The Race Paradigm

[Mumbles]

I always thought reparations are a bad idea. But I thought a good fair solution that wouldn't just be a "handout" would be a blanket gift of free education to any black student that can get into a college. IOW you get into Harvard, it's free. Where ever you get it in, it's free.

I actually don't think of this as much of a problem to solve. The big problem facing black Americans is a lack of wealth. Education, Crime, etc. are somewhat offshoots of this. But there's a very easy-to-spot group that has been aided massively by government help at federal, state, and local levels - white Americans!

For example, black Americans are more likely than white Americans to be unemployed and looking for work, even adjusting for education, region, and so forth. And when we study employers, we find that yes, they collectively discriminate against black people. Simple solution, hire a bunch of black Americans, train them, and let them work on, say, our infrastructure, the way we did with white people It's one of the simple ways we helped drive down unemployment among white people in the past, it should work again. The college tuition thing is a good one as well, although there's naturally more than that, with the elimination of the "war" on "drugs" being a major component.

And of course this isn't a claim that no white people are poor - just that poverty among white Americans is rare, precisely because of the government assistance they've received. And yes, many white Americans would shriek their heads off at the idea of any sort of benefit for black people - that's an issue regardless.

(ETA: This is a general remark, not a specific reply to what you've said, truethat.)

 

[Vortigern99]

There's a lot to respond to here, and I don't want to give the impression of having abandoned the thread whilst I sort through it, collect links and support for my views, and ponder the validity of counterarguments. I'll return later in the week to address what I can.

 

[Jono]

This study would perhaps offer some relevant thoughts to the discussion:

Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.
...
We note that the genetic cluster results indicate that older geographic ancestry—rather than recent geographic origin—is highly correlated with racial/ethnic categorizations and, thus, is the major determinant of genetic structure in the population. Although our results suggest that genetic stratification may exist within racial/ethnic groups—specifically, whites and African Americans sampled from different geographic locations in the United States—we found the differences based on current geography to be quite modest. On the other hand, geographic matching of Hispanic subjects is likely to be of much greater importance, given the larger genetic differentiation between Hispanic groups on the basis of current geographic origins.

Furthermore, I think Henry Harpending explained a bit about the 'ordeal' regarding race very well in the following interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pNn3gOELAg

 

[Pup]

Ran across the following government form (long story), which had an entry that struck me as odd.

http://www.odjfs.state.oh.us/forms/file.asp?id=1429&type=application/pdf

Race/Ethnicity: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 allows us to ask for racial/ethnic (Hispanic or Latino) information. If you do not want to give us this information, it will have no effect on your case. If you do not give us this information, the worker will enter an answer.

Okay up to the bolded part, but something about the bolded part just doesn't seem right. The idea of a government worker being required to observe someone who doesn't want to state their race and deciding what race to label them based on the way they look, just seems... weirdly anachronistic for this day and age.

 

[GnaGnaMan]

This study would perhaps offer some relevant thoughts to the discussion:

Not really, as this discussion is largely on social issues. That aside, it would be fallacious to argue that this study provides evidence for the validity of race as commonly understood.

Furthermore, I think Henry Harpending explained a bit about the 'ordeal' regarding race very well in the following interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pNn3gOELAg

His comment about global warming doesn't exactly instill confidence. Then again neither does much else he says.

 

[Jono]

Not really, as this discussion is largely on social issues.

Well, it seems to be (notably) about whether or not (and to which extent) that is true.

That aside, it would be fallacious to argue that this study provides evidence for the validity of race as commonly understood.

Ah, so a study that shows how self-reported race and the taxonomical usage for the major groups show a better batting-average than most confirmations, have only "fallacious" (oh come on?!) relevance to the validity of the term race as people use it?

 

[GnaGnaMan]

Ah, so a study that shows how self-reported race and the taxonomical usage for the major groups show a better batting-average than most confirmations, have only "fallacious" (oh come on?!) relevance to the validity of the term race as people use it?

Well, I'll interpret that as a request or more information.

The way I think race is commonly understood is that race should be something that falls out of biology rather than something that is put into biology by society.

Now let's look at the reasoning error in an abstract example.
Look at the numbers from 1 to 9.
We group them in low (1,2,3,4) and high (6,7,8,9).
The average value of the low numbers is: (1+2+3+4)/4=2.5
For high numbers it's : 7.5
And the number 5 is a hybrid.

So, we have a clear, mathematical difference between the low and high numbers. However, the distinction does not fall out of the numbers. I put it there. I could have formed groups in any number of ways and would still have found a difference.

I hope it can be seen how that applies. The study found that self-identified race contains information about ancestry. However, that does not mean that the division between races falls out of biology.
You could also predict someone's religion, language or nationality with the same method. That does not mean that those are biological categories.

 

[blutoski]

No it's not.

Unless, that is, I overslept a lot more than I thought I did.

Oops. Sorry, was working on my calendar for Winter semester, which starts in January.

 

[blutoski]

I would pretty much assure you that no NYer would really have that attitude but I assume they are tourists who are notorious for that.

