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Is Race Socially Constructed or Genetic? Or Both?

Jack Hays

Jack Hays

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In recent years it has been increasingly common to hear that race is socially constructed. Genetic research now calls that into question. The matter is certainly not settled, but the question is on the table. Is race genetic? Here's a grown-up discussion. The reviewer is unsympathetic to the book, but it's a fair treatment. The debate is on.:peace

Stretch Genes by H. Allen Orr | The New York Review of Books

www.nybooks.com/.../stretch-genes/The New York Review of Books

"Science and science journalism are different things. Though each is valuable, they require at least partly different skills. Science demands unrelenting skepticism about purported facts and theories, and science journalism demands an ability to make the complex clear. Despite my admiration for his work as a journalist, I’m afraid that Nicholas Wade’s latest book reminds us of the risks inherent in blurring the distinction between these endeavors. A Troublesome Inheritance goes beyond reporting scientific facts or accepted theories and finds Wade championing bold ideas that fall outside any scientific consensus.

Wade, now a freelance writer and reporter, is best known for his work as a journalist at The New York Times. He has also written several popular books on biology. The most recent—Before the Dawn (2006) and The Faith Instinct (2009)—focused on evolution in human beings, including the evolution of religion. In A Troublesome Inheritance, Wade maintains this focus on human evolution, though he turns to a far more controversial topic, human races. His goal, he says, is “to demystify the genetic basis of race and to ask what recent human evolution reveals about history and the nature of human societies.” He concludes not only that human races are real but that they probably differ genetically in surprising ways. . . ."
 
It's socially constructed. Genes are always a melting pot. Where do you draw the line on determining who is what race? The lines that are drawn are social. Genetically we are all different and some people are more closely related and similar than others... there are environmental/cultural/climate/geological/etc reasons for this.
 
celticwar17 said:
It's socially constructed. Genes are always a melting pot. Where do you draw the line on determining who is what race? The lines that are drawn are social. Genetically we are all different and some people are more closely related and similar than others... there are environmental/cultural/climate/geological/etc reasons for this.
Click to expand...

Did you read the OP article?
 
I would say that racial differences involves genetic differences (such as genetic diseases like sickle cell, tay sachs, etc.), but it also involves social constructs (black people are scary, violent, poor, lazy, etc. white people are stiff, wealthier on average, etc.). There is a phrase in Brazil that "money whitens." There are other examples where it's very obvious that the concept of race is a social construct, but that is the only one I can think of at this time.

Furthermore, you have social constructs such as being racially privileged because of one's race. Typically in American culture, the actions of one white person does not reflect on all white people. White people and more specifically white men are never expected to apologize for a social grievance white males may typically commit like mass shootings or establishing racially motivated hate groups. However, we often see minority racial and ethnic groups face pressure such as after a terrorist attack Arab people are sought out to apologize, change our minds, and remind us they aren't all the same. It also happens with the Obama family and other black leaders with the some social expectation that they specifically need tell black teen girls to stop getting pregnant out of wedlock, black teen boys need to stop xyz, and overall shake their finger at the larger majority of black people in society.
 
SheWolf said:
I would say that racial differences involves genetic differences (such as genetic diseases like sickle cell, tay sachs, etc.)
Click to expand...
The incidences of these diseases are not related to race, but to distinct geographical-cultural populations. They don't follow racial lines. E.G., sickle cell is endemic to West Central Africans, but also populations surrounding the Persian gulf and East India.

Or said another way: People who live in the same geographical regions for generations may have a similar allele distribution, but there are no alleles that can be matched up to one race and only one race.
 
There's research that points to the genetic basis for race (mostly in pharmacology and drug interactions), but it's not politically correct to talk about so no one does. It doesn't make much difference to me though. I strive to be a loving human being which means I want to get along with everyone. If aliens visited earth and weren't violent, I would want to get along with them too, even if we are genetically dissimilar.

