Does Race exist?

[Samson]

This looks very interesting, can You please translate what it says not using scientific terms like "STR" , "AGT", "site polymorphisms" and "14.4-kb gene" ? (tbh. it's all greek to me) If I gather those pictures correctly we are all descendants from the black people of Africa right ? And Asians are the most evolved representants of our species ?

Polymorphisms: Differences within the population, in this context genetic differences.
Alu insertion polymorphisms: Differences within the population where some individuals have a Alu sequence at a particular location and some do not. I think Alu is a self replicating sequence, that can duplicate itself within the genome, so this feature would be expected to have lots of variation.
STR polymorphisms: Short tandem repeat polymorphisms. Highly variable regions that consist of a short sequence repeated a number of times. The number of times is what is variable.
Restriction site polymorphisms: Specific regions that happen to be targets of bacterial DNA cutting enzymes. Generally used because they are easy to test for.
14.4-kb gene AGT: The gene that codes for the protein angiotensinogen, which is composed 14,400 base pairs. I do not know why they selected this gene.
we are all descendants from the black people of Africa right?: Pretty much. This actually says assuming we are all descended from a single ancestral population, those people living today that have diverged least are black people of Africa.
And Asians are the most evolved representants of our species ?: Most evolved has no real meaning when comparing existing species. We are all descended from a single ancestor, and we have all had the same amount of time to evolve, so there is no concept of "most evolved", whether you are comparing human populations or us to bacteria. However it appears from that chart that asians have acquired most changes from the putative last common ancestor.

 

[H4run]

Well the question was how do we decide which people belong in which boxes. I would think the answer to that definitely does depend on how we define the boxes. I don't see how it couldn't depend on that.

I agree completely in this statement of yours, we should first have a consensual definition of what is racism and then we can discuss about it, but as I stand as someone who let alone willing to define what is race, I even disagree with its reality to begin with, hence I'm not the one who suppose to define the concept, because I don't even believe the concept is true to begin with.

While in the contrary you are the one who insist on its necessity and reality, hence it should be you who defend and defined what is race, which in previous post you mentioned it is as ill-defined, and I agree, it is ill-defined because it can be understood loosely according to the political or sociological agenda of the one who defined it. This one drop rule is also a way to define what constitute a black race, a very poor concept, it never stop being poor until now.

I strongly disagree that it's totally arbitrary and doesn't bear any reference in reality. Also not sure what you mean by "modern concept of race". Whenever it comes up in these discussions it's usually assumed to refer to 19th century (at the latest) thinking.

If Chinese and Japanese is mentioned as race, and it has its own generic face, it is enough to deemed it as arbitrary. I never know a nation-state citizen possessed a certain generic faces. Look Belheim, as I mentioned to you, ethnicity or race were never really measured from your antecedent, but it is measured from the language and the culture that you were adopting, hence Nietzsche is never known as Polish, but German philosopher. IIRC, @Lexicus can help me here, the concept of race that is measured strictly from its genealogical antecedent is popularized by Nazi in relation to their effort to defined the Aryan race.

Is it? If the disagreement is about how the boxes should be defined, how many there are, what implications putting people in the boxes has, or whether the boxes should even exist at all, then taking all that as read and just asking how we work out which person belongs in which of those boxes seems to be focusing on the wrong area. Kind of like asking how you get the lid off each box or something.

lol come on, there is nothing much more important when we discuss such and such concept is exist or not in reality then first discussing the definition of it, hence I said definition is the utmost important in this discussion with it we can come to agreement, or to agree to be disagree, but without it we can only going on circling for eternity.

If you tell me that the definition of race is "a small domesticated carnivorous mammal with soft fur, a short snout, and retractable claws. It is widely kept as a pet or for catching mice, and many breeds have been developed."

Then rest assured I'm on your side that race is a reality based concept.

