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Does race actually exist?[W:115]

Does race actually exist?

  • Yes, humans are divided into different races (white, black, mixed, etc.)

    Votes: 21 46.7%

  • No, we are all the same race

    Votes: 20 44.4%

  • I don't know/other

    Votes: 4 8.9%
  • Total voters
    45
Yes, anyone with eyes can see race exists.
 
OscarB63 said:
consider the presence of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans. every group of modern humans with the exception of sub-saharan Africans has anywhere from 2-4% neanderthal DNA in their genetic make-up. Stuides have shown that this neanderthal DNA contributes to a wide variety of characteristics ranging from hair and skin color to resistance to certain diseases.

question: is that 2-4% difference in DNA enough to consider those who have it and those who do not to be separate "races"?
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Species drift occurs when two or more sub-species inhabit the same geography for a significant amount of time. We're not even sure we're a different race than neanderthal. Some classify them as homo sapiens neanderthalensis, some Homo neanderthalensis. If the later is accurate we are.

However, siccessful mating and resulting fertility of offspring is the key. I think that argues for homo sapiens neanderthalensis. As to that last, no, I don't believe so in this case. Of course it's highly dependent upon which 2-4% is different. Our gene and chromosome count are identical.

I go with the current minority thought that Africanus were the first sapiens and produced several sub-species (idaltu, floresiensis, sapiens, neanderthalensis etc). All those could interbreed successfully. I wouldn't be surprise if they found some percentage of contribution from those other sub-species as well.
 
Next time someone will question if taste and smell exists. :roll:
 
Race biologically (for humans) is a fiction. It means something different when we apply the term to humans as opposed to when applied to every other species. For humans it relies largely on "perceived differences" alone.
 
clownboy said:
Race biologically (for humans) is a fiction. It means something different when we apply the term to humans as opposed to when applied to every other species. For humans it relies largely on "perceived differences" alone.
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I agree.
 
It's a term we use to describe a difference in color, features and orgins. Does it mean there's a significant difference between races in thought and physical abilities, no. Is it a good basis for discrimination, absolutely not.
 
OscarB63 said:
but if DNA tests were done, they'd show neanderthal DNA whereas a sub-saharan african's would not...

that was my question. is the presence or absence of neanderthal DNA enough of a difference to consider those with it a separate "race" than those without?

I'm not, in any way, suggesting that one is superior to the other. merely that they are different. are they different enough to be considered distinct races?
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Only if throughout human history, neither side had ever cross-mated. Most people, except in the most isolated parts of the world, have. In the U.S., for instance, the chances that a black person has no white DNA or Hispanic DNA or Asian DNA in their system is small. The same is true for all other groups. Every group has interbred with every other group, there's no such thing as a pure strain anymore.
 
WCH said:
Race and gender only matter to Leftists. ;)
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If that were true then you'd rarely have culture wars, as the Right would follow the leader.
 
Rainman05 said:
So races are real but that doesn't make people less human. We're all human -> homo sapiens. But ignoring racial differences is not the key to "ending racism", it's the key to ignorance... you need to understand and accept racial differences as being there. For crying out loud, doctors accept them, that's why you have race related medications for certain diseases... so yeah.
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Race

'2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.'

Race - definition of Race by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.


Race is a term...not a fact.

And doctors that use these terms are just as ignorant/lazy as anyone else that does.

Race - medically - refers to a group of people with certain historical/geographic similarities. It has NOTHING to do with 'race'...the word is just a lazy convenience.
If the doctors were being truly accurate; instead of saying 'common to blacks', they would say 'common to individuals whose ancestors originated from such-and-such part of the African continent'.


The term 'race' is usually just a made up term for lazy and/or ignorant and/or bigoted people to lump groups together on the basis of superficial, physical characteristics.
 
DA60 said:
Race

'2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.'

Race - definition of Race by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.


Race is a term...not a fact.

And doctors that use these terms are just as ignorant/lazy as anyone else that does.