I find that these conversations only serve racists, because if there's a genetic basis then they feel more justified to feel the way they do. My points, however, are merely observations.
 
brothern said:
The incidences of these diseases are not related to race, but to distinct geographical-cultural populations. They don't follow racial lines. E.G., sickle cell is endemic to West Central Africans, but also populations surrounding the Persian gulf and East India.
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Because it's not exclusive to One race doesn't mean it's not racial or statistically infinitely higher probability in it.
Geography, not coincidentally, determined Race too.
ie, Native Northern Europeans would be unlikely to get Sickle Cell.

"said another way": Dark skin is an adaption to strong sun and is shared by several Different Races.
Sub-saharan Africans share this Racial trait with others, such as Australian Aboriginals, even though, in genetic distance they are farther apart, than the former and Europeans. (!)
IOW, speaking of color (or disease susceptibility) alone doesn't determine race. But the same environment that produces that Race may produce that trait elsewhere for the same reason. (malarial climate)


Brothern said:
Or said another way: People who live in the same geographical regions for generations may have a similar allele distribution, but there are no alleles that can be matched up to one race and only one race.
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The Definition Of Race is morphological difference caused by Genetic difference. Almost always geographic.
Humans easily qualify for race/sub-specie designation based on those used in other Species.
The reason we don't have them is political not scientific/taxonomic.

So many links....
 
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Northern Light said:
There's research that points to the genetic basis for race (mostly in pharmacology and drug interactions), but it's not politically correct to talk about so no one does. It doesn't make much difference to me though. I strive to be a loving human being which means I want to get along with everyone. If aliens visited earth and weren't violent, I would want to get along with them too, even if we are genetically dissimilar.

I find that these conversations only serve racists, because if there's a genetic basis then they feel more justified to feel the way they do. My points, however, are merely observations.
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It's WAY more than pharmacological.
Race can be, and IS often determined by skeletal remains alone.
No 'color' need be involved.

In fact, send your blood and app $125 into NatGeo's Genographic Project (google), and they'll tell you what percent of each "indigenous people"/RACE (11) you are.
They of course use the more PC term.

If you read the OP link, you will see the Races/sub-races are easily clustered using the same means. Just DNA.
 
Arguably the country's Foremost Expert on Evolution and Speciation.

Credentials
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Coyne said:
Jerry Allen Coyne (born December 30, 1949[2]) is an American professor of biology, known for his commentary on the intelligent design debate. A prolific scientist, he has published dozens of papers, elucidating on the theory of evolution. He is currently a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ecology and Evolution. His concentration is speciation and ecological and evolutionary genetics, particularly as they involve the fruit fly, Drosophila.[3]
He is the author of the standard text 'Speciation' and the bestselling science popularization Why Evolution Is True and maintains a website by the same name.

Coyne graduated with a B.S. in biology from the College of William & Mary in 1971. He started graduate work at Rockefeller University under Theodosius Dobzhansky before logistical complications (draft) forced a hiatus.
He then earned a Ph.D. in biology at Harvard University, studying under Richard Lewontin, and went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Davis with Timothy Prout.

He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and received the "Emperor Has No Clothes" award from the Freedom from Religion Foundation in 2011.

Coyne has served as President (2011) and Vice President (1996) of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and as Associate Editor of Evolution (1985–1988; 1994–2000) and The American Naturalist (1990–1993). He currently teaches evolutionary biology, speciation, genetic analysis, social issues and scientific knowledge, and scientific speaking and writing.

His work is widely published in scientific journals as well as in such mainstream venues as 'The New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement', and The New Republic. His research interests include population and evolutionary genetics, speciation, ecological and quantitative genetics, chromosome evolution, and sperm competition.
Coyne is a critic of creationism[4] including theistic evolution[5][6] and intelligent design, which he calls "the latest pseudoscientific incarnation of religious creationism, cleverly crafted by a new group of enthusiasts to circumvent recent legal restrictions."[7]

The Ecuadoran frog Atelopus coynei is named after Coyne. He collected the holotype in a swamp on a frogging trip to western Ecuador as a student in the late 1970s.[8][...]
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Article - His website
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/are-there-human-races/
Jerry Coyne
Are there human Races?