I'm not a defender of gun rights, but if someone claims that guns literally don't exist I would disagree with them. To reply to me with arguments about how bad guns are would be talking past me. To my mind this is similar. It's not that I'm dismissing your question as being of no importance, just that it's not really a response to what I was saying, and also not something I think it's possible to just "stop using" since I don't really agree that it's made up in the first place. Or at least the underlying differences that "race" tries to describe, which do exist and do matter to people, are not made up.

That's a fallacious analogy, both are not comparable. We comparing a false classification of human being based on its genetic and nation-state origins like Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malaysian, which is atrocious and fallacious at any level of reality. While gun, ugh should I explain this really?

 

[Lexicus]

Then I explain he isn't defining races or saying anyone is a member of a different race.

Then why is he, in your telling, interpreting "race is a social construct" as "there is no genetic difference between English people and Native Americans"??? If he were not claiming race is biologically/genetically 'real' then there would be no confusion on that point.

But this is missing the point: he isn't starting from variants and shoehorning them into racial categories.

Well, I would say that any genetic study that deals in racial categories is inevitably doing this. Like, what you describe here:

He's saying meaningful genetic variation exists based on geographic distribution of their ancestry. And the genetic implications of this fact are reflected at the level granularity of most people's racial self-identifications.

Is precisely "starting from the variants and shoehorning them into racial categories", specifically "people's racial self-identification".

Like, really: look at the images Samson posted upthread. There is simply no way to pull racial categories out of those maps without shoehorning at some point in the process. I honestly don't see how it is difficult to grasp the concept here: human genetic variation is clearly A Thing, but it doesn't map to racial categories because racial categories are socially constructed, never indicated "neutrally" by the genetic data. And that is the real objection to use of "race" in the context of genetics, not some kind of sacred taboo on the whole concept of human genetic variation.

@Lexicus can help me here, the concept of race that is measured strictly from antecedent it is popularized by Nazi for the definition of the Aryan race.

Not so much popularized by the Nazis as taken to its logical conclusion by them. That essay I posted back on page 1, I think, actually is a good overview of the emergence of the idea of human groups based on descent rather than culture. Much of the "race science" practiced over the three centuries from 1650-1950 was attempts to define culture as determined by blood, and as we know racial theory has mostly shifted to talking about 'culture'. So for example when mainstream commentators in the US claim that African-Americans have a "culture of failure/poverty" that is thinly disguised racism.

ugh should I explain this really?

I did tell you not to encourage him

All you're going to get out of this is repeated insistence that race is both real and important, and repeated refusal to even advance any specific theory of race let alone defend it.

 

[H4run]

Not so much popularized by the Nazis as taken to its logical conclusion by them. That essay I posted back on page 1, I think, actually is a good overview of the emergence of the idea of human groups based on descent rather than culture. Much of the "race science" practiced over the three centuries from 1650-1950 was attempts to define culture as determined by blood, and as we know racial theory has mostly shifted to talking about 'culture'. So for example when mainstream commentators in the US claim that African-Americans have a "culture of failure/poverty" that is thinly disguised racism.

This is gold thank you, actually I haven't read it, I must do my job both in the office and at home lol but my poor discipline keep gravitated me to this forum

 

[Lexicus]

This is gold thank you, actually I haven't read it, I must do my job both in the office and at home lol but my poor discipline keep gravitated me to this forum

I know that life

 

[Hygro]

Like sarkeesian, she's hated by angry men online

Unlike sarkeesian she’s not that cool...

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I agree completely in this statement of yours, we should first have a consensual definition of what is racism and then we can discuss about it, but as I stand as someone who let alone willing to define what is race, I even disagree with its reality to begin with, hence I'm not the one who suppose to define the concept, because I don't even believe the concept is true to begin with.

While in the contrary you are the one who insist on its necessity and reality, hence it should be you who defend and defined what is race, which in previous post you mentioned it is as ill-defined, and I agree, it is ill-defined because it can be understood loosely according to the political or sociological agenda of the one who defined it. This one drop rule is also a way to define what constitute a black race, a very poor concept, it never stop being poor until now.

