Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 11

message: "However, a distinct difference is only one of the two conditions that must be satisfied before a different form can be classified as a sub-species or even a race; the second is the lack of significant gene flow between populations. In the case of human "races", there historically has been little or no gene flow between, for example, aboriginal Australians and black Africans, between Asians and Caucasian Europeans, or between native American Indians and Hispanics. As such, interbreeding, although theoretically possible, was rare."
:§ As I understand it, there is a requirement for a kind of clear margin between subspecies, e.g. the frogs on the island are dark brown and never croak in the daylight hours and the frogs on the mainland are light green and croak occasionally all day long. One of the people who helps with the spider article does classifications professionally and he wrote me a rather "pithy" paragraph or two about the rarity of settled agreements, the difficulty of trying to make one's own categorization, etc. I would guess that one of the reasons that the professionals do not classify humans into anything other than Homo sapiens sapiens is that on an evolutionary timescale the aboriginal Australians have not been separated from the rest of us for very long.
"Hispanics" (as most Americans understand the term) are primarily of Native American Indian descent - the use of this linguistic term in a scientific sense is confusing. Plus, there is considerable evidence that intermixture between "Asians" (Mongoloids) and Caucasians is predominant among the Turkic and Uralic peoples from central Russia and Eastern Turkey though the "Stans" to Western China. Likewise most North Africans are of some degree of mixed Caucasoid and Negroid ancestry.
:§ Even in the case of the "Hispanics" (not to mention the supposedly "pure whites") there are no clear margins. Everybody except for identical twins is different (and different in as many different ways) and everybody is as pure as Ivory Soap (r). ;-)  (I'm not sure about the 99.44% figure, but it's close.) P0M 14:50, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current discussions 

message: Interesting. But I don't agree that classifying people as Frenchmen, Britons etc. is more accurate than a broader classification. If anything, I would think that attempting to narrow definitions would ride over more differences, ignoring the changes in societies, the differences within them and the similarities to those who happen to live under a different government.
To the anonymous writer of the above paragraph: (It helps to sign postings. Otherwise it becomes very difficult to maintain a coherent conversation.) [P0M]
I think that assertions to the effect that "group X had a concept of race" can be very misleading. Mere assertions do not prove anything, anyway. Asserting that the ancient Romans had the concept of gens and the concept of natio can be justified by reference to dictionaries and to ancient Latin texts. Asserting that involved in the concepts behind these words were explanations for why this gens or that gens has a certain set of characteristics is quite another matter. In fact, if somebody argued, e.g., that Arabs are different from Jews because their lineages split with the lines of descent from Abraham, then the natural question would be why they are different. And, since they all descend from Adam and Eve, where the differences came from. Prior to the discovery of the mechanisms by which evolution occurs, there would have been no clear answers to such questions.  When humans began to understand evolution it became possible to explain how human groups diverge. That being said, hereditary differences and learned differences (especially cultural differences) are frequently difficult to differentiate. The phenomena that spark interest in race are, generally speaking, very obvious differences between the people in one's own environment and the people "over there." But learned behavioral differences can be as striking, or more striking, than biologically inherited differences. So perhaps it is not surprising to see people differentiating people into what they call "races" on the basis of cultural features. P0M
:POM, if I follow you I think that once again you are veering into the territory of primary research and away from writing an encyclopedia articles.  Historians have pointed out that Romans have a concept of race, so this should be in an article.  They also point out that this concept did not mean the same thing as the contemporary concept of race -- a very important point, as it shows that the concept of race is at least culturally and historically variable, and thus suggests that it is socially constructed.  There is no doubt that the theory of evolution played a role in transforming the meaning of race; so did other historical events such as colonialism.  These are things some historians have written on, and if we can find those discussions we need to put an account of them here.  Now, the questions you raise -- what was the Roman "theory" of race, how did they account for similarities and differences, is another matter.  I do not know if any historians have studied this.  If they have, we need to reprot it; if they haven't, we can't. Slrubenstein
:§ Mere assertions, even from historians, are not worth very much in my eyes. Which of these historians has produced a coherent account, complete with citations, that shows that the Romans had something that was race and was not, e.g., ethnicity, barbarian group, or some other characterization of otherness? P0M 21:11, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Uh, I think you meant to address your comment to "Anon" who tucked the message above in at the top of this talk page. I moved it here, but I don't take responsibility for it. P0M 06:57, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Related concepts 