One of the touchiest subjects in human evolutionary biology —or human biology in general — is the question of whether there are human races. Back in the bad old days, it was taken for granted that the answer was not only “yes,” but that there was a ranking of races (invariably done by white biologists), with Caucasians on top, Asians a bit lower, and blacks invariably on the bottom. The sad history of biologically based racism has been documented in many places, including Steve Gould’s book The Mismeasure of Man (yes, I know it’s flawed).

But from that sordid scientific past has come a backlash: the subject of human races, or even the idea that they exist, has become Taboo. And this Despite the Palpable morphological Differences between human groups — differences that MUST be based on Genetic Differences and Would, if seen in Other species, lead to their classification as either Races or Subspecies (the terms are pretty interchangeable in biology). Racial delimitation could, critics say, lead to a resurgence of racism, racial profiling, or even eugenics.

So do races exist? The answer of Jan Sapp, a biology professor at York University in Toronto, is a firm “no”, as given in his new American Scientistpiece “Race finished..
[......]The consensus among Western researchers today is that human races are sociocultural constructs.[......]

What are races?
In my own field of evolutionary biology, races of animals (also called “subspecies” or “ecotypes”) are morphologically distinguishable populations that live in allopatry (i.e. are geographically separated).
There is no firm criterion on how much morphological difference it takes to delimit a race.
Races of mice, for example, are described solely on the basis of difference in coat color, which could involve only one or two genes.

Under that criterion, are there human Races?
Yes. As we all know, there are morphologically different groups of people who live in different areas, though those differences are blurring due to recent innovations in transportation that have led to more admixture between human groups.

How many human races are there?
That’s pretty much unanswerable, because human variation is nested in groups, for their ancestry, which is based on evolutionary differences, is nested in groups. So, for example, one could delimit “Caucasians” as a race, but within that group there are genetically different and morphologically different subgroups, including Finns, southern Europeans, Bedouins, and the like. The number of human races delimited by biologists has ranged from three to over 30.

How different are the races genetically?
Not very different. As has been known for a while, DNA and other genetic analyses have shown that most of the variation in the human species occurs within a given human ethnic group, and only a small fraction between different races. That means that on average, there is more genetic difference between individuals within a race than there is between races themselves. Nevertheless, there are some genes (including the genes for morphological differences such as body shape, facial features, skin pigmentation, hair texture, and the like) that have not yet been subject to DNA sequencing, and if one looked only at those genes, one would obviously find more genetic differences. But since the delimitation of races has historically depended Not on the degree of underlying genetic differences but Only on the existence of Some genetic difference that causes morphological difference, the genetic similarity of races Does Not mean that they Don’t exist...."
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IOW, because we are humans and have an unfortunate 20th C politics/history, the human species has avoided what certainly would qualify as Race/subspecie in other animals. As someone who collects seashells, I can assure what is said above is true. You add an extra spot and move over ten miles.. they'll pop another sub-species or even species.
There are Many subspecies designations for groups genetically And morphologically closer than human one-race.
 
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Genetics are such: Over millenniums humans that were able to adapt and survive passed on their strong genetic traits. Evolution. It's not really a matter of 'everyone on this entire continent developed the same' - because they didn't. Some people in one region developed in one way - others in another region developed in another. In one continent you could have wide diversity in skin tone, hair type, body shape, and even the ability to adapt, learn, and respond.

Race is such: People looked at each other and decided 'race' based on common physical traits. Dark skin are all 'black' and pale skin are all 'white' - light brown skin with a certain shaped eyes tend to be 'Asian' and earth-brown skin and high cheekbones tend to be 'Native American' unless you live in certain areas and then you're 'Latino'. Yes - splitting hairs with race vs ethnicity - doesn't matter. Both of these are all human-prescribed 'groupings' based on visuals. We use very broad scale concepts here.

