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White Beard

Registered: 08/13/11
Posts: 6,325
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Is race real?
#21980896 - 07/22/15 04:27 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Can race be used as a legitimate biological classification? I find it strange that human population groups were geographically separate for 10s of thousands of years and the only thing that supposedly changed was skin, bones, and facial features. Are measured differences in behaviour and IQ explained by genes or by social conditions?
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,819
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I'm going to say I really don't know, and I do not personally sanction what I am about to post, and have no comment on it whatsoever. Just reporting some data that I found when participating in the recent Why white supremacy? thread.
Quote:
DividedQuantum said: There was actually a Through the Wormhole very much along the lines of your comments, OC.
Found this:
Quote:
Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman: Is There A Superior Race?
Season 3, episode 2
Originally broadcast on the Discovery Channel, June 6, 2012
Beginning at 23:07 "There are differences between racial and ethnic groups on the average in IQ. The average whites IQs are fairly set at 100. Blacks in the United States and in many other western countries average 85. Hispanics the average would be about 80. Native Americans around that level. And then Japanese and Chinese Americans above the white average. And then Ashkenazic Jews probably around 110, 115." - Linda Gottfredson, sociologist, University of Delaware
Also found, during my brief search, a rather remarkable jpeg, on which I have absolutely no comment, either:
 IQ and the Wealth of Nations
Not really sure what to make of all this, White Beard. Thought it would be interesting to share, though.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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circastes
Big Questions Small Head



Registered: 01/14/10
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Yeah I've been wondering this a lot myself. I find it hard to believe beings as complex as human beings would only change skin color over hundreds of thousands of years when kept in differing environments.
I think Jews and East Asia top the IQ charts. Whites, in my opinion, are more socially cohesive and generally graceful, though many of them are also high on the IQ charts. I'm worried about Africa, where the average IQ is something like 75. Jung thought they were also predisposed to violence and cruelty.
-------------------- My solitude... My shield... My armour... TESTED WITH FULL FORCE
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qman
Stranger

Registered: 12/06/06
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Quote:
White Beard said: Can race be used as a legitimate biological classification? I find it strange that human population groups were geographically separate for 10s of thousands of years and the only thing that supposedly changed was skin, bones, and facial features. Are measured differences in behaviour and IQ explained by genes or by social conditions?
Of course there are differences beyond "skin, bones, and facial features". It's not politically correct to talk about them today, even biologists are careful to say the differences are subtle but do exist.
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Khancious
da Crow



Registered: 12/05/12
Posts: 628
Loc: Behind Everything
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Re: Is race real? [Re: qman]
#21982056 - 07/22/15 09:10 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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If evolution is at play, ancestral generic lines with history in skyscraper tribes, would assume to conform in a sense to the collective objectivity on a cellular and behavioural/psychological level.
-------------------- I am that, which is.
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Re: Is race real? [Re: qman]
#21982067 - 07/22/15 09:13 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Skin tone and facial features aren't the only thing different between races. Black people naturally have a lower white cell count then white people and also get sickle cell anemia something white people can't. Black people are genetically predisposed to heart disease more so then white people. Race defiantly exists. The closer your ancestors were to the equator the darker your skin becomes. Different geographical regions have different environments and if isolated long enough people will evolve to adapt to such conditions. It's okay to point out differences between people, no its not always derogatory, it's just a matter of fact.
Saying race doesn't exist is like saying short people and tall people don't exist. If there was wars over talls and shorts I would understand the sensitivity but at the same time it's silly to question if height variation is "real."
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
Edited by Cognitive_Shift (07/22/15 09:19 PM)
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Rhizoid
carbon unit


