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It's significant to me because it explains why I can tell the difference between a person with a long central African ancestry and a person with a long northern European ancestry, just by looking at them.
And? So what? I can tell when a guy is bald or a woman is good looking, and?
It's not a rationalization to "preserve the notion that races exist," any more than saying there are Holsteins and Herefords is a rationalization to preserve the notion that cattle breeds exist. It's simply stating the obvious.
It's obvious when someone is bald, so what? You aren't saying anything substantive. Yes, we can classify obvious traits like all the people who are short and blonde. And?
Is this the fallacy--can't remember the name--where the fact that there are things in between two categories, is supposed to prove that the two categories can't exist?
You've not demonstrated that races exist or even defined it.
Historically race was invented to justify tribalism, subjugation, apartheid, oppression, slavery, etc.
There are no significant differences and we've mixed so much so why bother?
I agree. It's such a silly point. Why do allele frequencies matter when they have little bearing on our lives?
I don't think I could guess their IQ, favorite food or criminal history, unless I had more information, like how and where they were raised.
Unless something else genetic, that's more important than eye-color, can be tied to the genes that cause the difference in appearance, then it's mildly interesting but in the end "so what."
This I will agree with. So long as race tells us nothing about a persons ethics, IQ, personality, etc, then it is largely worthless to anyone other than geneticists, doctors and anthropologists. We could group all the people with anal warts and call them a race but, so what?
No, I'm stating quite plainly that differences are insignificant if not arbitrary. We could decide that since all tall people are genetically different from short people that there is some significant difference. That a trait or phenotype is heritablr and therefore shared by members of a group does not make the trait or phenotype significant.
RandFan, I think I see where you are coming from, and to the degree that I see this correctly I agree with you. However, if I might be so bold, I would suggest that you consider going into more detail about this "significance", that is, completing your point.
Do you mean that these observable biological differences are not significant in terms of our expectations about the individuals' intelligence and behavior, nor in terms of how the rest of us should treat them? Insignificant in terms of public policy and social relations, for example, but not insignificant as matters of paleoanthropological research or medical advice.
I suspect that most people who accept the genetic variations as fact would agree with you that they are not justifiable reasons for denial of human rights, legal equality, social respect, or educational opportunities. Knowing what your challengers believe on that question may change the tenor of the debate.
Some guy named Chris Brand coined the term "race realist" in 1996 not merely to say that races are biologically real but that they result in significant differences in the intelligence and behavior between these different groups. It's about being "realistic" about the psychological deficits of particular groups, and the "fact" that we can't help them change, not about the existence of different human groups.
I coined the term 'race realism' in 1996. The term 'scientific racism' had long been used by the hysterico-intellectual left* to smear the position of psychologists (from Galton and Spearman to Jensen, Eysenck, Rushton and Lynn) who reckoned there were substantial and important genetic differences in psychological characteristics between races.
...
Alas for my wee joke, the term 'racist' had (unknown to me - I had no TV in those academic days) been so thoroughly demonized in the late-twentieth-century years of multicultural propaganda and growing peecee tyranny that my effort to stand jocularly proud for 'scientific racism' did not amuse. Even the brave Phil Rushton preferred at that time to be called just a 'race scientist' or `raciologist.'
So on went the thinking cap and (helped by a pal - thanks, Stuart!) I came up with 'race realism,' which has proved more acceptable -- even though I believe it may have enjoyed some degree of usage among Italian Fascists of the 1930s.
From its birth (or re-invention) fifteen years ago, the term comes weighted with a lot of baggage. And it isn't even the coinage of a geneticist or paleoanthropologist, but of a psychologist/psychometric researcher with several chips on his shoulder.
... and that if the person who said the above also claimed to be denying not races' actual, physical, biological existence, but only their importance/significance, then that person would be self-contradicting by claiming to both disagree and agree with the very same thing, thus exposing the fact that (s)he was lying.
Your claim that the biological human races don't exist is what I'm countering. Your response to that counter has been not to defend or retract your original position as expressed in quotes such as the above, but to try to change the subject to the significance/importance of race and the sinister motivations of anybody who admits that they exist instead. Perhaps I should consider that goal-post shift to be equivalent to a retraction of the original claim, and thus the end of the debate, but usually, resorting to goal-post shifting and well-poisoning like that is the behavior of someone who's still trying to continue debating, not the behavior of someone who's conceding.
