Race is a human/social construct.

[Skeptic Ginger]

When does left-handedness start and then end such that one is now right-handed? Is handedness therefore arbitrary?

That analogy is a fail.

If you wanted to call 'handedness' a racial grouping, then yes, it would be arbitrary.

And pretty much 'handedness' is not a continuum.

 

[RandFan]

When does left-handedness start and then end such that one is now right-handed? Is handedness therefore arbitrary?

No. Not even close to my point. I'm not sure why you are asking this question. Do you think left handed people are a race of people separate from right-handed people?

I think you answer your own question. Is there a group of people comprised only of right-handed people? Is there a group of people that is comprised only of a single trait or group of traits that clearly delineate that group such that no other delineation is possible?

Hypothetical, what if we had one group comprised 10% of left-handed people and not far from that group we had another comprised of 20% left handed people. And then what if we had a group next to the 20% comprised of 30% left handed people. Could you see a pattern here? Could that be considered a cline (gradient)?

 

[bpesta22]

I shoulda resisted the urge to reply. Why do you guys insist on discreteness for a category to have validity?

 

[RandFan]

I shoulda resisted the urge to reply. Why do you guys insist on discreteness for a category to have validity?

Without it, where do you draw the line? When does one group start and one end? Doesn't someone have to make a subjective decision? Isn't that decision, by definition, arbitrary and thus a human construct?

 

[bpesta22]

Without it, where do you draw the line? When does one group start and one end? Doesn't someone have to make a subjective decision? Isn't that decision, by definition, arbitrary and thus a human construct?

How about % ancestry with the lines drawn at percentiles?

I don't understand why people reject this as invalid. There are so many categories that are useful even though no lines can be drawn.

I don't want to call handedness a racial grouping. I used the analogy only to illustrate even non-discrete categories have utility. Apparently-- from posts above-- the are many examples of non-fine lines drawn when taxonomists classify things. Why such a high bar for race?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

How about % ancestry with the lines drawn at percentiles?...

Pick a percentile and defend why it should be used instead of a different percentile.

 

[RandFan]

How about % ancestry with the lines drawn at percentiles?

You put that in the form of a question. Why? Obviously your proposal is subjective, right?

I don't understand why people reject this as invalid. There are so many categories that are useful even though no lines can be drawn.

What do you mean by "invalid"? I don't at all see that as invalid. I see it as useful, but I also see it as subjective. You have the wrong idea about what it is we are trying to establish. Again, we accept that there are real observable differences. We accept that there is utility in categorizing. We reject that such categories are objective or a priori as to where the lines should be drawn.

I don't want to call handedness a racial grouping. I used the analogy only to illustrate even non-discrete categories have utility. Apparently-- from posts above-- the are many examples of non-fine lines drawn when taxonomists classify things. Why such a high bar for race?

Utility is not at issue. We've not rejected the function of race. We've not rejected the observable differences between groups. We are pointing out that how we delineate is subjective and therefore arbitrary.

 

[bpesta22]

You put that in the form of a question. Why? Obviously your proposal is subjective, right?

No, I put it there because I'm somewhat astounded by how this is not obvious to you. I mean this respectfully.

What is subjective about saying 87% of Joe's genes came from African ancestors? Does that make Joe African? I dunno, but I'd say he's more African than someone at 86% (assuming no margin of error in the %'s).

I get it: You won't find a % divider where below it one is African and above it one is not (to SG: though, for political purposes like the census, I think > 50% is reasonable. For something like epidemiology, I'd prefer the power the full % scale overs over some discreet categorization).

But, how does the lack of discreetness make the scale arbitrary? Find me the yes/no divider where one is smart, religious, motivated, a leader, insane, strong, pretty, healthy, happy, fast, etc.

I'm assuming we can put rather accurate %'s on a person's ancestry. In other words, these percentiles are in the genes. In that sense the numbers are not arbitrary.

What the % scale offers in terms of explanatory and predictive power (especially when controlling / un-confounding for the social aspects of race) is yet to be determined, and would QED-- in my opinion-- dictate whether the classification is arbitrary or not. So, a % African scale (determined by genetic markers) is arbitrary only if it explains / predicts nothing about humanity once the social baggage is partialed out.

