• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

How many human races exist?

How many human races are there?

  • 1

    Votes: 22 68.8%
  • 3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • more than 3.

    Votes: 10 31.3%

  • Total voters
    32
If people start living even in Mars and define Marsian features (which I leave it to you imagination to define) they still would be our human race.
 
Race? As in species? 1

Race, as in analogous to dog breeds? Heaps, depending on how specific you are.

Race, in the second definition, is a way of classifying groups of people by physical characteristics unique to geographic locations. It's fairly arbitrary and inapplicable to individuals, making it pretty much useless beyond vague identification.
 
i must allways laugh, when i hear that germans are blonde and blue-eyed.
cause most aren´t so.
maybe 5% are blonde and blue-eyed.

in example is my boy-friend black-coloured and pure prussian.
his ancestors moved in the year 1918 from africa to germany.
 
This: There's an endless variety in which various dominant physical traits can be blended together.

The US: we're lame when it comes to classifying races - we choose skin color . . . and that's pretty much it. We're quite stupid. Other cultures opt for a more complicated thing; skin tone, hair texture, facial features, etc etc etc. It's more interesting.

Well, I've read posts here and elsewhere that classify Hispanics as a race when they can be caucasian, Amer-indian, African or, more usually, a mix of all three. Race is a socio-political construct and has little to do with genetics.
 
Well, I've read posts here and elsewhere that classify Hispanics as a race when they can be caucasian, Amer-indian, African or, more usually, a mix of all three. Race is a socio-political construct and has little to do with genetics.

'Hispanic' is a contrived ethnicity - it's not a 'race' categorization.

Doesn't change your point. which I agree - it all depends on society.
 
'Hispanic' is a contrived ethnicity - it's not a 'race' categorization.
I know, but I've read many posts claiming it's a race. Might have something to do with La Raza, except that 'raza' in Spanish doesn't have quite the same connotation as 'race' in English.
 
I know, but I've read many posts claiming it's a race. Might have something to do with La Raza, except that 'raza' in Spanish doesn't have quite the same connotation as 'race' in English.

It's all the same - grouping people according to various traits either implied or genetic.

It's interesting to research and learn about but it's often considered much more important than it really is.
 
It depends on what's relevant to the population . I believe the United States tends to use 5 racial groupings for the purposes of biomedical research based on national data sets.
 
There are quite a few human races on the planet, more than 3.

From the most numerous:
east asian (chinese, korean, etc)
South asian (like the indians in india)
Africans (african americans, east africans, south africans, west africans, central africans)
Whites (slavs, germanic, latin, basque). You can include part of the hyspanic population here if you want or you can put them in a whole different race... it is really up to you.
Arabs (i really don't know here)
Arboriginals in Australia
Native americans (from both north america and south america)

Yeah... I think this sums it about.
Each race has specific traits to it and each race has numerous ethnic groups within it.

You can broadly classify these numerous races in further ways. If you want to go with 3 races you can say caucasian (all whites, most arabs and some indians), negroid (blacks) and mongoloid (from the steppes of siberia to taiwan and australia). The way I did was that each race has certain traits that are unique to it. Each race has for instance, diseases that are more common in some race than in others. This is further down in ethnic groups and so on and so forth. Another aspect is inherent traits like eye color or hair color given by certain genetic markers.
 
There are quite a few human races on the planet, more than 3.

From the most numerous:
east asian (chinese, korean, etc)
South asian (like the indians in india)
Africans (african americans, east africans, south africans, west africans, central africans)
Whites (slavs, germanic, latin, basque). You can include part of the hyspanic population here if you want or you can put them in a whole different race... it is really up to you.
Arabs (i really don't know here)
Arboriginals in Australia
Native americans (from both north america and south america)

Yeah... I think this sums it about.
Each race has specific traits to it and each race has numerous ethnic groups within it.

You can broadly classify these numerous races in further ways. If you want to go with 3 races you can say caucasian (all whites, most arabs and some indians), negroid (blacks) and mongoloid (from the steppes of siberia to taiwan and australia). The way I did was that each race has certain traits that are unique to it. Each race has for instance, diseases that are more common in some race than in others. This is further down in ethnic groups and so on and so forth. Another aspect is inherent traits like eye color or hair color given by certain genetic markers.

