Does Race exist?

[brennan]

Overall, the idea of a "black race" seems particularly bizarre. The San and Bantu are both parts of the "black race," but are as divergent as Europeans and Han Chinese. How does it make sense to call the Bantu and San members of the same race?

Because they are both black. Modern understanding means we know some theories are wrong - it absolutely doesn't mean they don't make sense.

Then people who claim race exists should be able to tell us (at minimum!) how many races there are, and to which populations they correspond.

You believe cultures exist, how many are there?

 

[Kyriakos]

She's meme famous. And the thing has 15 million hits.
For a half hour interview.
Not on politics. But on "not even politics".
And neither person is an American.
That's an achievement.
No matter if there's the supposition that part of that is for doing a noteworthily bad job.

Anyway. I'll let Lex Villena have you catch up:

Btw: To what extent are you familiar with British news channels in general?

So what you're saying is...

 

[Senethro]

There are obviously many many hundreds of cultures such as they are difficult to enumerate.

Unless you want to claim that ethnicity is exactly equal to race then I don’t think you have much of a point.

 

[Berzerker]

If someone is racist, it is because of his own belief that races can distinguish between people. It doesn't matter whether his belief is grounded in reality or not

But if they're right (hell, or wrong) why is it racist? Is it racist to distinguish between a Congolese pygmy and an Alaskan Tlingit ? If you're a doctor treating both wont distinctions become important? If the Doc doesn't know much about the individual patients they will quickly get informed on what does distinguish them. Racism is about 1) a feeling of superiority, and 2) mistreating the 'inferior' because of it. Well, that pretty much defines humanity. There are plenty of people who feel superior to others and mistreat them as a result. Is an inflated sense of self worth a product of psychological evolution? If you come to realize you're not so worthy might you look down on others to feel more worthy? Winners need losers, even the losers need losers.

Discrimination, xenophobia, chauvinism, prejudice and more can exist without appealing to the notion of race. The very term "race" isn't used in my language, at all, except for dogs and horses. I'm always stunned at how widespread it is in English.

How does your language refer to different peoples?

The objection is that the variations between individuals are greater than the variations between would-be races.

Cranial capacity variations eg within a group will be greater than the means between groups. That will be true for many traits.

 

[Kyriakos]

There are obviously many many hundreds of cultures such as they are difficult to enumerate.

Unless you want to claim that ethnicity is exactly equal to race then I don’t think you have much of a point.

There may be "hundreds of cultures" but not all of them have a lot of people practicing them, nor are they identified as something of local importance (eg they may be mostly a relic). Furthermore some current cultures are by and large so amalgamatic than they sort of aren't a cohesive culture. The latter seems to be true in most of the west.
Not that i think this is that bad (besides, ultimately each person has a personal culture, albeit influenced by various factors) - yet if so it doesn't help with defining "ethnos" that much. Language would be a better paragon.

 

[brennan]

You're quite happy to display a double standard then?

Lex's objection falls as soon as you look at any model in which someone declared there to be a specific number of races. Linnaeus thought there were 4. Objection failed.

 

[sophie]

Because they are both black. Modern understanding means we know some theories are wrong - it absolutely doesn't mean they don't make sense.

I don't think anybody is disagreeing that they don't make sense, but rather that they are arbitrary and change frequently between people, societies, and history.

We define race on the basis of skin color, but we could have just as easily categorized people on the basis of hair color, or whether or not they drink milk.

Even within the confines of how our culture chooses to define race, tensions exist and are immediately identifiable: is Obama black or white? Is Tiger Woods black or asian? Is Elizabeth Warren white or Native American? If we aren't calling Elizabeth Warren Native American: why? On the basis of what criteria are we parameterizing [race]-ness and do those parameters work in all cases?

 

[brennan]

I don't think I am parameterising race. I'm pointing out that other people have done it and that it made sense to them, it referred to clearly definable characteristics, and therefore right or wrong you can't protest that it isn't 'real' in some sense. To me this argument makes as much sense as claiming that crufts cannot possibly distinguish between breeds.

