White kid in Texas arrested for "knockout game"

[JohnStOnge]

Humans are 99.9% identical genetically. 85% of the .01% difference between humans occurs WITHIN geographically distinct populations. There's no scientific basis for race.

I've seen that argument many times. But let's say you randomly select 100 people living in the United States categorized as "Black" and select 100 people living in the United States categorized as "White."

Take genetic material from each of them. Give the material to molecular biologists and ask the molecular biologist to categorize each sample according to whether or not that individual is categorized as "Black" or "White."

The molecular biologists will probably be 100 percent correct in their categorizations. And the only reason they might be at something like 99% is that there has been substantial interbreeding.

The idea that there is no scientific basis for "race" is ludicrous. Race is just a term we use to describe something. The reason you hear people say that there is no scientific basis for race is because of egalitarian philosophy. It's not science. And it's not science regardless of how impressive their credentials are.

They'd have something if they could show that molecular biologists can't tell who is classified as "Black" and who is classified as "White" by looking at their genetic material. But they can't show that because molecular biologists can certainly do that in the overwhelming majority of cases. And the only reason I say"overwhelming majority of cases" is to cover something I may not have heard of because I've never heard of a case in which they couldn't do that. And if there are any cases in which they can't it's because of interbreeding.

[Chizzang]

Humans are 99.9% identical genetically. 85% of the .01% difference between humans occurs WITHIN geographically distinct populations. There's no scientific basis for race.

I've seen that argument many times. But let's say you randomly select 100 people living in the United States categorized as "Black" and select 100 people living in the United States categorized as "White."

Take genetic material from each of them. Give the material to molecular biologists and ask the molecular biologist to categorize each sample according to whether or not that individual is categorized as "Black" or "White."

The molecular biologists will probably be 100 percent correct in their categorizations. And the only reason they might be at something like 99% is that there has been substantial interbreeding.

The idea that there is no scientific basis for "race" is ludicrous. Race is just a term we use to describe something. The reason you hear people say that there is no scientific basis for race is because of egalitarian philosophy. It's not science. And it's not science regardless of how impressive their credentials are.

They'd have something if they could show that molecular biologists can't tell who is classified as "Black" and who is classified as "White" by looking at their genetic material. But they can't show that because molecular biologists can certainly do that in the overwhelming majority of cases. And the only reason I say"overwhelming majority of cases" is to cover something I may not have heard of because I've never heard of a case in which they couldn't do that. And if there are any cases in which they can't it's because of interbreeding.

This is ^ accurate...
DNA is a set of complex instructions / that's all

Using the DNA argument / these two cars (below) are 99% identical

[JohnStOnge]

BTW, do you know what they're saying when they say 85% of the variation is within groups? They're saying that 15% of the variation is between groups. There is some variation based on groups. To support the "no scientific basis for race" argument, one would have to show that variation is entirely accounted for by variation between individuals and that none of the variation was due to differences between what we call racial groups. 15% is a pretty substantial component of the variation.

If I were to look at variation in American adults and determine how much I could reduce it through taking the difference between men and women into account, do you know what would happen? Most of the variation would remain. I would not account for the majority of the variation by taking sex into account.

So does that mean that there is no scientific basis for saying that there is a genetic basis for women being shorter on average than men?

Of course it wouldn't.

[YoUDeeMan]

Wait...some people are actually having a conversation about biological differences.

And look, the rational people are not calling each other bigots.

Amazing how that works.

Life would be boring if we were all the same.

[Chizzang]

Wait...some people are actually having a conversation about biological differences.

And look, the rational people are not calling each other bigots.

Amazing how that works.

Life would be boring if we were all the same.

You (Mr. Smart ass) are the biggest name caller on this forum

[Grizalltheway]

I've seen that argument many times. But let's say you randomly select 100 people living in the United States categorized as "Black" and select 100 people living in the United States categorized as "White."

Take genetic material from each of them. Give the material to molecular biologists and ask the molecular biologist to categorize each sample according to whether or not that individual is categorized as "Black" or "White."

The molecular biologists will probably be 100 percent correct in their categorizations. And the only reason they might be at something like 99% is that there has been substantial interbreeding.

The idea that there is no scientific basis for "race" is ludicrous. Race is just a term we use to describe something. The reason you hear people say that there is no scientific basis for race is because of egalitarian philosophy. It's not science. And it's not science regardless of how impressive their credentials are.