In sum (agree or not?):

1. Salient physical differences exist across groups of people.

2. Socially, we use the label, race, to categorize these differences.

3. Race differences, though, map nicely but imperfectly to geographical differences in where most of our ancestors came from.

4. The geographic differences, themselves, map nicely to markers in the genome.

If the above are true, that's enough for a non arbitrary classification. There's a saying in the classification literature that "the prototypical bird may or may not exist". So I submit the scale is still non-arbitrary even if no one alive is 100% purely African or Asian or Caucasian.

***

SG: Handedness is a fine classification scheme too, but it isn't multi-faceted in the sense that it doesn't cluster with many other variables. Nor, afaik, can we trace it to points in the genome where our ancestors were isolated (and thus might perhaps have experienced different selection pressures which might cause non-trivial differences in gene frequencies across groups). I repeat myself, though.

 

[RandFan]

¹What is subjective about saying 87% of Joe's genes came from African ancestors? Does that make Joe African? ² I dunno, but I'd say he's more African than someone at 86% (assuming no margin of error in the %'s).

1. Nothing IS subjective about that. That's NOT the problem.
2. BINGO, THAT'S the problem. At what point do we determine one race ends and the other race begins? No look, one more time. We are not saying people can't be classified or that they shouldn't be classified. We are saying that doing so A.) involves subjective criteria and B.) Doesn't tell us biologically much about one group over the other. We are human and the differences are slight and superficial. The humanity and potential of someone born in Sub Sahara Africa is no different on average than someone born in Sweden.

But, how does the lack of discreetness make the scale arbitrary?

You tell me? Where do YOU draw the line? What if someone else draws it at a different point?

In sum (agree or not?):

1. Salient physical differences exist across groups of people.

2. Socially, we use the label, race, to categorize these differences.

3. Race differences, though, map nicely but imperfectly to geographical differences in where most of our ancestors came from.

4. The geographic differences, themselves, map nicely to markers in the genome.

1. There exists some salient physical differences across groups of people (these differences are not absolute for any single group of people).
2. True though we should leave these classifications to anthropologists and others because such usage for the average person serve no purpose beyond understanding culture and background which is better understood via ethnicity or extraction.
3. The differences are not discrete but lie on a gradient between groups.
4. The geographic differences are not discrete. People live on a continuum between groups.

The problem arises in that someone must subjectively draw the lines.

If the above are true, that's enough for a non arbitrary classification.

A.) The above is incomplete. B.) You agree that the delineation is chosen subjectively. Therefore I cannot reconcile your statements. It's "subjective but not arbitrary". Let me suggest that the differences are real and observable but what "race" a person is requires subjective determination.

There's a saying in the classification literature that "the prototypical bird may or may not exist". So I submit the scale is still non-arbitrary even if no one alive is 100% purely African or Asian or Caucasian.

The scale isn't arbitrary. It's where you delineate along that scale that is arbitrary. Multiple people could and would subjectively make different choices. When it comes to taxonomy that is by and large not the case. And when it is we can safely say that any classification is a human construct. Which isn't to say that it isn't real. It's to say that the classification has more to do with where the researcher chose to delineate rather than any objective criteria.

 

[Delvo]

I think race should be divided based on blood types

I think blood types should be divided based on fingernail thickness.

So all the biologists and geneticists who have looked at the evidence and concluded that humans are all one sub-species are wrong and you know better?

It's not a matter of knowing better or not knowing as well. It's a matter of just being silly or not. Calling an entire species as it exists at a particular time a subspecies of itself just because it had slightly different predecesors isn't saying anything incorrect, because it isn't saying anything at all. Absolutely all living species had slightly different predecessors, so what's the point in bothering? If this kind of standard for subspecies declaration were actually used in biology, it would do nothing but squish "species" and "subspecies" into a single level because there'd no longer be even the possibility of any species anywhere ever that isn't just a sub of itself. Fortunately for the sake of scientific non-goofiness (even without technical accuracy really being at stake on this one), this isn't a way that anybody ever does bother to look at other living species. It just became trendy to say it about humans at some point because somebody wanted to dramatize or exaggerate/emphasize something.

Humans are a single sub-species because there is comparatively little genetic variation between them and no clear dividing line between populations.

There's no amount of genetic variation at which to draw a line and say it's subspecies below and whole species above. (And if there were, it would be an arbitrary human-chosen line, not a real biological phenomenon.)