Note - this is the American simplified version of 'race' - other countries and cultures have their own definitions (which is a fascinating study in itself)

Of course, we can't pretend that race components aren't genetic (of course you inherit all of your physical characteristics genetically: fingers, toes, ears, eyes, skin tone, etc). So what's really in debate is whether the genetics of intelligence and the genetics of things like skin tone align and go together all the time.

Sometimes they might align (visual grouping components and things like genetically-inherited intelligence) but I don't think that our application of race really meets up with differences in various peoples along these lines.
 
Aunt Spiker said:
Genetics are such: Over millenniums humans that were able to adapt and survive passed on their strong genetic traits. Evolution. It's not really a matter of 'everyone on this entire continent developed the same' - because they didn't. Some people in one region developed in one way - others in another region developed in another. In one continent you could have wide diversity in skin tone, hair type, body shape, and even the ability to adapt, learn, and respond.

Race is such: People looked at each other and decided 'race' based on common physical traits. Dark skin are all 'black' and pale skin are all 'white' - light brown skin with a certain shaped eyes tend to be 'Asian' and earth-brown skin and high cheekbones tend to be 'Native American' unless you live in certain areas and then you're 'Latino'. Yes - splitting hairs with race vs ethnicity - doesn't matter. Both of these are all human-prescribed 'groupings' based on visuals. We use very broad scale concepts here.

Note - this is the American simplified version of 'race' - other countries and cultures have their own definitions (which is a fascinating study in itself)

Of course, we can't pretend that race components aren't genetic (of course you inherit all of your physical characteristics genetically: fingers, toes, ears, eyes, skin tone, etc). So what's really in debate is whether the genetics of intelligence and the genetics of things like skin tone align and go together all the time.

Sometimes they might align (visual grouping components and things like genetically-inherited intelligence) but I don't think that our application of race really meets up with differences in various peoples along these lines.
Click to expand...

Did you read the OP article?
 
Buck Ewer said:
Nicholas Wade is a racist and his book supports a racist agenda.

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/...-nicholas-wades-embrace-of-scientific-racism/

History News Network | What's wrong with Nicholas's Wade's new book on race

On the Origin of White Power | The Primate Diaries, Scientific American Blog Network
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Hmmm. I doubt he's a racist. The NYRB is not a publication that promotes racist views. And the article on the SA Blog Network was written by a graduate student. Not quite authoritative enough for such a weighty charge.:peace
 
Aunt Spiker said:
The review?

I can't debate a book review, dear. I can only discuss the overall content of a book if I've actually read it.
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I wouldn't ask you to debate a review or discuss the overall content of a book you haven't read. But the review brings to the topic a bit more nuance than your post incorporates.:peace
 
Buck Ewer said:
Nicholas Wade is a racist and his book supports a racist agenda.

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/...-nicholas-wades-embrace-of-scientific-racism/

History News Network | What's wrong with Nicholas's Wade's new book on race

On the Origin of White Power | The Primate Diaries, Scientific American Blog Network
Click to expand...
ie; Anyone whose race-based science doesn't parrot the PC status quo is a "racist"__where have I heard that before?!

Talk about a "troublesome source"; doesn't this sound exactly like what you'd expect from the Southern Poverty Law Center?!

"Although he acknowledges at the outset that these portions of the book are intended to be speculative, in the text he presents these racist, hackneyed ideas as though they are simple facts, uncontroversial and incontrovertible."
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/...-nicholas-wades-embrace-of-scientific-racism/

Rather than wasting time debating simple minds; I should be using it to expose their devotion to selective ignorance_
 
mbig said:
Because it's not exclusive to One race doesn't mean it's not racial or statistically infinitely higher probability in it.
Geography, not coincidentally, determined Race too.
ie, Native Northern Europeans would be unlikely to get Sickle Cell.

"said another way": Dark skin is an adaption to strong sun and is shared by several Different Races.
Sub-saharan Africans share this Racial trait with others, such as Australian Aboriginals, even though, in genetic distance they are farther apart, than the former and Europeans. (!)
IOW, speaking of color (or disease susceptibility) alone doesn't determine race. But the same environment that produces that Race may produce that trait elsewhere for the same reason. (malarial climate)


The Definition Of Race is morphological difference caused by Genetic difference. Almost always geographic.
Humans easily qualify for race/sub-specie designation based on those used in other Species.
The reason we don't have them is political not scientific/taxonomic.