Race - medically - refers to a group of people with certain historical/geographic similarities. It has NOTHING to do with 'race'...the word is just a lazy convenience.
If the doctors were being truly accurate; instead of saying 'common to blacks', they would say 'common to individuals whose ancestors originated from such-and-such part of the African continent'.


The term 'race' is usually just a made up term for lazy and/or ignorant and/or bigoted people to lump groups together on the basis of superficial, physical characteristics.
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I see you cropped my comment without making a reference to that and you never addressed the rest of things I said there. But let's ignore that for now, i'll get back to that at the end of the comment.

Race
1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
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This is #1. This means exactly what we know as race. African, middle eastern, east asian, SE asian (hindu) and European as major racial groups. But you also have a lot others and you can also classify them in other ways. You can say: caucasian, negroid and mongoloid if you want... though I wouldn't.

The German people are an ethnicity. Here is a map of ethnicities in Europe.
Languages_of_Europe_no_legend.png


A group of individuals that share some common traits form an ethnicity. A few ethnicities form an ethnic group (germanic -> reddish/pink, Latin -> blue, slavic -> Light blue, greek-> purple ) and a group of ethnic groups can form a race, this case, European.

Let's look at Indian.
This is a map of ethnic groups in India.
PQAAAH1-KK4xEoJ-6lCjZsdW0FiT3QY5niGNSknQRczizjN0a5jiNaZmCyfsze2C7-MbFwwNsaOYikZ1NEAKUJwMcNcAm1T1UK7THl-GXW1uK9R6cqgHme7G-68A.jpg


You got your Dravidians, your indo-aryans, your Kolarisn, your sino-tibetans, your pockets of Khasi and others. These are all ethnic groups, each having multiple ethnicities. Together, they all form the Hindi people, which is a race. Or SE Asian if you want to refer to them that way.

And the examples can continue.

Now for the remaining part of my comment. This is what I said in full:
We're all the same species, but there are different races.

You get species-> subspecies (races) -> ethnicities.

Homo Sapiens -> european / african / east asian / etc -> briton, norman, basque / kenyan, ethiopian / han chinesse, cantonesse /etc.

The genetic differences between each racial group is anywhere between 1-> 1.5% according to whatever studies you follow.

This is also valid in pre-sapien ancestry. For instance, it is just people whose ancestors were in Europe, the mediterraanian basin and west and central middle east that have homo neanderthalis genes... africans and east asians don't have them, they have other ancestry... because neanderthals didn't live elsewhere. So neanderthals aren't the ancestor of homo sapiens, just one of the ancestors of europeans and semitic people.

So races are real but that doesn't make people less human. We're all human -> homo sapiens. But ignoring racial differences is not the key to "ending racism", it's the key to ignorance... you need to understand and accept racial differences as being there. For crying out loud, doctors accept them, that's why you have race related medications for certain diseases... so yeah.

Really, i wouldn't worry to much about it. Race is not a determining factor in the personality or characteristic of someone unless he makes it so and those people are racists.

So if being of a particular race is something that defines you in say, your top 5... then you are a very sad person because you don't have a lot of things going for you and you should pick up a hobby or two or get out more.
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If you're gonna comment, comment on all of it or explain why you only chose to comment a part of it.
 
Voltaire X said:
This is about RACE, not ethnicity. There is a difference between saying "I am black" and "I am a Kenyan", for instance. I do not believe that race exists. It is a made up social construct that has been historically used to divide people into groups based on what their ethnic origins appear to be. We are all the same species; there are just tendencies in appearance based on the area where one's ancestors lived (which is obviously due to adaptations to the environment).

I am not asking if the social phenomena of "race" exists, rather I am asking if this social phenomena has any basis in reality.
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Click to expand...




The only race on this planet is the human race.

All human beings on this planet are homo sapiens sapiens.

Have a nice day.
 