No. You are entirely off track. You can't take just any single gene and trace the ancestral line.

I think I need to see a definition/description of what you mean by "tracing the ancestral line" in as much detail as possible, because at this point, I don't get how you figure a gene on a nuclear chromosome other than Y is any different from a Y chromosome or a mitochondrial genome. How is a single gene NOT inherently a demonstration of its "ancestral line", if it is indeed inherited from one parent who inherited it from one parent and so on?

Unlike other chromosomes mtDNA is inherited solely from the mother...

mtDNA is inherited solely from the mother.

What difference does that make? Why does the ancestor you inherited something from need to be female? (Or, why would it need to be male?) What's so wrong with an "ancestral line" that has both men and women in it?

Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from people who can pass on mitochondria. Y chromosomes are inherited from people who can pass on Y chromosomes. All other genes in the nucleus are inherited from people who can pass on nuclear chromosomes other than Y. It's all the same thing: any coherent chunk of DNA is inherited from predecessors who were able to pass it on. Whether that happens to include just one sex or the other or both is merely further description, not a fundamental difference in what's going on, so how can it effect what you're calling "tracing"? The only way I can see for that to work is if we define tracing as being only through all-male or all-female ancestries, which I don't think anybody does, and just wouldn't make any sense to do.

you are misunderstanding what I mean by "true biological division". Blood groups have a biological basis while you don't think they are 'race' divisions.

Right. The name "blood groups" is already quite a sufficient name for them. They don't need to annex some other thing's name.

For a taxonomic division the groups' divisions would be due to non-intermixing

...at or above the level "species". Below it, no, of course not. That would defy the way the word "species" is defined, at least for sexually reproducing plants & animals.

I'm talking about divisions below the division of species. A subspecies is a genetically isolated group that could interbreed but doesn't.

Subspecies

You skipped the word "often" at that link. With species and subspecies, absolutely nothing is ever absolute.

(And some sets of distinct populations have been called separate species before based on geographic isolation alone even if they could have reproduced if they mated... although the convention in more recent times has been to shift toward calling a case like that a single species anyway for the sake of retro-revised standardization.)

• There are observable differences between groups of people.

Yes...

• The differences between those groups is a cline (gradient).

Yes and no. One part of the "no" is that there would need to be multiple clines oriented in different directions. For example, among the three that happen to have had the most studies done on them, there'd be one cline from white to black, one from eastern Asian to white, and one from black to eastern Asian, rather than a single one with two of them at the ends and the third one in the middle between them. But that's just a quibble, in agreement with the basic idea.

More importantly, the other part of the "no" there is about the geographic distribution. To make an argument out of the fact is to imply that these clines/gradients are smeared out across the landscape so smoothly that anybody trying to divide it into separate units is making it up. That simply isn't the case in the real world. The clines you're talking about turn out in real life to be compressed into relatively narrow boundary zones between larger regions of internal consistency. The map I've included several times on this subject shows how much blending has actually been found, and where.

• There is no objective, a priori basis as to where to delineate when one group starts and the other ends.

No, there is. It's the trait clusters. The clustering effect is a structure built into the biology of the species, simply straightforward biological fact, not something anybody could possibly have chosen to invent or prevent.

And pretty much 'handedness' is not a continuum.

Actually, that's not a bad example of another phenomenon that works about the same as the human racial "gradient" thing. There are indeed people who aren't entirely left-handed or right-handed. They just aren't particularly common. It's not entirely one or the other, but it mostly is. Now just imagine having someone argue that left-handedness and right-handedness are somehow unreal because that not-quite-left-or-right-handed minority exists.

 

[RandFan]

Let's take it slow as this is trying my patience:

I think I need to see a definition/description of what you mean by "tracing the ancestral line" in as much detail as possible, because at this point, I don't get how you figure a gene on a nuclear chromosome other than Y is any different from a Y chromosome or a mitochondrial genome. How is a single gene NOT inherently a demonstration of its "ancestral line", if it is indeed inherited from one parent who inherited it from one parent and so on?

I don't know how I can make this anymore clear. When you inherited your mothers mitochondrial DNA you didn't inherit half of that DNA from your father. You inherited it solely from your mother. It's passed largely unchanged from mother to daughter many generations. Do you understand that? Do you understand how that is different from most of your DNA?

 

[Delvo]

OK... but what is the significance of it?

