Why do some people still believe in racial science?

[El_Machinae]

There are statistical differences between people which can be divided by race. If you're trying to create a hypertension medicine or a diabetes medicine, then you're going to want to determine if your target patient is black, white, or Indian. And the doctor is going to want to know the skin color too. Why? Well, the chance of each drug working is different based on the visible race.

So, to answer the OP, the last time I ran into a discussion of differences based on race, it was from medical professionals. They were also the last group to discuss differences based on gender. I hope that's allowed. Since, you know, women differ genetically from men too.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Have you ever encountered anyone who still seriously believes this?

Thankfully not in real life, but only as comments on the internet.

Is it their parents, or is public education in Finland and Germany (the locations of these two people) just that horrible?

Probably their parents. Racial science is a figment of the past traditions.

Why do you think some people cling to racial science?

For the same reason some people cling to the belief that the earth is flat.

 

[Verbose]

There are statistical differences between people which can be divided by race. If you're trying to create a hypertension medicine or a diabetes medicine, then you're going to want to determine if your target patient is black, white, or Indian. And the doctor is going to want to know the skin color too. Why? Well, the chance of each drug working is different based on the visible race.

So, to answer the OP, the last time I ran into a discussion of differences based on race, it was from medical professionals. They were also the last group to discuss differences based on gender. I hope that's allowed. Since, you know, women differ genetically from men too.

Yeah, and people infected with malaria also differ genetically from people who don't suffer from it.

There's a lot of interesting stuff going on on the level of molecular medicine, but "race" is still superflous as a concept for dealing with it - while it drags a bucketload of old crap into the equation by its presence.

The statistical differences might allow for "races" as abstractions on a collective level. Faced with an individual you just get sets of probabilities, which can be a very decent guide to stuff, but doesn't hold water for safe actual identification and classification of individuals, which is what "race" still implies.

Beats me why there seems to be an irrational favouring of this concept still.

 

[Enkidu Warrior]

Beats me why there seems to be an irrational favouring of this concept still.

People just crave simplicity and shallow artificial group identity.

People are still repeating the sickle cell thing even though just a few posts back it can be clearly seen that the geographic distribution of sickle cell vulnerability is quite different to the distribution of "black people". There are "white people" that have a greater vulnerability than some "black people". And yet people discount the explanation that this vulnerability is a local adaptation, just like skin colour is an overlapping but distinct local adaptation. We've chosen the most outward of these adaptions as the basis of so called "races", but in fact other adaptions are not consistent with this classification. It should come as no surprise that some "white people" have more in common genetically with similarly adapted "black people" than with more distant members of their so called "race".

If vulnerability to sickle cell anaemia was a racial trait, the peoples of the Congo, Nigeria, Greece, Turkey, Iraq and Eastern India would form a single race. That makes every bit as much sense as selecting another geographical trait, skin colour, and using that as the basis of racial identity. But then skin pigmentation is so much more fundamental to our identity because it can be seen with the naked eye. If that's the level of sophistication we base our identities on then we really haven't come that far after all.

This whole topic just drives me mad. We'll surely get in short order posts along the lines of "But look, you can see that those other people look different to us!", and then waves of insecure sheep concurring "Oh yes, my world view couldn't possibly be founded on preposterous colonialist bs".

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

The correlation between black African ancestry and sickle-cell anemia is useful in, say, the US, where the majority of people who have it are the descendants of black Africans. Since the geographical correlation disappears when you move, but the genetic one doesn't.

On a side note, I have only ever seen one depiction (on a TV show) of Cro-Magnons with dark skin. Yeah, the earliest Europeans were undoubtedly dark skinned.

 

[El_Machinae]

There's a lot of interesting stuff going on on the level of molecular medicine, but "race" is still superflous as a concept for dealing with it - while it drags a bucketload of old crap into the equation by its presence.

The statistical differences might allow for "races" as abstractions on a collective level. Faced with an individual you just get sets of probabilities, which can be a very decent guide to stuff, but doesn't hold water for safe actual identification and classification of individuals, which is what "race" still implies.

You get a similar set of probabilities when it comes to gender.
If you go to your doctor and he determines you have hypertension: he's going to treat you differently (medicine wise) if you're black vs. white, male vs. female.

Now, there's historically some outrageous racism when it comes to medical treatment. Once you correct for poverty, some racial subgroups get treated quite a bit worse by the medical establishment. That's got to end, of course.

