Are Hispanics a Race?

[Thunder]

I was told today that Hispanic people are a race.

Not a culture..but an actual race.

Hispanics can be as pale as this page..or as black as my keyboard. They can have dark brown eyes or light green eyes. They can be blond..or have black hair.

Hispanics are clearly NOT a race. Hispanics started out as folks who came from Spain, but it now includes all the immigrants to followed them to these Spanish speaking countries and became part of the culture.

One can have Italian, German, Irish, Swedish, native American, Russian-Jewish, Spanish, African, Korean, ancestry..and be part of the Hispanic culture.

Hispanic...is NOT a race.

[Old Bob]

Same as Jews.

[paximperium]

Same as Jews.
Or whites.

[GreNME]

Why the hell does this question come up so often here?

The term Hispanic is an ethnonym (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnonym), with it and Latino (also an ethnonym) being used interchangeably in the US.

[MaGZ]

I would think someone living in Central or South America who is of whole Spanish descent would not want to be considered Hispanic, but Spanish or European or White. Hispanics today denotes the brown people of Latin American, so the word today does have racial connotations.

[Thunder]

Same as Jews.

well, I'm sure there is a whoooool lot more inclusion of non-Spanish ethnic groups into the Hispanic ethnic family then there are non-Jews into the Jewish family.

genetic studies have shown common chromosomal traits amoung many Jewish men. I doubt Hispanics of Italian and German ancestors are descendents of the same dudes.

but I do understand the analogy.

[Thunder]

I would think someone living in Central or South America who is of whole Spanish descent would not want to be considered Hispanic, but Spanish or European or White. Hispanics today denotes the brown people of Latin America, so the word today does have racial connotations.

wrong....wrong...wrong.

Hispanic is used to describe anyone from any of the Latin American countries. they can have blue eyes and blond hair..or dark eyes, skin, and hair.

Blonds from Argentina call themselves Hispanic.

[paximperium]

I would think someone living in Central or South America who is of whole Spanish descent would not want to be considered Hispanic, but Spanish or European or White. Hispanics today denotes the brown people of Latin American, so the word today does have racial connotations.
Hispanics mean brown people of Latin America as opposed to brown people of South Europe? Do tell.

[plumjam]

Qué?

[Richard Masters]

I was told today that Hispanic people are a race.

Not a culture..but an actual race.

Hispanics can be as pale as this page..or as black as my keyboard. They can have dark brown eyes or light green eyes. They can be blond..or have black hair.

Hispanics are clearly NOT a race. Hispanics started out as folks who came from Spain, but it now includes all the immigrants to followed them to these Spanish speaking countries and became part of the culture.

One can have Italian, German, Irish, Swedish, native American, Russian-Jewish, Spanish, African, Korean, ancestry..and be part of the Hispanic culture.

Hispanic...is NOT a race.

I am Hispanic and I don't consider it a race. However, to be Hispanic it's generally agreed that you need to have Spanish ancestry, speak Spanish or belong to a culture that does.

[Richard Masters]

I would think someone living in Central or South America who is of whole Spanish descent would not want to be considered Hispanic, but Spanish or European or White. Hispanics today denotes the brown people of Latin American, so the word today does have racial connotations.

That's only in the United States, where ignorance is rampant.

[paximperium]

That's only in the United States, where ignorance is rampant.
Now THAT is an ignorant statement that is on par to MaGZs. Congrats, I guess.

[linusrichard]

wrong....wrong...wrong.

Hispanic is used to describe anyone from any of the Latin American countries. they can have blue eyes and blond hair..or dark eyes, skin, and hair.

Blonds from Argentina call themselves Hispanic.

But do Brazilians call themselves Hispanic? I don't think they do. "Hispanic" comes from the word for "Spanish" - it's people whose ancestry can be traced to Spanish-speaking countries. Most of Latin America, yes. All of Latin America, no. For that, we have the term "Latino."

[Thunder]

"Still more recently, the term is used to describe the culture and people of countries formerly ruled by Spain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Empire), usually with a majority of the population having some ancestry of Spanish origin and speaking the Spanish language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language). These include Mexico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico), the majority of the Central (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_America) and South American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_America) countries, and most of the Greater Antilles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Antilles). There are also Spanish influences in the African nation of Equatorial Guinea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_Guinea),[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic#cite_note-0) and the cultures of the former Spanish East Indies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_East_Indies) - the Philippines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines), Guam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam) and the Northern Mariana Islands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mariana_Islands)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic#cite_note-1)

[Thunder]

That's only in the United States, where ignorance is rampant.

MaGz's views in no way represent any large portion of the USA.

[Thunder]

But do Brazilians call themselves Hispanic? I don't think they do. "Hispanic" comes from the word for "Spanish" - it's people whose ancestry can be traced to Spanish-speaking countries. Most of Latin America, yes. All of Latin America, no. For that, we have the term "Latino."

Hispanic comes from the word Hispania..which is the Roman name for the Iberian peninsula...which includes Spain.

[MaGZ]

wrong....wrong...wrong.

Hispanic is used to describe anyone from any of the Latin American countries. they can have blue eyes and blond hair..or dark eyes, skin, and hair.

Blonds from Argentina call themselves Hispanic.

Why would Whites in Argentina accept a label that in today's popular usage means non-White? There is a great deal of class consciousness and racial consciousness in South America between the peoples of various racial background in these countries. The Whites are on the top rung of the economic ladder in these countries, so it makes no sense they would want to be brought down to the level of a Hispanic.

[MaGZ]

Hispanics mean brown people of Latin America as opposed to brown people of South Europe? Do tell.

The Mediterranean Race of Southern Europe are White. However, over time some now-White racial elements have drifted into the gene pool. Some Southern Italians have Sickle Cell trait.

[MaGZ]

I am Hispanic and I don't consider it a race. However, to be Hispanic it's generally agreed that you need to have Spanish ancestry, speak Spanish or belong to a culture that does.

I doubt the people in Spain consider themselves Hispanic. Ask them and they will say they are European.

[KingMerv00]

Do we even have a good definition of "race"?

[paximperium]

Do we even have a good definition of "race"?It seems to be whatever a racist wants it to be.

[GreNME]

These sorts of thread seem to foster the idea that being "right" is more desirable than having a wider understanding of the differences between ethnicities.

MaGz's views in no way represent any large portion of the USA.

Neither do yours, but you continue to insist your opinion. I find both of your opinions to be similarly ignorant.

Hispanic comes from the word Hispania..which is the Roman name for the Iberian peninsula...which includes Spain.

Which is a dated and mostly-expired version of the word. You're making assertions that essentially demand vernacular usage be back-dated instead of ebbing and flowing like languages naturally do.

I'm calling your assertions ignorant, parky76, because you're basing them on what seems to be a desire for a hard line of demarcation for ethnic identity. However, in the US-- which is most likely where you heard the statement you find objectionable-- the term Hispanic is used generally interchangeably with Latino, which does denote an ethnic identity (among other things). Hispanic on its own just denotes a lineage to a Spanish-speaking country, in the vernacular usage.

-----

Do we even have a good definition of "race"?

Of course not, which is why threads like this irritate me.

[linusrichard]

Do we even have a good definition of "race"?

Race is a social construct. A race is whatever people consider a race to be. The Irish used to be non-white. The Japanese used to be white. There's no science behind it (except maybe social science). I would argue that the way "Hispanic" is used in the US today, it is reasonable to consider it a race.

[bpesta22]

Do we have a good definition of gravity?

[linusrichard]

Hispanic comes from the word Hispania..which is the Roman name for the Iberian peninsula...which includes Spain.

Well, the Iberian peninsula includes Portugal and it doesn't include Argentina. And yet Argentineans are Hispanic and Portuguese aren't. So maybe what I was saying was right in the first place, that "Hispanic" applies to people who trace their ancestry back to Spanish-speaking countries.

[MaGZ]

Race is a social construct. A race is whatever people consider a race to be. The Irish used to be non-white. The Japanese used to be white. There's no science behind it (except maybe social science). I would argue that the way "Hispanic" is used in the US today, it is reasonable to consider it a race.

Where and when did this movement of race denial originate? No doubt when the 60s radicals got tenure.

[paximperium]

Where and when did this movement of race denial originate? No doubt when the 60s radicals got tenure.


Define race. Go ahead, people are eagerly waiting.

[Thunder]

Where and when did this movement of race denial originate? No doubt when the 60s radicals got tenure.



Hispanics can't be a race. Not only do they not have identical origin, but they can look as different as day and night.

Hispanics are a culture.

[Richard Masters]

I doubt the people in Spain consider themselves Hispanic. Ask them and they will say they are European.

That's generally true.

[MaGZ]

Race is a social construct. A race is whatever people consider a race to be. The Irish used to be non-white. The Japanese used to be white. There's no science behind it (except maybe social science). I would argue that the way "Hispanic" is used in the US today, it is reasonable to consider it a race.

Racial scientists use to hail from the very best of America's institutions of higher learning.

You can start your education here.

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/List_of_race_theorists

[Richard Masters]

MaGz's views in no way represent any large portion of the USA.

I live in the Northwest and visit California often, where I hear those terms used that way very frequently.

[paximperium]

Racial scientists use to hail from the very best of America's institutions of higher learning.

You can start your education here.

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/List_of_race_theorists
Still waiting
Define race. Go ahead, people are eagerly waiting.

[linusrichard]

Racial scientists use to hail from the very best of America's institutions of higher learning.

You can start your education here.

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/List_of_race_theorists

I've read a lot of posts that have annoyed me, and some have even made me a little bit mad. But this is the first that has evoked a physical response, that of nausea. And I am speaking literally, not being facetious, figurative, sarcastic, or tongue-in-cheek.

Where's that "ignore" button I hear people talking so much about?

ETA: Found it.

[Richard Masters]

Now THAT is an ignorant statement that is on par to MaGZs. Congrats, I guess.

I guess I can't speak for the Southern (old South) and Eastern states, but I'm quite certain otherwise.

[MaGZ]

Hispanics can't be a race. Not only do they not have identical origin, but they can look as different as day and night.

Hispanics are a culture.

The problem is today Hispanics in America consider themselves a race.

For example, La Raza

[paximperium]

I've read a lot of posts that have annoyed me, and some have even made me a little bit mad. But this is the first that has evoked a physical response, that of nausea. And I am speaking literally, not being facetious, figurative, sarcastic, or tongue-in-cheek.

Where's that "ignore" button I hear people talking so much about?

ETA: Found it.
Don't bother. His list of "race theorist" are just that, "theorists" since they all apparently come from the pre-genetics era or are journalists. It's kinda like how Creationists love to trot out their silly Argument from Authority lists.

[paximperium]

The problem is today Hispanics in America consider themselves a race.

For example, La Raza
Still waiting
Define race. Go ahead, people are eagerly waiting.

[Richard Masters]

The problem is today Hispanics in American consider themselves a race.

For example, La Raza

La Raza is a poetic term from an 1925 book. Nowadays La Raza is predominantly used as an ethnic and political identity by political groups like the Chicano movement and MeChA. It doesn't exist as such outside the United States.

[Tailgater]

A rough definition is just spanish-speaking people from latin america.

[MaGZ]

La Raza is a poetic term from an 1925 book. Nowadays La Raza is predominantly used as an ethnic and political identity by political groups like the Chicano movement and MeChA. It doesn't exist as such outside the United States.

Are you suggesting La Raza is the equalivant to the Brown man's Ku Klux Klan?

[Tailgater]

The problem is today Hispanics in America consider themselves a race.

For example, La Raza

False.

[ddt]

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/List_of_race_theorists

Great source, metapedia. Gobineau and H.S. Chamberlain are on that list - sources of inspiration for Hitler.

Let's see what other sources say about metapedia. First wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_encyclopedia_project):
Metapedia - a white nationalist encyclopedia; multiple languages (Conservapedia contains an article about Metapedia)


And then conservapedia (http://www.conservapedia.com/Metapedia):
Metapedia is a wiki site, established circa 2005-2006, that promotes a Euro-centric point of view, a racist view of politics, culture, and the arts and sciences. Available in English and now in ten additional languages, Metapedia also maintains links to WikiSlavia, in Russian and Siberian. The site labels the Holocaust as "the holohoax" and denigrates both the character and intelligence of black people, Jews and other non-European peoples.


Need I say more?

[paximperium]

Helloooooo MaGZ?
Define race. Go ahead, people are eagerly waiting.

[Richard Masters]

Are you suggesting La Raza is the equalivant to the Brown man's Ku Klux Klan?

Not quite... La Raza is just a misappropriated term. However, Chicanos and MEChA are political groups, with (in my opinion) racist views. However, I've never heard of any racist violence on their part.

For the most part, they are simply proud of a pseudo-culture they've manufactured around the myth of Aztlán. A lot of them can't speak Spanish to save their lives, and have never stepped foot in Mexico. They basically just have a separate identity from both Mexicans and (U.S.) Americans of which they feel proud, and they'd like to take over the Southwestern states as they believe the land does not rightfully belong to either Mexico or the United States, but to them (by ancestry, per the Myth of Aztlán).

In the past these groups demanded certain civil rights for farmers; these days they are more about illegal immigration, and mentoring young low-recourse Mexican-Americans who may have never heard of these myths.

ETA: I should add, the KKK was about taking away rights from other outgroups through violence and intimidation, while the Chicano movement and MEChA have generally been about pride and equality.

[MaGZ]

Great source, metapedia. Gobineau and H.S. Chamberlain are on that list - sources of inspiration for Hitler.

Let's see what other sources say about metapedia. First wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_encyclopedia_project):


And then conservapedia (http://www.conservapedia.com/Metapedia):


Need I say more?

The fact is after the turn of the last century racial science and eugenics were cutting edge. Today we have sunk into a type of Dark Age. Of course this was all due to the outcome of Second World War.

Need I say more?

[gtc]

This wikipedia article talks about the issue in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States_Census).

According to the article, the US government views Hispanic or Latino as an ethnicity not a race and it seems they want to include people from Spain who have emigrated to the US directly.

So Hispanics would be White, Black, Asian or whatever. Likewise a White person could be Hispanic or not.

However, it seems they are having trouble convincing Hispanics that they aren't a race as 40 per cent of them apparently tick the some other race box on the census and 97 per cent of the people ticking that box are Hispanic.

[shawmutt]

My Hispanic friend gets a tad offended when folks call her "African-American". Black as the ace of spades, but she's from Brazil. Some work applications and government applications distinguish white (non-Hispanic) and white Hispanics.

[paximperium]

The fact is after the turn of the last century racial science and eugenics were cutting edge. Today we have sunk into a type of Dark Age. Of course this was all due to the outcome of Second World War.

Need I say more?
Racist consider the modern Golden Age of Biology and Genetics to be " a type of Dark Age" since it has completely destroyed their false beliefs about the "differences" between the ethnic groups. That's what I call progress.

[Hokulele]

Define race. Go ahead, people are eagerly waiting.


Race - A qualitative category based on appearance used by neo-Nazis to determine which people they should hate.

[Drudgewire]

The fact is after the turn of the last century racial science and eugenics were cutting edge. Today we have sunk into a type of Dark Age. Of course this was all due to the outcome of Second World War.

Need I say more?


Nope. Holy crap. http://www.lethalwrestling.com/upload/psyduck.gif

[MaGZ]

Not quite... La Raza is just a misappropriated term. However, Chicanos and MeChA are political groups, with (in my opinion) racist views. However, I've never heard of any racist violence on their part.