Well I never said anything about "necessity" at all. It wouldn't be remotely necessary for me to devise a system of classifying pebbles according to size, weight, ellipticity, etc. But whether or not I actually did this would make no difference to the fact that these variations between pebbles objectively exist.

But the key point is that the boxes are ill-defined, so asking me specifically how it should be determined who belongs in which box, just because I believe that the concept of having some system of boxes is valid. But I've already said it's mostly going to be based on visual appearance, simply due to necessity (by which I don't mean the necessity referred to earlier of course).

If Chinese and Japanese is mentioned as race, and it has its own generic face, it is enough to deemed it as arbitrary. I never know a nation-state citizen bear a certain faces. Look Belheim, as I mentioned to you, ethnicity or race were never really measured from your antecedent, but it is measured from the language and the culture that you were adopting, hence Nietzsche is never known as Polish, but German philosopher. IIRC, @Lexicus can help me here, the concept of race that is measured strictly from antecedent it is popularized by Nazi for the definition of the Aryan race.

You can say that if you like, but if I show you a very dark-skinned child, then show you two photos of couples - one very white and one very black - and asked you to pick who you think are the parents...

lol come on, there is nothing much more important when we discuss such and such concept is exist or not in reality then first discussing the definition of it, hence I said definition is the utmost important in this discussion with it we can come to agreement, or to agree to be disagree, but without it we can only going on circling for eternity.

Okay I agree with that, obviously a misunderstanding of your meaning. I would represent that more with "how do we decide what the boxes are", not "how do we determine which box someone belongs on". Might seem subtle or pedantic, but it was enough for me to misunderstand the meaning.

My only claim is that there are various "branches" of humans, that through geographical isolation and "inbreeding" over prolonged periods of time, have evolved to have genetic differences. These genetic differences are obviously small, and I'm not imbuing them with any moral value or deeper meaning, but they nonetheless exist. Further, many of these genetic differences result in clearly perceptible differences in appearance. The result of this is that most people are able to identify various subgroups of people, based solely on these differences, just by looking at them. I don't really know how anyone can deny the truth of this.

And that's essentially all "race" is. Call it "breeds" or "subgroups" or whatever you like, it doesn't really matter to me. Whether or not any of that matters to you is entirely subjective. How you choose to break the groups down is also essentially subjective, given how the variations are often continuous with no discreet boundaries, and how it's continually changing, particularly with how people move around on a global scale much more freely these days. Also not all genetic differences are going to lead to differences we can see, and not all differences we can see will be down to genetics either, so just basing it on "what we can see" is also going to be prone to errors. And also the whole thing can be hijacked and used as a tool of oppression and cause of division when latched onto by those tribal tendencies we have.

So yeah, I'm not making any claim as to the absolute truth of any specific and rigidly-defined system of categorising races, nor denying that any such system is indeed a "social construct", I'm just recognising the underlying objective reality that any such system is trying to categorise.

That's a fallacious analogy, both are not comparable. We comparing a false classification of human being based on its genetic and nation-state origins like Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malaysian, which is atrocious and fallacious at any level of reality. While gun, ugh should I explain this really?

It's not fallacious because you keep asking me about why I think something is necessary and good, when you think it is unnecessary and bad, when I never made any such claims other than it just simply "is". It could be about guns, bananas, the smell of oranges, domestic violence or God. Merely stating that I think any of these things exist doesn't mean it makes sense to counter with opinions about how good/bad or necessary/unnecessary they are.

 

[Peuri]

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.

I think we have a different conceptualisation of what a social construct is.

