How many races in the world?

[ironduck]

There actually is a scientific purpose these days of dividing humans into ethnic groups, but it's not related to the purpose it used to be.

It so happens that different ethnicities in some instances have different tolerances to various substances and have variant tendencies towards certain diseases. Therefore it matter from a medical viewpoint, both in terms of diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. So for medical reasons there is ongoing research in these variations of humans.

Further, I find it fascinating how humans have adapted to different conditions. There are clear differences between masai and inuit, for instance. Their bodies have adapted to very different climate extremes. It's a triumph of evolution for mankind to be able to inhabit almost all of this planet.

 

[Quasar1011]

Their bodies have adapted to very different climate extremes. It's a triumph of evolution for mankind to be able to inhabit almost all of this planet.

No it isn't. It's a triumph of God's creation. After all, He told mankind to "fill the Earth and subdue it."

 

[ironduck]

No it isn't. It's a triumph of God's creation. After all, He told mankind to "fill the Earth and subdue it."

What god? Evolution is easy to demonstrate.

 

[wit>trope]

There is only one human race. For example, a Finn and an Aborgine have genetically very much in common.

By your reasoning we could say "There is only one human sex. For example a woman and a man have genetically very much in common." Not very good reasoning there mate. And now someone will say, "There's more difference genetically within the individuals of a race than there is genetically between two racial aggregates" .... well you could say the same thing about the sexes "There's more difference genetically within the individuals of a sex than there is genetically between the two sexual aggregates" ... that doesn't mean there isn't sex and likewise it doesn't mean that there isn't race.

But we are still one race.

You could believe we are one race while at the same time believing we are more than one race. There could be races within the one human race kinda like how there can be folders within one root folder (like in Windows).

 

[Rambuchan]

1 race - 1 species - 1 love - let's get together and feel alright.

Those that try to define and categorise the races will find the sand slipping through their hands again. There will be a myriad of exceptions, cross category cases and exclusions in any list you try and draw up. But I wish you luck!

 

[Marla_Singer]

By your reasoning we could say "There is only one human sex. For example a woman and a man have genetically very much in common." Not very good reasoning there mate. And now someone will say, "There's more difference genetically within the individuals of a race than there is genetically between two racial aggregates" .... well you could say the same thing about the sexes "There's more difference genetically within the individuals of a sex than there is genetically between the two sexual aggregates" ...

Actually, that's wrong. There's a whole chromosome being different between male and female.

There's no race. Let's face it. Only differences such as the colour of the eyes, the nature of the hair or the colour of the skin. You can group those differences if you want, but that will always be a construction of your mind, you will never prove anything scientifically speaking.

 

[ironduck]

There's no race. Let's face it. Only differences such as the colour of the eyes, the nature of the hair or the colour of the skin. You can group those differences if you want, but that will always be a construction of your mind, you will never prove anything scientifically speaking.

Uh. Well, you're right that the term 'race' is a bit of a misnomer. However, as I already mentioned there are obvious scientific reasons why it makes sense to study the physical differences of various ethnic (or 'racial') populations. In other words it is far from a 'construction of your mind'. I don't know how you can come up with that - is the difference between a central African pygmy and an inuit 'a construction of the mind'? The differences are obvious, both from a superficial viewpoint and from a genetic inheritances that causes different thresholds and response to environmental factors.

All that has nothing to do with racism in any way. The fear of racism should not impede beneficial medical research that involves study of different ethnicities.

And you can't 'prove' anything in science.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Uh. Well, you're right that the term 'race' is a bit of a misnomer. However, as I already mentioned there are obvious scientific reasons why it makes sense to study the physical differences of various ethnic (or 'racial') populations. In other words it is far from a 'construction of your mind'. I don't know how you can come up with that - is the difference between a central African pygmy and an inuit 'a construction of the mind'? The differences are obvious, both from a superficial viewpoint and from a genetic inheritances that causes different thresholds and response to environmental factors.

All that has nothing to do with racism in any way. The fear of racism should not impede beneficial medical research that involves study of different ethnicities.