For the most part, they are simply proud of a pseudo-culture they've manufactured around the myth of Aztlán. A lot of them can't speak Spanish to save their lives, and have never stepped foot in Mexico. They basically just have a separate identity from both Mexicans and (U.S.) Americans of which they feel proud, and they'd like to take over the Southwestern states as they believe the land does not rightfully belong to either Mexico or the United States, but to them (by ancestry, per the Myth of Aztlán).

In the past these groups demanded certain civil rights for farmers; these days they are more about illegal immigration, and mentoring young low-recourse Mexican-Americans who may have never heard of these myths.

ETA: I should add, the KKK was about taking away rights from other outgroups, while the Chicano movement and MeChA have generally been about equality.

It bothers me Sonia Sotomayor is a member of La Raza. I thought she was Puerto Rican.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=99420

[bpesta22]

Still waiting

The "define race" quip, repeated, reminds me of creationists demanding a true transitional fossil.

It's a fallacy to assume something doesn't exist til it's defined with zero error. It's also a fallacy to assume something can't be studied til it's defined with zero error.

Are people really claiming that race is a 100% social construct?

[bpesta22]

Racist consider the modern Golden Age of Biology and Genetics to be " a type of Dark Age" since it has completely destroyed their false beliefs about the "differences" between the ethnic groups. That's what I call progress.

Can you cite how the concept of biological races has been completely destroyed by modern genetics?

That seems to be a pretty strong scientific statement.

[linusrichard]

My Hispanic friend gets a tad offended when folks call her "African-American". Black as the ace of spades, but she's from Brazil. Some work applications and government applications distinguish white (non-Hispanic) and white Hispanics.

This confuses me - your friend from Brazil considers herself Hispanic? Because it was my impression that Brazilians didn't consider themselves Hispanic, but I would of course defer to an actual Brazilian on the matter, if you're sure that she does.

A brief check of Wikipedia... interesting: the US Department of Transportation (but not the US government as a whole) includes Brazilians and Portuguese as Hispanics. I guess the Dept. of Transportation will not be recognizing Sotomayor as the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice!

[KingMerv00]

The "define race" quip, repeated, reminds me of creationists demanding a true transitional fossil.

It's a fallacy to assume something doesn't exist til it's defined with zero error. It's also a fallacy to assume something can't be studied til it's defined with zero error.

I think you misunderstand the opinions of others. Everyone knows that genetic markers vary by region. The problem is how to decide which regions to include and which to exclude when labeling a race. The lines are arbitrary and don't add any information to the discussion.

If it is so obvious, perhaps you could help define it for us?

[MaGZ]

This wikipedia article talks about the issue in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States_Census).

According to the article, the US government views Hispanic or Latino as an ethnicity not a race and it seems they want to include people from Spain who have emigrated to the US directly.

So Hispanics would be White, Black, Asian or whatever. Likewise a White person could be Hispanic or not.

However, it seems they are having trouble convincing Hispanics that they aren't a race as 40 per cent of them apparently tick the some other race box on the census and 97 per cent of the people ticking that box are Hispanic.

And the US government for census purposes considerer Egyptians in America to be racially classified as White. My point is the government is as confused about race as the 60s radical race deniers.

[linusrichard]

Are people really claiming that race is a 100% social construct?

I am.

[MaGZ]

My Hispanic friend gets a tad offended when folks call her "African-American". Black as the ace of spades, but she's from Brazil. Some work applications and government applications distinguish white (non-Hispanic) and white Hispanics.

Either way you friend would get preferential treatment and affirmative action placement if she worked for the government.

[bpesta22]

At a practical level, I'd use self reports-- ask people what race they are. Or, an eyeball test.

Up a level I'd use whatever forensics markers police and anthropologists use to identify a bone, hair or blood sample as being from one race versus another.

I'd also look at the genetic clustering studies (which I am not qualified to completely understand) and using modern psychometrics estimate how much of the trait can be measured by assuming that biological races exist.

I wouldn't suspect it would be all black or white, but more a continuum (or whatever type of space is needed to model all the races) wherein one could put a percentage on a person as to how many of his / her ancestors came from different parts of the world.

I'd bet the fancy and expensive genetic set of tests would correlate near perfectly with self-reports and somewhat less strongly with eye-ball classifications. The correlation would be so large that self reports would be vindicated as a reliable indicator of the construct (much like getting an x-ray before ordering a cat scan).

Sorting people by these markers and then correlating the categories with other variables (and then testing for mediating and moderating variables) would reveal very useful information about key issues facing all of us. But most skeptics would rather not go there.

The above would be testable, repeatable, observable classifications, and so could be scientific. Getting at causality is hard, but not impossible. Not studying the issue-- or claiming any scientist who does is racist-- is frustratingly non-skepticlike (imho).

[ImaginalDisc]

Do we have a good definition of gravity?

The phenomenon of mutual attraction between all material bodies in the universe, proportionate to their mass and inversely proportionate to the squares of their distances.

Using even this relatively simplest of definitions you can solve any two body problem for any two bits of matter bigger than motes too small to see. More unusual cases of very fast and very small objects, lots of objects, and air resistance, require more complex but equally clear and refined laws honed by centuries of observation and confirmation against actual evidence.

Can you offer a one sentence definition of race which makes checkable predictions with equal precision and clarity?

[bpesta22]

The phenomenon of mutual attraction between all material bodies in the universe, proportionate to their mass and inversely proportionate to the squares of their distances.

Using even this relatively simplest of defintions you can solve any two body problem for any two bits of matter bigger than motes too small to see. More unusual cases of very fast and very small objects, lots of objects, and air resistance, require more complex but equally clear and refined laws honed by centuries of observation and confirmation against actual evidence.

Can you offer a one sentence definition of race which makes checkable predictions with equal precision and clarity?

Attraction? What is that? How does that word illuminate / define what gravity is? Your telling me what gravity does versus what it is. That doesn't seem like a definition to me, but I claim complete ignorance in physics so if someone needs to correct me with a further definition, please do.

If I knew how anthropologists categorized blood, bones, hair, etc., by race, I bet I could come up with a short definition that does better than yours.

Here's a try unrelated to the above. Race: The conglomerate of biological, sociological and psychological differences created by natural selection, due to the genetic drift of man's early ancestors.

[gtc]

Can you offer a one sentence definition of race which makes checkable predictions with equal precision and clarity?

No, but that just means that race is not as simple a matter as gravity.

The concept of race is usefully employed in public health in Australia (http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/) and New Zealand (http://www.maorihealth.govt.nz/) where it is recognised that certain races are pre-disposed towards certain health issues. It is useful even if not every person who identifies as a member of that race is predisposed to the particular health issues and it is useful even if a precise classification is not possible for many people.

[MaGZ]

At a practical level, I'd use self reports-- ask people what race they are. Or, an eyeball test.

Up a level I'd use whatever forensics markers police and anthropologists use to identify a bone, hair or blood sample as being from one race versus another.

I'd also look at the genetic clustering studies (which I am not qualified to completely understand) and using modern psychometrics estimate how much of the trait can be measured by assuming that biological races exist.

I wouldn't suspect it would be all black or white, but more a continuum (or whatever type of space is needed to model all the races) wherein one could put a percentage on a person as to how many of his / her ancestors came from different parts of the world.

I'd bet the fancy and expensive genetic set of tests would correlate near perfectly with self-reports and somewhat less strongly with eye-ball classifications. The correlation would be so large that self reports would be vindicated as a reliable indicator of the construct (much like getting an x-ray before ordering a cat scan).

Sorting people by these markers and then correlating the categories with other variables (and then testing for mediating and moderating variables) would reveal very useful information about key issues facing all of us. But most skeptics would rather not go there.

The above would be testable, repeatable, observable classifications, and so could be scientific. Getting at causality is hard, but not impossible. Not studying the issue-- or claiming any scientist who does is racist-- is frustratingly non-skepticlike (imho).

The race deniers do not deserve any response. They are Cultural Marxists and can not be persuaded with any arguments.

[ImaginalDisc]

Attraction? What is that? How does that word illuminate / define what gravity is? Your telling me what gravity does versus what it is. That doesn't seem like a definition to me, but I claim complete ignorance in physics so if someone needs to correct me with a further definition, please do.

Gravity *is* what it does. It's a force. Defining it as "the force of X" is entirely sufficent. You may as well complain that the weak nuclear isn't definied because scientists who study it only talk about the force of its action rather than what it "is."

If I knew how anthropologists categorized blood, bones, hair, etc., by race, I bet I could come up with a short definition that does better than yours.

Here's a try unrelated to the above. Race: The conglomerate of biological, sociological and psychological differences created by natural selection, due to the genetic drift of man's early ancestors.

False start. Natural selection is not genetic drift. Genetic drift is the accumulation of genetic differences in a population over generations. Genetic changes may, and very often do, have no visible phenotypic differences, not even meaingful chemical ones, and thus are not something for natural selection to act on. Two species may be physically indistinguishable but genetically incompatible. This is peripatric speciation. It's not only common in nature, it happens all the time in laboratory animals such as drosophila and is familiar to any freshman in Biology.

Genetic differences (genotype) do not equal physical differences (phenotype). Physical differences can have environmental and developmental causes, rather than genetic ones.

For all these reasons you have both failed to undermine the definition of gravity and failed to put forward a definition of race which is supported by science.

Please try again.

[LostAngeles]

Attraction? What is that? How does that word illuminate / define what gravity is? Your telling me what gravity does versus what it is. That doesn't seem like a definition to me, but I claim complete ignorance in physics so if someone needs to correct me with a further definition, please do.

If I knew how anthropologists categorized blood, bones, hair, etc., by race, I bet I could come up with a short definition that does better than yours.

Here's a try unrelated to the above. Race: The conglomerate of biological, sociological and psychological differences created by natural selection, due to the genetic drift of man's early ancestors.

I wonder, given my mixed-race background, what my blood, bones, hair, etc. would indicate my race as being.

[Delvo]

This confuses me - your friend from Brazil considers herself Hispanic? Because it was my impression that Brazilians didn't consider themselves Hispanic, but I would of course defer to an actual Brazilian on the matter, if you're sure that she does.

A brief check of Wikipedia... interesting: the US Department of Transportation (but not the US government as a whole) includes Brazilians and Portuguese as Hispanics.My impression has always been that the words "Hispanic" and "Latino" were created for the specific purpose of being categorical, to include both Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries or cultures. It's how I was taught the terms in elementary & middle school. They come from words that referred not just one of them but to both (at least... with "Latino" being a bit sloppy because the Latin-speaking world included even more than that).

(Similarly, would could have also used the word "Iberian" or "Iberic" or such, but apparently nobody felt like bothering.)

That it usually ends up referring to Spanish-speakers in the USA is essentially just a coincidence due to the fact that the closest Latin American countries to us just happen to speak Spanish, not Portuguese; it's not a matter of excluding the Portuguese-speakers from the word's definition, just not really thinking of them at all because we meet so few of them here.

I am.Then you (and others), quite simply, are lying. You KNOW that black people, white people, Australian aborigines, and so on actually exist and possess different physical traits. They just do, and you know it, and that's all there is to it, so trying to claim otherwise won't fool anybody. (It might draw "agreement", but not from anybody being fooled; only from others who also KNOW as well as you and the rest of us do that people whose ancestries are from different regions of the world really do have different physical traits, and that that absurd agreement is thus not an agreement on the fact itself but an agreement to lie about it.)

But why bother with a lie that's so obvious that you know it can't possibly ever fool anybody? Would you claim that grass is orange or that orange juice comes from cows?

And why be so aggressive & adversarial about it, barging into threads that aren't even about that supposed "question" in the first place to spread The Word when nobody asked for it?

Can you offer a one sentence definition of race which makes checkable predictions with equal precision and clarity?Races are groups of individuals of the same species (usually referring to the human species, with "breed" and "variety" being the more common equivalent terms when referring to other animals and plants), characterized by certain inherited traits which are distinct from the traits which characterize other such groups of the same species, having diverged due to sufficiently divided ancestry under different selection pressures.

...but of course, you already knew that, and were just using the "define ___!" gimmick in the same pushy, belligerent way it's nearly always used in debates/arguments: not as a way to give or get information, but as a way to try to put The Enemy in the defensive, pressured, burdened, obligated, supplicant position and yourself in the in the controlling, judging position...

But the burden of proof isn't where your demands act like it is. We all know what races are and that they're obviously real. YOU are the one making the claim that human populations in different environments of the world magically didn't evolve different traits from each other even though we all see some of those traits every day and science has uncovered many more that aren't so easy to see. It's up to YOU to prove YOUR case that it's all some kind of illusion and there really are no physical differences between the human populations that developed in different parts of the world.

[bpesta22]

Gravity *is* what it does. It's a force. Defining it as "the force of X" is entirely sufficent. You may as well complain that the weak nuclear isn't definied because scientists who study it only talk about the force of its action rather than what it "is."

I'll defer to physicists, this not being my area. But, I thought that trying to figure out what gravity is-- versus does-- was a topic of interest. If not, I retract. To be clear, your stating that asking what gravity "is" is meaningless, because gravity can only be described by what it does? If this is not what you claim, then I don't see how your example makes mine "fail".


False start. Natural selection is not genetic drift. Genetic drift is the accumulation of genetic differences in a population over generations. Genetic changes may, and very often do, have no visible phenotypic differences, not even meaingful chemical ones, and thus are not something for natural selection to act on. Two species may be physically indistinguishable but genetically incompatible. This is peripatric speciation. It's not only common in nature, it happens all the time in laboratory animals such as drosophila and is familiar to any freshman in Biology.

Genetic differences (genotype) do not equal physical differences (phenotype). Physical differences can have environmental and developmental causes, rather than genetic ones.

I understand that natural selection is not genetic drift. I don't see how my initial statement makes that inference. I also understand that physical differences can have environmental causes. Perhaps I got into trouble by trying to use specific terminology. So, in English:

A long, long time ago, humans diverged geographically. Some ended up close to the equator. These people have black skin. Some ended up in much colder climates. These people have white skin.

For some long period of time, these people didn't interbreed because they were geographically isolated (that's why I mentioned genetic drift, so sorry if I used the term wrong).

During all this, the things that mattered for survival in cold climates were different from the things that mattered for survival in warm climates. Natural selection in the cold favored-- among other things-- bigger brained slower reproducing / developing peoples (is that r or K selection?) whereas natural selection in the warm favored the opposite.

So, now we have measurable, observable, biological differences between people whose ancestors came from different parts of the world.


For all these reasons you have both failed to undermine the definition of gravity and failed to put forward a definition of race which is supported by science.

Please try again.[/QUOTE]

I don't think I was trying to undermine gravity. Perhaps it was a bad example, but clearly we can study things scientifically before knowing what their precise definition is.

[Thunder]

The race deniers do not deserve any response. They are Cultural Marxists and can not be persuaded with any arguments.

They are not motivated by hatred or bigotry, therefore they are MORE then worthy of a response.

[bpesta22]

I wonder, given my mixed-race background, what my blood, bones, hair, etc. would indicate my race as being.

I don't think race is all black or white. Clearly, mixed race people exist. Does the presence of bisexuality exclude the existence of homo and hetero sexuality (or do ambidextrous people make it impossible for left and right handers to exist, and for that difference to be caused biologically)?

But your question is interesting. I wish we had some forensics type people here who could tell us how accurate this type of ID is, and what they would likely conclude in the case of mixed race bones (wouldn't it be interesting if the forensics concluded that the bones were from someone of mixed race?)

