Why do some people still believe in racial science?

[Atticus]

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.

I thought that black people tend to have bigger lips and broader noses, is that anatomical difference? And that sickle-cell anemia is associated with resistance to malaria, which became useless to people living in colder areas, not to social conditioons.


Edit: since this is a delicate issue, I'd like to point out that I'm not taking sides here, just asking question.

 

[Arwon]

The problem isn't that people believe there's differences, the problem is that so many people believe these differences matter a thousand times more than they actually do.

 

[Mise]

"Race" and many characteristics correlating well with "race" (such as sickle-cell anaemia) tend to have common causes.

 

[nihilistic]

(sociologists are not really scientists)

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

OK. Let's break this into two parts:

1. I am not a scientist. I'm a mathematician. In fact, I'm quite sure what whatever statistics "skillz" you may have, I'm better at it.

2. I did not say "sociology is not a science" or "sociology couldn't be a science". I claim that in general, contemporary sociologists cannot be classified as scientists. Why? Because sociologists do not have the same commitment to truth and evidence science requires. Specifically, when developments in other sciences provide irrefutable evidence that some fundamental assumptions of your science needs to be altered, generally scientists will alter their theories to fit the evidence. That was how atomic theory in physics affected chemistry, how the molecular model in chemistry affected biology, and so on. Now lets do an experiment:

a. Tell us what you, as a sociologist, thinks of the the concept of "Tabula Rasa", which if I am correct, is one of the fundamental concepts of sociology.

b. Compare/contrast that with the findings of developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, and genetics.

 

[Bill3000]

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

It evolved multiple times.

Population is a far more superior concept to race. You can't freaking group all of Africa into a single "black" race.

It's not the fact that there are genetic differences between populations that I am bothered with as it is the layman's definitions of race.

2. I did not say "sociology is not a science" or "sociology couldn't be a science". I claim that in general, contemporary sociologists cannot be classified as scientists.

Sociology in general may not, but Sociology still has a positivist tradition.

 

[El_Machinae]

I tend to not think of sociology as a science, mainly because they cannot actually conduct experiments at the scales where such experiments would provide answers. They only have the authority to watch events and make post-hoc explanations which can later be tested (at some point)

 

[nihilistic]

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.

You are screwing around with the Nazi concept of 'created' races again aren't you? Did I mention anything about 'blackness' anywhere in my two replies to your post? I think I mentioned "statistically significant differences" between "geographically separated populations". If you are going to dispute that, go read a biology textbook. As for the relationship between the heritable traits "sickle-cell anemia" and "skin color", if you want to argue it, then actually yes, there is a significant statistical correlation between them, but it is only by chance that the populations that underwent selection pressures for "sickle-cell anemia" happen to have one skin color rather than the other one. Correlation doesn't mean causation.

And this other claim of yours, that "there is no anatomical differences between any races", is clearly false. For one, there are anatomical differences in skin color. Yes, skin color itself is an anatomical feature. Then there is height and metabolism, which no one seems to object to. Differences in immunology, drug resistance, and a whole ton of medically significant statistics that everyone accepts whenever one goes to see a doctor.

I really don't care if I'm labeled an idiot, but I must point out that if you really accepts what you propose, then you shouldn't trust your doctor.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

I've heard some where that lactose(spelling?) intolerance is more common in black people due to a genetic difference, which was created in Siberia/Northern Europe? The genetic difference made people able to drink cow milk so they could better survive in harsh conditions.

 

[Yeekim]

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...

So, if I eat lots and lots of rice, will I get epicanthic fold too? Or should I eat chicken and noodles to achieve this effect even quicker? :ROFL:

 

[Bill3000]

And for what it's worth, it doesn't have to mean that there is "no physical variation" for there to be no races. We typically define race as another term for subspecies - a subspecies in biology is defined to have subspecies if it has an X% level of genetic variation between populations. (And a subspecies will crossbreed.) If the population variation is lower than that, then there are no separate subspecies and variation must be studied at the population level. So then you'd have to use population instead when one wants to study genetic variation within the human species.

That value is 0.25-0.30. Humans have a value of 0.06-0.1. Not enough to create a taxonomic category of race, bt enough to take into account what population one is from, but that would mean that the classification of "races" that are far from orthodox, as you're dealing with continuous variation.

This would mean like abolishing terms such as an "Asian" or "Chinese" race and making classifications between the Northern and Southern Han, for example.

 

[holy king]

please, how dare you bring facts in here...

anyway, i'm still waiting for an explanation for the anglophone obsession with the word "race"? isnt it really about time to drop it?