If you're gonna comment, comment on all of it or explain why you only chose to comment a part of it.
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I will comment on ANY part of a post I feel like - you don't like that...too bad.

Your first part was irrelevant to me...so I disregarded it.

Same with most of your above post.


As for the first definition of race:

'1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.'
That is what the word means to many...that does not make it accurate. There is a definition for Martians...that does not make it accurate or mean that there are actually Martians.


Let me make this clear to you...I don't much care what you think about this. I commented about your post for others to see.

Race is as I said...a lazy, ignorant way of lumping people together into arbitrary groups - usually by physical characteristics.
To call 'blacks' a 'race' is pathetically simplistic. Same with 'whites'. Same with 'east Asians' (btw - calling 'orientals', Asians is moronic as it gets. Russians, Iraqi's, Indians, and Syrians are all from Asia...but nobody calls them 'Asian'.)

Just like simplistic pigs call escorts, whores. Simplistic people look at a person with substantial melanin and call them 'blacks'.
Technically, the are both right (though most 'blacks' are usually brown in color...not black).
They are both also ignorant/lazy on the subject...reducing human beings to the most basic, crude denominators.

And if I actually have to explain to you about the negative repercussions from people being lumped into 'races'...then you truly are ignorant on this subject.

So continue the stereotype and refer to people by their most common and simplistic denominator...but leave me out of it....I have more respect for humans then that.

You disagree...I don't much care.


I am done on this subject with you for now...good day.
 
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DA60 said:
I will comment on ANY part of a post I feel like - you don't like that...too bad.

Your first part was irrelevant to me...so I disregarded it.

Same with most of your above post.


As for the first definition of race:

'1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.'
That is what the word means to many...that does not make it accurate. There is a definition for Martians...that does not make it accurate or mean that there are actually Martians.


Let me make this clear to you...I don't much care what you think about this. I commented about your post for others to see.

Race is as I said...a lazy, ignorant way of lumping people together into arbitrary groups - usually by physical characteristics.
To call 'blacks' a 'race' is pathetically simplistic. Same with 'whites'. Same with 'east Asians' (btw - calling 'orientals', Asians is moronic as it gets. Russians, Iraqi's, Indians, and Syrians are all from Asia...but nobody calls them 'Asian'.)

Just like simplistic pigs call escorts, whores. Simplistic people look at a person with substantial melanin and call them 'blacks'.
Technically, the are both right (though most 'blacks' are usually brown in color...not black).
They are both also ignorant/lazy on the subject...reducing human beings to the most basic, crude denominators.

And if I actually have to explain to you about the negative repercussions from people being lumped into 'races'...then you truly are ignorant on this subject.

So continue the stereotype and refer to people by their most common and simplistic denominator...but leave me out of it....I have more respect for humans then that.

You disagree...I don't much care.


I am done on this subject with you for now...good day.
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You also didn't include me in your comment in the reply, so I got no notification. Fortunately it's a slow day so I log in here every hour to see what's up. That's like... dirty. Whenever I chop down someones' comment I give an explanation as to why I did it. Usually something like "I agree with everything else but this" or "I chopped your wall of text because it was too big". But that's just me trying to be civil.

You can say that human beings are a race but we're a species. Like canines... canines come in different breeds (subspecies or races).

Race is not a lazy way to do anything. It's just a way to group people because grouping people is what people do.
We group people by profession, by age, by gender, by sex, by whatever. We assign these things because it's easy to quantify them and use them in our day to day lives. There is nothing wrong with grouping people by race. There's nothing dirty in it.

One of the things I work with is databases. I put information into databases and in order for someone to find them easier, I assign useful "tags" to them as it were. It's like when you try and file a group of pictures.
Let me make it simpler for you and everyone to understand.
Say you have pictures on your computer. All the pictures are pictures (all humans are humans) but some pictures are pictures of cats... others are pictures of dogs, some are pictures of wildlife and some are pictures of nature like mountains and rivers... some are pictures of events you've been to and some are pictures of your family and friends at birthdays or weddings.