Yes, I'm pretty sure they were tourists, too. Photo op at a NYC attraction.

 

[Jono]

I hope it can be seen how that applies. The study found that self-identified race contains information about ancestry. However, that does not mean that the division between races falls out of biology.
You could also predict someone's religion, language or nationality with the same method. That does not mean that those are biological categories.

The fact that the cross-matching of biological categories and colloquial self-report match almost to the 'T' suggests that the general value comes not from a social construct but a biological one through taxonomical conventions (even if slight confusion/change between the understanding and application of colloquial and technical/clinical terms can be observed). So, simplified predictions based on division of numerical brackets can be done sure but it says nothing of relevance, especially not on behalf of the Rose/Kamin'esque argument that race is just an arbitrary social construct.

 

[A'isha]

The fact that the cross-matching of biological categories and colloquial self-report match almost to the 'T' suggests that the general value comes not from a social construct but a biological one through taxonomical conventions (even if slight confusion/change between the understanding and application of colloquial and technical/clinical terms can be observed). So, simplified predictions based on division of numerical brackets can be done sure but it says nothing of relevance, especially not on behalf of the Rose/Kamin'esque argument that race is just an arbitrary social construct.

No, it's still purely a social construct and not a biological one, since knowing that person X who self-identifies as African American and person Y who identifies as a Xhosa both can have their ancestry traced genetically to the same continent is utterly meaningless given the immense genetic variation among Africans and those of African descent. Which means lumping them together as part of a "black race" as distinct from a "white race" is is just an arbitrary social construct.

 

[GnaGnaMan]

The fact that the cross-matching of biological categories and colloquial self-report match almost to the 'T' suggests that the general value comes not from a social construct but a biological one through taxonomical conventions (even if slight confusion/change between the understanding and application of colloquial and technical/clinical terms can be observed).

What taxonomical conventions are you referring to?
What confusion/change do you mean?

I don't get what you are trying to say there.

So, simplified predictions based on division of numerical brackets can be done sure but it says nothing of relevance, especially not on behalf of the Rose/Kamin'esque argument that race is just an arbitrary social construct.

I have no idea what this means. What simplified prediction is that?

 

[Jono]

No, it's still purely a social construct and not a biological one.

Nope.

since knowing that person X who self-identifies as African American and person Y who identifies as a Xhosa both can have their ancestry traced genetically to the same continent is utterly meaningless given the immense genetic variation among Africans and those of African descent.

How does the ability to pin-point one's racial/biogeographical/ecotypical (semantics aside) descent make race a purely social construct?

Which means lumping them together as part of a "black race" as distinct from a "white race" is is just an arbitrary social construct.

Well they are colourisms, mainly, with a faint representation of the biological groups. Sforza's groupings of "populations", for example, are very similar to Carleton Coon's racial groupings. This should be odd for no one, except those who pretend race is "purely a social construct". It still just appears to me as if the rejection of 'race' is, mostly, on a semantic level.

Recap from elsewhere, in Pinker's chapter "Fear of Inequality" (from his book 'The Blank Slate...') he writes:

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.

The vast majority of resistence toward the concept of race is more or less just about the word itself, despite the involved peoples' convictions. It's for most parts a lot of huff n puff about the word as it is used both colloquially and anthropologically in a mixed manner. However, as it is, all related taxonomy is based on conventions used from observation and data of the lineage of human biogeographical/blood, and such groups are studied by mainstream psychology, genetics and medicine (defined as such), we can do little more in the face of scientific coherence than to just argue about the semantics of what terms to call the taxonomic realities we consistently observe.

 

[Jono]

What taxonomical conventions are you referring to?

Well race, for one. That was the context.

What confusion/change do you mean?

Well certain terms like race, species, breeds et al have been used in different ways, applying different meanings to them, which is certainly not an issue exclusive to taxonomical terms/conventions but also found cluttering around in the history of lingustics and then some.

have no idea what this means. What simplified prediction is that?

I was referring to the one/ones you hinted at. I guess I'm not coming across clearly? I thought I was, then again I don't write in the english language that frequently, except on a couple of forums like this one (I'm swedish fyi).

 

[MaGZ]

Then how do you explain their 1964 divorce papers?

I started a thread to discuss this topic here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9704220#post9704220

 

[MaGZ]

You said that race itself does not exist in any definite or definable or quantifiable or measurable or significant sense [...]
And that seems to clash with eg the below paragraph.

As to those actors, there was more than just visual differences dividing them. In fact, I remember hearing almost the same anecdote from actors that were involved in a movie on the Stanford Prison Experiment.



I'm not quite sure how do provide evidence for this. How about this: If the difference was obvious, then why was it necessary to make those of jewish descent wear yellow stars?

How about this guy? What's his background?
[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Sally_Perel.jpg[/qimg]
Solution

Yes, let’s play spot the Jew, that’s fun.

 

[Delvo]

The way I think race is commonly understood is that race should be something that falls out of biology rather than something that is put into biology by society.