And you can't 'prove' anything in science.

I don't say the differences are a construction of our mind, I simply say that the classification is a construction of our mind. That's a big distinction.

Of course the mankind is very diverse, and it's true we can group several physical characteristics which appear most in a population from a certain location. However, it's impossible to scientifically classify those groups. You can't divide the world between whites, blacks and asians because nearly half of the human population wouldn't fit in any of those three category. Those categories are purely construction of our mind which are made as an extrapolation of factual differences which are emphasized through cultural references, which means subjectively. And you cannot deny this.

Classifying the human race into blacks, whites and asians is purely subjective. Why wouldn't we singularize also red haired, indians, melanesians, aborigenes, American natives, inuits, arabs or scandinavians with their blond hair and their mustach ?

Do you see the point ? I'm simply saying that we are constructing a classification of the human race which is purely subjective and isn't based on any scientific facts. I'm not saying differences don't exist !

 

[Xen]

Classifying the human race into blacks, whites and asians is purely subjective. Why wouldn't we singularize also red haired, indians, melanesians, aborigenes, American natives, inuits, arabs or scandinavians with their blond hair and their mustach ?

we do, most people just dont know about it. except for the mustach thing. nobody creates racial division based on hairstyles

 

[ironduck]

Do you see the point ? I'm simply saying that we are constructing a classification of the human race which is purely subjective and isn't based on any scientific facts. I'm not saying differences don't exist !

No, I don't see your point at all, you completely contradict yourself. Genetic differences are scientific facts! Medical research into different 'racial' groups or whatever you want to call it makes a ton of scientific sense. It is used increasingly to prevent diseases, complications, and for proper treatment. Without the knowledge of these differences that exists between these groups that you call 'artificial' a lot of people would be worse off.

Just because you can find a ton of people who are a mixture of these genetic groupings doesn't mean the above results hold no scientific value. There is nothing subjective about what I'm talking about, try to read up on genetics yourself and you may realize this.

Again, this has nothing to do with racism, which seems to be what you are really protesting about. I don't care if people are purple or green or pink with polka dots. There are good medical reasons for classifying people into groups, and that's that.

Further, it also makes a ton of sense to look at the biological differences in humans to trace the migrations to the various parts of the world. In these cases you *need* biological groupings of people, you can call it races or ethnicities or whatever you want, but you need groupings, and they are definitely not subjective.

 

[Marla_Singer]

No, I don't see your point at all, you completely contradict yourself. Genetic differences are scientific facts! Medical research into different 'racial' groups or whatever you want to call it makes a ton of scientific sense. It is used increasingly to prevent diseases, complications, and for proper treatment. Without the knowledge of these differences that exists between these groups that you call 'artificial' a lot of people would be worse off.

Just because you can find a ton of people who are a mixture of these genetic groupings doesn't mean the above results hold no scientific value. There is nothing subjective about what I'm talking about, try to read up on genetics yourself and you may realize this.

Again, this has nothing to do with racism, which seems to be what you are really protesting about. I don't care if people are purple or green or pink with polka dots. There are good medical reasons for classifying people into groups, and that's that.

Further, it also makes a ton of sense to look at the biological differences in humans to trace the migrations to the various parts of the world. In these cases you *need* biological groupings of people, you can call it races or ethnicities or whatever you want, but you need groupings, and they are definitely not subjective.

If there are grouping, then what are the limits of your groups ?

Assuming there are genetical differences between humans is something obvious. However, I would be a lot more cautious before saying there are clear borders separating each groups as you're saying...

 

[Marla_Singer]

Oh, and by the way, stop with that racism crap. Racism has nothing to do with what I'm stating. I'm just saying that we are building limits between races which are purely subjective, because there's no clear limits. What's ideological in this ?

Please, think outside the box.

 

[ironduck]

However, I would be a lot more cautious before saying there are clear borders separating each groups as you're saying...

Try paying attention to general medical news, it's not information that is hidden in some esoteric field. Drugs that are shown to only work effectively on African blacks, allergies that are shown to be almost exclusive to Japanese people, there are evermore examples as more and more research is made in this field. It's simple genetics and the discovery thereof.