[Thunder]

Some work applications and government applications distinguish white (non-Hispanic) and white Hispanics.

It is incorrect and stupid for application forms in the USA to list "Hispanic" as a race. Hispanics can have blue eyes and blond hair. Would such a person not be white?

such stupidity.

[Richard Masters]

It is incorrect and stupid for application forms in the USA to list "Hispanic" as a race. Hispanics can have blue eyes and blond hair. Would such a person not be white?

such stupidity.

I simply check "other" when faced with such ignorance.

[GreNME]

Are you suggesting La Raza is the equalivant to the Brown man's Ku Klux Klan?

Nope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Raza_%28radio%29). It's (http://979laraza.lamusica.com/) a (http://www.yosoyraza.com/) lot (http://www.laraza.fm/) of (http://www.laraza937.com/remotos.html) things (http://www.laraza1023.com/). Mostly (http://www.impre.com/laraza/) stuff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Raza) you'd (http://www.nclr.org/) hate (http://techforpeople.net/~lrcl/).

[FONT=Arial][SIZE=2]The fact is after the turn of the last century racial science and eugenics were cutting edge. Today we have sunk into a type of Dark Age. Of course this was all due to the outcome of Second World War.

Need I say more?

No, you really don't.

[ImaginalDisc]

My impression has always been that the words "Hispanic" and "Latino" were created for the specific purpose of being categorical, to include both Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries or cultures. It's how I was taught the terms in elementary & middle school. They come from words that referred not just one of them but to both (at least... with "Latino" being a bit sloppy because the Latin-speaking world included even more than that).

(Similarly, would could have also used the word "Iberian" or "Iberic" or such, but apparently nobody felt like bothering.)

That it usually ends up referring to Spanish-speakers in the USA is essentially just a coincidence due to the fact that the closest Latin American countries to us just happen to speak Spanish, not Portuguese; it's not a matter of excluding the Portuguese-speakers from the word's definition, just not really thinking of them at all because we meet so few of them here.

Then you (and others), quite simply, are lying. You KNOW that black people, white people, Australian aborigines, and so on actually exist and possess different physical traits. They just do, and you know it, and that's all there is to it, so trying to claim otherwise won't fool anybody. (It might draw "agreement", but not from anybody being fooled; only from others who also KNOW as well as you and the rest of us do that people whose ancestries are from different regions of the world really do have different physical traits, and that that absurd agreement is thus not an agreement on the fact itself but an agreement to lie about it.)

But why bother with a lie that's so obvious that you know it can't possibly ever fool anybody? Would you claim that grass is orange or that orange juice comes from cows?

And why be so aggressive & adversarial about it, barging into threads that aren't even about that supposed "question" in the first place to spread The Word when nobody asked for it?

Races are groups of individuals of the same species (usually referring to the human species, with "breed" and "variety" being the more common equivalent terms when referring to other animals and plants), characterized by certain inherited traits which are distinct from the traits which characterize other such groups of the same species, due to divided ancestry under different selection pressures.

...but of course, you already knew that, and were just using the "define ___!" gimmick in the same pushy, belligerent way it's nearly always used in debates/arguments: not as a way to give or get information, but as a way to try to put The Enemy in the defensive, pressured, burdened, obligated, supplicant position and yourself in the in the controlling, judging position...

But the burden of proof isn't where your demands act like it is. We all know what races are and that they're obviously real. YOU are the one making the claim that human populations in different environments of the world magically didn't evolve different traits from each other even though we all see some of those traits every day and science has uncovered many more that aren't so easy to see. It's up to YOU to prove YOUR case that it's all some kind of illusion and there really are no physical differences between the human populations that developed in different parts of the world.


The burden of proof is always, without any exception or hesitation, on the claimant. There is more genetic diversity among the peoples of Africa than among the entire rest of the human race, though few people would argue that there are thousands of races in Africa and comparatively few in the rest of the world. We are predisposed to notice people's faces, coloration, height, and build. These are a tiny fraction of the phyenotypes that our genetics code for, and two closely related groups may have very smiliar or different characteristics of these narrow types.

Let me illustrate how fallacious this race based reasoning is. There are clades birds, custaceans, and insects which are visibly impossible to distinguish from one another, have the same lifestyle and habits, but are seperate species only because they cannot breed. Are they different races, based on mutual incompatibility, or the same race, based on identical physical characteristics? This is a conundrum only if you accept race as having some inherent meaning, rather than simply accepting it as a social construct based on our primate evolutionary history as social animals sensetive to outward features.

Race is a consenquence of the modeling in our brains, not a detailed biological examination of the evolutionary history of the person we are looking at. It's a model generated by our socially adaptive brains, and like all other models our brains generate, it was useful to our ancestors, but that doesn't make it true.

Here, look at the necker cube (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necker_cube). Which way is this three dimensional object rotated? Which vertex is closest to you? If you are like many people who see this image, your brain may be flipping back and forth between two completely incompatible images, trying to make sense in three dimensions of what is really just a two dimensional image. Just because you're certain that race is plainly obvious doesn't mean it's true. You have to accept race is as vulnerable to skeptical inquiry as all other ideas.

Complaining that I'm not being nice about the issue is the last refuge of a person without any contradictory evidence.

[GreNME]

I wonder, given my mixed-race background, what my blood, bones, hair, etc. would indicate my race as being.

It would indicate you're a human being and have a high likelihood of not being indoctrinated with racist nonsense. ;)

[GreNME]

It is incorrect and stupid for application forms in the USA to list "Hispanic" as a race. Hispanics can have blue eyes and blond hair. Would such a person not be white?

such stupidity.

The only stupidity seems to be yours. Are you really saying that blonde hair or blue eyes classifies someone as white? Seriously (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vanuatu_blonde.jpg), get a grip (http://www.topsocialite.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/gary-dourdan.jpg).

[ImaginalDisc]

The only stupidity seems to be yours. Are you really saying that blonde hair or blue eyes classifies someone as white? Seriously (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vanuatu_blonde.jpg), get a grip (http://www.topsocialite.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/gary-dourdan.jpg).

What does classify a person as white?

[bpesta22]

I think the check the box for hispanic thing is more about protecting these individuals from racism (by tracking, say, their flow through an organization's hiring process) than to assert that hispanic is a race, so there.

There's practical value to the coding, even if race doesn't exist biologically. Ask any company who contracts with the federal government.

ID: I remember hearing stats about how similar chimp DNA is to human DNA. Astonishing. The small difference, though, leads to some rather large phenotypic (?) effects.

So what if the vast majority of genetic material is the same within race. Obviously, that material couldn't be used to define race. What about the material that's different? Too small to matter? I dunno; I imagine some genetic disorders involve very small changes in genetic material with big real-world effects, but again I am no geneticist.

fwiw, I don't think you're being mean. Just overconfident that your answers are correct, at least in proportion to how compelling they seem to me.

[Eyeron]

La Raza and Mecha are the United State's equivalent of the Palestinians. Only far less violent.

[Delvo]

I'll defer to physicists, this not being my area. But, I thought that trying to figure out what gravity is-- versus does-- was a topic of interest.How gravity works is indeed a big question in physics today. According to basic particle physics, any force must be transmitted by a particle, such as a photon, and space doesn't curve. According to relativity, it's a matter of the curvature of the space that particles such as photons move in, so it can't possibly be a particle. But both theories appear to be right according to every test we can do so far, so the question is how to reconcile them, or how one of them could turn out to be wrong even though all tests seem to say it's right so far.

The problem of whether or not such details are crucial to a definition of "what gravity is" is one of the basic reasons why the "Define ___!" attacktic is akin to logical fallacies. People use it as a distractor to give themselves something else to quibble over and get as far away as possible from the actual point when they know they haven't got a case on the actual subject.

So, in English:

A long, long time ago, humans diverged geographically. Some ended up close to the equator. These people have black skin. Some ended up in much colder climates. These people have white skin.Too much focus on just one trait, when there are dozens of macroscopic physical ones and hundreds of biochemical or genetic ones.

For some long period of time, these people didn't interbreed...or interbred little enough for natural selection to cause their traits to diverge, anyway.

During all this, the things that mattered for survival in cold climates were different from the things that mattered for survival in warm climates.Too much focus on temperature. There are multiple other environmental factors at work, and we don't even know what they all were.

It is incorrect and stupid for application forms in the USA to list "Hispanic" as a race.It would be, but most (actually all that I'm personally aware of) don't do that. They ask for "race or ethnicity".

[quarky]

Are white trash still white?
Are all Beaners male?
Can a Wet-back be wealthy?

[GreNME]

What does classify a person as white?

You're diverting away from the stupidity that was exhibited. Why? There are, in reality, more than one ethnic group in many of the South and Central American nations, as well as heavy and demonstrable intermingling with European people for a few hundred years. Claiming something as arbitrary as eye or hair color as proof that someone is, in fact, white is ridiculous, particularly with recessives like blonde hair and blue eyes. You may as well say that someone isn't Irish or Scottish because they don't have red hair.

[bpesta22]

ID-- define white?

Some have argued that the amount of genetic variation within populations dwarfs the variation between populations, suggesting that discrete genetic categories are not useful (Lewontin 1972; Cooper et al. 2003; Haga and Venter 2003). On the other hand, several studies have shown that individuals tend to cluster genetically with others of the same ancestral geographic origins (Mountain and Cavalli-Sforza 1997; Stephens et al. 2001; Bamshad et al. 2003)

Another major point of discussion has been the correspondence between genetic clusters and commonly used racial/ethnic labels. Some have argued for poor correspondence between these two entities (Lewontin 1972; Wilson et al. 2001), whereas others have suggested a strong correlation (Risch et al. 2002; Burchard et al. 2003). We have shown a nearly perfect correspondence between genetic cluster and SIRE for major ethnic groups living in the United States, with a discrepancy rate of only 0.14%.


I'm guessing you're familiar with the Tang article. I would be interested in an experts trashing of it (without intense technical jargon) if you or anyone's up to it.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1196372



Also, I place tremendous weight on journal quality-- do you know if the American Journal of Human Genetics is elite?

[GreNME]

La Raza and Mecha are the United State's equivalent of the Palestinians. Only far less violent.

You're wrong. Please see post #72 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4988154#post4988154).

[fuelair]

I was told today that Hispanic people are a race.

Not a culture..but an actual race.

Hispanics can be as pale as this page..or as black as my keyboard. They can have dark brown eyes or light green eyes. They can be blond..or have black hair.

Hispanics are clearly NOT a race. Hispanics started out as folks who came from Spain, but it now includes all the immigrants to followed them to these Spanish speaking countries and became part of the culture.

One can have Italian, German, Irish, Swedish, native American, Russian-Jewish, Spanish, African, Korean, ancestry..and be part of the Hispanic culture.

Hispanic...is NOT a race.Based on what a lot of people on this forum seem to want to believe, race seems to mean whatever you want it to, so there is (according to them) as best I can tell (and some specifically stated on here) a Palestian race, a Jewish race, an Hispanic race, a white race which may or may not be caucasian, a Jamaican race and a Mexican race (I assume because Mexicans are neither Indian (the race in the Americas, not the one in India which has trouble with the Pakistani race) nor Hispanic nor caucasian which a number of Hispanic race people and Jewish people and others seem to resemble on occasion. Anyway, outside of pointing out that race is functionally unimportant and caused purely by how far your ancesters lived away from the equator some thousands of years ago (re: Vitamin D and a compound I always forget - keeping lightish skin for one and needing darker for the other)I am officially uninterested in the topic and would only consider coming back when Semitic (the race name) is being used properly and some people figure out that it may be religiousity or culture but they aren't all racial.

Note: not listing all anthropologically defined races, just enough to make a point - though I should probably remember WWII here as our gov't actually thought there was a seperate Japanese and Chinese race and made up really dumb pamphlets to tell US soldiers how to tell them apart

[Delvo]

The burden of proof is always, without any exception or hesitation, on the claimant.Yes, and that's you, so...

There is more genetic diversity among the peoples of Africa than among the entire rest of the human raceIrrelevant. (And you know it.)

though few people would argue that there are thousands of races in Africa and comparatively few in the rest of the world.Why that number? The degree to which genetic diversity there is greater than elsewhere is not that large. The number of unique or nearly unique alleles is only on the order of 2 to maybe at most 4 times as high as elsewhere... which amazingly just happens to be about as many races as there are in Africa.

Not that that has anything to do with the claim you're still not supporting...

We are predisposed to notice people's faces, coloration, height, and build. These are a tiny fraction of the phyenotypes that our genetics code forIrrelevant. (And you know it.)

There are clades birds, custaceans, and insects which are visibly impossible to distinguish from one another, have the same lifestyle and habits, but are seperate species only because they cannot breed. Are they different races, based on mutual incompatibility, or the same race, based on identical physical characteristics?Different species, not a racial issue at all, because races are groups within a single species.

I'm sorry, was that supposed to be some kind of deep mysterious conundrum, some unanswerable koan to spend life pondering without ever finding the solution? What's next, will you ask me whether species is above or below the level of phylum?

Or maybe you'd prefer to start saying something that might in some way support something that has something to do with your actual claim about races.

...a social construct based on our primate evolutionary history as social animals sensetive to outward features.If we're sensitive to it, then it must exist. Would couldn't have an excessive response to something that didn't exist; we couldn't even detect it at all because it wouldn't be there to detect.

But even though you've just confirmed the races' existence yourself by pointing out how we respond to it, that's irrelevant anyway (and you know it), because it's not where you originally planted the goal post. You said the races don't exist, not that people merely react too strongly to the visible evidence of them.

Just because you're certain that race is plainly obvious doesn't mean it's true.It does mean that it's up to you, as the person claiming otherwise, to give some reason to think it's not true, which you haven't. You've just thrown out distraction attempts and shifted your goal post.

[LostAngeles]

I don't think race is all black or white. Clearly, mixed race people exist. Does the presence of bisexuality exclude the existence of homo and hetero sexuality (or do ambidextrous people make it impossible for left and right handers to exist, and for that difference to be caused biologically)?

But your question is interesting. I wish we had some forensics type people here who could tell us how accurate this type of ID is, and what they would likely conclude in the case of mixed race bones (wouldn't it be interesting if the forensics concluded that the bones were from someone of mixed race?)

Well, first off, how many races are there? Where do Middle Easterners fall for example? Are they their own race or are they a mix? I've seen as much variety in the handful of Lebanese I've known as Latinos I've known.

You suggested that you could use forensics to categorize, but you've just clearly admitted that it won't quite work. Anything better?

Also, are people from Suriname, Guyana, and French Guyana Hispanic? The national languages are Dutch, English, and French respectively and if I'm not mistaken they all have a high Indian and Pakistani population.

[ImaginalDisc]

ID: I remember hearing stats about how similar chimp DNA is to human DNA. Astonishing. The small difference, though, leads to some rather large phenotypic (?) effects.

Somewhere in the evolution of hominids two ape chromosomes fused at their ends to form human chromosome 2. That's typical of drift, as long as it doesn't lead to some deliterious mutation.

So what if the vast majority of genetic material is the same within race. Obviously, that material couldn't be used to define race. What about the material that's different? Too small to matter? I dunno; I imagine some genetic disorders involve very small changes in genetic material with big real-world effects, but again I am no geneticist.

Again, that's tough. Geneticists have argued that you could go through the human genome, cutting out whole sections like an overzealous Reader's Digest editor, slip that DNA into a zygote and get a human being who is medically normal. Although evidence is mounting that A) even though most of our DNA has been thought to have no function, lately some functions has been founds for parts that used to be considered "junk" and B) some of our genetic data is stored in RNA whereas we used to think that RNA was only ever involved in the translation of genes into proteins. In fact, there's grounds to suspect that RNA may completely predate DNA.