They'd have something if they could show that molecular biologists can't tell who is classified as "Black" and who is classified as "White" by looking at their genetic material. But they can't show that because molecular biologists can certainly do that in the overwhelming majority of cases. And the only reason I say"overwhelming majority of cases" is to cover something I may not have heard of because I've never heard of a case in which they couldn't do that. And if there are any cases in which they can't it's because of interbreeding.

This is ^ accurate...
DNA is a set of complex instructions / that's all

Using the DNA argument / these two cars (below) are 99% identical

A four door Posrche? What in the actual fuck?

[CID1990]

This is ^ accurate...
DNA is a set of complex instructions / that's all

Using the DNA argument / these two cars (below) are 99% identical

A four door Posrche? What in the actual ****?

One of the nouveau riche Vietnamese dudes in the Harley group in Saigon has one of those. Nice car.

[YoUDeeMan]

Wait...some people are actually having a conversation about biological differences.

And look, the rational people are not calling each other bigots.

Amazing how that works.

Life would be boring if we were all the same.

You (Mr. Smart ass) are the biggest name caller on this forum

Nonsense...I'm not even in the top 20. You're just focusing on me because, deep down, you realize that Seattle will self-destruct and fall into the sea and the left leaning, granola eating hippies will be eaten by Orcas.

Besides, all of the names I use (and even then only after repeated attempts at rational conversations) to so accurately describe some of the folks on this board have been carefully vetted and approved by the voices in my head, so I have the moral backing of something equivalent to a papal decree or a fatwa.

[Chizzang]

You (Mr. Smart ass) are the biggest name caller on this forum

Nonsense...I'm not even in the top 20. You're just focusing on me because, deep down, you realize that Seattle will self-destruct and fall into the sea and the left leaning, granola eating hippies will be eaten by Orcas.

Besides, all of the names I use (and even then only after repeated attempts at rational conversations) to so accurately describe some of the folks on this board have been carefully vetted and approved by the voices in my head, so I have the moral backing of something equivalent to a papal decree or a fatwa.

YOU ^ are pretty damn entertaining - I'll give you that

[Skjellyfetti]

Why is everyone jumping on the 99.9% genetic similarity I mentioned? That wasn't the important point......

It was that the 85% of the .01% difference occurs WITHIN geographically distinct populations.

Since obviously noone bothered to read the articles I linked... I'll try to pick out the juicy morsels for you. Still doubt anyone reads it... but, what the heck?

Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin showed that human populations, then held to be races, were far more genetically diverse than anyone had imagined. Lewontin’s study was based on molecular-genetic techniques and provided statistical analysis of 17 polymorphic sites, including the major blood groups in the races as they were conventionally defined: Caucasian, African, Mongoloid, South Asian Aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians and Australian Aborigines. What he found was unambiguous—and the inverse of what one would expect if such races had any biological reality: The great majority of genetic variation (85.4 percent) was within so-called races, not between them. Differences between local populations accounted for 8.5 percent of total variation; differences between regions accounted for 6.3 percent. The genetic divergence between geographical populations in the course of human evolution does not compare to the variation among individuals. “Since such racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance either, no justification can be offered for its continuance,” Lewontin concluded.

In 2000, at a White House event celebrating their completion of the first draft of the human genome, Craig Venter of the Institute of Genetic Research and Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health declared that the concept of race had no genetic basis. Genetics offered no support for those wishing to place precise racial boundaries around groups. Despite rebuttals and objections, no matter how one cuts it, the data have come out much the same: Between 5 and 7 percent of human genetic diversity is between subgroups within the classically defined races; 6 to 10 percent of the total human variation is between those groups that we think of as races in an everyday sense based on skin color. The remainder of the variation occurs at the individual level and cannot be categorized by group or subgroup.

[Pwns]

Over a million SNPs in the human genome, and you are talking about 17 markers?

Again, if there is no genetic basis for race then how can it be discerned in DNA tests? Your information seems very dated.

[Skjellyfetti]

Over a million SNPs in the human genome, and you are talking about 17 markers?

Again, if there is no genetic basis for race then how can it be discerned in DNA tests? Your information seems very dated.

It can't be discerned through DNA tests. It can be estimated. Same with bones.

[Skjellyfetti]

If race is biological and discernible in DNA tests -- how many races of humans are there?

[JohnStOnge]

If race is biological and discernible in DNA tests -- how many races of humans are there?

That can vary based on opinion. What I've written before is that there IS blurring of the lines and there has been substantial interbreeding. But I think that if you could go back something like 5,000 years and compare the people of a community in what is now Norway to the people of a community in what is now Nigeria you could say you're looking at two different subspecies with respect to each other. They would have been geographically isolated from each other and they would have been characterized by very obvious morphological differences that made it very easy to place them all into each of their two distinct groups.