So many links....
Click to expand...
You're missing my point. There are no genetic markers exclusively aligned to specific race. There's nothing that we can use to 100% define one person as Race X and another person as Race Y. Such exclusive markers just don't exist. Like your skin color example: Dark skin isn't an exclusive African characteristic. It is shared by populations in Sub-Saharan African AND aboriginal Australia.

In addition these genetic websites (e.g the Genographic Project) don't tell you what race you are. They give you a probability of what your origins are. They've identified specific genetic mutations that are likely to occur in broad geographical swaths, and then use statistics to try to average out your highest probability of what places you come from.

That is a total scam, however, because almost every human being is interbred. I could right now, walk down the street and pick 100 people at random and I'd bet that 96 out of 100 of them share a common ancestor with me within the past 500 years. It doesn't matter what color, race or ethnicity they are. Why? It's the power of exponential growth. A single individual moving from Europe in the year 1500 (first wave of European colonization) to the heart of Africa and having children, would in 500 years having his/her DNA represented in ~ 33 million Africans. A single individual. That's 2^25 = 33,000,000 people.

Or take someone famous, like William the Conqueror. He died in 1087. He can claim as his descendants the entire continent of Europe, America, Australia and most of South America, the Middle East and parts of Asia and Africa. Why? Because there were roughly 40 generations between 2014 and then, which means his genes would have reached (by now) 1,099,511,627,776 people, assuming no interbreeding. That's more people than the population of the Earth. Of course there was interbreeding, but through simple fact that people migrate and have children - any fertile individual who lived in the 1000s would have hundreds of millions of descendants by now.
 
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Empirica said:
ie; Anyone whose race-based science doesn't parrot the PC status quo is a "racist"__where have I heard that before?!

Talk about a "troublesome source"; doesn't this sound exactly like what you'd expect from the Southern Poverty Law Center?!

"Although he acknowledges at the outset that these portions of the book are intended to be speculative, in the text he presents these racist, hackneyed ideas as though they are simple facts, uncontroversial and incontrovertible."
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/...-nicholas-wades-embrace-of-scientific-racism/

Rather than wasting time debating simple minds; I should be using it to expose their devotion to selective ignorance_
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Trying to use pseudo science, or even real science, to support and carry water for the racist agenda is nothing new. This is just the latest iteration of that failed and despicable practice.
Wades speculation assumes ethnic genetic purity ...an extremely rare and unlikely condition given the promiscuous an nomadic history of the peoples of the world. A genetic marker from scandinavian ethnicity might seem to indicate your people were from Norway or Sweden but in fact it may well mean your ancestry was really Turkish given Viking proclivities towards roaming and settling with conquered peoples .
Common ancestry is far more common than Wade's narrow and weak minded postulations would allow.
He is careful to add the caveat that his conclusions are purely speculative but those who would quote his findings will always conveniently forget and omit that careful predication to his ill founded conjecture.
He is admittedly saying "what if" but his racist followers will inevitably say ..." see, there ya go ... genetic science backs us up..."
 
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Jack Hays said:
In recent years it has been increasingly common to hear that race is socially constructed. Genetic research now calls that into question. The matter is certainly not settled, but the question is on the table. Is race genetic? Here's a grown-up discussion. The reviewer is unsympathetic to the book, but it's a fair treatment. The debate is on.:peace
Click to expand...
The article doesn't really address the OP's question.

In general, 'people from geographical location X' will have a higher frequency of a particular gene or set of genes - this is entirely unsuprising, given how genetics are shared during reproduction and how people are more likely to reproduce with those near them. Similarly, 'people with skin tone X' are also likely to share genetics (ignoring tans!) - just as 'people with ginger hair' or 'people with blue eyes' share the (respective) genes which give them those particular physical traits. On the other hand, as the article points out, there is no evidence of a link between genetics and social traits.