Also, going back to your claim of not knowing what "race is real" means, that also contradicts using this to identify who you're talking to when you issue your challenge to other people to defend the position that you deny but supposedly don't know the meaning of:
To address those who accept some statement, in order to challenge them to defend it and counter your denial of that same statement, requires knowing what the statement is. Even adopting the initial position against it requires that, even if you never challenge those who accept it to explain why. You started a thread to deny a statement that you then claimed not to know the meaning of. That means either the latter claim was a lie, or the creation of the thread, to argue against a statement that you don't even understand, was a bluff... speaking of which...
It would have that in common with this other assertion you made within the bluff-thread, too:
Such a hopelessly absurd claim shows either a spectacular level of ignorance about even the barest, most minimally basic introductory stuff in genetics, about the same as the level of knowledge of aeronautical engineering illustrated in the tale of Icarus and Daedalus, or, if you do actually know anything about genetics and how absurd that statement was, a large gamble on the odds that nobody else here would know any genetics ourselves and catch it. So there's precedent for the idea that that could be what the whole thread was, too.
Your persistent use of "so what?" and "and?" constitutes a pretense that "race realists" to whom this thread is addressed must have something else to add about race beyond the fact that it is real. Not only has this well-poison already been debunked in this thread and completely lacked anything even vaguely resembling an attempt at actually supporting it from you, but it also doesn't even make internal sense, given that the phrase itself only indicates people based on their acceptance that race is real, and nothing else about it.
On top of that, since the only claim you're going against here about height is its significance, not its existence, it still has nothing to do with the assertion you started out with, which, going with this analogy, was the equivalent of claiming that there's no such thing as different heights in humans. ("claims of different heights are silly and absurd"... "difference in heights is just a social construct")
That in itself is pretending that I've claimed not to have made any, which is a lie, of the particular type known as a(nother) straw man. I do not deny the fact that I have actually asserted stuff in this thread. I simply asked you for what you were claiming that stuff is/means. And you avoided answering. That is rather peculiar for someone who claims to have produced something that is supposedly "fatal" to it.
That you have some information that is "fatal" to my argument requires that you can state what my argument actually is and why its bane is so fatal. You have not, even when directly asked for it, which you could have considered the perfect opportunity to do so if you were actually able. I don't know of any plausible reason for this avoidance other than the fact that my request revealed your dishonesty about what my argument was and about the effectiveness of your supposed death-blow to it.
Which, because I never stated the part beginning with the word "beyond", was not my argument, and I don't believe could honestly be mistaken for it based on anything I've written in this thread or any other. Why did you ascribe it to me? (If you have seen anything I've written that is confusing about this, then show me so I know what ambiguous word/phrase choices to avoid. If you can't, then you were simply lying by pretending I'd said something that you made up to fling at me.)
Baker’s book contradicts you assertion. You can ignore it if you like, others here will investigate it for themselves. I make no claims to be an authority on racial anthropology so I defer to experts.
You are welcomed to your opinion on race even if it is based on ignorance.
Racial anthropology isn't such a technically complicated subject that you should have to defer to authority.
Whether RandFan has a PhD or not doesn't matter if you are smart enough to understand the argument itself. Lots of people on this forum make appeals to authority and believe people with titles after their names are more right than laymen. That's intellectual laziness - you should address the argument, not the arguer. The only case in which experts are relevant are cases in which decisions need to be made regarding a subject that is so technically complicated that its more trouble than its worth to learn, and utility is maximized by deferring to an expert.
I will accept the premise only if you accept that all bald people constitute a race. Until we get past that you are not saying anything. Differences exist. Heritible differences exist. So what?
Your claim that the biological human races don't exist is what I'm countering.
Not only that they don't exist but that they have no real meaning. They are arbitrary and tell us nothing of significance. It's as if we declared all bald people a race. Baldness is an objective fact. We can group people by that trait. Why should we?
Also, going back to your claim of not knowing what "race is real" means, that also contradicts using this to identify who you're talking to when you issue your challenge to other people to defend the position that you deny but supposedly don't know the meaning of:
I'm saying that if you declared that all bald people are a race and that the race is real I would find it meaningless.
{sniped}
You are failing to address the salient point and are posting walls of text. Please to slow down, take a deep breath and focus. Unless and until you can deal with this pertinent fact you are just wasting key strokes screen pixels.
Such a hopelessly absurd claim shows either a spectacular level of ignorance about even the barest, most minimally basic introductory stuff in genetics
Not even close. You know perfectly well that races are defined not by a single trait but by a conglomeration of mutually correlated ones found in different regions.
