The idea of natural selection predated the discovery of genes. So what.

 

[bpesta22]

Says more about confirmation bias of the reader than any value in the work.

Assuming this when you haven't even read it sounds ironically like confirmation bias.

Please then show us the way? I have a free copy of the chapter. It's not long. It would stop you judging books by covers and perhaps could set us all here straight?

bpesta22@cs.com

 

[bpesta22]

It's not so much that ancestry doesn't matter. The nature vs nurture argument is not the same as asking if racial groups are a justifiable biological concept or, is race only a sociological concept. The question here is, do the genetics of those two black men constitute a distinct biological group?

The answer is, the distinct group only occurs when you chose arbitrary criteria. That makes race a social grouping. There are not scientifically logical reasons to group the biological features of blacks because the genetic basis for the outward appearance is no more important biologically than the genetic basis for hundreds of other inheritable things.
I think this is the point people are missing. I can group people by any number of things that are biologically determined. Outward appearance has profound social implications at times. But family lineage has far more importance biologically than outward appearance. 'Race' is only crudely predictive of family lineage. Haplogroups may be a little more than crudely predictive of 'race', but they don't correlate cleanly with racial groupings.

Here's an example from Wiki assuming it is accurate (even if the details are not accurate the concepts are):There are more groups noted in the link.

Do you see the problem there? Look at the overlap by continent. Race is typically tied to the continent one's ancestors come from. We all have ancestors from Africa (ignoring the most recent challenge to this conclusion) so right there the continental origin of race has problems. It should be obvious from this breakdown of haplotypes that the old categories of race are not going to line up well. That's why genetic research is requiring a paradigm shift in how we view biolgical divisions of race.

The Wade chapter cites several studies that map genetic ancestry to continents with 99% accuracy. They line up near perfectly according to Wade.

So, who is making stuff up?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... Questions like that, and especially the orange-red example before it, are why I keep coming back to the fallacy of the heap.

What it boils down to is: how many similar animals/plants does it take to be a breed and how similar do they need to be? The anti-race argument seems to be that if one can't give a precise number, then race doesn't exist.

It's not that one cannot divide the heap. It's that one can choose arbitrary groupings or biologically important groupings. Haplogroups are an important biologic grouping. Species are an important biologic grouping.

But choosing skin color, hair and body type are more arbitrary biologically. I could just as easily decide to group everyone by hair color and type and call that 'race'. I can choose to divide the group up by blood type and call that 'race'. I can choose to divide people up by height and even though the fallacy of the heap might apply because height is a continuum, I could choose arbitrary places to divide the groups such as by the foot and call that 'race'.

There are going to be genetic correlations to my arbitrary groupings. I can determine the genetic pattern responsible for hair color and type and declare it is therefore a biological basis for my arbitrary determination of race. I could do the same with my arbitrary divisions of blood groups or height.

If I choose divisions arbitrarily, that makes the divisions a social construct.

Biology starts with the genetics and divides up the groupings then looks to see what traits the groupings are going to have. In the case of haplogroups, the groups' traits have considerable overlap. Turns out our concept of racial groups does not match very closely what we see genetically. In addition, there has been so much population mixing, if we use the traditional scientific categories of species and subspecies, humans would not meet the criteria for subgrouping.

We could choose to subgroup humans anyway, and in any number of ways. But dividing up the continuum would be an arbitrary action, aka social construct.

 

[lomiller]

One more thing...

We could just as easily argue that "species" is a human/social construct.

No, we can’t.
You seem to be confusing the act of categorizing things with the nature of the category. Race doesn’t categorize meaningful biological groups it categorizes cultural/social groups.

There is no hard-and-fast line in the sand as to whether two animals are different species; whether two different populations of related creatures are distinct species or not is a FREQUENT point of scientific contention.

Certainly there are arguments about how to categorize various organisms, but this isn’t the type of discussion taking place here.

There is no universal scientific agreement on how many continents there are (although I think no scientist will say there are no continents ).

On the contrary, plate tectonics are fairly clear on the matter. Geopolitics has need of other definitions and uses them

While it’s not what you intended you probably did come up with a decent analogy. The old concept of continents has little meaning in geology just as the concept of race has little meaning in biology. Still, the old definitions of continents are a lot closer to the current understanding of the various plates than race is to current understanding of genetics.

BTW you seem to have ignored the posts above debunking you equation of race with species or sub species (you equated it to both). Race is not a synonym for either of these, nor are there any such divisions in humans, we are all one sub-species.