However, note that not once above did I use the word 'race'. Given that the OP asks 'is race a social or biological construct?', that's not very helpful...

If you wish for 'race' to be a purely biological construct, then you would start with the biology. You would look for common genetic traits that were shared by some of the population but not by others - then you could declare the "Gene X" race as "all people who have Gene X". However, this would lead to a massive medly of 'races' - the 'ginger hair' race, or the 'blue eyes' race. Nor would it neccesarily refer to visible traits - you might have the 'Huntingdon's race', or the 'sickle cell race'. Nor would it be specific - how many genetic traits must people share before they can be considered to be 'of the same race'? One? Fifty? The book seems to define 'race' as 'a property of a person which is influenced by the geographic location of their ancestry'. This isn't a very good definition either - it doesn't apply for 'mixed-race' people, who are very great in number, nor does it explain why it has chosen that definition, rather than, say, skin colour, or nose length (!).

As such, 'race' is not biological - hence it must be social. While you can take those social groups and then analyse them for genetic similarities (which is what the author refers to), if you try to do the process backwards (look for genetic similarities and then use them to classify 'race'), you would not get such an effect.
 
Jack Hays said:
In recent years it has been increasingly common to hear that race is socially constructed. Genetic research now calls that into question. The matter is certainly not settled, but the question is on the table. Is race genetic? Here's a grown-up discussion. The reviewer is unsympathetic to the book, but it's a fair treatment. The debate is on.:peace

Stretch Genes by H. Allen Orr | The New York Review of Books

Page Not Found - Debate Politics Forumsstretch-genes/The New York Review of Books

"Science and science journalism are different things. Though each is valuable, they require at least partly different skills. Science demands unrelenting skepticism about purported facts and theories, and science journalism demands an ability to make the complex clear. Despite my admiration for his work as a journalist, I’m afraid that Nicholas Wade’s latest book reminds us of the risks inherent in blurring the distinction between these endeavors. A Troublesome Inheritance goes beyond reporting scientific facts or accepted theories and finds Wade championing bold ideas that fall outside any scientific consensus.

Wade, now a freelance writer and reporter, is best known for his work as a journalist at The New York Times. He has also written several popular books on biology. The most recent—Before the Dawn (2006) and The Faith Instinct (2009)—focused on evolution in human beings, including the evolution of religion. In A Troublesome Inheritance, Wade maintains this focus on human evolution, though he turns to a far more controversial topic, human races. His goal, he says, is “to demystify the genetic basis of race and to ask what recent human evolution reveals about history and the nature of human societies.” He concludes not only that human races are real but that they probably differ genetically in surprising ways. . . ."
Click to expand...

I am slightly confused as to your point. Wade's book (which is being review) has the idea that regional differences in cultural institutions and practices are genetically based and thus the argument that Wade makes is that race is highly genetic and recently evolved. Wade does that without real hard evidence which he admits. The review not only attacks that position it uses the book itself to point out the flaw. Wade's book is panned in the scientific community.

These are big claims and you’d surely expect Wade to provide some pretty impressive, if recondite, evidence for them from the new science of genomics. And here’s where things get odd. Hard evidence for Wade’s thesis is nearly nonexistent. Odder still, Wade concedes as much at the start of A Troublesome Inheritance:

Readers should be fully aware that in chapters 6 through 10 they are leaving the world of hard science and entering into a much more speculative arena at the interface of history, economics and human evolution.
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I can go on but I am not sure what you are trying to argue posting this review. If you are arguing that Wade is right and that cultural institutions of isolated genetic groups historically are because of their genes, Wade doesn't make the argument and speculates that is the case. No one doing the science agrees. It is clear these isolated groups have a genetic thread that runs through them, we see that both in morphology and in some unique traits. But calling these groups races is a sociological distinction. Jews have a distinctive shared genetic marker but it is hard to call them a race. Certainly Italian, Greek and Northern European people are different but we don't call them distinct races. Race is a social construct. Wade does nothing to change that.
 
brothern said:
You're missing my point. There are no genetic markers exclusively aligned to specific race. There's nothing that we can use to 100% define one person as Race X and another person as Race Y. Such exclusive markers just don't exist. Like your skin color example: Dark skin isn't an exclusive African characteristic. It is shared by populations in Sub-Saharan African AND aboriginal Australia.
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False.
Our genetic Sequences determine our race. Because some people don't fit that race profile [strawman] "100%" doesn't mean there isn't race.
See below.