What is the truly lazy way to deal with all these pictures? The lazy way is to put them all in a single folder named "pictures". That way when you want to find a picture that you're looking for, you'll have a hard time doing it.
No.
What you do is you make a folder for cat pictures, a folder for dog pictures, a folder for all different kinds of pictures and you meticulously organize them. This is the correct way to do it. This is the smart way to do it. The lazy way is to just say they are all pictures and disconsider what kind of pictures they are.

You can choose what kinds of pictures you want in what folder. You can say you want to put dogs and cats together as a "pet folder" and you can group friends and family with event photos. It's your decision on how you group them. But the more meticulous and correct you group them, the easier it is to have access to them. And this is the smart way to do it.
Yours is the lazy and ignorant way.

I could branch out that example in multiple ways but I think you got the point.
EDIT: I'm also not talking about stereotypes, at all... you seem to go full automaton with the replies. Read this and my prev comment carefully. You're the only one who is attacking X set of stereotypes to a race. I'm not even going there.
 
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Voltaire X said:
This is about RACE, not ethnicity. There is a difference between saying "I am black" and "I am a Kenyan", for instance. I do not believe that race exists. It is a made up social construct that has been historically used to divide people into groups based on what their ethnic origins appear to be. We are all the same species; there are just tendencies in appearance based on the area where one's ancestors lived (which is obviously due to adaptations to the environment).

I am not asking if the social phenomena of "race" exists, rather I am asking if this social phenomena has any basis in reality.
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I had a giant debate with someone from my congressman's office about this issue around 2003. I was impressed that she called me at work to discuss my concerns.

My question was different. What criteria must a person meet in order to call themselves black? Her answer: I could tell by looking at you what your race is. This answer seemed typical but it really can't be defined on paper. I did receive an interesting answer from one of my professors years later. Your race is the same as your mother's race.

Drum roll...................................................

Years later a black man was elected president. Use the above logic. His mother was white. Obama is the 44th white president.

Of course we can use the, "I can tell by looking at you." logic. That would make him the first black president but again this can't be defined on paper.
 
Rainman05 said:
You also didn't include me in your comment in the reply, so I got no notification. Fortunately it's a slow day so I log in here every hour to see what's up. That's like... dirty. Whenever I chop down someones' comment I give an explanation as to why I did it. Usually something like "I agree with everything else but this" or "I chopped your wall of text because it was too big". But that's just me trying to be civil.

You can say that human beings are a race but we're a species. Like canines... canines come in different breeds (subspecies or races).

Race is not a lazy way to do anything. It's just a way to group people because grouping people is what people do.
We group people by profession, by age, by gender, by sex, by whatever. We assign these things because it's easy to quantify them and use them in our day to day lives. There is nothing wrong with grouping people by race. There's nothing dirty in it.

One of the things I work with is databases. I put information into databases and in order for someone to find them easier, I assign useful "tags" to them as it were. It's like when you try and file a group of pictures.
Let me make it simpler for you and everyone to understand.
Say you have pictures on your computer. All the pictures are pictures (all humans are humans) but some pictures are pictures of cats... others are pictures of dogs, some are pictures of wildlife and some are pictures of nature like mountains and rivers... some are pictures of events you've been to and some are pictures of your family and friends at birthdays or weddings.

What is the truly lazy way to deal with all these pictures? The lazy way is to put them all in a single folder named "pictures". That way when you want to find a picture that you're looking for, you'll have a hard time doing it.
No.
What you do is you make a folder for cat pictures, a folder for dog pictures, a folder for all different kinds of pictures and you meticulously organize them. This is the correct way to do it. This is the smart way to do it. The lazy way is to just say they are all pictures and disconsider what kind of pictures they are.

You can choose what kinds of pictures you want in what folder. You can say you want to put dogs and cats together as a "pet folder" and you can group friends and family with event photos. It's your decision on how you group them. But the more meticulous and correct you group them, the easier it is to have access to them. And this is the smart way to do it.
Yours is the lazy and ignorant way.