I explicitly said that the Moon exists without humans. But still "the Moon" is a social construct, because our knowledge about the Moon is always knowledge about our representation of "the Moon", and never the Moon as it exists, because our knowledge is always positional in the world. We can never reach the object of which our representation of "the Moon" is about as it exists in reality. It's not just about the word "the Moon", which is obviously trivially a social construct, but about our knowledge about the Moon that makes it a social construct. Social constructs are the way we relate to reality and can talk about the referents to which our words refer to, all the while our representations of the real is just a symbol of the actually existing reality.

 

[brennan]

Well I never said anything about "necessity" at all. It wouldn't be remotely necessary for me to devise a system of classifying pebbles according to size, weight, ellipticity, etc. But whether or not I actually did this would make no difference to the fact that these variations between pebbles objectively exist.

The grades of aggregates are already defined. Pebbles consist of those 'stones' with a particle size of 2-64mm.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Yes.

Previously it was a designation that decided things like who you could marry, where you could sit on the bus, and how easy is it for you be killed before anyone would give a damn.

Most of that is gone now, but people still cling onto it for some reason because they think lumping entirely different cultures together because they have the same skin color works. I mean people are different, but if you want a more accurate hobby, you should probably pick up Astrology instead.

 

[Gori the Grey]

my poor discipline keep gravitated me to this forum

I'm not sure I don't want that in my signature line!

 

[Truthy]

Then why is he, in your telling, interpreting "race is a social construct" as "there is no genetic difference between English people and Native Americans"??? If he were not claiming race is biologically/genetically 'real' then there would be no confusion on that point. Well, I would say that any genetic study that deals in racial categories is inevitably doing this. Like, what you describe here:
...
Is precisely "starting from the variants and shoehorning them into racial categories", specifically "people's racial self-identification".

I think we're talking past each other, but we have an opportunity to find common ground. What it boils down to is that identifications are geographically correlated and so is genetic variation. For that reason, and that reason alone, we find correlations between identifications and genetic variation. This is not intended to bolster old racial theories.

We could just not say things like white and black, and say Gambian, Northern European, and so on, with varying levels of granularity as we see fit. But given the granularity that exists in common parlance, people's identifications, the census, educational research, public policy, and so on and so forth, we don't have much choice but to point out the correlations as they exist in the existing widespread terminology.

Reich is coming from a background where people observe "African Americans" as having a higher risk of prostate cancer. They then say "African Americans" have this higher risk because of healthcare disparities. Reich writes a paper showing it's actually a genetic effect--"African Americans" as a population genetically have this difference. Then everyone becomes outraged, saying, "but, no, don't you understand, race is just a social construct. There's no underlying basis for which you can claim anything about it." And then Reich says "Yeah, look, what I'm saying is that geographic correlations lead to correlations in variants among certain populations, and... just look at the data." And then everyone's like "But it's an arbitrary categorization devised by white supremacy! You can't count the races! You need to work closely with social scientists to fix your fraught terminology and..."

Do you see what I'm saying?

Like, really: look at the images Samson posted upthread. There is simply no way to pull racial categories out of those maps without shoehorning at some point in the process. I honestly don't see how it is difficult to grasp the concept here: human genetic variation is clearly A Thing, but it doesn't map to racial categories because racial categories are socially constructed, never indicated "neutrally" by the genetic data. And that is the real objection to use of "race" in the context of genetics, not some kind of sacred taboo on the whole concept of human genetic variation.

Yeah, I did. One of the images supported what I've been saying this whole time. Another showed poor geographic correlations for tiny portion of the genome, namely one loci, which is also something I've been saying this whole time. But a few loci don't matter that much in what we're talking about (though in some cases they do, as in the case of HbS). Most traits are polygenic or omnigenic, involving dozens to millions of loci. Take a look at the studies I posted upthread.

Large numbers of loci vary in geographically correlated ways. In some cases, small numbers of loci vary in geographically correlated ways. That means we should expect traits to vary in geographically correlated ways. And that is, in fact, what high throughput sequencing and genetic clustering analysis algorithms are showing.