Brothen said:
In addition these genetic websites (e.g the Genographic Project) don't tell you what race you are. They give you a probability of what your origins are. They've identified specific genetic mutations that are likely to occur in broad geographical swaths, and then use statistics to try to average out your highest probability of what places you come from.
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False.
They don't measure "probability"!
They measure DNA/ACTUAL percentages of each Race in you.
They may influence the probability of what people call your mix, but that doesn't mean we don't know WHAT it's mix of.. Races. Which is how they determine/gather the DNA in the first place; from as pure a base population a they can get.


Brother said:
That[/B] is a total scam, however, because almost every human being is interbred. I could right now, walk down the street and pick 100 people at random and I'd bet that 96 out of 100 of them share a common ancestor with me within the past 500 years. It doesn't matter what color, race or ethnicity they are. Why? It's the power of exponential growth. A single individual moving from Europe in the year 1500 (first wave of European colonization) to the heart of Africa and having children, would in 500 years having his/her DNA represented in ~ 33 million Africans. A single individual. That's 2^25 = 33,000,000 people.
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Anecdotal and Logical Nonsense.
Because Red and Blue make Purple doesn't mean Red and Blue don't exist!
Your example Unwittingly admits there are Races but they have Mixed.

In a room with 300 Naked people: 100 Pygmies, 100 East Asians, and 100 Scandinavians, what do you suppose your margin of error would be in telling them apart.
WHY?

Races have a distinct set of genetic sequences for color, stature, Skeletal/Facial features, Hair/eye-color, Hair consistency, pharmacology, etc. based on adaptation to their geographical region. Just like other animal Species/subspecies do.
Two different races may share dark skin, but that doesn't men they don't have a Long list of other things that do make them distinct and distinguishable both in appearance and the Genes that produce that appearance.
ie, an albinistic Pymgy would still be distinguishable as such without color.

'One-race/subspecie' Human Groups have far greater morphological Difference than that of Chimp or Gorilla subspecies, maybe even species.


Brothern said:
Or take someone famous, like William the Conqueror. He died in 1087. He can claim as his descendants the entire continent of Europe, America, Australia and most of South America, the Middle East and parts of Asia and Africa. Why? Because there were roughly 40 generations between 2014 and then, which means his genes would have reached (by now) 1,099,511,627,776 people, assuming no interbreeding. That's more people than the population of the Earth. Of course there was interbreeding, but through simple fact that people migrate and have children - any fertile individual who lived in the 1000s would have hundreds of millions of descendants by now.
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"Or take some" is obviously the preface for more goofy Anecdote, not fact.
Worldwide travel was miniscule before 1700/1800 in any case.
Before Columbus/app 1500 AD most Euros had never even seen another race, much less mixed.
Australia wasn't discovered until 1606.
'Stanely ran into Livingstone' in darkest Africa only in 1871.
So "1087" is ridiculous and throws your Disingenuous 'math' out the window.
One person or small group interbreeding wouldn't color the gene pool significantly enough to make them indistinct in any case. It would genetically insignificant and would show as such in the test mentioned.

Many on the race-denial side, in fact, claim race isn't valid, it's a Modern Euro concept, that it didn't exist until the last century or two.
That's because it wasn't common knowledge so many existed and where. (much less bred with them)
Similarly genetically significant (and describing related/evolved species/inter-species), Darwin's voyage wasn't until the 1830s.
It was really only then, we started to realize that there were different kinds/strains of humans as well as different kinds of 'finches'... and everything else.