As for whether the genetic differences can be used to scientifically define race. . .no.

Let's examine of groups of hypotheical people. A and B live close to one another, but rarely interbreed. They live the same environment and have the same evolutionary pressures, so even though they will experience genetic drift and could potentially speciate entirely over thousands of generations, they probably will look very similar. Perhaps this a good model of the gulf that seperated the Brahmin and untouchable castes. I'd have to dig through the journals to see if anyone has done genetic studies to compare those castes, but the point is that however large or small the genetic difference, very few people would define them as being distinct races because they're phenotypically so similar, and race is an ad hoc system of classifying phenotypes.

Conversely, groups C and D live far apart, have had no genetic contact for thousands of years, but live in similar environments. Most people would naively classify almost any African as belonging to the same race as any other African, even though we can tell that the Massai are a tall and thin people and the Kalihari bushmen, while looking similar, have a different facial "look." Are they different races or not?

Try groups E and F, who live close, do interbeed, but call themselves different races. Are Tutsis and Hutu, two tribes of Rwanda, different races or not? They have lived relatively close and interbred for comparatively longer than, say, "Hispanics" and "Northern Europeans." There was a recent and bloody way based on the percieved racial difference in Rwanda in the recent past, yet whether or not they are different races depends entirely on what your personal definition of race is. Say they're not different races you contradict the people with machettes who brutally hacked people apart in a deliberate attempted genocide of another "race," as well as those who condem that action on that same basis. Say yes and then you have to find some basis for the distinction, which is entirely social, not scientific.

I think race is something we've made up to lend a name to the way our brain tends to be sensetive to the faces, builds, and coloration of people, coupled together with our social history of building in-groups and out-groups, i.e. my tribe vs. outsiders.

ETA: Added final paragraph and changed the second to last a little bit to make it more clear.

[ddt]

Well, first off, how many races are there? Where do Middle Easterners fall for example? Are they their own race or are they a mix? I've seen as much variety in the handful of Lebanese I've known as Latinos I've known.

You suggested that you could use forensics to categorize, but you've just clearly admitted that it won't quite work. Anything better?

Also, are people from Suriname, Guyana, and French Guyana Hispanic? The national languages are Dutch, English, and French respectively and if I'm not mistaken they all have a high Indian and Pakistani population.

And when you're talking about Suriname (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Suriname), you find all races there: "white" people (mainly from the Netherlands), "hindustani" from India/Pakistan, Javanese from Indonesia, Chinese, blacks (descendants from black slaves); and most importantly, Creoles, i.e., people from mixed descent.

Even if you can identify a cluster of genes that identifies someone as "black" or another as "white" or as "yellow" - in the pre-industrial age - how are you nowadays going to distinguish them from each other, with so many people of mixed descent? It won't be long before everybody is a mixture of those groups, with the possible exception of the followers of H.S. Chamberlain's ideas.

[SimonD]

Helloooooo MaGZ?

I also thought that there was only one - the human race

[bpesta22]

Lost:

I dunno how many races there are. I guess some kind of pyramid deal with major races at the top. That there are no fine demarcations among the races doesn't mean they don't exist. Nor does my ignorance on how many races there are somehow prove that race isn't partly biological.

I obviously enjoy debating race on the JREF. I don't enjoy it so much that I ever wanted to spend time classifying various races to answer the "how many" question.

I think my position is easy-- most here believe that any race difference on anything real-world and important (e.g., income, education, crime rates, IQ) is 100% caused by social stuff. That's the strongest statement one can make on the environmental side of the fence.

I don't need to show (nor even believe) that race differences on social factors are 100% biologically caused. Just showing that it's greater than zero falsifies the mainstream view here (that it is zero).

A paper linked here in another thread by Rushton and Jensen-- at least imo-- makes a compelling case that some (not all!) of these differences are genetic differences.

If they are, we should study them (versus label those who do as racist). Race issues are and have always been one of the most compelling challenges humans face. We should throw money at this line of research as only science can figure it out.

Going to bed now. If this thread isn't 20 pages by morning, I will try to reply to posts below I've skipped.

Thanks to all--so far-- for discussing this nicely.

[bpesta22]

eta: race could be like color. increase the wavelength a little bit, and it still looks blue. keep increasing the WL and sooner or later, the color changes to green. Green and blue are different, but there's probably no point along the scale where we can mark off and say everything left is blue and right is green. That said, blue and green exist (well, at least in our perception).

[ImaginalDisc]

eta: race could be like color. increase the wavelength a little bit, and it still looks blue. keep increasing the WL and sooner or later, the color changes to green. Green and blue are different, but there's probably no point along the scale where we can mark off and say everything left is blue and right is green. That said, blue and green exist (well, at least in our perception).

That's probably a better analogy then you might think. Until the twentieth century in Japan, they had no word for blue. At least, they had no word to differentiate between blue and green. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ao_(color)) This etymology persists in that two objects of the identical color might be called either ao or midori based on the type of thing it is (a wasabi plant v. a green bus), not its color.

This sort of thing has happened in English, too. Organge was not a word until after the fruit was introduced to England, and the word appears first in print in the early 1500's. Before that it was just "yellow-red."

Ergo, color is a social/lingusitic construct very much like race. The distinction between "yellow" and "white" in both cases is anything but black and white.

[Aepervius]

The main problem is that you are all speaking of a different concept.

There is the concept of race as being distinct group of people recognizable by their appearance (white/black etc...) and this is pure bunk which has long been discredited. "hispanic looking" as in "brown people" or "white" or even "black" is one such stupid concept, as this include people which might come from wildly varying origin.

Then there are the forensic and genetic concept of race which are hotly debatted. With , as far as my cursory look tells me, are tending toward no real race being definable, just a continuous spectrum, with sometimes less genetic variation between visibly different people, than between visibly identical people (using the old concept).

Which is why I think paximperium is correct in requesting the definition of race, as it is a moving concept which seem to depend on the time, on the goal of the person using it

bpesta22, to be able to make prediction and be useful in science, a concept has to be clearly defined and presented. It does not matter if we don't know what that concept *IS* (gravity) as long as we can describe what it *DOES* and how to distinguish it from other concept (gravity / nuclear force). The concept of race being used in that thread is *CLEARLY* not well defined and vary from people to people, and there is even example in this thread using the old crappy definition of skin color.

All I can see anyway with the various race concept, is that except very very rare exception (how likely is somebody to get a rare disease like sickle cell anemia for example) the concept of race *ALWAYS* seem to be used to wedge people group against each other, or to pretend some people should have more/less right than others. And that IMHO is a (rule 10) concept.

[zooterkin]

Well, the Iberian peninsula includes Portugal and it doesn't include Argentina. And yet Argentineans are Hispanic and Portuguese aren't.

And what about people from Spain?

[ImaginalDisc]

ID-- define white?

Some have argued that the amount of genetic variation within populations dwarfs the variation between populations, suggesting that discrete genetic categories are not useful (Lewontin 1972; Cooper et al. 2003; Haga and Venter 2003). On the other hand, several studies have shown that individuals tend to cluster genetically with others of the same ancestral geographic origins (Mountain and Cavalli-Sforza 1997; Stephens et al. 2001; Bamshad et al. 2003)

Another major point of discussion has been the correspondence between genetic clusters and commonly used racial/ethnic labels. Some have argued for poor correspondence between these two entities (Lewontin 1972; Wilson et al. 2001), whereas others have suggested a strong correlation (Risch et al. 2002; Burchard et al. 2003). We have shown a nearly perfect correspondence between genetic cluster and SIRE for major ethnic groups living in the United States, with a discrepancy rate of only 0.14%.


I'm guessing you're familiar with the Tang article. I would be interested in an experts trashing of it (without intense technical jargon) if you or anyone's up to it.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1196372



Also, I place tremendous weight on journal quality-- do you know if the American Journal of Human Genetics is elite?

That does not define white. Thank you for playing.

[Undesired Walrus]

Oh dear God, I sense another epic 30-60 page thread on whether race exists. All the old players are lining up, from bpesta22 to maGZ. Curse you Parky! But just my two cents, there is no such thing as the 'black' race, as folk on the islands in the pacific look virtually identical to folk in Africa. They are clearly not the same 'race', so 'black' is thus not a race.

[ponderingturtle]

Do we even have a good definition of "race"?

Sure, it is a cultural construct that means what ever the culture wants it to mean. This is why the same person can be both black and white depending on which country they are in at the time.

[ponderingturtle]

Hispanics can't be a race. Not only do they not have identical origin, but they can look as different as day and night.


So? The same can be said of African Americans, is this now not a race?

[ponderingturtle]

Don't bother. His list of "race theorist" are just that, "theorists" since they all apparently come from the pre-genetics era or are journalists. It's kinda like how Creationists love to trot out their silly Argument from Authority lists.

So what? Race is NOT biological but social.

[ponderingturtle]

The race deniers do not deserve any response. They are Cultural Marxists and can not be persuaded with any arguments.

Yea, it pisses me off too that they consider the Irish, the Italians and the Slavs as white.

[ponderingturtle]

It is incorrect and stupid for application forms in the USA to list "Hispanic" as a race. Hispanics can have blue eyes and blond hair. Would such a person not be white?

such stupidity.

So eye and hair color are the most important things in race then?

[ponderingturtle]

Oh dear God, I sense another epic 30-60 page thread on whether race exists. All the old players are lining up, from bpesta22 to maGZ. Curse you Parky! But just my two cents, there is no such thing as the 'black' race, as folk on the islands in the pacific look virtually identical to folk in Africa. They are clearly not the same 'race', so 'black' is thus not a race.

Why? They likely have no more genetic variation than other groups you would accept as both being black. You seem less than totaly consistent in your view that race has some biological meaning.

[Undesired Walrus]

It's just an eye-opener, that's all. We're all too willing to use 17th century definitions of race, relagating the world's races into four or five categories. The people of the John Frum islands, for example, raise people's consciousness to the extend that they realise regarding 'black' as a race is short-sighted. I accept there are genetic differences between groups of people on Earth, but I wish we could do away with defining them in such narrow terms (saying that 'blacks have a lower IQ than whites' for example).

[ponderingturtle]

It's just an eye-opener, that's all. We're all too willing to use 17th century definitions of race, relagating the world's races into four or five categories. The people of the John Frum islands, for example, raise people's consciousness to the extend that they realise regarding 'black' as a race is short-sighted. I accept there are genetic differences between groups of people on Earth, but I wish we could do away with defining them in such narrow terms (saying that 'blacks have a lower IQ than whites' for example).

The point is that we don't use 17th century definitions of race, we consider the Irish white for one.

[ImaginalDisc]

And what about people from Spain?

Don't forget the Basque, a people who have resided in the area since long before the Romans came and who maintian an independent ethnic identity. What does a racist call them? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Basque_people.png)

[DC]

Humans often categorize themselves in terms of race or ethnicity, sometimes on the basis of differences in appearance. Human racial categories have been based on both ancestry and visible traits, especially skin color, hair texture and facial features. Most current genetic and archaeological evidence supports a recent single origin of modern humans in East Africa.[81] Current genetic studies have demonstrated that humans on the African continent are most genetically diverse.[82] However, compared to many other animals, human gene sequences are remarkably homogeneous.[83][84][85][86] The predominance of genetic variation occurs within racial groups, with only 5 to 15% of total variation occurring between groups.[87] Ethnic groups, on the other hand, are more often linked by linguistic, cultural, ancestral, and national or regional ties. Self-identification with an ethnic group is based on kinship and descent. Race and ethnicity can lead to variant treatment and impact social identity, giving rise to racism and the theory of identity politics.

There is no scientific consensus of a list of the human races, and some anthropologists even question the notion of human "race". [88] For example, a color terminology for race includes the following in a classification of human races: Black (e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa), Red (e.g. Native Americans), Yellow (e.g. East Asians) and White (e.g. Europeans).

In June of 2009 the United Nations changed their charter which was reflected in their Durban Review Conference Durban Review Conference, global summit on combating racism, which now states:

"6. Reaffirms that all peoples and individuals constitute one human family, rich in diversity, and that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights; and strongly rejects any doctrine of racial superiority along with theories which attempt to determine the existence of so-called distinct human races."

Thus the United Nations will no longer use the word "race" as a cultural determinant; instead, we will all be considered a part of one race: humans.[89]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Race_and_ethnicity

[Cainkane1]

That's only in the United States, where ignorance is rampant.
Thats not true of most Americans.

[DC]

there is no such thing as Human races.

when Magz has any evidance otherwsie, i am happy to take a look at it. Aslong it hasnt to do with messuring sculls.

[Rogue1stclass]

Well, in the US, Hispanics are not considered a race.

We classify five races. These are White, Black, Asian, Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Innuit. These are also probably the broadest brushes possible that still acknowlege physical differences and allow the government to protect people from discrimination based on those differences.

Due to discrimination towards those of especially Puerto Rican and Cuban decent, it was decided to include Hispanics as an ethnicity of special consideration. They were never considered a race of their own, but were seperated out from "White, non-Hispanic" in order to receive special protection under the EEOC.

The newer trend is to seperate "Hispanic" from race entirely. I've seen forms where you have to check one of the five races races then "Hispanic" if it applies to you.

Now, I understand that in Europe, race is defined much more narrowly than it is here. Under that definition, it is possible that Hispanic would be a race, or more likely, many different races. But here it is not.

[paximperium]

there is no such thing as Human races.

when Magz has any evidance otherwsie, i am happy to take a look at it. Aslong it hasnt to do with messuring sculls.
MaGZ and bpesta has been very consistent in refusing to define race.

[DC]

Well, in the US, Hispanics are not considered a race.

We classify five races. These are White, Black, Asian, Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Innuit. These are also probably the broadest brushes possible that still acknowlege physical differences and allow the government to protect people from discrimination based on those differences.

Due to discrimination towards those of especially Puerto Rican and Cuban decent, it was decided to include Hispanics as an ethnicity of special consideration. They were never considered a race of their own, but were seperated out from "White, non-Hispanic" in order to receive special protection under the EEOC.

The newer trend is to seperate "Hispanic" from race entirely. I've seen forms where you have to check one of the five races races then "Hispanic" if it applies to you.

Now, I understand that in Europe, race is defined much more narrowly than it is here. Under that definition, it is possible that Hispanic would be a race, or more likely, many different races. But here it is not.

how is it defined in europe?
i have never ever heard my Government talking about Human races, expect for the SVP that does indeed belive in such things as races.

[zooterkin]

Due to discrimination towards those of especially Puerto Rican and Cuban decent, it was decided to include Hispanics as an ethnicity of special consideration. They were never considered a race of their own, but were seperated out from "White, non-Hispanic" in order to receive special protection under the EEOC.

The newer trend is to seperate "Hispanic" from race entirely. I've seen forms where you have to check one of the five races races then "Hispanic" if it applies to you.



I think the biggest stumbling block for those outside the US, particularly those in Europe, is the use of the term 'Hispanic' to mean something other than 'Hispanic'.


Now, I understand that in Europe, race is defined much more narrowly than it is here. Under that definition, it is possible that Hispanic would be a race, or more likely, many different races. But here it is not.

I have no idea what you mean; I'm not even sure that 'race' is recognised as a valid categorisation officially. Ethnic origin is collected for various surveys and other purposes, but I don't think that's quite the same thing.