message: With regard to this text: "The data indicate that there is one human species with variations comprising only aproximatly 1.5% percent of the DNA. The difference between any two groups is on average only 1/10th of a percent. (SciAm Feb 2004 Does race exist?)"
Arnejohs, if the text merely stated that within group variation was larger than between group variation, then I would agree. However, the choice to write about percentages of the total DNA sequence that vary is all but certainly an attempt to lead the reader to one conclusion. To all but the most informed reader, 1.5% and 1/10th of 1% seem like incredibly small numbers. Those particular numbers don't seem to be consistent with previously published figures -- they strike me as the lower bound on a range. Moreover, there's no need for statistics or statements that the data unequivocally indicates one thing in the first paragraph. I think I'll put the burden on others to fix the POV, so I'm going to re-revert the text. --Rikurzhen 14:20, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
:Maybe its not clear to others why you can't just say that within group differences are smaller than between group differences and then conclude that race does not exist. Here's one reason why: this measurement does not consider the phenotypic importance of the differences. Kimura's neutral model would predict that most DNA variations are neutral, and thus probably do not have a marked phenotypic effect. However, we have some reason to believe that many of the between group differences may have become fixed as a result of selection. Thus, we have reason to believe that more of the between group difference have a phenotypic effect. The unanswered question is whether differences within vs between are equally enriched for phenotypically important variations. Would you expect there to be more variation between groups than within for races that divereged only 50-100k years ago? The answer is most likely no. Yet phenotype is a good marker for distinguishing race. Here's the second one: the smaller but still large between group variation is sufficient to re-construct the genetic divergence of human populations throughout history. Whether you call them races or not is a different matter. Continential populations consistently pop out when you put human DNA sequences into a multiple alignment algorithm. --Rikurzhen 14:39, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
::Agree with Rikurzhen; this data belongs in one of the arguments sections, not the intro, which should summarize views, not give details of them or argue for them.  This is in addition to Rikurzhen's other reasons. -- VV 20:39, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Within vs Between 

message: To write an encyclopaedia together on a global network is a splendid idea. Problems exist however, as the race article is demonstrating. When all existing opinions in all countries (NPOV=Average of all POVs?) shall be covered, the resulting article may both be long and confusing. It is important that the first paragraph is grasping the essential content of the term with a high degree of precision. I think the current version is not in line with this.
Typical expressions are:
:"Some feel that in this usage we may justifiably speak of ..."
:"Many researchers in biology and genetics, however, assert ..."
:"some use race to mean ..."
:"Many social scientists therefore view race as ..."
Some and many say a lot, but do not necessarily deserve a place in an encyclopaedia because of that! I think the race article in Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. (Encyclopædia Britannica Online) in an excellent way demonstrates my point. Rather than referring to some and many, they refer to "most researchers" and states that "Race is today primarily a ...etc":
:"Race. Term once commonly used in physical anthropology to denote a division of humankind possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type (e.g., Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid).
:"Today the term has little scientific standing, as older methods of differentiation, including hair form and body measurement, have given way to the comparative analysis of DNA and gene frequencies relating to such factors as blood typing, the excretion of amino acids, and inherited enzyme deficiencies. Because all human populations today are extremely similar genetically, most researchers have abandoned the concept of race for the concept of the cline, a graded series of differences occurring along a line of environmental or geographical transition. This reflects the recognition that human populations have always been in a state of flux, with genes constantly flowing from one gene pool to another, impeded only by physical or ecological boundaries. While relative isolation does preserve genetic differences and allow populations to maximally adapt to climatic and disease factors over long periods of time, all groups currently existing are thoroughly 'mixed' genetically, and such differences as still exist do not lend themselves to simple typologizing. 'Race' is today primarily a sociological designation, identifying a class sharing some outward physical characteristics and some commonalities of culture and history. See also climatic adaptation, ethnic group, racism.
Could we do better? --Arnejohs 21:42, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Lack of precision