I'm not speaking classic race theory that was typically used to assert the white man over other humans that looked differently. I'm talking about obvious difference in genetics between groups that have been isolated long enough to form differences that need to be heeded in the medical field. Call it what you like, but it's real.

Please, think outside the box.

Nice, the latest rage in meaningless insults. I could say the same thing for you who seem to cling to the 'races are just subjective groupings'. Ignore scientific results all you want, but please don't insult me for actually being open to the study of genetics.

 

[Romanfe]

Anthropologically there are 5, Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid and Capoid. That said there is more genetic variation between any two people of the same race than any two people of a different race. We are more the same than different.

 

[Nobody]

So if your from France is it racist to make fun of someone from England

 

[wit>trope]

Actually, that's wrong. There's a whole chromosome being different between male and female.

I know that there's a chromosomal difference but it still remains true that there is more genetic variation within a sex than there is between the two sexes as aggregates. But clearly there is such a thing as sex. Thus, arguing that race does not exist based on the same reasoning -- i.e. the reasoning that there is more genetic variation within a race than there is between two races as aggregates is a critically flawed argument. If you want to argue that there's no such thing as race you have to use some other kind of reasoning.

There's no race. Let's face it. Only differences such as the colour of the eyes, the nature of the hair or the colour of the skin. You can group those differences if you want, but that will always be a construction of your mind, you will never prove anything scientifically speaking.

You can prove that people have different colour eyes and different hair and different colour skin and different facial and cranial shapes. Grouping people with like characteristics together is not a construction of one's mind -- it's discovering an aspect of reality that is already there. The similarities and dissimiliarities within and between the races exist whether you discover or recognize or perceive them or not. It's an objective part of reality.

 

[wit>trope]

That said there is more genetic variation between any two people of the same race than any two people of a different race.

No you're absolutely wrong about that and it's not surprising because a lot of people go around and repeat this or something like it without really knowing what they are saying and confuse innocent people like you If you take any two random people of the same race and any two random people of different races, it is more probable than not that the genetic variation between the first two people will be LESS than the genetic variation between the second two people. IOW, for example, if you pick two whites at random and then pick at random a white and a black person, the genetic variation between the first two whites is likely to be LESS than the genetic variation between the white and black person in the second group.

What IS true, is that using a complex mathematical formula if you derive the AGGREGATE genetic variation between two races as AGGREGATES that this genetic variation will be LESS than the genetic variation within the INDIVIDUALS of each race. So the breadth of genetic difference between two races as AGGREGATES will be less than the depth of genetic variation among individuals within a race.

Now guess what? The same is true of sex. The genetic "difference" between the two sexes as AGGREGATES is LESS than the depth of genetic variation within a sex.

In another thread someone said that geneticists don't support race. NOT TRUE! Let me quote from wikipedia (I'm quoting first from the section which contains arguments AGAINST race):

Some scientists have argued there exists more variation within racial groups than between, and therefore human races have no taxonomic value. This opinion can be traced back to a 1972 paper by Richard Lewontin. Some researchers report the variation between racial groups (measured by Sewall Wright's population structure statistic FST) accounts for as little as 5% of the total 80 000-100 000 genes found in each human cell.² This argument was widely popularized after Lewontin's original publication. However, most geneticists now recognize that low FST values do not invalidate the suggestion that there might be different human races because of technical limitations of FST and the observation that genetic variation between races is highly structured (Edwards, 2003; Risch, 2002). Thus, when one considers many points (i.e., genetic loci) of variation one can distinguish groups and allocate people into groups. The rules of biological classification do not set any 'smallest allowable difference' between taxa: any distinct difference is sufficient.

Note how this discussion involves advanced math and statistics. People who repeat this pseudo-myth about genetic variation generally have no clue what they are saying and haven't even heard of "FST values" Note also that now MOST GENETICISTS reject as false the argument that Marla and whoever else is making.