[Darth Rotor]

Let's try a different tack here: this is not an original thought, I don't recall where I first heard this, but I've watched for about twenty five years and seen the following: Hispanic is how a fancy, Harvard educated sort calls someone a Spic without getting punched for it.

Hispanic has in another sense evolved as entitlement group, under the law. It uses the curious criterion of language as a discriminator.

Beyond that, this discussion amply demonstrates the pitfalls of making such categorizations.

[GreNME]

Let's try a different tack here: this is not an original thought, I don't recall where I first heard this, but I've watched for about twenty five years and seen the following: Hispanic is how a fancy, Harvard educated sort calls someone a Spic without getting punched for it.

Hispanic has in another sense evolved as entitlement group, under the law. It uses the curious criterion of language as a discriminator.

Beyond that, this discussion amply demonstrates the pitfalls of making such categorizations.

Really? The anti-intellectual argument? Where the hell did that come from?

[ponderingturtle]

MaGZ and bpesta has been very consistent in refusing to define race.

I will give you the perfect definition.

Race is an inconsistently defined and applied social construct.

[DC]

I will give you the perfect definition.

Race is an inconsistently defined and applied social construct.

as MagZ is not here, may I?

you sir are a Race denier !!!!
not worth responding to

i hope i got that right :D

j/k

[KingMerv00]

Sure, it is a cultural construct that means what ever the culture wants it to mean. This is why the same person can be both black and white depending on which country they are in at the time.

So in your opinion we don't have a GOOD definition of race. :D

[ddt]

Now, I understand that in Europe, race is defined much more narrowly than it is here. Under that definition, it is possible that Hispanic would be a race, or more likely, many different races. But here it is not.

From a third European country, I'd like to state we don't register "race" here either in the Netherlands. The national statistics bureau doesn't even register "ethnicity", only the birth nationality. So, e.g., there's no way to measure how many 3rd generation immigrants there are, as either their parents or their grandparents at some time got the Dutch nationality.

[ponderingturtle]

as MagZ is not here, may I?

you sir are a Race denier !!!!
not worth responding to

i hope i got that right :D

j/k

I am not denying that race exists though, it is a real social construct with real impact on peoples lives and how they behave. It is just social in orrigion and not biological.

And there is the weirdness of why people think that the Irish and Slavs are white now.

[ponderingturtle]

So in your opinion we don't have a GOOD definition of race. :D

Not exactly, there is no universal definition of race. Race is defined by culture so two people could be considered the same race by one culture and different races by another.

On the streets of NYC a Hutu and a Tutsi are both just blacks after all. But in Rawanda the distinction is significant to them.

So how can you say who it right and who is wrong?

[Darth Rotor]

Evil Double Post. Bah.

[KingMerv00]

eta: race could be like color. increase the wavelength a little bit, and it still looks blue. keep increasing the WL and sooner or later, the color changes to green. Green and blue are different, but there's probably no point along the scale where we can mark off and say everything left is blue and right is green. That said, blue and green exist (well, at least in our perception).

I don't have a problem with arbitrary lines when it comes to defining something. For example, we draw fuzzy lines between infant and child, dinosaur and bird, and republican and democrat. That being said, I do have misgivings when it comes to race.

Let's say we take a group of humans that label themselves as "white". Undoubtedly we will find some genetic markers in common. The same will occur with any other socially defined race.

What happens if we take a random sampling of people from all over the world? Will we or will we not find that they share similar genetic markers? (This question is not rhetorical. I honestly don't know the answer.) If they do, why not define them as a race?

[Darth Rotor]

Really? The anti-intellectual argument? Where the hell did that come from?
PT said it better than I did:

Race is an inconsistently defined and applied social construct

That's the pitfall I was referring to, on which we've had three pretty decent pages of conversation, here and there.

[KingMerv00]

PT said it better than I did:

Race is an inconsistently defined and applied social construct

That's the pitfall I was referring to, on which we've had three pretty decent pages of conversation, here and there.

Other than MagZ, can we all agree that the socially definitions of race are too blurry to be of any scientific use?

[ponderingturtle]

I don't have a problem with arbitrary lines when it comes to defining something. For example, we draw fuzzy lines between infant and child, dinosaur and bird, and republican and democrat.
That being said, I do have misgivings when it comes to race though.

Let's say we take a group of humans that label themselves as "white". Undoubtedly we will find some genetic markers in common. The same will occur with any other socially defined race.

Possibly and possibly not. This has to do with how the melinine is geneticaly controled and it could be that different groups with the same skin tone get the same level of genetic regulation through different mechanisms.

The reason skin color is so common is that it is very clear and obvious, so it makes grouping people by it easy.

What happens if we take a random sampling of people from all over the world? Will we or will we not find that they share similar genetic markers? (This question is not rhetorical. I honestly don't know the answer.) If they do, why not define them as a race?

Sure, there are interesting views on human expansion that come from this, and it shows that the most genetic diversity by far is in africa, where people would generaly just be classified as "black" in america.

[ponderingturtle]

Other than MagZ, can we all agree that the socially definitions of race are too blurry to be of any scientific use?

Depends on what you mean by science. IF you are a social scientist like an antropologist then definitions of race might be of use. IF you are a geneticist they are likely of much less use.

Just because something is a social construct does not mean it is not real.

[KingMerv00]

Depends on what you mean by science.

I suppose I am asking for more precision and accuracy when it comes to a definition of race. To steal BPs example, consider wavelength. The names we give to colors may be arbitrary but they can be broken into specific quantifiable units.

Just because something is a social construct does not mean it is not real.

Real but imagined. Like God.

[GreNME]

PT said it better than I did:

Race is an inconsistently defined and applied social construct

That's the pitfall I was referring to, on which we've had three pretty decent pages of conversation, here and there.

I agree it's a pitfall. When discussions like this come up, as I said earlier I get irritated by them. One isn't going to find any single set of defining factors to determine "race" in any useful sense or for compartmentalizing a matrix of different people based solely on that criteria.

It's one of the reasons I tend to eschew using "race" and instead focus on ethnicity, which are a bit more stable in terms of coming up with definable factors. Race and ethnicity tend to get used interchangeably, though, especially in the US (but in many ways all over).

[bpesta22]

MaGZ and bpesta has been very consistent in refusing to define race.

Just the opposite; I gave on the fly definitions at least twice already. The reaction to them is "fail". Ok, obviously we disagree on whether race has a definition, but stop accusing me of avoiding your "clever/argument-ending" question.

I cited an article that shows distinct genetic clustering that overlaps with self reports of race to near unity. What is wrong with using the constellation of clusters as the definition of race?

White, for example, is one endpoint on a multidimensional scale. It's a reference point even if no one is trully white (much like no one is trully iq=100). But we can sort people along the dimension and do so reliably. And, here, the dimension is defined completely by genes (and then predicts near perfectly self-reports of the construct).

How is that not a definition? Unless you were expecting I list some string of amino acids?

To the people pondering how many races there are, note that humans categorize everything, but categories have different levels:

Fruit (superordinate)
apple (basic)
Mackintosh (subordinate)

Is it possible that further study might reveal a basic level categorization of race, with other groupings of people falling at different levels of categorization?

Also, show me anywhere on the JREF where I've been racist (claiming that we should act on any of these ideas to restrict rights for minorities). I think we should be implementing massive interventions; but driven by science that can't be done now as long as people want an amino acid string before admitting that maybe studying this stuff can help illuminate the human condition.

[bpesta22]

eta, and when I posted the article, the reaction was: Nope, not a definition of white.

That's helpful. Who is avoiding things?

[GreNME]

Also, show me anywhere on the JREF where I've been racist (claiming that we should act on any of these ideas to restrict rights for minorities). I think we should be implementing massive interventions; but driven by science that can't be done now as long as people want an amino acid string before admitting that maybe studying this stuff can help illuminate the human condition.

I think that the main reason your answers haven't been very warmly accepted has to do with your focusing on the statistical analysis of genetic traits or characteristics as defining factors, but you're doing so in a way that doesn't allow people to easily compartmentalize those factors into a simple "this is race" statement. I think that's fine, and on the broader scale than what started this thread it's correct enough from an anthropological/biological perspective. It just doesn't answer the question presented in the context the people who asked wanted it answered in.

I suspect you realize that, though, and are challenging anyone accusing you of racism or not answering the question in a more rhetorical sense.

[bpesta22]

King-- I think we could use your example to demonstrate or discover the convergent and divergent validity of race as a biological construct.

If random samplings of mixed race people show common clusterings, then QED these clusters can't be used to distinguish one race from another.

But, if random samplings of blacks, and then whites, show clusters that are reliably different from each other, then we have something to study.

Show that the pureness of a cluster within persons predicts things (social outcomes / health outcomes) better than environmental (or in addition to) factors and you now have discovered something important. That some redneck might want to use the info to take rights away does not make me a racist, nor does it imply that the benefits of knowing this information (assuming it is reality) outweigh the costs (especially given race relations throughout the history of humanity).

[bpesta22]

I think that the main reason your answers haven't been very warmly accepted has to do with your focusing on the statistical analysis of genetic traits or characteristics as defining factors, but you're doing so in a way that doesn't allow people to easily compartmentalize those factors into a simple "this is race" statement. I think that's fine, and on the broader scale than what started this thread it's correct enough from an anthropological/biological perspective. It just doesn't answer the question presented in the context the people who asked wanted it answered in.

I suspect you realize that, though, and are challenging anyone accusing you of racism or not answering the question in a more rhetorical sense.

Thanks!

But, really, race is a continuum. Distinguishing black from white is not like distinguishing a hammer from a hamster.

To demand the hammer/hamster delineation is unfair, as it doesn't map on to reality. I guess it is like demanding a distinction between blue and red that doesn't appeal to wavelength.

Extroversion is a personality trait on a bell curve. Most people are average; some score very low; some score very high. At what point do we label someone extroverted? Above the mean (1 sd above; 2?).

People want a "type" definition of race when a "trait" definition is needed. This is precisely why type personality tests (the Meyers Briggs) suck compared with trait personality tests (the NEO).

[KingMerv00]

Also, show me anywhere on the JREF where I've been racist (claiming that we should act on any of these ideas to restrict rights for minorities).

Why should I go through the effort? It is a non-sequitur.

Anyone who called you a racist for simply claiming race exists would be wrong. I haven't read the thread carefully but I don't think anyone is calling you "racist", at worst they are calling you "mistaken".

[ponderingturtle]

I suppose I am asking for more precision and accuracy when it comes to a definition of race. To steal BPs example, consider wavelength. The names we give to colors may be arbitrary but they can be broken into specific quantifiable units.

Maybe, but you will also get people from different cultures breaking up colors differently. So two paint squares might be classed in the same color in one culture and in different colors in another.

People look for patterns, and to look for patterns you have to classify things, so you need many ways to classify a person. Race is one of those ways.

The thing is that race is not a nice neat spectrum of a single feature like a color line, so what emphasis different elements get in diffenent cultures will lead to even more differences in how they break down racial differences.


Real but imagined. Like God.

I would say religion, or politics.

[Richard Masters]

It bothers me Sonia Sotomayor is a member of La Raza. I thought she was Puerto Rican.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=99420


I wasn't familiar with the National Council of La Raza (which is referenced here), but I was familiar with their basic political ideology.

However, this document by the NCLR (http://www.nclr.org/content/viewpoints/detail/42500/) and the links provided should calm you down.

Here's some relevant information:

We have a Spanish term in our name, “La Raza” (meaning “the people” or “community”), which is often mistranslated.

I don't think they could have picked a much dumber name, but,

NCLR freely acknowledges that some of [MEChA's] founding documents, e.g., Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, contain inappropriate rhetoric, and NCLR also acknowledges that rhetoric from some MEChA members has been extremist and inflammatory.
...
NCLR has publicly and repeatedly disavowed this rhetoric as we have others that we believe are inappropriate, as we did when we criticized a pro-separatist Latino website for its racist and anti-Semitic views

NCLR has never supported and does not endorse the notion of a “Reconquista” or “Aztlán.” Similarly, NCLR’s critics falsely claim that the statement “Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada,” [“For the community everything, outside the community nothing”] is NCLR’s motto. NCLR unequivocally rejects this statement, which is not and has never been the motto of any Latino organization.

I disagree. It's in the founding documents of MEChA, whether it's an official motto or not, it's in the core of MEChA's identity. Of course, who knows what they mean by Latino organization, since Latino is, too, a corrupted word, or a neologism.

Nevertheless, NCLR appears to be no more dangerous than the John Birch Society.

[DC]

Just the opposite; I gave on the fly definitions at least twice already. The reaction to them is "fail". Ok, obviously we disagree on whether race has a definition, but stop accusing me of avoiding your "clever/argument-ending" question.

I cited an article that shows distinct genetic clustering that overlaps with self reports of race to near unity. What is wrong with using the constellation of clusters as the definition of race?

White, for example, is one endpoint on a multidimensional scale. It's a reference point even if no one is trully white (much like no one is trully iq=100). But we can sort people along the dimension and do so reliably. And, here, the dimension is defined completely by genes (and then predicts near perfectly self-reports of the construct).

How is that not a definition? Unless you were expecting I list some string of amino acids?

To the people pondering how many races there are, note that humans categorize everything, but categories have different levels:

Fruit (superordinate)
apple (basic)
Mackintosh (subordinate)

Is it possible that further study might reveal a basic level categorization of race, with other groupings of people falling at different levels of categorization?

Also, show me anywhere on the JREF where I've been racist (claiming that we should act on any of these ideas to restrict rights for minorities). I think we should be implementing massive interventions; but driven by science that can't be done now as long as people want an amino acid string before admitting that maybe studying this stuff can help illuminate the human condition.

whats the use of it?
since science is into DNA, less and less people start talking about race, because they realise that what was understood by race for so long, does not exist.

Sure we have diffrent colors and diffrenct cultures, diffrent origins etc. but that is not what race ment. i think.

[Richard Masters]

You're wrong. Please see post #72 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4988154#post4988154).

Not quite. It's a good simplification for MEChA and related organizations.

NCLR freely acknowledges that some of [MEChA's] founding documents, e.g., Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, contain inappropriate rhetoric, and NCLR also acknowledges that rhetoric from some MEChA members has been extremist and inflammatory.
...
NCLR has publicly and repeatedly disavowed this rhetoric as we have others that we believe are inappropriate, as we did when we criticized a pro-separatist Latino website for its racist and anti-Semitic views

[quarky]

Tiger Woods is mostly known as a great golfer.

Race can be defined by groups of people that want to kill an other group because of perceived differences in heredity. If you find a cross burning on your lawn, for instance, then you are black. If you are burning the cross there, then you're white.

[GreNME]

Not quite. It's a good simplification for MEChA and related organizations.

It's much broader than that. More than the NCLR have adopted the name "La Raza" for their uses, many of them completely unrelated to the NCLR or MEChA at all. The invocation of the name is intentionally used to imply some large reconquista movement by Latinos coming from Mexico, usually coupled with rhetoric using words like "invasion" and "battle" with regard to immigrants, documented or otherwise.

I don't find anything good or useful about that simplification.

[Richard Masters]

It's much broader than that. More than the NCLR have adopted the name "La Raza" for their uses, many of them completely unrelated to the NCLR or MEChA at all. The invocation of the name is intentionally used to imply some large reconquista movement by Latinos coming from Mexico, usually coupled with rhetoric using words like "invasion" and "battle" with regard to immigrants, documented or otherwise.

I don't find anything good or useful about that simplification.