But, medically, people differ based on certain attributes. And their responses to therapies will differ along certain attributes. Eventually, we'll be able to do medicine based on an individual's genes, for sure. But until then, we use proxies to best-guess what genes they carry.

 

[Verbose]

You get a similar set of probabilities when it comes to gender.
If you go to your doctor and he determines you have hypertension: he's going to treat you differently (medicine wise) if you're black vs. white, male vs. female.

Now, there's historically some outrageous racism when it comes to medical treatment. Once you correct for poverty, some racial subgroups get treated quite a bit worse by the medical establishment. That's got to end, of course.

But, medically, people differ based on certain attributes. And their responses to therapies will differ along certain attributes. Eventually, we'll be able to do medicine based on an individual's genes, for sure. But until then, we use proxies to best-guess what genes they carry.

Sure, we're in perfect agreement over this.

With the possible exception - or maybe not - that I think the concept of "race", and not any kind of neatly defined specific medico-scientific construct, but the whole gammut of bad blood it also conjures up, entirely superfluous. You don't need it to do anything of real value here, and the stuff it dredges up just plain ain't worth the extra bother.

 

[Truronian]

It's not racist to aknowledge differences between races (if they're legit), but it is racist to consider these differences as anything other than superficial.

I like how anybody trying to ascribe genuine differences between the races is immediately shot down.

Like how when studies are given that show Asian-Americans scoring higher on IQ tests than people of other races, that's incredibly racist and the work is disqualified.

1) These studies are often terrible. I remember back when cierdan was still around he had a fondness for the Race and IQ wikipedia page which has a wonderful graph based on these data which draws conclusions from a sample of:

1, 664 whites, 192 blacks, and 24 from other nonwhite groups

which is statistically ridiculous.


2) The correlation between race and IQ is much better explained by the correlation between race and wealth and wealth and IQ, because there is actually a mechanism (less money = less education).

 

[LordRahl]

Have you ever encountered anyone who still seriously believes this? Is it their parents, or is public education in Finland and Germany (the locations of these two people) just that horrible? Why do you think some people cling to racial science?

I'm sure sickle-cell disease, and differences in facial features were mentioned already. Thread FAIL.

 

[Yeekim]

People are still repeating the sickle cell thing even though just a few posts back it can be clearly seen that the geographic distribution of sickle cell vulnerability is quite different to the distribution of "black people". There are "white people" that have a greater vulnerability than some "black people". And yet people discount the explanation that this vulnerability is a local adaptation, just like skin colour is an overlapping but distinct local adaptation.

Of f*cking course it is "local adaptation". Just like about any other human characteristic or physical feature. While spreading out over the world, people of common descent have split into separate groups, which adapted to their environments. Different environments --> different people. Now you take these different people and divide them into "ethnic groups". If enough "ethnic groups" share a set characteristics similar enough, you can call these "a race".

We've chosen the most outward of these adaptions as the basis of so called "races", but in fact other adaptions are not consistent with this classification.

So? Just because we can divide creatures into birds and mammals, does that mean we can't divide them into herbivores and carnivores at the same time? Or into long-lived and short-lived? Or inio prolific and non-prolific? Or into social and solitary?

It should come as no surprise that some "white people" have more in common genetically with similarly adapted "black people" than with more distant members of their so called "race".

Absolutely no surprise, if we choose characteristic our division into "races" was never based on in the first place. The characteristics on which we base division into "races" are arguably arbitrary or irrelevant, of course. But these are simply the ones which are easy to note. That is what makes this classification useful.

That makes every bit as much sense as selecting another geographical trait, skin colour, and using that as the basis of racial identity. But then skin pigmentation is so much more fundamental to our identity because it can be seen with the naked eye. If that's the level of sophistication we base our identities on then we really haven't come that far after all.

Because something is blatantly obvious, it should be ignored? Base your identity in what you please, for God's sake.

Is your understanding of "race" somehow fundamentally different than mine? As I understand it, "race" is a common denominator for groups of people, who share a set of similar, quite easily observable characteristics. The characteristics are different because of what you call "local adaptations". It would make sense that while these groups have become uniform (and distinct to others) in some visual characteristics due to having adapted in a similar way in a similar environment, there would be similar uniformity/distinctness in some other characteristics, too, for exact same reasons. And likewise it makes sense that this is not nearly always the case.

 

[nihilistic]

Have you ever encountered anyone who still seriously believes this? Is it their parents, or is public education in Finland and Germany (the locations of these two people) just that horrible? Why do you think some people cling to racial science?

