Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 13

message: I very much appreciate the new addition, Race in biomedicine, but reading it my hackles rise at one point, and that is the unqualified use of the word "race." There must be a better way to write about [race] than to use the word as though it has a real referent. If the New York Times had an article on its front page saying that Senator Joseph Biden had introduced a bill for the imposition of landing fees on flying saucers, it would definitely get some bemused attention because it would strongly imply that both the NYT and Senator Biden believed in the existence of flying saucers. If Senator Biden was actually talking about something that didn't exist but was thought to exist because of the real existence of the planet Venus, the real existence of weather balloons, etc., etc., and he was actually introducing a bill to arrange for payments of fees for services involved in collecting downed weather balloons and the like, then the NYT would had done better to be more careful of its language. P0M
:Funny you should mention the NY Times. If you're interested in reading more about the subject, look for an internet cache of a now expired NY Times Magazine story  titled "The Genome in Black and White (and Gray)". (Or pick up next month's Nature Reviews Genetics, which is slated to include a lot of discussion of this topic.) When I (or anyone else) get some more time, BiDil would make a good example. --Rikurzhen 18:43, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)
Having an article on [race] and heading it up with pictures of members of "U.S. Government Inspected" [racial] categories is horrendously inappropriate.  P0M
As one recent contributor has pointed out, labeling the third group as "white (Hispanic)" is particularly inappropriate. There is no way of our knowing what the real genetic heritage of either of the individuals pictured in that category may be, but surely their parents were not Ola and Bessie from Olso. The group for which they stand as representatives does not have even a majority of its ancestry coming from Spain, nor does it have a majority of its ancestry from Spain and Germany, nor even does it have a majority of its ancestry from anywhere in Europe. O.k., perhaps I am wrong. I don't have the genetic information of that group sitting on my bookshelf. But should we perpetuate as "fact" the rule-of-thumb category whomped up by the FBI? (What are we going to call people from S. America who predominantly speak Spanish or Portugese, and who don't look much like people with a genetic heritage from Europe? Well, since there is a presumption of there being some of the conquorer's genetic heritage in most of them, and since most of them can operate in Spanish or Portugese, we'll call them "white and Hispanic") I don't think so. If we are going to call them "white (Hispanic)" -- by implication, literally, by folding in the FBI characterization -- we should have statistical proof based on genetic studies. Good luck on getting such proof, and I mean that sarcastically.P0M
What would seem fair to me is a map tesselated by faces of representative inhabitants of those places. That way we could say, "Look, this is really what is out there. People draw lines here, here, here, and here. The people on the left side of that line are called 'white,' and the people on the right side of that line are called 'black,' and then...   And if you pulled the lady next to the left side of that line over next to to the right side of that line, nobody could tell the difference." P0M 09:48, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Precisely.  I agree.  I am an African-American.  There is NO question of that.  Like many African-Americans, my ancestry includes white (Irish) and Native American (Cado and Cherokee) progenitors.  There is no question of my ethnic/"racial" identity -- until I speak Spanish, which I learned as a second language (not fluently, but well enough and without a "gringo" accent), or until I am seen with some of my Bangladeshi friends.  Most recently, I was traveling alone on a bus, my head covered with a simple, cotton scarf (nothing culture-specific), and a man from Bangladesh approached me, because he thought I was from his homeland.  I am CLEARLY and unmistakably African-American in certain contexts -- yet I've been thought to be Egyptian, Ethiopian, Latina, Bangladeshi, East Indian, etc.  The article needs to be rewritten (I think it's awful) and, I think, better photos used -- and ANALYZED, not simply presented without comment.  Sorry, but the sister looks wupped!  Besides, her hair is straightened (kind of), and the brother hasn't any?  Where's the natural, nappy hair?  Gotta have it if we're talking about "racial" phenotypes.  (Besides, since when did law enforcement in the U.S. have a particularly enlightened, intelligent take on "race"/ethnicity, anyway?)  Simply astounding. deeceevoice 10:28, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: I'm not missing the point.  My point -- and that, I think, of others -- is that to present examples of "racial" classifications that have the imprimatur of the U.S. government (or an agency thereof), without subjecting such ridiculously arbitrary classifications to objective scrutiny, is to abdicate the responsibility of examining the notion of "race" as a construct and gives the impression that such classifications are valid.  Hell, we might as well use Chris' tongue-in-cheek photos of "Ferengis," "Vulcans" and "Hobbits."  There does not appear to be a rigorous examination of the sociological, historical, economic and political forces/motives which have shaped "racial" phenotypes and the subsequent classification of ethnic groups -- which is my whole point in my discussion of the equally silly, but also nefarious, classification of East Indians as "Caucasoid."  IMO, without addressing such issues, the article is deeply flawed and potentially tragically misleading. deeceevoice 17:56, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: § I agree. We need a map of faces with [race] boundaries drawn on it, or, better, a bunch of maps with the same faces and different [race] boundaries drawn on it. And we need an explanation for who put these lines there and why. Any other features we could include? Body types would be an obvious factor so maybe we want whole body shots. Anything else? Hair color? Hair texture? The sad thing is that humans hang so damned much baggage on color and maybe one or two other superficial factors. P0M 03:46, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assuming the Conclusion in the Premise 