Again with the straw man about my alleged belief that there's some other step to take on the subject of races, such as about their "significance", after establishing the fact that they simply exist. Shoveling more onto your pile of lies won't diminish its odor.
So now you're back to openly admitting that your claim is that they don't exist. A while ago you were trying to shift the goalposts away from that original claim.
By this I presume you mean the thing about races being significant or important (despite the fact that, although now you observe that I haven't said anything about it, you were previously peddling your straw man that I DID have some position on it).
I haven't addressed it because it's neither in dispute nor salient. It's just what you resorted to when you decided to run away from your original claim about their mere existence (before you decided to run right back to it, thus illustrating that this isn't the real point even to you; it's just a distraction you use as a debate gimmick).
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.
In another sense, the sense in which race truly is a social construct, I think it would be accurate to say that Obama is "black", because people say he's black.
Not even close. You know perfectly well that races are defined not by a single trait but by a conglomeration of mutually correlated ones found in different regions.
"Race" doesn't exist in any objective meaningful way. You could use the label to substitute for haplogroups and define it into existence but it's loaded and the original definition is anachronistic and what it represents is false.
It's just what you resorted to when you decided to run away from your original claim about their mere existence (before you decided to run right back to it, thus illustrating that this isn't the real point even to you; it's just a distraction you use as a debate gimmick).
Bald face lie. I have always held that "race" is a social construct (see thread title). I've always conceded that heritable traits exist. I've conceded that anthropologists classify people into haplogroups and this classification serves some important purpose but race does not.
You are arguing against a straw man. Races don't exist. I stand by that. It's a human invention. A mental classification invented to justify racism. We could as easily call 5' tall bald people with blue eyes and diabetes a race... but to what end.
Not only that they don't exist but that they have no real meaning. They are arbitrary and tell us nothing of significance. It's as if we declared all bald people a race. Baldness is an objective fact. We can group people by that trait. Why should we?
In another sense, the sense in which race truly is a social construct, I think it would be accurate to say that Obama is "black", because people say he's black.
I so agree. The term can obviously be used to classify people. The problem is that there is so much overlap and no single trait is unique to any group. Further the label was used to justify racism, bigotry, slavery, xenophobia, etc. The term divides us more than it unites us. We have FAR more in common than we are different. The word has baggage, little to no meaning and no distinct monolothic race of people exists. Let's stick with ethnicity, national origin and haplogroups.
Some guy named Chris Brand coined the term "race realist" in 1996 not merely to say that races are biologically real but that they result in significant differences in the intelligence and behavior between these different groups. It's about being "realistic" about the psychological deficits of particular groups, and the "fact" that we can't help them change, not about the existence of different human groups.
Not only that they don't exist but that they have no real meaning. They are arbitrary and tell us nothing of significance. It's as if we declared all bald people a race. Baldness is an objective fact. We can group people by that trait. Why should we?
I agree, race has no bearing on whether people deserve to be treated in one way or another, racism is irrational.
I don't necessarily agree with your analogy because its clear that scientists who study population migration regard race as a somewhat malleable classification of human populations, not unlike an evolutionary taxonomy. The important relationship in the classification is some shared cultural, genetic, geographical, and ancestral relationships between people over a long period of time, and differences between groups reflect populations genetically drifting over time.
(I sincerely apologize for the odd terminology. There a lot of people with nasty political agendas who try to classify races as subspecies of humans, obviously with the assumption that their own race is the 'true' human species and inherently superior for some ridiculous reason -- these people are not just incorrect, but categorically evil. I don't hold those views, in fact I'm an animal rights activist who regards "human exceptionalism" as a religious fiction and rejects any taxonomic classifications as a basis for more distinctions entirely.)
I agree that all humans originated from Africa and, at the time, could essentially be regarded as the same race. I generally hold a view that race is just a classification of humans related by common ancestry, that races develop over time. If race is a social construct on the basis that, at some point in the past, all humans were effectively members of the same race, what stops a person from arguing that biological kingdoms and all of its sub-divisions are social constructs on the basis that - ultimately - all organisms on the planet have a common ancestry?
I get the feeling you're trying to goad me into some particular answer that you're looking for. As I said, sometimes "so what" is just the end of it; there really isn't anything beyond.
I'm curious why you seem to be insistent that anyone who recognizes different races must therefore feel some deep-seated significance to it. I know some people do, but have you really not met people who don't?
Historically race was invented to justify tribalism, subjugation, apartheid, oppression, slavery, etc.