The LEADING GENETICISTS of today acknowledge that race exists and one of them was able to convince another leading scientist of this fact:

The geneticist A.W.F. Edwards argued in 2003 that race exists. He points out that most of the information that distinguishes populations is not simply the sum of variation of individual genes (the 6 percent), but is variation hidden in the correlation structure of the data. The argument is technical and difficult to follow for those with no statistical training, but is presented in detail in the paper by Edwards (the journal BioEssays volume 25 pages 798-801). It was this argument of Edwards that finally convinced Richard Dawkins, Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, UK (the author of The Selfish Gene) in his new 2004 book The Ancestor's Tale, that race in mankind is of taxonomic value, in other words, races do exist, despite the fact that the boundaries between races are blurred.

The only reason some scientists don't recognize this fact is that some of them are just stupid but most of them are blinded by their liberalism and/or PC-ism. The WIKIPEDIA article mentions PC-ism as a cause:

Some researchers believe the view that races do not exist is influenced by racial politics and political correctness, not science. They claim that race researchers are often attacked as racists, even if they espouse liberal sociopolitical views and claim to be against racism. Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele, in Race: The Reality of Human Differences, write that "racial differences in humans exceed the differences that separate subspecies or even species in such other primates as gorillas and chimpanzees" and that "race is a biologically real phenomenon with important consequences". A number of scientists have supported this currently controversial view, including Ralph L. Holloway, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University; Arthur Jensen; Joseph Carroll, University of Missouri-St. Louis; and Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., Prof. of Psychology, University of Minnesota.

 

[Plotinus]

Good points, cierdan. Although personally, any theory that has the backing of Richard Dawkins is inherently suspect as far as I'm concerned!

I'm not sure that the argument between Marla Singer and Ironduck is really anything more than about words. They both agree that there are differences between (say) a black person and a white person. That is obvious. Marla's point is that you can't create an abstraction on the basis of those differences and call it a "race", because to do so is arbitrary, and you might as well make an abstraction on the basis of different hair colour, height, etc. Surely the point is that you can make such an abstraction when it is useful to do so - as in the medical examples that Ironduck gives - but really you are only saying, when you do so, that people with certain physical characteristics are especially prone to certain diseases, or whatever it might be. The mistake is when you "reify" that abstraction and think of it as a thing in itself, or as a set of categories that are definitive and which everyone must belong to.

More importantly, why is this thread in the History forum anyway? Looks entirely Off Topic to me. I notice that the person who began it hasn't said anything since, too!

 

[Marla_Singer]

Good points, cierdan. Although personally, any theory that has the backing of Richard Dawkins is inherently suspect as far as I'm concerned!

I'm not sure that the argument between Marla Singer and Ironduck is really anything more than about words. They both agree that there are differences between (say) a black person and a white person. That is obvious. Marla's point is that you can't create an abstraction on the basis of those differences and call it a "race", because to do so is arbitrary, and you might as well make an abstraction on the basis of different hair colour, height, etc. Surely the point is that you can make such an abstraction when it is useful to do so - as in the medical examples that Ironduck gives - but really you are only saying, when you do so, that people with certain physical characteristics are especially prone to certain diseases, or whatever it might be. The mistake is when you "reify" that abstraction and think of it as a thing in itself, or as a set of categories that are definitive and which everyone must belong to.

I agree with this.

More importantly, why is this thread in the History forum anyway? Looks entirely Off Topic to me. I notice that the person who began it hasn't said anything since, too!

I also agree with this.

 

[Xen]

Get over yourselves! Race dose in fact exist, but its (primarilly) based on bone structure

In particuler, the classifacation of skull structure, and facial features; colour dosent even enter the picture, its possible to be a very dark (what many would call "black") and still be, technically, a caucasian- this site, posted previouslly (though I've known of it for a while) offer marvelous examples. It also goes out of its way to crush the racist arguments forwarded by both the Nazis, and white suprmeists, and black- afrocentric revisionists.

http://racialreality.shorturl.com/

and in particuler, for those digussing what actually defines what "creates race" you shoudl look at the section called "biological race"