And I think that the objection is a purely ideological one, rather than one based upon sense and pragmatism. People who argue vehemently that race cannot be real are ideologically opposed to it, true or not - just as they argue against the idea that there are difference in male and female psychological traits (against the evidence a lot of the time).

 

[red_elk]

What is strange to me, that people people regard the idea that races are "real", as racist and morally wrong.
It may be scientifically right or wrong, but why is it racist?
If I said for example, that Poles or Chinese are inferior, that would be racist or chauvinist or whatever you call it. But there is nothing wrong to claim that Poles and Chinese do exist and are different to some extent from people of other ethnicity or culture. And classification of people by ethnicity seems just as valid (or invalid) as classification by race. The only difference is granularity.

 

[Senethro]

You're quite happy to display a double standard then?

Lex's objection falls as soon as you look at any model in which someone declared there to be a specific number of races. Linnaeus thought there were 4. Objection failed.

No, because all the models of races declaring a specific number in the range of 3 - 12 that looks oddly similar to the standard white imperialist model of C19 are obviously stupid.

There is no utility to the concept of race except to be racist. That’s what it was intended for. It’s not a secret truth that my politically correct eyes are too blind to see, it’s a weapon long past need of being decommissioned.

It was ideological from the start. Why the desperation of some to defend it?

 

[Perfection]

You can't just shrug off a thing by saying it's "just a social construct, bro". Literally everything is a social construct. Without us socially construing knowledge about our surrounding, our surroundings would be incomprehensible to us in the form of language. Weddings are social constructs, countries are social constructs, nations are social constructs and even trees, ants and lakes are social constructs, hell even the Moon is a social construct.

The moon is not a social construct, it is an object that would continue to exist even if all humans were to be wiped out. Ants are not a social construct they are a class of physically existing things that can be defined by physical and functional features. Now of course the word "ant" is social construct but that's not the same things ants existed before we were around to name them. Race is a social construct, defined by cultural norms and primarily constructed as a means of establishing a hierarchy of discrimination. Unlike ants vs non-ants there arent criteria to distinguish whites vs non-whites that don't rely heavily on social categorization and historical accident.

Now of course social constructs are real things with real consequences, but by merely changing our attitudes and systems we can fundamentally alter them. A gay wedding wasn't a real thing until we decided it should be and changed our laws and norms to incorporate it. We should look to alter race and stop thinking of it as anything more than an unfair system of discrimination that we should mop up, discard, and think about only as a historical folly.

 

[uppi]

I don't think I am parameterising race. I'm pointing out that other people have done it and that it made sense to them, it referred to clearly definable characteristics, and therefore right or wrong you can't protest that it isn't 'real' in some sense. To me this argument makes as much sense as claiming that crufts cannot possibly distinguish between breeds.

And I think that the objection is a purely ideological one, rather than one based upon sense and pragmatism. People who argue vehemently that race cannot be real are ideologically opposed to it, true or not - just as they argue against the idea that there are difference in male and female psychological traits (against the evidence a lot of the time).

In the sense of the individual's prejudices associated with skin color, in the sense of a social construct it is of course real. In the sense of a universal or sensible scheme to classify humans it is not real. It is about as real as my classification of people into stupid people and non-stupid people.

 

[Berzerker]

We define race on the basis of skin color, but we could have just as easily categorized people on the basis of hair color, or whether or not they drink milk.

The Sumerians referred to themselves as the black headed people

 

[Truthy]

One peer reviewed article would probably do the job, decent ones do not let unreferenced claims through. I hope you saw my edit, I did read the paper a bit.

I need to actually get work done at some point today, so I'll see what I can do later on. Also, if you find some more studies about clustering coming, I'll take a look at them.

No one is actually disputing that claim. What we are disputing is concluding from those genetic differences that therefore English and Native Americans are members of different "races."