Perhaps in that MEChA and proponents of the Chicano movement are basically separatist groups according to their own documents. And also in that some of them sympathize with Palestinians and use inflammatory rhetoric against Jews.

Also, I'm confused as to what you mean by Latino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latino). It's a neologism that means a lot of different things.

[GreNME]

Perhaps in that MEChA and proponents of the Chicano movement are basically separatist groups according to their own documents. And also in that some of them sympathize with Palestinians and use inflammatory rhetoric against Jews.

MEChA is not in any way affiliated with the many organizations who use the name La Raza today, so it's the rhetorical equivalent of truthers attending a protest rally that they didn't organize (and isn't in favor of their truther-ism), and claiming a larger influence than is really there. In other words, outside of some gang activity and a few pep rallies in the American SouthWest, MEChA is pretty much a non-entity (or a small, mostly-ignored entity outside of Arizona and California).

Also, I'm confused as to what you mean by Latino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latino). It's a neologism that means a lot of different things.

You know, repeating it constantly doesn't make it more true. The term in its normal usage is an ethnonym typically denoting people from Latin-American nations. That's not mutually exclusive to what you're asserting, but you're demanding a much more narrow definition of a very general term without much of a reason beyond repeatedly asserting it.

[Richard Masters]

MEChA is not in any way affiliated with the many organizations who use the name La Raza today, so it's the rhetorical equivalent of truthers attending a protest rally that they didn't organize (and isn't in favor of their truther-ism), and claiming a larger influence than is really there. In other words, outside of some gang activity and a few pep rallies in the American SouthWest, MEChA is pretty much a non-entity (or a small, mostly-ignored entity outside of Arizona and California).

I think you'll find MEChA in a lot of universities throughout the United States. It's not a gang per se; it's a student organization.

You know, repeating it constantly doesn't make it more true. The term in its normal usage is an ethnonym typically denoting people from Latin-American nations. That's not mutually exclusive to what you're asserting, but you're demanding a much more narrow definition of a very general term without much of a reason beyond repeatedly asserting it.

I'm not demanding a narrow definition. I just wanted to know what you meant. Apparently you mean Latinoamerican or from Latinoamerican nations (a definition I agree with).

Some people in the U.S. use it to mean brown-people, as is the case with Hispanic.

[GreNME]

I think you'll find MEChA in a lot of universities throughout the United States. It's not a gang per se; it's a student organization.

I think you misunderstand what I said. MEChA itself isn't a gang, but its rhetoric tends to pop up in some Chicano gangs in Arizona and SoCal. The organization itself states that it's non-violent, but often enough it has winks and nods to even tinier fringe groups who have no problem with using violence-- again, though, this happens predominately in the American Southwest. As for their "student organization" activities, in many of the universities you'll find a MEChA chapter they'll often be precisely what I described regarding truthers (or, if that's too inflammatory, the newer "Tea Party" people) latching on to other political or social activism and claiming the crowds represent them. I'm not denying their existence as an organization, but I am pointing out how marginal and unimportant they really are-- they have no authority to claim proprietorship of the name "La Raza" and are often brought up by fear-mongering white racists as an example of how Mexicans are somehow trying to take away part of America (hence the language often involving "invasion" and "battle" and regular associations with illegal immigration).

Maybe you live somewhere that there is sufficient numbers of people sympathetic to them to make it feel like a bigger deal in your daily life. For the most part, though, outside of the SouthWest "La Raza" is going to mean a radio station or a popular Hispanic newspaper, and MEChA is going to be about as relevant as pseudo-hipsters who think trotting about in El Che t-shirts counts as meaningful political commentary.

I'm not demanding a narrow definition. I just wanted to know what you meant. Apparently you mean Latinoamerican or from Latinoamerican nations (a definition I agree with).

Some people in the U.S. use it to mean brown-people, as is the case with Hispanic.

Okay, that's cool with me. I would also agree that people use Hispanic and Latino not only interchangeably, but in an ethnic context that isn't always based on accuracy as much as it is "not white and talks funny."

[Darth Rotor]

I agree it's a pitfall. When discussions like this come up, as I said earlier I get irritated by them. One isn't going to find any single set of defining factors to determine "race" in any useful sense or for compartmentalizing a matrix of different people based solely on that criteria.

It's one of the reasons I tend to eschew using "race" and instead focus on ethnicity, which are a bit more stable in terms of coming up with definable factors. Race and ethnicity tend to get used interchangeably, though, especially in the US (but in many ways all over).

True, yet I think this one is based on linguicity. :D

[lomiller]

Do we even have a good definition of "race"?

We do, but it's not what many people think. While there is no biological definition for race, Anthropologists define race to be a *cultural* classification with no significant biological meaning.

Attempts to derive genetic criteria that try to reverse engineer traditional classifications of race using marker genes have generally been unsuccessful. One of the more prominent studies using gene clusters, for example, was unable to identify a cluster for India for example. People of Indian decent were equally likely to group with Europeans and Asians. A study like this, wouldn’t consider Hispanic to be a race because it works backward from a preconceived notion of what the “races” should be. Basically they are attempts to rationalize a preconceived view rather then to come up with something useful.

Generally speaking humans have very little genetic diversity, and there is more diversity inside Africa then everywhere else combined. There can be more difference genetically between two people who decent from different regions of Africa then there is for someone of Asian and someone of European decent.

[lomiller]

But, if random samplings of blacks, and then whites, show clusters that are reliably different from each other, then we have something to study.



No, you don’t have anything to study because all you are using to make the distinction are data-mined genetic markers that do not have any particular significance on their own.

In contrast, useful generic studies usually work in the exact opposite way, they take a genetic trait that is of interest and trace it back to where it may have originated. In such cases, however, it isn’t at all common for that trait to be present only in a single “race”.

You also fail to account for the lack of a cluster for India. Using the cluster approach you have to differentiate between people of Indian decent who are “really white” and people of Indian decent who are “really Asian” using genetic testing.

[bpesta22]

No, you don’t have anything to study because all you are using to make the distinction are data-mined genetic markers that do not have any particular significance on their own.

In contrast, useful generic studies usually work in the exact opposite way, they take a genetic trait that is of interest and trace it back to where it may have originated. In such cases, however, it isn’t at all common for that trait to be present only in a single “race”.

You also fail to account for the lack of a cluster for India. Using the cluster approach you have to differentiate between people of Indian decent who are “really white” and people of Indian decent who are “really Asian” using genetic testing.

If these markers correlate .999 with self-reports of race, that seems significant. We can then identify with pretty amazing accuracy which race you consider yourself to be by a genetic profile of clusters, or vice versa (the skin deep biology or race, at least).

The rest of what you claim is an unanswered empirical question. What do the clusters, once controlled for, statistically explain? In other words, how do you know that this particular set of clusters has no significance on its own without doing the study?

I've never even tried to account for non-clustering indians neither.

[ponderingturtle]

If these markers correlate .999 with self-reports of race, that seems significant. We can then identify with pretty amazing accuracy which race you consider yourself to be by a genetic profile of clusters, or vice versa (the skin deep biology or race, at least).


So what ones do?

[lomiller]

If these markers correlate

You’ve given yourself the freedom choose:
Which groups are actually “races”
Who is/isn’t a member of that “race”
A set of markers, from the vast number of permutations of human genetic traits, that can be grouped in such a way as to match the arbitrary racial definitions above.

When a problem is insufficiently constrained you can show statistical correlations at will, and clearly you have no constraints at all.

[bpesta22]

So what ones do?

the ones in the article i linked to above.

[Questioninggeller]

I was told today that Hispanic people are a race.

Not a culture..but an actual race.

Hispanics can be as pale as this page..or as black as my keyboard. They can have dark brown eyes or light green eyes. They can be blond..or have black hair.

Hispanics are clearly NOT a race. Hispanics started out as folks who came from Spain, but it now includes all the immigrants to followed them to these Spanish speaking countries and became part of the culture.

One can have Italian, German, Irish, Swedish, native American, Russian-Jewish, Spanish, African, Korean, ancestry..and be part of the Hispanic culture.

Hispanic...is NOT a race.

In terms of science, there is no such thing as "race."

[lomiller]

with self-reports of race

Clearly BS. I’ve already pointed out that you can’t tell whether someone of Indian decent is “Asian” or “White” without genetic testing. If you asked them what race they are they probably wouldn’t say either and even if they did they would be guessing.

The same goes for people of mixed decent. Barack Obama would likely report his “race” as “African American” but do you have any evidence at all that is the groups he would cluster with?

[bpesta22]

You’ve given yourself the freedom choose:
Which groups are actually “races”
Who is/isn’t a member of that “race”
A set of markers, from the vast number of permutations of human genetic traits, that can be grouped in such a way as to match the arbitrary racial definitions above.

When a problem is insufficiently constrained you can show statistical correlations at will, and clearly you have no constraints at all.


Every time I read your screen name, I keep seeing lolmiller. Is it just me?!

I think everyone here would agree that there are physical / appearance differences that are highly salient among blacks, whites and asians at least.

How is grouping people by those differences arbitrary? By definition, it would seem not.

So, the real issue is do those genetic clusters that cause the appearance differences also cause any other differences. Not all or none differences, even, but group differences (say, explaining the over-representation of blacks in athletics or asians in math).

It seems like there are dozens of good science studies one could do with data like these. Showing cluster loading within races explain within race differences would be fairly amazing. That's just one example.

How many races are there? I dunno; lets collect the data. If race is a wash / racist / only-social construct, then these cluster will not predict anything once other things are controlled.

I'd like to do a study where whites and blacks are rated on white and blackness by people using just their eyeballs. Then, I would like to map their specific cluster pattern. Give tests where races are known to differ and see if it's appearance or genetics that explains the outcome once the other is controlled. Or, show that within races, controlling for variance in cluster patterns explains variance in outcome measures.

Those studies could be potentially very compelling as evidence one way or the other.

Finally, science is data-driven and theory-driven. The texts always say data should be driven by theory (there should be an explanation for whatever it is you're studying to guide the type of research you do). But, when data and theory conflict, the data win (that's the rules!).

So, I'd rather let the data answer the question: how many races are there.

[bpesta22]

Clearly BS. I’ve already pointed out that you can’t tell whether someone of Indian decent is “Asian” or “White” without genetic testing. If you asked them what race they are they probably wouldn’t say either and even if they did they would be guessing.

The same goes for people of mixed decent. Barack Obama would likely report his “race” as “African American” but do you have any evidence at all that is the groups he would cluster with?

This is an empirical question too, and we should bet on it.

I'd bet you any amount of money that I could better than chance identify a random group of people by race, and that my categorizations would correlate significantly with the genetic testing.

I never claimed self-reports are 100% accurate (a test doesn't have to be for it to have utility, which is why the concept of reliability was invented).

But, I can identify race far better than chance just by looking at people. So can you.

Would you take that bet?

If not, it shows that self reports are not entirely worthless (the claim you seem to be making). It would not prove that self-reports are 100 reliable (a claim I never made).

I don't understand your stats sentence re constraining correlations.

[lomiller]

How is grouping people by those differences arbitrary? By definition, it would seem not.


There are “clear physical differences” between Inuit and Apache yet you don’t treat them as separate races. Likewise there are “clear physical differences” between white Europeans and Asian and people of Indian decent, yet your methodology doesn’t make a clear distinction.

Finally you continue to ignore the fact that there is remarkably little genetic difference between humans of any ethnicity. Every human alive today descends from a small group of survivors ~2500 generations ago. This population may have numbered less then 1000 breeding pairs.

[Richard Masters]

...
As for their "student organization" activities, in many of the universities you'll find a MEChA chapter they'll often be precisely what I described regarding truthers (or, if that's too inflammatory, the newer "Tea Party" people) latching on to other political or social activism and claiming the crowds represent them. I'm not denying their existence as an organization, but I am pointing out how marginal and unimportant they really are-- they have no authority to claim proprietorship of the name "La Raza" and are often brought up by fear-mongering white racists as an example of how Mexicans are somehow trying to take away part of America (hence the language often involving "invasion" and "battle" and regular associations with illegal immigration).

Maybe you live somewhere that there is sufficient numbers of people sympathetic to them to make it feel like a bigger deal in your daily life. For the most part, though, outside of the SouthWest "La Raza" is going to mean a radio station or a popular Hispanic newspaper, and MEChA is going to be about as relevant as pseudo-hipsters who think trotting about in El Che t-shirts counts as meaningful political commentary.

Yeah, pretty much. I want to add that Chicano isn't the same as Mexican-American, even though MEChA and right-wing groups would like everyone to think so.

Okay, that's cool with me. I would also agree that people use Hispanic and Latino not only interchangeably, but in an ethnic context that isn't always based on accuracy as much as it is "not white and talks funny."

In colloquial speech and in right-wing TV shows that's usually what is meant.

[bpesta22]

There are “clear physical differences” between Inuit and Apache yet you don’t treat them as separate races. Likewise there are “clear physical differences” between white Europeans and Asian and people of Indian decent, yet your methodology doesn’t make a clear distinction.

Finally you continue to ignore the fact that there is remarkably little genetic difference between humans of any ethnicity. Every human alive today descends from a small group of survivors ~2500 generations ago. This population may have numbered less then 1000 breeding pairs.

These threads always turn into 20 pages because people dredge up stuff that was mentioned earlier. No problem if you missed it, but I did not ignore the "remarkably little" argument. It's mentioned above. I suspect a little bit of DNA difference can lead to big things sometimes.

Also, I addressed your first paragraph. I bet human diversity is a pyramid with races at the top. I appealed to different levels of categorization (sub/super ordinate and basic). Perhaps that is the answer to your Indian problem?

[GreNME]

Yeah, pretty much. I want to add that Chicano isn't the same as Mexican-American, even though MEChA and right-wing groups would like everyone to think so.

Well, I can't speak to their politics-- IMO, racist orgs are weird in their simultaneous use of extreme political aspects of the right and left-- but yeah. Some `Mericans are under the weird impression that those in Mexico who aren't out to take over the US and make it Mexican states just want to come to the US and steal our hard-earned money and jobs.

In colloquial speech and in right-wing TV shows that's usually what is meant.

I wouldn't be so hard on colloquial speech. On the East Coast where I grew up there were enough different people from different Latin-American nations (or whose parents were from those places, or were perhaps from Puerto Rico) that Latino tends to be used as a catch-all until point-of-origin is determined as well. Same with Hispanic: i.e. - "I had a great Hispanic meal over Valerie's last night." "What kind?" "Dominican, I think. I'll ask her."

It's often not a pejorative.

[lomiller]

That’s the problem, you are going with what “you suspect” even though there is no science to support you and the only relevant scientific organizations that care to comment say your suspicions are wrong.

Once again,
You have no non-arbitrary way to say what race is
You have no non-arbitrary way to say what races exist
You have no non-arbitrary way to say who belongs to what race.
You have no non-arbitrarily way to say which gene distributions are important for race

All this is fit together after the fact, and even with all this latitude you bring it together in a consistent way because you can’t explain physical or genetic differences within a so-called race, nor explain how a very clear ethnicity like India is not a race.


Not only can’t you support your contention of “separate races” you can’t even tell us what a race is supposed to be or why it should be significant. When pressed you repeat the same erroneous claim that it’s a division within a species, it’s not sub-species is the division within species and humans are all part of a single sub-species due to limited genetic diversity.

[Rogue1stclass]

how is it defined in europe?
i have never ever heard my Government talking about Human races, expect for the SVP that does indeed belive in such things as races.