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Yes, races are real, in the same way as arbitrarily defined shades of grey are real. But race doesn't mean what most people think it means, so biologists prefer to not talk about the subject. For example, having black skin doesn't define a race in any biological sense. And as another example, in my part of the world muslims are viewed as a separate race for political reasons, despite the fact that everyone knows that being a muslim is a religious category, having nothing to do with biological taxonomies.
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spock
journeyman
Registered: 08/26/03
Posts: 1,165
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Quote:
Cognitive_Shift said: Black people naturally have a lower white cell count then white people and also get sickle cell anemia something white people can't. Black people are genetically predisposed to heart disease more so then white people. It's okay to point out differences between people, no its not always derogatory, it's just a matter of fact.
Saying race doesn't exist is like saying short people and tall people don't exist. If there was wars over talls and shorts I would understand the sensitivity but at the same time it's silly to question if height variation is "real."
Your take makes sense. Couple of things I'd point out though. Now I am biracial but very few American blacks are "pure African". My white cell count is never low and if anything sometimes high. The problem with heart disease in the black community, I'd argue, is due to diet. My dad had heart disease, diabetes and other problems directly related to diet. I have never had those problems but I don't eat those typical ,what I'd call, slave foods. Remember, Kunta Kinte was a muslim who went from never eating pig to having to make due with pig scraps. I was also married into a family that ate all of that slave shit. I would tell them that soul food did not have to be slave food. About cycle cell. As you said, living closer to the equator results in darker skin. It also means living around Malaria. I've heard(micro biology class) that malaria may account for the death of 10% of everybody that has ever lived. Cycle cell is a genetic defence against malaria. So yeah, people with darker skin are more likely to have cycle cell but I'm just clarifying that it is because of having lived near equator and not because of the color of skin.
Also, shout out to Cleveland. That is where I grew up but I'm currently living in columbus. I'd kill for some real pizza. Food down here sucks.
Peace Spock
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DieCommie

Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Quote:
White Beard said: Can race be used as a legitimate biological classification?
That is different than being "real". Tell me, what makes a biological classification "legitimate" in general? Maybe "useful" is a more appropriate word. If the question is Can race be used as a useful biological classification?, then I would say yes. I find that people who deny the usefulness of race often just substitute a different phrase for the same concept (like "population group") because they are simply uncomfortable with the word "race" and its associations. (basically, they engage in a form of newspeak because they are consumed with white guilt)
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spock
journeyman
Registered: 08/26/03
Posts: 1,165
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Quote:
DieCommie said: race often just substitute a different phrase for the same concept (like "population group") because they are simply uncomfortable with the word "race" and its associations. (basically, they engage in a form of newspeak because they are consumed with white guilt)
You made sense at first. But. Race implies the difference is because of skin color. It's not.
Peace Spock
Oh, and "newspeak"...lol.
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Re: Is race real? [Re: spock]
#21987136 - 07/23/15 08:24 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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I used to go to school in columbus. I'm down there quite a bit. Now that we live in a global society and people can easily travel there is more and more gene mixing and creating people who aren't really defined as a race. A white person is still a white person and an east asian person is still and east asian person though I would imagine race would become even harder to define in the future assuming people aren't isolated from one another as less and less "pure breds" (for lack of a better term) are born.
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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circastes
Big Questions Small Head



Registered: 01/14/10
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I think because of population explosion there are too many in each population of race to lead to one disappearing. There's more of every race than ever.
It's not exactly good news though. We're going to have to cull that, or else we're ALL going off the deep end. 
This world needs a plan, and less dumb fucks in power.
-------------------- My solitude... My shield... My armour... TESTED WITH FULL FORCE
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clam_dude
stranger in astrange land

Registered: 09/10/03
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Even if it's true that white people have higher IQs in general than Black people, and Asians have a higher IQ than white people, the differences in IQ within any of those groups vary so much that it makes no sense to conclude anything about any particular black person, white, or asian person.
Add to this that IQ is (I would speculate) more a product of nurture than nature. And even if it is genetics, again there is plenty of variation within any one race.
Also, we know that skin color evolved due to exposure to the sun. There is no reason to think that this alone would determine intelligence.
Even if we come to the conclusion that one race is generally more intelligent than another (which I don't accept in the first place), why stop there? Surely we could pinpoint specific blood lines or family trees that have generally higher, or lower IQs.
And then the question arises - what would be the point of this? So for these reasons, it seems pointless - whether true or not - to say that one entire race is more intelligent than another.
But yes, race is real.
-------------------- "I would like to thank god for making me an atheist" - Ricky Gervais
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DieCommie

Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Quote:
And then the question arises - what would be the point of this? So for these reasons, it seems pointless - whether true or not - to say that one entire race is more intelligent than another.
I like this. The notion that one race is smarter than another is only important if you judge a person's value and worth based on their intelligence. That is a ridiculous thing to do. Dumb people and smart people are each still people and each should be entitled to the same basic human rights we decide to grant. Once you no longer devalue somebody based on low intelligence you no longer implicitly devalue a race based on their low intelligence.
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xFrockx


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Race is a judgement based on human conceptualization.
Biologically, we are built from DNA. There is no "race gene" only genes for various traits which some people assemble together and draw (always flawed) racial lines.
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xFrockx


Registered: 09/17/06
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Re: Is race real? [Re: xFrockx]
#21991617 - 07/24/15 06:11 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Also this thread belongs in THE racial discussion thread, where race has been debunked, repeatedly, without valid rebuttal, by yours truly.
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Silversoul
Rhizome


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For purposes of studying population genetics, no. Racial categories as we know them do not map neatly onto genetic variation. We tend, for example to think of white people as one race and black people as another. Yet there is more genetic diversity among those we would label "black" than among all other populations combined (just as the "out of Africa" theory predicts).
Race is, as is often said, a social construct. However, this confuses a lot of people because they think "social construct" equals "make-believe." The category of "race" picks out a loose set of phenotypes, clustered together by broadly defined geographic markers. It is further complicated by prevailing social attitudes. There was a time in American history when Irish people weren't considered white. Same with Italians and Eastern Europeans. They essentially attained whiteness by assimilation into the white mainstream.
Regarding the IQ thing, there has been some very interesting research into the effects of poverty on cognitive development. There is definitely an inherited component to intelligence, but there is good reason to believe this inheritance is not so much genetic as epigenetic.
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White Beard

Registered: 08/13/11
Posts: 6,325
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Quote:
Silversoul said: We tend, for example to think of white people as one race and black people as another. Yet there is more genetic diversity among those we would label "black" than among all other populations combined (just as the "out of Africa" theory predicts).
That's a very course classification. There are many white races. E.g. Slavic, Germanic, Latin, Hellenic, etc. And then these can be subdivided. E.g. Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, etc. are all Slavic. If Africa has more genetic diversity then that means there are just more African races then anywhere else. I've heard that argument multiple times to try and discredit race but I don't see how it matters.
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White Beard

Registered: 08/13/11
Posts: 6,325
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Re: Is race real? [Re: xFrockx]
#22001474 - 07/26/15 07:31 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
xFrockx said: There is no "race gene"
is there a "species gene"?
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extreme


Registered: 04/05/11
Posts: 9,340
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Quote:
White Beard said: Can race be used as a legitimate biological classification? I find it strange that human population groups were geographically separate for 10s of thousands of years and the only thing that supposedly changed was skin, bones, and facial features. Are measured differences in behaviour and IQ explained by genes or by social conditions?
I remember when learning in sociology, about race to be specific, the definition I got specifically stated that there is no real basis in biology. "A group that perceives itself and is perceived by others as having distinct physical traits. Race is culturally based and is a social construction. 'Colors.'" Then ethnicity is the same definition but with cultural traits replacing physical traits. I dunno how I feel about that definition lol, but from a sociological POV that's what it is.
I think the "issue" arises defining race because even though most people can usually fit into a certain race, race still can't have perfect, exact borders between one race and the next. It also serves to pigeonhole and stereotype people, etc.
I'd say the measured differences in behavior and IQ are affected by both genes and social conditions. Think of immigrants. In the USA people come from all over the world, and sure it takes them some time but eventually they can learn to do most of the basic things in order to function in society that everyone else can. They might be a different race than most, but they can have a kid and that kid will likely behave much like other kids their age; in just one generation they've assimilated.
I often do wonder how we would classify different "races" of people in a biological sense. We aren't different species or subspecies now right? Does that mean we can still be different "breeds" as someone else kind of mentioned in this thread?
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