message: § Sam Spade has made his objections to the photographs he deleted somewhat clearer. Among other things he thought they were too small. (Not my fault. He or anyone could have made them larger.) I was aiming at what Slrubenstein asked for just above. The photos have not disappeared from this earth. They are real people and in each case I know with a reasonable degree of certainty where those people and most if not all of their ancestors hail from. What we need, then, is more photos. We would need most particularly "first nation" people of Australia, Tamils, First Nation people in the U.S., Canada, South America, and also Hawaiians, Melanesians... If I can come up with three or four population samples, surely some of the rest of you are cosmopolitan enough to have friends among some of these other groups.  All my samples were male, primarily because I took the guys from Malawi, Japan, and China from martial arts classes I have participated in. They should ideally be matched with female humans. I would like to have a photo for each terminus on the new pop-gen map. I'd also like clarification on why it is different from the one immediately preceding it. Some of its paths look like they might be mistaken, and there are none of the very useful YBP dates that the somewhat earlier one had. P0M 03:27, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  More on Photos 

message: I think I remember that someone wanted to map of human skin color variation. I found one that we should be able to use. --Rikurzhen 23:13, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
very neat. it should have a date, though: Is it present-day distribution, or pre-colonial ('white America' suggests the former; it would be cool to have a pre-columbian map to campare it to.) besides, I am certainly not arguing that the Mercator projection is 'colonial POV', but since it has been accused of that, it would be a very good idea to use a different projection, for this particular subject matter, ideally a true-to-area one (because dark areas are close to the equator and are thus severely underrepresented in this projection). Yeah, I know it's not easy to just change the projection. dab 08:06, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  skin color map 

message: in reply to 'is race biologically real?' (and if so, what is it?) above, I drew a new 'tree' image to replace :Image:Human-nj-tree.png:
*numbers on the lower border are genetic difference (0.1%.....2%), numbeers on the upper border are the approximately corresponding age of phylogenetice separation (present............>4.000.000 years ago)
*the "gaps" of the former image are avoided, allowing quantitative comparison of the concepts of
**genera
**species
**subspecies
**"races"
*the vertical dimension has again no meaning, but I avoided the annoying custom of placing the Africans next to the Chimps.
I suggest that the lengthy caption of Human-nj-tree.png is worked into a paragraph of its own explaining this image. dab 11:27, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Human tree

message: There hasn't been any movement on my suggestion to replace the mugshots with computer generated faces. Would the skin color map make a suitable replacement? --Rikurzhen 18:53, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
:§ I would definitely be in favor of that change. The effect of the mug shots is to hypostatize the idea of [race] into "realities" typified by some rather unattractive specimens. I'd like to download the image to my Macintosh and use some software I have to improve the colors. Depending on which kind of computer you use, and maybe depending on what browser you use, you can get different degrees of clarity and attractiveness. P0M 19:25, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I am totally opposed to computer generated faces (what, 6 billion people are not good enough, we need to show artifiially generated races? that would indeed make the concept seem entirely abstract) dab 11:23, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternative to mugshots? 

message: Hi,
§ Please create a log-in identity for yourself. It will make it easier to communicate. (You don't have to reveal anything about yourself. But if somebody else with the same numerical identification creates problems you could attract negative attention. It's happened before.)  Also, when you make comments it is always helpful to preserve other people's indentations, and to indent your own comments appropriately so that it will be more clear whether you are commenting on speaker 1 or speaker 2's remarks. E.G.
:Speaker 1:  I think Splavendorst is completely wrong on this subject.
:::Speaker 2: Well, I think Splavendorst is exactly right.
I agree entirely. [User:Digger-O'Dell]
§ So with whom is the friendly undertaker agreeing? 1? or 2? 
§ Sometimes things have gotten so bad that I have written an angry retort to something that I myself said. ;-)  That's why I start my paragraphs with "§" -- and then if somebody splits up a paragraph that I wrote I go back and re-identify what I have written before I forget that it's my own stuff.P0M 07:49, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  New User 200nnn