Then I stand corrected. I was thinking about the UN definition of racism, which is more strict than the US definition, I believe.

[Delvo]

So, the real issue is do those genetic clusters that cause the appearance differences also cause any other differences. Not all or none differences, even, but group differences (say, explaining the over-representation of blacks in athletics or asians in math).Of the several hundred (maybe 1-2 thousand) alleles that are particularly common or universal in at least one race but rare or absent in others, at least dozens have had their functions identified to one extent or another. At least six affect skin color. Others are known to affect metabolism and other such invisible traits. A couple are even known to affect brain development, although precisely what neurological results they generate is not known.

The rest, which, last time I checked, were the majority, have not had their functions identified yet, just as there are also many non-race-linked genes & alleles with unknown functions as well. Geneticists are chipping away at that.

How many races are there? I dunno; lets collect the data. If race is a wash / racist / only-social construct, then these cluster will not predict anything once other things are controlled.Actually, if race were not biological reality, the clusters of genes/alleles would not exist at all, or there would be similarly mutually correlated groups of alleles having some other geographic distribution not matching the racial one. The fact that neither of those situations is the case (because highly mutually correlated groups of alleles DO exist and there are NONE that follow any other kind of distribution) is one of the facts that the race deniers never really address.

The question of how many there are is answered as follows:

1. Eastern Asia, N&S America, and a bunch of Pacific islands (all originating from Eastern Asia, so mostly succinctly describable as "Eastern Asian" with the subsequent colonizations from there being implied)

2. Western Eurasian & Northern African; Caucasoids/Caucasians (some might argue that they aren't all "white" because some subgroups are rather brown, but some anthropological authors such as Jared Diamond call the whole group "white" because the word's short and easy to use)

3. Australoids; the very-dark-skinned people of Australia and some nearby islands... distinct from black Africans not just by geography but also by certain physical traits, contrary to some claims in these threads

4. Black (African)

5. Khoi/San; African but distinct from black people by multiple physical traits... the genetic difference between them and black people is the main reason why it's true that Africa has higher genetic diversity than any non-African race, just because two races will obviously have more genetic diversity than one has

6? African pygmies... distinguishable from other Africans not only by size (which is biological, not diet-induced as it is in other pygmies elsewhere) but also by the usual other things like hair texture, skin color, and facial shape... however, there are so few of them left and they tend to be so uninterested in agreeing to be the subjects of studies, that there is rather little information about their genes, bone structure, metabolic traits, and so on, so they tend to get left out of these things. So it's still theoretically possible (although unlikely because this isn't how things have worked in prior experience) that they could turn out to share a genetic allele cluster with one of the above 5 races rather than having their own 6th one, despite their different appearance.

This basic 5-or-6-level classification comes independently from two different sources: phenotype studies first, and genetics, which came along later. It was given the chance to find ANY sets of mutually correlated alleles that might exist REGARDLESS of geographic distribution, and just happened to discover facts that just happened to match the established phenotypic conclusions.

[Symbol]

I propose all use of the word "race" be banished from this thread (ironic, I know), to be replaced by what posters really mean:

Geographical groups

Cultural groups

Groups based on a perceived spectrum of skin colour, hair colour, hair texture, eye shape, eye colour, athletic ability, height

Allele groups

Psychological groups

Political groups

Historical groups

Social groups

Merging the combined opinions on this thread, so-called race is possibly all of these things and more. Put them together and we create a multi-dimensional space that is difficult for our 3-D, perhaps 4-D, minds to imagine.

Now put down your weapons and back away slowly.

[bpesta22]

I think the discussion here's been very respectful despite the loaded topic. Hopefully, it meets the ideal of what the JREF had in mind for this forum.

I do agree race is a loaded term.

I don't understand, lomiller, why you claim "arbitrary this and that". I've gave what I thought were fairly precise reasons. And, I agree with Delvo, the fact that the clusters exist for race is compelling (especially if the clusters themselves do things that are measurable and explain differences within and between races on outcome measures).

[bpesta22]

I keep forgetting about this. It's from Linda Gottfredson, and I think it's a compelling explanation for why most of the posters here are wrong:

Components of variation fallacy #4: 99.9% similarity negates differences. Portraying the study of human genetic variation as irrelevant or wrong-headed because humans are 99.9% (or 99.5%) alike genetically, on average.
Of recent vintage, the 99.9% Fallacy impugns even investigating human genetic variation by implying, falsely, that a 0.1% average difference in genetic profiles (3 million base pairs) is trivial. (Comparably estimated, the human and chimpanzee genomes differ by about 1.3%.) The fallacy is frequently used to reinforce the claim, as explained one anthropology textbook (Park, 2002; Example xiv), that “there are no races.” If most of that 0.1% genetic variation is among individuals of the same race, it said, then “All the phenotypic variation that we try to assort into race is the result of a virtual handful of alleles.” Reasoning in like manner, Holt (1994) editorialized in the New York Times that “genetic diversity among the races is miniscule,” a mere “residue” of human variation (Example xv).

The implication is that research into racial differences, even at the phenotypic level, is both scientifically and morally suspect. As spelled out by another anthropology text (Marks, 1995), “Providing explanations for social inequalities as being rooted in nature is a classic pseudoscientific occupation” (Example ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬xvi).


More recent estimates point to greater genetic variation among humans (only 99.5% alike; Hayden, 2007), but any big number will do. The fallacy works by having us look at human variation against the backdrop of evolutionary time and vast array of species. By this reasoning, human genetic variation is inconsequential in human affairs because we humans are more similar to one another than to dogs, worms, and microbes. The fallacy focuses our attention on the 99.9% genetic similarity which makes us all human, Homo sapiens sapiens, in order to distract us from the 0.1% which makes us individuals. Moreover, as illustrated in diverse life arenas (Hart, 2007, p. 112), “it is often the case that small differences in the input result in large differences in the final outcome.”

The identical parts of the genome are called the non-segregating genes, which are said to be evolutionarily fixed in the species because they do not vary among its individual members. The remaining genes, for which humans possess different versions (alleles), are called segregating genes because they segregate (reassort) during the production of eggs and sperm. Only the segregating genes are technically termed heritable because only they create genetic differences which may be transmitted from parent to offspring generations. Intelligence tests are designed to capture individual differences in developed mental competence, so it is among the small percentage of segregating genes that scientists search for the genetic roots of those phenotypic differences. The 99.9% Fallacy would put this search off-limits.



http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2008logical-fallacies.doc

[Jeff Corey]

If these markers correlate .999 with self-reports of race, that seems significant. We can then identify with pretty amazing accuracy which race you consider yourself to be by a genetic profile of clusters, or vice versa (the skin deep biology or race, at least)..
No way, I self reported myself as a member of the Fukawi Tribe and they wouldn't even let me into the Fukawing Casino.
Racists.

[Alareth]

What does classify a person as white?


A lack of jumping ability and/or rhythm on the dance floor.

[gtc]

No way, I self reported myself as a member of the Fukawi Tribe and they wouldn't even let me into the Fukawing Casino.
Racists.

Do they exist or are you trying to circumvent the automod?

I am loathe to google the terms.

[quarky]

There should be a simple, verbal test to determine race.
What food you eat; what music you like; your fashion statement, and such.

[ImaginalDisc]

I think the discussion here's been very respectful despite the loaded topic. Hopefully, it meets the ideal of what the JREF had in mind for this forum.

I do agree race is a loaded term.

I don't understand, lomiller, why you claim "arbitrary this and that". I've gave what I thought were fairly precise reasons. And, I agree with Delvo, the fact that the clusters exist for race is compelling (especially if the clusters themselves do things that are measurable and explain differences within and between races on outcome measures).

Emphasis added.

Oh, but there aren't. Rather, there are some clusters of alleles more common among Europeans, Asians, or what ever you like, but there are clusters shared across populations - and there populations like the entire Indian subcontinent where geneticists throw up their hands at an inability to distinguish genetically among the many populations. (Thanks to whoever posted that earlier. I'd have to revise my earlier example of Hindu castes as coexisting but not interbreeding populations if I could.) Furthermore, what geneticists are tracking are differences in the frequencies of various alleles, a vanishingly tiny minority of which have any relationship to skin color, eye color, or facial features.

If you try to use genetic data to affirm naive notions about human races you can do one of two things:

A) Admit defeat.

B) Become the Texas Sharpshooter. Mine the data for differences between populations which match up with your preconcieved notions, draw the boundries to mach what you want to see, and then declare victory. That is not science.

[bpesta22]

Emphasis added.



If you try to use genetic data to affirm naive notions about human races you can do one of two things:

A) Admit defeat.

B) Become the Texas Sharpshooter. Mine the data for differences between populations which match up with your preconcieved notions, draw the boundries to mach what you want to see, and then declare victory. That is not science.

I'm happy to defer to people with expertise in genetics, but I find your claims here odd given I linked to the Tang study, asked if you were willing to critique it and even asked for an opinion on journal quality. Unless I missed it, you ignored the request (which is fine).

But what you say here is completely contradicted by (a) me finding evidence of such in a peer-reviewed journal of apparently high regard, and (b) various cites of other articles that also find these effects.

Here is the abstract

Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. 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. Implications of this genetic structure for case-control association studies are discussed.

So, before I admit defeat, I think the claimed victors owe me some type of debunking of this article (it's not a wiki link; the journal's impact factor suggests it's elite).

[bpesta22]

10 minutes of google searching and I get the impression that indeed many are studying the genetics of race and trying to precisely define what black or white is.

Of course, there's no consensus from what I can tell. Some claim race can't be measured genetically, others claim they have measured it already.

Point is, the issue's not at all resolved.

You can't dismiss the cluster studies by stating "fail" or "try again" or arbitrary". Perhaps at the end of the day, your world view will be vindicated, but to claim there's no evidence for a genetic basis to race is patently false.



Here's a harvard review article that seems to be balanced on the issues:

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic185351.files/RACEgen.pdf

From the conclusion:
Knowing the proportion of recent genetic ancestry that
an individual shares with members of one or more
groups facilitates making accurate predictions about
disease susceptibility and outcome, and can increase the
power of studies designed to find environmental and
genetic factors that underlie health-related traits...

...However, descriptors such as race or ethnicity capture
only some of the ancestral information about the
biological and environmental factors that influence phenotypic
characteristics. In addition, the amount of
information captured by each varies depending on how

race or ethnicity is defined, the specific groups being
studied, and how a study is designed and executed. It is
time to devote some political will, experimental innovation
and financial resources to address crucial questions
about patterns of genetic variation, geographical ancestry
and disease.At the same time, geneticists need to facilitate
the incorporation of this new information into complicated
frameworks of knowledge that we already have and
attitudes that manifest as public perceptions of race.

[LostAngeles]

I never claimed self-reports are 100% accurate (a test doesn't have to be for it to have utility, which is why the concept of reliability was invented).

But, I can identify race far better than chance just by looking at people. So can you.



So I really am Hispanic? Or am I Indian? Or am I Middle Eastern? Or am I Italian? Or am I Brazilian? Or am I Hawaiian? Am I really an immigrant as one woman once insisted I must be and was lying when I said otherwise?

Or can I simply self-report as mixed and you can all simply accept it?

[Geezer]

how is it defined in europe?
i have never ever heard my Government talking about Human races, expect for the SVP that does indeed belive in such things as races.

Same in Sweden, they do catagorize groups along language, birthplace, nationality, or cultural lines on occasion but not in ID card, Passports or drivers license.

Personally I'm quite baffled by the facination you colonials have with 'race'.

Sure for some medical reasons there might be an interest to know if someone is of African decent (like sickle cell or some such) but to have a systematic categorization of 'race' seems pointless and can only help to divide a nation.
Why should the government care which 'race' you belong to?Does it have any practical use that outweigh the negative sides of viewing people this way?

[DC]

Same in Sweden, they do catagorize groups along language, birthplace, nationality, or cultural lines on occasion but not in ID card, Passports or drivers license.

Personally I'm quite baffled by the facination you colonials have with 'race'.

Sure for some medical reasons there might be an interest to know if someone is of African decent (like sickle cell or some such) but to have a systematic categorization of 'race' seems pointless and can only help to divide a nation.
Why should the government care which 'race' you belong to?Does it have any practical use that outweigh the negative sides of viewing people this way?

well im not a colonial so i am also baffled by it.

i find it amazing how often in statistics from the USA, black and white is sepperated.

just read something that involved a statistic about suvival chance of cancer, the only nation in the list having blacks and whites seperated is the USA. (more baffled i am by the lousy survival chance blacks have)

I also see no use of it other than once again concentrating on something that makes us diffrent from eachother instead of concentrating on the thing we have in common.

[funk de fino]

AFAIK, I have only marked down ethnic group on one form in my life over here. The census. No license, passport, insurance etc etc.

Possibly a police arrest sheet but I was drunk so cannot really remember.

ETA - As I work for an American company I just remembered other times I have had to put it down. Work surveys.

[linusrichard]

Do they exist or are you trying to circumvent the automod?

I am loathe to google the terms.

I Googled. It appears to be a joke.

Although I can't stop myself from pointing out that membership in Indian tribes doesn't work that way. Sorry. (And that membership in a tribe is obviously not a requirement for getting into a casino. Sorry again.)

[zooterkin]

AFAIK, I have only marked down ethnic group on one form in my life over here. The census. No license, passport, insurance etc etc.

Possibly a police arrest sheet but I was drunk so cannot really remember.

ETA - As I work for an American company I just remembered other times I have had to put it down. Work surveys.

You've entered it as your Location, too. :)

[gtc]

Why should the government care which 'race' you belong to?Does it have any practical use that outweigh the negative sides of viewing people this way?

If there are significantly worse outcomes for one self identified race, ethnic or cultural group relative to others then the government might want to tailor its intervention (welfare, education, job creation etc) appropriately.

Australia does this with schemes aim tailored towards its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

There was a debate about this in France, which AFAIK doesn't collect that data but where the descendants of migrants are significantly disadvantaged.

[Geezer]

If there are significantly worse outcomes for one self identified race, ethnic or cultural group relative to others then the government might want to tailor its intervention (welfare, education, job creation etc) appropriately.

Australia does this with schemes aim tailored towards its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

There was a debate about this in France, which AFAIK doesn't collect that data but where the descendants of migrants are significantly disadvantaged.

Read the rest of my post again, my problem is the 'race' bit, to include ethnic or cultural concerns is quite different imo as it's actually possible to define unlike 'race'. 'Race' is a useless label while cultural distinction isn't.

[funk de fino]

You've entered it as your Location, too. :)

Not necessarily;)

[gtc]

Read the rest of my post again, my problem is the 'race' bit, to include ethnic or cultural concerns is quite different imo as it's actually possible to define unlike 'race'. 'Race' is a useless label while cultural distinction isn't.

Fair enough - the term race does have very little content. However, people seem to use it to mean ethnicity or culture. I've mentioned the large number of Latinos who choose other race on their US census. I suspect they are using race to mean ethnicity or culture.

Its like starsigns. People remain convinced that both give meaningful information about a person.

[Geezer]

Fair enough - the term race does have very little content. However, people seem to use it to mean ethnicity or culture. I've mentioned the large number of Latinos who choose other race on their US census. I suspect they are using race to mean ethnicity or culture.

Its like starsigns. People remain convinced that both give meaningful information about a person.

And quite right too, because classing 'Latinos' under a 'race' is just silly as the concept falls to pieces there due to the genetic history of the americas, they range all the way from european to african with native americans in the mix but they are connected by their culture.