 

[RandFan]

OK... but what is the significance of it?

It represents an unbroken chain. We can't say that about much of our DNA because of recombination.

• There is a finite number of genes (our pool of genes does not grow with each new generation).
• Recombination shuffles half of one deck with half of another.
• Because of recombination your offspring will only have half of your genes.
• Because of recombination your offspring will only have a quarter of the genes of each of your parents.
• With enough generations your genetic line among your descendants could be wiped out entirely.
• Because of recombination, after a generation or two, it's very difficult to say which branch of the family tree any gene is from.

In short, not every gene from every ancestor is represented among your genes and where the rest come from are damn difficult to determine because of recombination.

 

[RelativeSpace]

Certainly race is a human/social construct. So is nationality and religion.

That doesn't stop it from being, memetically, very important to a very large number of people. The social effects of that are very real. It could be, to that end, a meaningful study.

I don't think that the concept of "race" implies a strictly genetic outlook.

 

[bpesta22]

Certainly race is a human/social construct. So is nationality and religion.

That doesn't stop it from being, memetically, very important to a very large number of people. The social effects of that are very real. It could be, to that end, a meaningful study.

I don't think that the concept of "race" implies a strictly genetic outlook.

Welcome to the jref and the thread that never ends!

I don't think race implies strictly genetics; the argument here seems to be it implies strictly the social.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
I don't think race implies strictly genetics; the argument here seems to be it implies strictly the social.

How it is with the most clear explanations you would write this is mind boggling.

 

[bpesta22]

1. Nothing IS subjective about that. That's NOT the problem.
2. BINGO, THAT'S the problem. At what point do we determine one race ends and the other race begins? No look, one more time. We are not saying people can't be classified or that they shouldn't be classified. We are saying that doing so A.) involves subjective criteria and B.) Doesn't tell us biologically much about one group over the other. We are human and the differences are slight and superficial. The humanity and potential of someone born in Sub Sahara Africa is no different on average than someone born in Sweden.

1. 
   
   Maybe we're getting somewhere.
   
   Your (a) above: I agree that demanding we divide a continuum into a dichotomy is likely arbitrary, but the division *does not* invalidate the continuum.
   
   I disagree that dichotomies are a necessary condition for a valid (i.e., non arbitrary) classification scheme. The fuzzy lines come from people of mixed race, which is precisely what one might expect if the classification scheme were valid.
   
   That said, I don't think ">51%" is an unreasonable division for something like qualifying for a social program (or deciding which race box to check on a census form). We were trying to predict disease, I'd rather go with the continuum for statistical power reasons.
   
   Your (b) seems like pure speculation (except for the humanity part-- I agree, equal rights for all. This doesn't mean people / groups of people are blank-slatedly born with equal talents / flaws / predispositions, etc).
   
   We now have the means to test whether your (b) is true with the experimental rigor of something like identical twin studies.
   
   Why bother / that's racist?! Human history often reads like a list of differences in human well-being across race. Scientists in at least some areas have tried to identify the cause of this difference by appeal to purely social / cultural mechanisms (and so far have failed). To the extent well-being depends partly on genes, it's racist to not study the issue (and we won't know until we, like, study the issue).
   
   

   1. There exists some salient physical differences across groups of people (these differences are not absolute for any single group of people).
   2. True though we should leave these classifications to anthropologists and others because such usage for the average person serve no purpose beyond understanding culture and background which is better understood via ethnicity or extraction.
   3. The differences are not discrete but lie on a gradient between groups.
   4. The geographic differences are not discrete. People live on a continuum between groups.

   1. 
      
      But we can measure where on the continuum each person lies. And differences along the continuum might matter: If your arteries are blocked, you have a heart attack, otherwise, you don't. Fair enough in the absolute, as comparing someone with 0% blockage to someone with 100% blockage is a no-brainer. What about in the relative (i.e., continuum) sense. Would you be comfortable trading my 75% blockage for your 25% blockage?
      
      
      

      The problem arises in that someone must subjectively draw the lines.
      
      A.) The above is incomplete. B.) You agree that the delineation is chosen subjectively. Therefore I cannot reconcile your statements. It's "subjective but not arbitrary". Let me suggest that the differences are real and observable but what "race" a person is requires subjective determination.
      