I'd argue that your classifications and reasoning are inaccurate and that there are no criteria for identifying one race from another. Can you cite academic work that proves that "each race has certain traits that are unique to it"? I don't think that's true at all. Inherited disposition to disease may indeed be genetically-based, but can you cite a single disease that affects exclusively a particular one of your putative 'races'?

Please provide us with a scientifially demonstrable definition of what 'race' means.
 
How many human races are there?

there are lots of human races......foot races, bicycle races, car races, swimming races..the first human to the finish line wins the race
 
I'd argue that your classifications and reasoning are inaccurate and that there are no criteria for identifying one race from another. Can you cite academic work that proves that "each race has certain traits that are unique to it"? I don't think that's true at all. Inherited disposition to disease may indeed be genetically-based, but can you cite a single disease that affects exclusively a particular one of your putative 'races'?

Please provide us with a scientifially demonstrable definition of what 'race' means.

I never said that a single disease affects a race exclusively. But there are certain diseases, genetic and otherwise, that are more prevalent in certain racial groups.

This wiki page does a pretty decent job of showing how certain diseases are much more predominant in certain races than in others for mostly americans.

Race and health - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

By just removing diseases like HIV that are not inherent to any racial group, but rather, found in any number of unfortunate people who had contact with it, we have several clear examples.

Osteoporosis is a disease of the bones, most affected group is the Whites... while blacks are the least affected.

Lupus is more common found in blacks rather than whites. This is also collaborated by the fact that dementia is also more common among blacks than whites.

Here is another site,

https://www.counsyl.com/learn/asian/

That shows how certain races are the target of some diseases much more often than others.

Race, genetically, is that 0.2%-0.3% difference between the general DNA of the human subspecies.
Humans are 3% different than chimpanzees. This means that if a human had 100 candies and in front of him a chimp had 100 candies, the human and the chimp could trade either of the 97 candies that are the same with one another and it will all be ok. But both the human and the chimp would have 3 candies of different sortiments that cannot be traded with one another because if so, you will create a new species.

The differences between humans are much smaller. If you put 2 men of different races, arab and east asian, in front of each other, each of them with 1000 candies, 998 of those candies would be the same for each one so that each of those 998 candies can be traded by the arab with the asian and there would be no problems. But both the arab and the asian will have 2 candies that are different from the others'. The asian will have lemon flavor candy and the arab, caramel. Ofc ,this is very simplistic way of looking at it.

Does this mean that you are dealing with different species? No. One species, different races. Just like wolves, cats, whales, dolphins, sharks and almost all other animals.
 
There are quite a few human races on the planet, more than 3.

From the most numerous:
east asian (chinese, korean, etc)
South asian (like the indians in india)
Africans (african americans, east africans, south africans, west africans, central africans)
Whites (slavs, germanic, latin, basque...

... Illiryan, Dardanian...

You can include part of the hyspanic population here if you want or you can put them in a whole different race... it is really up to you.
Arabs (i really don't know here)
Arboriginals in Australia
Native americans (from both north america and south america)
Yeah... I think this sums it about.

Now I agree!
 
2 exist.

Me and then the rest of you lowly peons.
 
Last edited:
The differences between humans are much smaller. If you put 2 men of different races, arab and east asian, in front of each other, each of them with 1000 candies, 998 of those candies would be the same for each one so that each of those 998 candies can be traded by the arab with the asian and there would be no problems. But both the arab and the asian will have 2 candies that are different from the others'. The asian will have lemon flavor candy and the arab, caramel. Ofc ,this is very simplistic way of looking at it.

Continuing this analogy.....

If you took two Arabs (all else being constant with your previously stated analogy) and looked at their candies, they would probably have more than two different candies.
 
I never said that a single disease affects a race exclusively. But there are certain diseases, genetic and otherwise, that are more prevalent in certain racial groups.

You did say specific traits though. I think it's possible for any race to produce the whole gamut of obvious phenotypes like eye and hair colours, though extremely rarely.

Does that make race useless? No. Does it make it entirely arbitrary? No.