There are no significant differences and we've mixed so much so why bother?
Individual family bloodlines were also once given great significance (not "invented"--they really do exist, just like inherited physical variations). They were used to justify who could rule and who must be a peasant, though now in most democracies we've mixed and lost the distinctions.
Yet it's considered pretty normal to talk genealogy today, without anyone demanding an explanation or a deep significance. If somebody tells me their genealogy, it's just a mildly interesting factoid about their distant family, and not an attempt to see which of us should be bowing down to the other.
That's all I'm doing when it comes to race, just noticing a mildly interesting factoid about somebody's distance ancestors, visible in their appearance.
I agree. It's such a silly point. Why do allele frequencies matter when they have little bearing on our lives?
Since you said I didn't define race, here's exactly where I'd put him (the bold part), from my post #49:
So at any one time, there are recognizable members of one of the isolated groups that have been around a while, as well as people who are the result of the old groups intermixing, and if the intermixing continues and is isolated itself, those "mixed race" people may actually be early examples of one of the future races that will temporarily stabilize, till people intermix again in different ways.
I think he looks sorta like the race that the majority of Americans will belong to in, oh, I dunno, 200-300 years, especially if he had a bit more Asian background. Edited to add: assuming there's no new social pressure that makes Americans start marrying in dramatically different patterns than they are now.
We could say all bald people with blue eyes and are less than 6' tall are a race... You could use the label to substitute for haplogroups... I've conceded that anthropologists classify people into haplogroups... We could as easily call 5' tall bald people with blue eyes and diabetes a race.
No, none of those would come anywhere near the same thing as races. You're trying to change the meaning of the word to something else that it isn't and has never been.
Just arbitrarily, randomly grouping any 2 or more traits bears no resemblance to it, not only because you're dealing with so few traits compared to the hundreds of genes that establish racial populations, but also because those traits you're choosing aren't statistically correlated with each other; having one such trait is not linked to the odds of having the other. The racial genetic clusters are identified by the correlations between one trait and the others in the group, which means that people who have one trait in such a group are also likely to have most or all of the rest in the same group. To make a valid analogy between races and anything else, you'd have to find another cluster of, to be generous, just a few dozen alleles that are correlated to each other like that, AND ARE NOT one of the ones I showed a map of before or a subset of one of them. (Its geographic distribution should also not match any part of the geographic distribution of phenotype-based human races, which the known allele clusters do independently match.) The only problem there is that there are no such other allele clusters.
Nor do haplogroups bear any resemblance to races, because those only trace one single chunk of DNA apiece, either the mitochondrial genome or the Y chromosome, which only inform about that one piece of DNA in one individual apiece per generation. The genes that naturally form groups of hundreds based entirely on mutual correlations are all in those other little unimportant specks of DNA that you previously implied don't exist: all nuclear chromosomes other than Y.
Good afternoon, Dessi. I'm pleased to finally meet you.
Basically, I would answer your question with a "yes". But I would advise anyone pursuing that approach to avoid describing themselves as a "race realist". The term is fraught with unwanted baggage, from the start and especially now.
If race is a social construct on the basis that, at some point in the past, all humans were effectively members of the same race, what stops a person from arguing that biological kingdoms and all of its sub-divisions are social constructs on the basis that - ultimately - all organisms on the planet have a common ancestry?
I don't think that's what the idea is claiming. The idea that race is a social construct derives from historical research, not paleontological discovery.
But do you feel like you have the option? Can you choose how much you "notice" race? If you choose not to notice race, is your life personally affected? Will some people notice your race for you, and treat you accordingly?
If I don't get to make the choice, if my (perceived) race and the way it might get me treated aren't things I can choose to leave at my doorstep when I go out into the world each day, then what does that say about the reality of this "choice?"
I'm white. I currently live in a community that is, for all I can see, white. I've not met anyone living here who wouldn't be considered white, who doesn't consider him- or herself white.
I don't have to deal with race at all in my daily life, and I can blithely ignore it.
What if I were black, and living in this small, apparently all-white community? Do you think I'd be able to ignore it then?
We don't want to be blind to a person's "color," because that then makes us blind to what their "color" means to them and for them every day. Color does matter. Not noticing it won't make it not matter. Because it's not the color that's the problem, but the attitudes we've ascribed to it. The attitudes have to change first, and then the color won't matter.
Basically, I would answer your question with a "yes". But I would advise anyone pursuing that approach to avoid describing themselves as a "race realist". The term is fraught with unwanted baggage, from the start and especially now.
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