When people like Reich hear "race is just a social construct" it seems they hear "meaningful genetic differences don't exist between English and Native Americans." And then they respond saying "no, race isn't just a social construct." Then you say "but if we look at the genealogy of the concept of race, you'll find its origins rest on historical contingencies surrounding power dynamics, colonialism, and the 17th century political economy. Plus the classic racial categories are just kinda bs." And then they think "well, yeah, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm saying meaningful differences are correlated with where a person's ancestors were predominantly located 500 years ago because before that all of their ancestors had been separated for maybe 40,000 years. So the English and Native Americans are in fact divergent populations..." And then someone's like "so are you saying those are two different races??"

I'm not clear on where your goalposts are or if we're even in disagreement about anything besides what we think David Reich is trying to say.

Then why is he saying things like
But as a geneticist I also know that it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among “races.”

A chapter of his book is devoted to the vast genetic diversity within Africa. He is the source for which I claim huge amounts of genetic diversity exist within Africa. E.g., huge differences between the San, Pygmies, and Bantu. He's well aware that defining a "black" race is problematic and this quote doesn't show he tries to do so. He puts the word "race" in scare quotes for a reason.

What he is saying is that (1) genetic differences exist between populations whose ancestors were separated by 70,000 years prior to colonization, (2) at some level of granularity, e.g., African Americans are a population of relatively similar ancestry (note the US does not have a lot of African pygmy or San peoples) and this ancestry is separated from, e.g., European ancestry by like 70,000 years, and (3) tens of thousands of years is long enough for SNPs to build up. And for that reason, we observe differences in the distributions of medically relevant phenotypes, like propensity for a number of diseases between self-identified African Americans and self-identified whites. Which parts of this, exactly, do you object to?

My guess is you object to (2). But I don't think his goal is to say there is some globally optimal level of granularity or height of the hierarchical clustering tree we should always stick with. Some mutations, like adaptations against malaria, are probably pretty high up the tree, in which case it makes sense to discuss the subtree of that height. I highly doubt his hill to die on is arguing we shouldn't adjust the granularity in different situations. His hill is that the tree matters and his argument is that people refuse to believe any such hierarchical tree can or should ever be created. I imagine he's also kind of taking for granted that the granularity already exists in people's identifications and given that granularity, we do in fact see meaningful differences between those subtrees and other parts of the overall tree. If African Americans had the luxury of identifying with particular parts of Africa, maybe it'd be different.

 

[Truthy]

People find meaning where they want to. Sometimes they try their mind at logic.​

Well, sorry for being too harsh in my response. I didn't intended any disrespect.

Because they are both black. Modern understanding means we know some theories are wrong - it absolutely doesn't mean they don't make sense.

It doesn't make sense because it's too reductionist and it's inconsistent. If we're going about it that way, we should make up some new color to clump Europeans and Han Chinese together.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I'll snip this for brevity.

People want to insist that race does not exist simply because the term and associated theories about race have been historically used to justify various crimes.

that's not what I'm saying at all, just a strawman.

people haven't distinguished between them and their neighbors in terms of race for thousands of years, they have distinguished themselves through tribalism, language, citizienship, culture, religion, and many other factors.

race is about grouping people entirely on phenotype and as a concept can only really exist in a globalized world. how you perceive human differences is necessarily tied to what you see in your life. the "racial" distinctions are pretty much based on giving continent a respective haplotype "black, white, asian" etc.

 

[Perfection]

I don't think I am parameterising race. I'm pointing out that other people have done it and that it made sense to them, it referred to clearly definable characteristics, and therefore right or wrong you can't protest that it isn't 'real' in some sense. To me this argument makes as much sense as claiming that crufts cannot possibly distinguish between breeds.

And I think that the objection is a purely ideological one, rather than one based upon sense and pragmatism. People who argue vehemently that race cannot be real are ideologically opposed to it, true or not - just as they argue against the idea that there are difference in male and female psychological traits (against the evidence a lot of the time).