There is a world of differences between the Nazi-ish dogma of separately created races by some god, and what the science revealed. Races exist, but it is caused by geographical separation of populations for an amount of time long enough for statistically significant differences to develop but not long enough for 'crossbreeding' (not exactly crossbreeding because we are not really that different) to be impossible. No serious scientist (sociologists are not really scientists) would even attempt to dispute this anymore, and almost everyone else accepts that there are obvious statistical differences in almost every dimension of comparison. The point is that these differences are not significant enough for us to base decisions on except in a few cases, such as medical cases.

Most of these differences (like height) everyone accepts and no one really cares about, but some of these differences can be much harder to accept, such as intelligence. Intelligence clearly largely determined by genetics, since chimpanzees which share 94% of our DNA really aren't as smart as we are. Our minds, being a product of our brains, do not start out as a blank slate. As much as it pertains to races, there will clearly be differences between geographically separated populations, but since we didn't evolve far enough apart to not be able to have viable offsprings with each other, whatever differences that exist probably isn't too significant.

 

[MobBoss]

Given the amount of evidence to the contrary, I vote we change the title of this thread to "Why do some people still 'not' believe in racial science?"

 

[LesCanadiens]

Given the amount of evidence to the contrary, I vote we change the title of this thread to "Why do some people still 'not' believe in racial science?"

I don't think you understand what racial science is.

By the way, are you going to admit you were wrong in your "ZOMG UK ADOPTS SHARIA LAW LOL" thread?

 

[REDY]

That is to say, they endorse the notion that there are legitimate physiological/anatomical differences between people of different races.
Thats true.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I endorse the notion that there are legitimate physiological/anatomical differences between people of different races, because that's what it looks like to me.

 

[MobBoss]

I don't think you understand what racial science is.

I think I understand what you think it is, as premised in your OP just fine. I think others here have pointed out the flaws of your understanding of it, not mine.

By the way, are you going to admit you were wrong in your "ZOMG UK ADOPTS SHARIA LAW LOL" thread?

Nice attempt at misdirection. What, precisely, was I wrong about in a thread where I linked to a story in the UK and said 'discuss'?

 

[nihilistic]

In the last sixty seconds I've encountered two people (one on another forum, one in a chatroom) that endorse racial science. That is to say, they endorse the notion that there are legitimate physiological/anatomical differences between people of different races....

Whoa, before my first reply I didn't actually read this carefully enough and I actually thought you had a more sophisticated, and thus dodgier and more nebulous, claim. The item that you defined, "legitimate physiological/anatomical differences", obviously exists. It's really a rare day that I actually agree with MobBoss et al, but really, what idiot doesn't accept that?

If you seriously practice what you preach, next time you get sick enough to have to go to a doctor, you should be very angry that he/she takes your race into account when prescribing medicine. Tell your doctor that those physiological differences are 'illegitimate'. Good luck.

 

[Thorbal]

(sociologists are not really scientists)

Of course we are! I will pwn u with my crazy statistical skillz you scienze nOOb!

 

[LesCanadiens]

Whoa, before my first reply I didn't actually read this carefully enough and I actually thought you had a more sophisticated, and thus dodgier and more nebulous, claim. The item that you defined, "legitimate physiological/anatomical differences", obviously exists. It's really a rare day that I actually agree with MobBoss et al, but really, what idiot doesn't accept that?

If you seriously practice what you preach, next time you get sick enough to have to go to a doctor, you should be very angry that he/she takes your race into account when prescribing medicine. Tell your doctor that those physiological differences are 'illegitimate'. Good luck.

Because there aren't. Black people might be more prone to (ie.) sickle-cell anemia, but that has nothing to do with their "black-ness" and everything to do with the social conditions black people find themselves in. There is no anatomical differences between any races.

What idiot doesn't understand this? Oh, you.

I think I understand what you think it is, as premised in your OP just fine. I think others here have pointed out the flaws of your understanding of it, not mine.

Then allow me to take a page out of the book of V and let you know that you are simply wrong. You have (as with everything else in this world) no idea what you're talking about. There is simply no anatomical differences between peoples of difference races. Sure, Chinese people might be shorter on average than white people, but that's due to their diet and has nothing to do with their "Asiatic-ness." So get a clue.

Isn't your time better spent warning us of the non-horrors of Islamization of Western society?

 

[El_Machinae]

LesCanadiens, you're wrong. There are disctinct biochemical differences between people, and a huge number of those differences are genetically tied to race.

Sickle-cell anemia is due to a gene. This gene recently appeared in Africa