      The scale isn't arbitrary. It's where you delineate along that scale that is arbitrary. Multiple people could and would subjectively make different choices. When it comes to taxonomy that is by and large not the case. And when it is we can safely say that any classification is a human construct. Which isn't to say that it isn't real. It's to say that the classification has more to do with where the researcher chose to delineate rather than any objective criteria.

      
      What if we adopt a policy where you are not African unless you are 100% African. That seems non arbitrary. I then scale anyone not meeting this requirement in terms of % African (I won't even call the 99% African). This semantic word shift might make people happy, but it's irrelevant to whether the continuum is non-arbitrary and scientifically useful (i.e., no matter where we draw the line, the continuum still exists).

 

[lomiller]

There's no amount of genetic variation at which to draw a line and say it's subspecies below and whole species above.

It's not a matter of knowing better or not knowing as well. It's a matter of just being silly or not.

So you don't know better than the scientific community that has concluded humans are all one sub-species you just think they are silly? Not a particularly convincing argument IMO.

I should not need to say this but you are not entitled to your own facts. Humans are all one sub-species, end of story. It doesn't matter how much you don't like this fact or find it inconvenient to your worldview, you are not entitled to rewrite it.

 

[bpesta22]

Btw, handedness is a continuum. Look at the long paragraph on page 177. It's making the same claims raised above:

"Accordingly, we include as right-handed those subjects who answered most,
but not necessarily all, of the items in the right-handed direction. The
cutting points for designating subjects as right-handed, left-handed, or
ambilateral are necessarily arbitrary. Usage of these terms varies immensely."

Does handedness exist?

http://dionysus.psych.wisc.edu/lit/articles/ChapmanL1987a.pdf

 

[Delvo]

you are not entitled to your own facts. Humans are all one sub-species, end of story.

Facts are things we can observe about the world. There are some facts associated with this: the living human population has less genetic variation than some (maybe even most, but not all) other living multicellular species, and recent fossils of a predecessor population to the current one have been found. But to get from one of those facts to "the living human population is a subspecies" requires the application of a rule that some human(s) made up, such as "A species with an amount of genetic variation below this quantity computed by this statistical procedure can be called a subspecies of itself" or "A species can be called a subspecies of itself if fossils of a predecessor population are known from this long ago or less".

Of course, people are entitled to make up such rules and get others to follow them; it's pretty much the only way for words to have definitions, for example. The catch in this case, other than the fact that the implications of such rules are choices rather than "facts", is that no such rule has actually been written or applied in this case. If it had been, then other species meeting the same qualifications would also have the same thing (that they're just "subspecies") said about them. The fact that other species do not get this same treatment means that the rule you would need in this case doesn't really exist or get used in biology, which means that a claim that that's the case for humans is an ad-hoc excuse/rationalization, not a scientific conclusion/fact. (And this is consistent with the fact that the just-a-subspecies claim is only brought up in contexts like this one, where somebody has an interest in emphasizing human unity over differences, which, while sociologically benevolent and not even really dishonest, is not scientific either.)

So you don't know better than the scientific community that has concluded humans are all one sub-species...

They didn't conclude it. Some of them (even without fighting over whether those represent the whole "community" or not) have simply declared it. You are welcome to change my mind about that: simply show what method was used to legitimately draw it as a conclusion, and establish that it's really a method that's used for drawing conclusions about species/subspecies in general. If it isn't (i.e., if other species aren't also declared to be merely subspecies for the same reasons), then it's just an excuse/rationalization designed to allow people to say about humans what they want to say about humans.

you just think they are silly?

Another way to put it would be "ascientific". Those who call the entire human species just a subspecies of itself aren't going against science in doing so, but aren't using science to get there either. Without a real, actual rule like I described above, there's no evidence that could be for it or against it, and it makes no difference in any way to any scientific theory or procedure or question.

Not a particularly convincing argument IMO.

Not meant as an argument at all.

* * *

PS: This kind of thing is why I've responded relatively little to your posts. You're mostly talking about formalities and arbitrarily labeling practices, and I didn't want a discussion of those things to become a sidetrack away from the biological (or statistical) facts in dispute. In a thread where people make false claims about real, actual, solid facts like those, I figure getting those facts straight is a higher priority than debating a naming/classification scheme. (To make an analogy with legal cases, I identify more with forensic scientists, detectives, and expert witnesses than with lawyers.)