It's a cheap and statistically useful surrogate for genetic heredity, at least until individualised genetic maps are in use in medicine and our knowledge of biological mechanisms are fully developed (the latter of which did and do depend in large part on comparative study of the race model).

There is an arbitrary component to any grouping mechanism developed by man. This goes for controversies regarding the definition of species and other taxonomic strata. Race just happens to be far more arbitrary.
 
Continuing this analogy.....

If you took two Arabs (all else being constant with your previously stated analogy) and looked at their candies, they would probably have more than two different candies.

Yes and no. Depends on the range.

If you have 2 arabs with 1000 candies each, no candies would be entirely different. Because the differences between people of the same race are not statistically measurable within 0.x%, but rather, with less.

So if you have 2 arabs with 10.000 candies each, then yes, you will get more than 2 candies of different sortiments. And here you are talking about genes that are unique to each race, that make each race a race basically. So within those 0.1-0.2% differences between races, you have 100% different genes that are unique to a certain race. And out of those, you get a certain % which is common to all members of that race and a % that varies, giving each one of us our uniqueness in all aspects.

Now. The 99.8% that is common between all human subspecies also varies. To give an example. Height is a gene within that 99.8%. All humans have height. Within the DNA sequence, the gene that determines your height is located in the same place in all human beings. So if it is, lets say, the 5th gene in the DNA, it will be the 5th gene in me, you and everybody else on the planet. And all human beings have it. It just has a different value in it that says that I am 1.8m tall and you are whatever size you are. So this is why the sortiment and candy example is just a basic representation of what I am trying to say. Because if we get down in all the sciency stuff, almost no "candy" is transferrable because each "candy" has a certain information about me. So if I give you the 5th candy in my candy box, you need to give me back the candy at the same position, or else I turn into a a new subspecies that is heightless :p.
 
How many human races are there?

310,412,687 but I counted the triple crown as 4 races, not 3 as you have to win the 3 to win the 4th
 
You did say specific traits though. I think it's possible for any race to produce the whole gamut of obvious phenotypes like eye and hair colours, though extremely rarely.

Does that make race useless? No. Does it make it entirely arbitrary? No.

It's a cheap and statistically useful surrogate for genetic heredity, at least until individualised genetic maps are in use in medicine and our knowledge of biological mechanisms are fully developed (the latter of which did and do depend in large part on comparative study of the race model).

There is an arbitrary component to any grouping mechanism developed by man. This goes for controversies regarding the definition of species and other taxonomic strata. Race just happens to be far more arbitrary.

It is not cheap. calling race cheap is the reason people are still having problems with race. if you don't understand it, you will be ignorant of it and won't be able to accept it. And like all AA groups tell you, acknowledgement and acceptance are the first steps to a healthy way of curing it.

An unhealthy way of dealing with it is to ignore it, call it a "social construct". The dumbest way to deal with it is to say that there are no races and that there is just 1 race, the human race, instead of correctly identifying it as the human species with different subspecies. But by far the worst way to "cure" the race problem is to cheer for the destruction of the diversity that the the simple fact that humanity has various races. If we would have no races, just 1 race, we would be less than dogs. Dogs have different breeds (races), each with its own unique traits. Well, maybe dogs are bad example because there is no human equivalent to the chiuahua. But rather, humans are more like wolves. There are a great deal of wolf subspecies, each subspecies being different than the other due to the fact that it evolved and grew in a different environment and because of that, the Canidae branch of the animal kingdom is much more interesting.
 
Well, as I child I was taught "red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight", so I figured there must be four, but when I think of the *human race*, there is only one. Race is essentially the product and result of human migration, and the differences are cultural, rather than color-related.

The only decent answer to a rather needless/silly question.
 
That depends on how Mac defines race.

Until Mac explicitly states his definition of race, it's all a waste of time.

People tend to confuse race with social or cultural background. Anthropogists recgonize about 5 races as I recall but there are tons or cultures or societies so clarification is necessary
 
I never said that a single disease affects a race exclusively. But there are certain diseases, genetic and otherwise, that are more prevalent in certain racial groups.
No, but you said:
... each race has certain traits that are unique to it.
My question is, what traits are unique to different 'races'? I can't think of any.
 
Back
Top Bottom