 

[Shekwan]

Why do some people still believe in racial science?

Some people still believe that the Earth is flat, so is it really so hard for some to believe in racial science?

 

[warpus]

Maybe, but that isn't contingent on their race. Racial science is saying things like "all black men have huge penises to compensate for their tiny brains" and other such drivel. If you said "black people get sickle-cell anemia more often than white people because they're black," that's racial science.

What about "All blacks are black" ?

 

[Bill3000]

What about "All blacks are black" ?

For what value of black?

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

As long as you use the same value of "black" for both times you use the word "black", it doesn't matter.

 

[Thorbal]

OK. Let's break this into two parts:

1. I am not a scientist. I'm a mathematician. In fact, I'm quite sure what whatever statistics "skillz" you may have, I'm better at it.

2. I did not say "sociology is not a science" or "sociology couldn't be a science". I claim that in general, contemporary sociologists cannot be classified as scientists. Why? Because sociologists do not have the same commitment to truth and evidence science requires. Specifically, when developments in other sciences provide irrefutable evidence that some fundamental assumptions of your science needs to be altered, generally scientists will alter their theories to fit the evidence. That was how atomic theory in physics affected chemistry, how the molecular model in chemistry affected biology, and so on. Now lets do an experiment:

a. Tell us what you, as a sociologist, thinks of the the concept of "Tabula Rasa", which if I am correct, is one of the fundamental concepts of sociology.

b. Compare/contrast that with the findings of developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, and genetics.

1.) Agreed ! Was just trying to be funny.

2.) Sociology (note that I´m not a "pure" sociologist. It was one of my fields of study, not the only one) is not about finding "truth", perhaps more about tendencies. One of the cornerstones of (serious) sociology is that creating long-term "laws" is extremely difficult (but possible to a certain extent!) because human social environment has the tendency to change quickly. But we do employ the scientific method (most of it through experiment and statistical means) to create correlations, verify theories and so on. There were/are a lot of sociological theories which are constantly being adjusted/refuted due to new findings. e.g. Max Weber´s class theory or Pierre Bourdieu´s "theory of practice" to name a few. Sociology can correctly show and explain the evolution of social environments on a macro and micro level with a good degree of probability and sometimes even predict the most likely further evolution. As macrosociology tends to analyse groups numbering in the millions, a +70% accuracy is generally enough to predict behaviour of large samples ( but it´s not the point of it). The problem of sociology is that it has to constantly verify and adapt it´s variables when the environment changes significantly while the parameters stay fixed in other disciplines. But it can be done nonetheless.

a/b) Ok, I´ll try. None of my Profs ever used Tabula Rasa as a foundation for analysis and I would not do so as well. Tabula Rasa, while certainly being proposed by some sociologists, can not be considered mainstram (anymore!). "Classic" social research did refer to this term until the ~70s but it was shown to provide rather inaccurate results, especially when applied to cultural and symbolic phenomena. Current (european, I don´t really know how it´s in the US, for example) theories do try to implement the factors you mentioned by taking predispositional factors into account. Norbert Elias, in his book "The Civilizing Process", is a very good example for an interdisciplinary approach, which is sometimes called "sociogenetic" and there he tries to include psychological and biological predispositions into his procedural sociology. The problem which arises of course is the problem of quantification. How do we include biological/genetic predispositions into a good calculation of how likely this person will be jobless for a long time or live in a suburb? This, for example, is one of the fields where a lot of theory building and -verification is taking place currently. I can´t really answer your question, though, because it aimed at Tabula Rasa being a centerpiece of sociology, which it, IMHO, isn´t. But I honestly can´t think of any findings from the fields of psychology, biology or genetics that openly contradict sociological theory at the moment.

 

[Thorbal]

Sociology in general may not, but Sociology still has a positivist tradition.

I would disagree with you there. Think of Max Weber who his one of the founding fathers of "modern" sociology. He established a very distinctively antipositivist approach which is rather well-known (and still "in use").

 

[Trajan12]

What about "All blacks are black" ?

Some Blacks are brown.

Wrap your head around that.

 

[Bill3000]

I would disagree with you there. Think of Max Weber who his one of the founding fathers of "modern" sociology. He established a very distinctively antipositivist approach which is rather well-known (and still "in use").

I didn't say that it was the sole or the dominant tradition, just that the tradition still exists.

 

[Thorbal]

I didn't say that it was the sole or the dominant tradition, just that the tradition still exists.

Ah, ok, I seem to have misunderstood you there, sorry .