I could branch out that example in multiple ways but I think you got the point.
EDIT: I'm also not talking about stereotypes, at all... you seem to go full automaton with the replies. Read this and my prev comment carefully. You're the only one who is attacking X set of stereotypes to a race. I'm not even going there.
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It is amusing that you like to categorize photos. I shoot down your entire simplistic hypothesis with one simple word;
Lineage.
 
Buck Ewer said:
It is amusing that you like to categorize photos. I shoot down your entire simplistic hypothesis with one simple word;
Lineage.
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I categorize everything on my computer. Makes for a tidy workplace. You know that saying? Cleanliness is next to Godliness? Well Computer Cleanliness IS godliness :p
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
Also, what about lineage? Can you like... user your words?
 
Rainman05 said:
I categorize everything on my computer. Makes for a tidy workplace. You know that saying? Cleanliness is next to Godliness? Well Computer Cleanliness IS godliness :p
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
Also, what about lineage? Can you like... user your words?
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Photos are simple to categorize. Each is from a different source.
People come from other people. It is neither a simple nor clean study.
 
Buck Ewer said:
Photos are simple to categorize. Each is from a different source.
People come from other people. It is neither a simple nor clean study.
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Ok. But that was a simplified model. I'm not going to write a PHD paper on the whole thing.

We discuss the principle. And the principle that DA60 and I were debating is whether it's lazy and wrong to put pictures into separate folders based on what they represent or to put all pictures into just 1 folder.

Also, read what I wrote in my original comment. This isn't about individuals, this covers individuals and you should interract in day to day life with individuals:
Really, i wouldn't worry to much about it. Race is not a determining factor in the personality or characteristic of someone unless he makes it so and those people are racists.

So if being of a particular race is something that defines you in say, your top 5... then you are a very sad person because you don't have a lot of things going for you and you should pick up a hobby or two or get out more.
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This is about how we look at the world, how we look at populations and people and us, as a species... and we are in multiple races. We're all pictures but we go in separate picture folders so it becomes easy to understand.
 
Voltaire X said:
This is about RACE, not ethnicity. There is a difference between saying "I am black" and "I am a Kenyan", for instance. I do not believe that race exists. It is a made up social construct that has been historically used to divide people into groups based on what their ethnic origins appear to be. We are all the same species; there are just tendencies in appearance based on the area where one's ancestors lived (which is obviously due to adaptations to the environment).

I am not asking if the social phenomena of "race" exists, rather I am asking if this social phenomena has any basis in reality.
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Only the reality of politics.
 
Race, like Gender is a social construct but that doesn't make it any less real. But deeper than the construct there are distinct and important differences that emerge in different racial groups and sub-groups. We tend to focus on morphology though when we deal with race. That morphology however does change the way that members of the same group and other groups interact with a person.

Racism exists in that there are those who assume certain attitudes, behaviors, and expectations based solely on perceived racial identification. It is clear that there is vast diversity within every racial group.

Race clearly plays a role in american politics. Both at an overt and covert level. One only look at how liberals and conservatives treat a black conservative to see that.
BTW it is not only liberals who see race in politics, that is an asinine statement.

The reality is that we have created racial categories, based first on morphology and later on cultural differences that have meaning in some respects but on the whole will become less and less useful in a smaller and smaller world. But the idea that race doesn't exist if often a veiled attempt to force a white European standard on everyone that makes invisible entire cultures.
 
Recognizing races doesn't make one a racist. :)
 
If there is no such thing as "race", then there is no such thing as "racism"........
 
OscarB63 said:
If there is no such thing as "race", then there is no such thing as "racism"........
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Actually it 's the other way round - there are races but racism is arbitrary. Like colours - there are red, yellow, green, etc but if you start discriminating against certain colours, that's "racism". Although you could have a favourite colour, I guess. :cool:
 
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