And of course, you felt completely free to Ignore my Coyne article and proceed on your merry way!
Or rather, it was absolutely Necessary for your to ignore it lest you just you have zero to say.
I mean, that's pretty string stuff from a pre-eminent source.
One can't ignore and claim he's in sincere debate: Not that even what you did reply with was sincere debate.
 
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Oh look, it's the top of the hour.

Time for yet another race-based thread on debate politics.


Maybe if you people stop thinking about it SO much, you would stop looking at people as different 'races' and just look at them as different 'people'.
 
iangb said:
The article doesn't really address the OP's question.

In general, 'people from geographical location X' will have a higher frequency of a particular gene or set of genes - this is entirely unsuprising, given how genetics are shared during reproduction and how people are more likely to reproduce with those near them. Similarly, 'people with skin tone X' are also likely to share genetics (ignoring tans!) - just as 'people with ginger hair' or 'people with blue eyes' share the (respective) genes which give them those particular physical traits. On the other hand, as the article points out, there is no evidence of a link between genetics and social traits.

However, note that not once above did I use the word 'race'. Given that the OP asks 'is race a social or biological construct?', that's not very helpful...

If you wish for 'race' to be a purely biological construct, then you would start with the biology. You would look for common genetic traits that were shared by some of the population but not by others - then you could declare the "Gene X" race as "all people who have Gene X". However, this would lead to a massive medly of 'races' - the 'ginger hair' race, or the 'blue eyes' race. Nor would it neccesarily refer to visible traits - you might have the 'Huntingdon's race', or the 'sickle cell race'. Nor would it be specific - how many genetic traits must people share before they can be considered to be 'of the same race'? One? Fifty? The book seems to define 'race' as 'a property of a person which is influenced by the geographic location of their ancestry'. This isn't a very good definition either - it doesn't apply for 'mixed-race' people, who are very great in number, nor does it explain why it has chosen that definition, rather than, say, skin colour, or nose length (!).

As such, 'race' is not biological - hence it must be social. While you can take those social groups and then analyse them for genetic similarities (which is what the author refers to), if you try to do the process backwards (look for genetic similarities and then use them to classify 'race'), you would not get such an effect.
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Sababa said:
I am slightly confused as to your point. Wade's book (which is being review) has the idea that regional differences in cultural institutions and practices are genetically based and thus the argument that Wade makes is that race is highly genetic and recently evolved. Wade does that without real hard evidence which he admits. The review not only attacks that position it uses the book itself to point out the flaw. Wade's book is panned in the scientific community.



I can go on but I am not sure what you are trying to argue posting this review. If you are arguing that Wade is right and that cultural institutions of isolated genetic groups historically are because of their genes, Wade doesn't make the argument and speculates that is the case. No one doing the science agrees. It is clear these isolated groups have a genetic thread that runs through them, we see that both in morphology and in some unique traits. But calling these groups races is a sociological distinction. Jews have a distinctive shared genetic marker but it is hard to call them a race. Certainly Italian, Greek and Northern European people are different but we don't call them distinct races. Race is a social construct. Wade does nothing to change that.
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Thank you both for thoughtful contributions. I'm not trying to "argue" anything. I just thought it was an interesting topic, and the NYRB is usually a pretty good guide to questions that have important ramifications. My personal opinion is that this question will become more acute in coming years as increasingly refined and powerful DNA/genetics research produces results that will sometimes make us comfortable, and sometimes not.:peace
 
You can call it race, you can call it ethnic or geographic groupings, you can call it Elves and Dwarves and Hobbits if you like... but it is pretty damn obvious that those distinctions in appearance that are typically grouped under "race" are mainly genetic.

I mean damn, just go to a sufficiently "diverse" playground and see which kid belongs to which parent and it is pretty obvious genes are the main factor in such things.


Whether race MATTERS is a different issue...
 
DA60 said:
Oh look, it's the top of the hour.

Time for yet another race-based thread on debate politics.


Maybe if you people stop thinking about it SO much, you would stop looking at people as different 'races' and just look at them as different 'people'.
Click to expand...

That is not the point of the thread. Read first, then post.:peace
 
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