Yes, and it does. The groups of biological traits defining them exist whether we have names for them or not, did long before any present language or culture did, are the origin of our whole concept of them, and don't disappear just because some people don't like them.

The study found that self-identified race contains information about ancestry. However, that does not mean that the division between races falls out of biology.

Can you describe how that situation would come about without coming from biology?

You could also predict someone's religion, language or nationality with the same method. That does not mean that those are biological categories.

They are, however, real things that actually exist, and which people identify themselves as because it's what those people really are. So the equivalent here to a biological category such as race would be if there were someone claiming that religions, languages, and nationalities aren't real... and/or responding to the fact that some independent method of verifying what religion/language/nationality somebody really is matches up with what religion, language, or nationality they claim, without actually coming from people's real religions/languages/nationalities.

No, it's still purely a social construct and not a biological one

Simply false.

knowing that person X who self-identifies as African American and person Y who identifies as a Xhosa both can have their ancestry traced genetically to the same continent

Not just to the same continent, but to the same particular genetic group within that continent, separate from the continent's other inhabitants (Caucasoids in the north, Khoi-San in the south).

is utterly meaningless given the immense genetic variation among Africans and those of African descent.

Even if I were to go along with the relative mischaracterization "immense", particularly when not including the Khoi-San (southern-Africans who aren't black, whose inclusion or exclusion makes a big difference), this thing about variation would still be entirely irrelevant without a rule that says that a categorization/grouping scheme relies on some arbitrary (not to mention unspecified and inherently unspecifiable) but still magical and all-important level of variation within groups. No such rule exists or is ever used or even advocated/suggested in any other context; it's just a fiction made up ad hoc to dishonestly lead to the desired end point for just this one special case. In reality, it's quite common and ordinary for groups of things to be distinct from each other while having a variety of different amounts of variation within each such group, because how much variation either group has simply does not, and could not possibly even in theory, have any thing at all to do with whether or not the two groups were actually separated from each other. It's like you're trying to tell us that there are no such things as separate kinds of fabrics because shirts can have differently-shaped necklines & collars.

 

[GnaGnaMan]

Well race, for one. That was the context.

Well certain terms like race, species, breeds et al have been used in different ways, applying different meanings to them, which is certainly not an issue exclusive to taxonomical terms/conventions but also found cluttering around in the history of lingustics and then some.

Neither race nor breed are recognized as taxonomical terms. I think it is usually said that race is used as a synonym for subspecies, which is recognized.

I was referring to the one/ones you hinted at. I guess I'm not coming across clearly? I thought I was, then again I don't write in the english language that frequently, except on a couple of forums like this one (I'm swedish fyi).

Apparently I was the one who was not clear.

This is an analogy:

Look at the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. You can distinguish between high numbers and low numbers.
But that does not mean that there are two mathematical groups of numbers. Wherever you draw the line is an arbitrary choice.

Once you draw the line, you can distinguish mathematically between high and low numbers but they are still arbitrary groups.

With human races it is the same. You can distinguish between light and dark colored individuals but wherever you draw the line is an arbitrary choice. Go from north to south and you will find that the local people get gradually darker until you reach the equator.
If you draw an arbitrary line somewhere, then you can distinguish between white and black people. It still is an arbitrary line.
That sort of thing is called clinal variation.

It gets somewhat more complicated but that's for later. Note that you can also draw the line at national borders. So you can use the same genetic method used to predict someone's race to predict their nationality.
Same reasoning applies for the spread of language and religion.

 

[GnaGnaMan]

Yes, and it does. The groups of biological traits defining them exist whether we have names for them or not, did long before any present language or culture did, are the origin of our whole concept of them, and don't disappear just because some people don't like them.

What is your evidence for "groups of biological traits"?

Can you describe how that situation would come about without coming from biology?

See my above reply to Jono.

They are, however, real things that actually exist, and which people identify themselves as because it's what those people really are. So the equivalent here to a biological category such as race would be if there were someone claiming that religions, languages, and nationalities aren't real... and/or responding to the fact that some independent method of verifying what religion/language/nationality somebody really is matches up with what religion, language, or nationality they claim, without actually coming from people's real religions/languages/nationalities.

Yes, nationality and religion are real social constructs, just like race. I am not sure if language falls into that category but doesn't matter.
Since you apparently know what a social construct is, I do not know what you are up to here.

 

[Pup]

Neither race nor breed are recognized as taxonomical terms. I think it is usually said that race is used as a synonym for subspecies, which is recognized.

I'd put race closer to the equivalent of breed rather than subspecies, like Holstein cattle vs. Hereford cattle.

With human races it is the same. You can distinguish between light and dark colored individuals but wherever you draw the line is an arbitrary choice. Go from north to south and you will find that the local people get gradually darker until you reach the equator.
If you draw an arbitrary line somewhere, then you can distinguish between white and black people. It still is an arbitrary line.

That's true, but one has to be careful using the Sorites paradox as a way to "prove" a classification such as race doesn't exist at all. One can at most prove that race is not rigidly definable, or at least that classification will be arbitrary in many cases.