[MaGZ]

MaGZ and bpesta has been very consistent in refusing to define race.

There are White people and everybody else.

That definition works for me.

[MaGZ]

I am not denying that race exists though, it is a real social construct with real impact on peoples lives and how they behave. It is just social in orrigion and not biological.

And there is the weirdness of why people think that the Irish and Slavs are white now.

Who are making the claims the Irish and Slavs are not White?

[MaGZ]

If race is a social construct and not based on genetics, then how many here think the White children of Michael Jackson were actually fathered by him?

[funk de fino]

There are White people and everybody else.

That definition works for me.

We are all the same.

[DC]

There are White people and everybody else.

That definition works for me.

is there anything special about those "White people" compared to "everybody else"?

can we Whites do aomething better than others or are we more evolved (better designed) than those non whites ?

or is it indeed just the color that is diffrent?

[ponderingturtle]

Who are making the claims the Irish and Slavs are not White?

That was a common belief 100 years ago or a 150 years ago. See how Nazi germany classed the slavs as being so much less than them on a fundamental level.

[uruk]

Hispanic is not a racial term. it is an ethnic identification. There are many groups who are from different "races" who consider themselves hispanic.

Hispanic is just an arbitrary label covering a certain group of peoples who self-identify with that label. According to the American Census bureau Hispanic is defined as:

"Persons of Hispanic origin, in particular, were those who indicated that their origin was Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or some other Hispanic origin. It should be noted that persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race."

Source: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hispanic/hispdef.html

There are other "hispanic groups who also hold this definition of hispanic as ethnic affiliation rather than racial affilliation. Here is an example from one group:
http://hispanic.com/topics/definitionofhispanic.aspx

Even academic source hold Hispanic as an ethnic term rather than racial:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hispanic

Anybody who sees "Hispanic" as race is going against The commonly held definition of Hispanic. But then thats the dynamic nature of language.

The one common characteristic that all these groups share is the use of Spanish as thier predominate language.

Many different "racial groups" identify themselves as hispanic. Philipinos are predominatly oriental. Brown eyed, brown skinned, black haired Mexicans are of native American Indian groups as are South Americans of similar appearance. (Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs, Karankowan, Some Deep South Apache Tribal groups, Also some culturaly extinct tribes along the Rio Grande River)

Cubans and Puerto Ricans are also of indigenous native and African groups.

In South America, you also have Caucasians of European decent such as German, Portugese, French, and Spaniard.

You also have Caucasian groups such as Spaniard, French, and central European Jewish in Mexico. You also have a huge Moorish group in Mexico.

Most of the areas we consider "Hispanic points of origin" are in the New World and are now composed of a hodge-podge mix of indigenous native groups intermingled with European, African, Semetic, Asian and Eastern Asian stock. Spanish is spoken in all these areas because Spain first colonized these areas.

You see the influences of these different groups in the hispanic cultures. The music, the food, the art, the language, the religions and the mythologies.

All you have to do is study the Hispanic history and culture to realise that "Hispanic" is not a "race" but a culture

[Thunder]

Although, a TRUE Hispanic has some Spanish blood. So there is a real descendants element to being Hispanic.

[Thunder]

If race is a social construct and not based on genetics, then how many here think the White children of Michael Jackson were actually fathered by him?

um..when a black man and a white lady make a baby..sometimes baby comes out lighter skinned.

[uruk]

There are White people and everybody else.

That definition works for me.

Define "White people"

Exactly what shades of white includes or excludes you from this group? Milk? Ivory? Really creamy coffee? What is the precise amount of melanin?

Is George Hamilton still white? How about Albinoes?

[uruk]

Although, a TRUE Hispanic has some Spanish blood. So there is a real descendants element to being Hispanic.

I have never heard of this "TRUE Hispanic" definition. Do you have a source for this?

When Spain colonized these areas in the new world, they used the natives as slaves So there was no doubt quite a bit of intermingleing a la Jefferson.

I have a friend who did that National Geographic Genographic project testing. https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/lan/en/journey.html

His last name is Guajardo, which is of Spaniard origin, and his ancestors immigrated from Mexico. He looks very light skinned (see MaGZ "white people") with black curly hair and brown eyes. He was surprized to find out that he has Jewish blood in him, amoung a plethora of many other "racial" types.

I suspect most people in the Americas are the same.

If anyone is interested I am of both Mexican and English decent. My Mother's family is from Mexico and my father's ancestry is Southern England.

One odd fact is that My mothers parents immigrated legaly to the US in the early 1900's. My fathers ancestors stowed away on a boat from England back in the late 1700s and entered the U.S. illegaly (so to speak).

I'm part "wetback" on my father's side.

[GreNME]

Although, a TRUE Hispanic has some Spanish blood. So there is a real descendants element to being Hispanic.

Seriously, man, you need to stop making statements you know jack and squat about. Worse than looking like a fool, you come really close to sounding similar to those who would make outright racist remarks.

[Iconoclast08]

Many of panty in a wad here.

I was recently reading a book by African American psychologist Beverly Tatum, and she differentiates race and ethnic identity in this way:

Race = a group that is socially defined but on the basis of physical criteria, such as skin color and facial features (Van den Berghe's definition).

Ethnic group = a socially defined group based on cultural criteria, such as language, customs, and shared history (e.g., Irish, Italian).

So where would Hispanics fit best? Seems to straddle both in my view.

Tatum has a rich view of racial identity development as a complex process of defining for oneself the personal significance and social meaning of belonging to a particular racial group, and it is shaped by individual characteristics, family dynamics, and historical factors within social and political contexts. And these group identifications are mediated by sex, age, SES, wealth, sexual orientation, etc.

Multifaceted "looking glass self," she calls it.

[Richard Masters]

Seriously, man, you need to stop making statements you know jack and squat about. Worse than looking like a fool, you come really close to sounding similar to those who would make outright racist remarks.

I tend to agree with Parky76 on this. That would make about 78% of the Mexican population Hispanic.

[Richard Masters]

I have never heard of this "TRUE Hispanic" definition. Do you have a source for this?

When Spain colonized these areas in the new world, they used the natives as slaves So there was no doubt quite a bit of intermingleing a la Jefferson.

There was a lot, and it wasn't all a la Jefferson. In fact, 60+% of the population of Mexico is mixed, and the genetic tests released in May 09 show that European and Indigenous DNA markers are spread out evenly in 80% of the mixed population. The other 20% of the mixed population is more heavily European. And on top of that there is a 10% of the population that is only European.

So by this standard, 70+% of Mexicans have actual Spanish ancestry (thought to be 78% or more, actually).

I have a friend who did that National Geographic Genographic project testing. https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/lan/en/journey.html

His last name is Guajardo, which is of Spaniard origin, and his ancestors immigrated from Mexico. He looks very light skinned (see MaGZ "white people") with black curly hair and brown eyes. He was surprized to find out that he has Jewish blood in him, amoung a plethora of many other "racial" types.

I suspect most people in the Americas are the same.

If anyone is interested I am of both Mexican and English decent. My Mother's family is from Mexico and my father's ancestry is Southern England.

One odd fact is that My mothers parents immigrated legaly to the US in the early 1900's. My fathers ancestors stowed away on a boat from England back in the late 1700s and entered the U.S. illegaly (so to speak).

I'm part "wetback" on my father's side.

Yes, all the people I know in Mexico have extremely diverse backgrounds, and they could all pass for white supremacists if they wanted to.

[GreNME]

I tend to agree with Parky76 on this. That would make about 78% of the Mexican population Hispanic.

Why you're agreeing with what is essentially an ethnic 'no true Scotsman' statement doesn't really concern me, but the length of time and genetic distribution makes the statement useless. With the exception of the more recent migrants there from non-Latin-American countries, more than that percent of the Mexican population (that you claim) are likely related to each other by a little more than a dozen degrees of separation (at most).

[Richard Masters]

Why you're agreeing with what is essentially an ethnic 'no true Scotsman' statement doesn't really concern me, but the length of time and genetic distribution makes the statement useless. With the exception of the more recent migrants there from non-Latin-American countries, more than that percent of the Mexican population (that you claim) are likely related to each other by a little more than a dozen degrees of separation (at most).

I've taken that into account. Look at the statistics prior to your last post.

[GreNME]

I've taken that into account. Look at the statistics prior to your last post.

Those statistics aren't saying what you think they're saying if you think "more European" and "Spanish ancestry" have some sort of exclusivity. You can feel free to elaborate your statistics to solidify your claim, but considering the numbers you cite that only determines the amount of indigenous versus less-(or non-)indigenous lineage.

[Richard Masters]

Those statistics aren't saying what you think they're saying if you think "more European" and "Spanish ancestry" have some sort of exclusivity. You can feel free to elaborate your statistics to solidify your claim, but considering the numbers you cite that only determines the amount of indigenous versus less-(or non-)indigenous lineage.

That's all I am saying.

I'm not implying any exclusivity. Mixing between native Americans and Spaniards has always been interpreted as inclusive/additive, unlike the case with British and native Americans or Africans, where a single black ancestor socially excludes you from being considered white.

In other countries, like Mexico, you'd be each or both.

[BenBurch]

There are no "races." The concept has no validity at all since the Neanderthal race died out. We are all members of the "human" race.

[DC]

H6IrUUDboZo

[ponderingturtle]

Hispanic is not a racial term. it is an ethnic identification. There are many groups who are from different "races" who consider themselves hispanic.


How are you defining race in this context? How do you know that your definition of race is more valid than someone elses?

[uruk]

How are you defining race in this context? How do you know that your definition of race is more valid than someone elses?

My definition of race would be a group of people who share closely related genetic sequences which produce certain specific superficial physiological characteristics differentiated from other general groups and also share the same general ancestral geographic origins.

I strongly suspect that my definition of race is no more valid than any other definition. More so since I am niether an anthropologist or biologist.

There is an illdefined difference of connotation between ethnicity and race. Ethnicity is more of a cultural or sociological term whereas race has more of a biological bent.

I was simply pointing out that peoples of widely differing geographic origins and physiological characteristics such as Caucasoid, Asian, and African identify themselves as hispanic because of cultural similarities rather than physiological similarities.

Take Jimmy Smits and Zoe Saldana for example.

[ponderingturtle]

My definition of race would be a group of people who share closely related genetic sequences which produce certain specific superficial physiological characteristics differentiated from other general groups and also share the same general ancestral geographic origins.

So it is as odds with how any other person defines race. It is noted that you can not classify anyone in your system with out genetic testing.

There is an illdefined difference of connotation between ethnicity and race. Ethnicity is more of a cultural or sociological term whereas race has more of a biological bent.

Again this all depends on how you define race.

[uruk]

So it is as odds with how any other person defines race. It is noted that you can not classify anyone in your system with out genetic testing. Well that would be the case if one persons definition of race was no more valid than any others. But if two people are going to communicate a specific concept there has to be some agreement or middle ground on definition of terms.

I think genetic testing would be the only way considering how intermingeled the different characteristic types have become over the Centuries. Especialy in the former colonial areas.



Again this all depends on how you define race. Of course. That is the difference between the two terms that i've come to develop due to my experiance.

I have always used ethnicity to label a group of people who share common cultural traits. They can be of different physical characteristcs. I use race to describe a group of people who share the same physical genetic characteristics.

Sue me if other people don't agree with my definitions.

I think if you do a bit of research you will see that most people do see a difference between ethnicity and race.

[bpesta22]

But I think genetic testing would correlate very strongly with self reports of race, and so self reports of race could be used as a reliable but not perfect measure of whatever the genetics shows.

In terms of reliability, I'd bet self reports would rival that for most non-standardized psych tests, at least, and would easily pass the .60 barrier that's considered a minimum for a test to have utility.

[ponderingturtle]

Well that would be the case if one persons definition of race was no more valid than any others. But if two people are going to communicate a specific concept there has to be some agreement or middle ground on definition of terms.

How does one social construct become more valid than another? And as long as they define their definitions it is perfectly workable.

[ponderingturtle]

But I think genetic testing would correlate very strongly with self reports of race, and so self reports of race could be used as a reliable but not perfect measure of whatever the genetics shows.

In terms of reliability, I'd bet self reports would rival that for most non-standardized psych tests, at least, and would easily pass the .60 barrier that's considered a minimum for a test to have utility.

Again this depends on what we mean by race. How likely is it that an african american would correctly name each of the african races that they belong to geneticaly?

[LostAngeles]

Again this depends on what we mean by race. How likely is it that an african american would correctly name each of the african races that they belong to geneticaly?

As somewhat of one, I'm pretty sure there's five, of which I can name two, the Khosian and... the Pygmy?

[Darth Rotor]

There are no "races." The concept has no validity at all since the Neanderthal race died out. We are all members of the "human" race.
There is no such thing as law, since it is a construct of the imaginations of human beings.

Right?

[Thunder]

There are no "races." The concept has no validity at all since the Neanderthal race died out. We are all members of the "human" race.

would "breed" be a term that you would support instead?

[ImaginalDisc]

There is no such thing as law, since it is a construct of the imaginations of human beings.

Right?

That's exactly right. Laws are things human made up to formalize their social interactions. Excellent analogy with race.

[uruk]

How does one social construct become more valid than another? And as long as they define their definitions it is perfectly workable.

It depends on well defined the social construct is. The greater the objective concepts, the more vaild the construct is.
On the other hand, the wider the usage, the more it is accepted. Valid or not.

[uruk]

That's exactly right. Laws are things human made up to formalize their social interactions. Excellent analogy with race.

The only thing is that there are certain identifiable and testable superficial physical characteristics that people have that show a genetic and geographic link to types of groups.

A chihuahua and a german sheppard are both dogs but there are very distinct physical characteristics which identify a chihuahua as a chihuahua and a german sheppard as a german sheppard.

I think there is a resistance in people to recognise these superficial difference because they have been used to persecute and oppress people. And what is worse is that certain groups have been identified with certain socio-economic classes.

Some people try to pretend the physical difference don't really exist or on the other extreme, try to use the superficial differences to make unfair or derrogatory generalizations about people. You know, African American people are atheletic, Asians are smart and industrious, Caucasions are power hungry.

I think we are ignoring facts when we deny the differences but we are being equaly foolish to make generalizations based on the physical appearance of people.

For I have an aspiration that my decendants will one day reside in a socio-political system where we will make assesments of each other based not by our specific genetic/geographical ancestry but by the content of our own individual personality and behaivior.

Not resricted by racialy based ignorance and oppression, Not resricted by racialy based ignorance and oppression, Thank providence, Not resricted by racialy based ignorance and oppression.

Come on everybody sing! We shall not be impeaded by obstacles. we shall not be impeaded by obstacles

[Darth Rotor]

That's exactly right. Laws are things human made up to formalize their social interactions. Excellent analogy with race.
The mix of "formal and informal" in law and custom, as in race, IMO makes the parallel intriguing, even if it isn't a perfect comparison.

DR

[Thunder]

If Hispanics are indeed a race..what are their racial characteristics by which they can be recognized?

what color is their hair? their eyes? their skin?

their hair straight or curly?

their eyes round or slanted?

hmmmm??????

[CompusMentus]

I have a friend who did that National Geographic Genographic project testing. https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/lan/en/journey.html



Sorry to ressurect this old 'un.
I came across this thread whilst searching JREF for references to the National Genographic project, I am thinking about buying a DNA testing kit for the Mrs as a present and wanted some feedback on it before I part with my hard-earned. Anyone here bought the kit and had the results back? If so, what do they think of the information recieved?

Compus

[Davidlpf]

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