Crufts can distinguish between dogs breeds because breeders are fanatically devoted to producing dogs that fit the exact criteria Crufts uses to define dog breeds. Crufts doesn't merely distinguish dog breeds it creates and sustains dog breeds often to the detriment if the dogs themselves.

I don't think we should use Crufts as a good example for humanity.

For more information on Dog Vs. Humans please see this thread

 

[Berzerker]

3 races - us, us + Neanderthal, and us + Denisovan

no, that aint right... Us not only lived along side homo erectus populations in Africa we ran into them as we spread into Asia. There were erectus living in Indonesia relatively recently, enough to overlap with our arrival. Many Asian and European people acquired DNA from people who had already spent a long time living in cold mountainous regions.

 

[Lexicus]

Lex's objection falls as soon as you look at any model in which someone declared there to be a specific number of races. Linnaeus thought there were 4. Objection failed.

It doesn't, because it's only the start of the objection. Once you say there are so many races, then we can start poking innumerable holes in your actual assertion. But instinctively you avoid making specific claims about the nature of race, because you understand that getting into specific territory will mean being totally goddamn wrong.

made sense to them, it referred to clearly definable characteristics

And this is just stupid garbage. It "made sense to them" because they needed a way to justify genocide, mass pillage and enslavement on a hitherto unknown scale.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

How we determined which people belong to which race obviously

Depends on what you think "the races" are and where the dividing lines are doesn't it. For the most part it's going to be done by visual appearance isn't it. I don't really see what's interesting about this question.

If there are no benefit then why the classification even required? as it only serves negative, one of it it breeds racism, obviously the term racism itself derived from the concept of race. If there are no benefit, should we just get rid of it?

I think you have the cart before the horse here. But anyway, as I've said, I think "race" is just an attempt at recognising and classifying actual real observable differences. Humans like to classify things. If the real differences are there (which they are) then that's reason enough for classifications to exist. There doesn't have to be any benefit.

I know a person who mixed white Polynesian who are more considered as white than that of Polynesian, not because of specific measurable genetic rule, but more into the observable complexion, the concept is something pure observation based not base on clear measurement.

Well people don't generally go around measuring other people, so that's perfectly understandable, hence my answer to the first question. I'm sure if someone with 50% Polynesian ancestry essentially looks "white" then that's probably how most people are going to see them, at least initially. I don't know about you though, but if they were then to tell me that they are actually 50% Polynesian, I wouldn't ignore it and insist they were white.

What measure the one drop btw? I just know the one drop rule is a rule that stated a single drop of "black blood" makes a person a black, this is not about more or less than one drop, it is more about the mixture of blood.

I just mean that in your example you were talking about (apparently) someone of 50/50 mixed race, yet said "but that one drop of blood". I was just saying that it sounded like more than one drop of blood. Unless you think that people only have two drops of blood in them I suppose. It wasn't an important point however.

I'm sorry I can't limit myself like that. I used it as a general statement for the word like people in general, if you think that's not correct and I'm wrong about it, you can just make an objection about it

Well as I said, I can see why someone like Obama tends to be seen as "black" in a majority white country, for obvious reasons. I don't know if that holds true universally however, and I also think most people are able to comprehend that he is mixed race. I certainly don't think that someone of white/black mixed race is more black than someone of white/Polynesian mixed race is Polynesian though. Hope that helps.

Race as something consensual doesn't means that it is something that poorly defined. When people look after a group of black people and categorized them as African, it doesn't mean race is a well defined category. ugh

I don't really know what you're asking me here, if anything.

Edit: I'm sure I haven't really answered you properly, so sorry for that, but I doubt this is going to actually go anywhere as it never does. And 6 pages have popped up in the few hours I've been away which I can't be bothered to read so I think I'm just going to leave it here. If you want to ask me more feel free to PM me but I probably won't see it if you ask in this thread.