Again, what it boils down to is that our identifications are geographically correlated and so is genetic variation. I am not in the business of claiming there is a white race or a black race or whatever and neither is Reich. The first sentence of this paragraph is not doing anything nefarious. There is an important nuance here.

 

[Lexicus]

I am not in the business of claiming there is a white race or a black race or whatever and neither is Reich.

Then I suggest you both stop saying otherwise. Stop writing in the NYT editorial page that race has genetic significance. Stop writing in CFC:OT that when people say "race is a social construct" you hear "there are no genetic differences between English people and Native Americans." This isn't difficult.

 

[Truthy]

For one, that doesn't address the main points of my posts. Two, I think you're misunderstanding or I didn't make it clear. My point with that one sentence was that this whole discussion is fraught with confusion and everyone is talking past each other. What Reich is talking about are geographic correlations with identifications and genetic correlations with geography. I am not entirely sure what you're talking about because you've declined to make your position known when I've asked several times.

 

[Lexicus]

That's a lie. I stated my position clearly more than once. I chose not to "address the points" because it's just going in circles and I see no need to just repeat what I've already said over and over.

I will note that you demonstrate the same intellectual schizophrenia that many proponents of scientific racism demonstrate: the constant balancing act between disavowing racism, claiming to agree that race is a social construct, and then at the same time insisting (in a rather roundabout way, in your case: Reich states it much more clearly and concisely) that race is biologically meaningful. One manifestation of this schizophrenia in the case of Reich's op-ed was of course that he claims in the piece to be "deeply sympathetic" to the idea that genetic discoveries could be misused to promote racism, and yet his own article was immediately seized upon by the usual suspects (Charles Murray and company) as vindication for their views on "race and IQ".

 

[Hehehe]

Does race exist? This kind of discussion always devolves into word games, so let's start by defining race. Races are human populations that are distinguishable from each other. Under that definition, yes, obviously races exist. If human populations weren't distinguishable from each other, then "racism" would be absolutely impossible.

Overall, humans have more genetic variation than many species that do have recognized subspecies. We also know that these differences between human populations correspond to genetic differences. Genetic cluster analysis matches self-identified race with a high degree of accuracy.

In the end, I expect this thread to consist of nothing more than word games. Yes, all categories are man-made. Yes, categories are never perfect (philosophers have been grappling with that problem since antiquity). Categories do not need to be perfect, as long as they have predictive validity. They are valid as long as they say something about whatever it is that is being categorized. From a biological perspective, there is a strong case for using the term race, it's just that some people insist that we shouldn't classify people that way for political reasons (except when it suits them)

 

[Lexicus]

Races are human populations that are distinguishable from each other.

Wrong

Overall, humans have more genetic variation than many species that do have recognized subspecies.

Also wrong

From a biological perspective, there is a strong case for using the term race, it's just that some people insist that we shouldn't classify people that way for political reasons (except when it suits them)

Wrong, and projection to boot. It's racists who need to divide the world hierarchically and mangle the science to support that end.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I'm not a racist. I just happen to subscribe to an ideology that is fair and just happens to suggest some people are better than others. Oh sorry, I meant different. And when I mean different I mean some groups of people are more intelligent and others are lazy and more bestial, but this is just adaptation to environment and diet. You people should just stop being sensitive and politically correct. I mean sure, it's led to ideologies that's killed off millions of people, but it's got nothing on the flu and we have billions of people anyways.We all know cranks from the 19th century are far more trustworthy than modern scientists.

 

[Hehehe]

Wrong

Also wrong

Would you like to make some kind of an argument to support your case, or did you have a yuhhuh-nuhhuh type of exchange in mind?

Wrong, and projection to boot. It's racists who need to divide the world hierarchically and mangle the science to support that end.

Differences exist in reality. Racism is the act of noticing them, apparently.

 

[Naskra]

The discussion has been most elucidatory. Yesterday I was a racist, today I am a social constructist; Morgan Freeman is still insufferable.