I wonder if they may even have met the proposed definition of "subspecies" based on comparing within group variation to between group variation. I also wonder if anyone has used that kind of genetic assessment on some community of people that has been isolated for a long time. Maybe something like compare people from a village in Africa populated entirely by "negroids" to people in one of those South American "native american" villages that's been kind of protected and isolated all along.

[JohnStOnge]

I kind of tried to look into the rationale behind the "no scientific basis for race" thing. First of all it looks there is the premise that "race" is the same thing as "subspecies." Then the idea is to use a proposed definition of "subspecies" based on within group vs. between groups variation to say that there are no distinct subspecies among humans.

I don't accept the premise that "race" and "subspecies" are the same thing.

Here is one treatment of the subject from NIH:

http://science.education.nih.gov/supple ... ation1.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In there you'll see the statement:

The amount of genetic variation between these traditional classifications actually falls below the level that taxonomists use to designate subspecies, the taxonomic category for other species that corresponds to the designation of race in Homo sapiens. This finding has caused some biologists to call the validity of race as a biological construct into serious question.

Note that it says "some biologists." Another thing is that, as I think you'll find if you Google around looking for what the definition of a subspecies is, I don't think it's correct to say that there is some fixed rule on defining subspecies based on genetic variation. In fact I think you'll find that the definition of subspecies is still pretty much "reproductively isolated and morphologically distinct." That's basically it.

Here is a discussion that does that clever thing of first equating "race" to "subspecies" then going on from there:

http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetic ... KMR4Q6.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What I like about that one is that it first says that race is a social construct then goes on to talk about the idea that it's still OK to look at them as different groups with a biological basis for dividing them for purposes of medical research and such.

Reminds me of an article I read once about how there are biological reasons for the dominance of people of West African ancestry in sprinting. The authors made this big point of saying race is a social construct yet nevertheless spent most of their time talking about the biological differences between groups of certain ancestries that contributed to the dominance of one group in sprinting events. So it's OK if you say "People of X ancestry" and look at that as a group with certain population traits that make it different from other groups but it's not OK to say "Race" because that is a social construct.

[CID1990]

Over a million SNPs in the human genome, and you are talking about 17 markers?

Again, if there is no genetic basis for race then how can it be discerned in DNA tests? Your information seems very dated.

It can't be discerned through DNA tests. It can be estimated. Same with bones.

That is because the science is ongoing (and slowly where race is concerned because it is a third rail).

Get that, SK? The science is ongoing. Sort of like whether or not climate change is significantly anthropogenic, but that doesn't stop people like you from calling it gospel.

And in terms of racial or ethnic makeup, it most certainly can tell you what the race of the subject is, based on regional origin. What you don't see published very often is any discovery about human genetic behavior based on haplogroups. Why? That's the third rail again, because whining liberals like you start bringing up things like Hitler and eugenics and racism. That's why the only acceptable scientific discovery involves those that refute race as a biological construct. There's no grant money for anything else.

But by all means, keep asking questions without refuting anything that has been said here.

Edit: None of the articles you linked said that genetics have no bearing on behavior (given that there ARE racial charateristics based on genetics- or how do we explain the epicanthal fold? Asians get their faces pinched in the womb?), nor do they unequivocally say that racial characteristics are not genetically based. They simply show that there is more genetic diversity within racial groups than without. This has nothing to do with COMMONLY SHARED MARKERS among racial groups. Markers which affect growth, life cycle/expectancy, and reactivity to environmental factors. If you can't see the tippy-toeing going on in those links then there's no help for you getting your head out of the sand.

[Chizzang]

That is because the science is ongoing (and slowly where race is concerned because it is a third rail).

Get that, SK? The science is ongoing. Sort of like whether or not climate change is significantly anthropogenic, but that doesn't stop people like you from calling it gospel.

And in terms of racial or ethnic makeup, it most certainly can tell you what the race of the subject is, based on regional origin. What you don't see published very often is any discovery about human genetic behavior based on haplogroups. Why? That's the third rail again, because whining liberals like you start bringing up things like Hitler and eugenics and racism. That's why the only acceptable scientific discovery involves those that refute race as a biological construct. There's no grant money for anything else.

Funny story:
The grant money thing is always a good way of determining societal taboos
So a guy who was once a very close friend of mine (he's now dead - very sad) did a research paper on the exact research you could not get funded for... that's right
His study was a study of what you could NOT get grant funds on

and in so doing he clearly outlined our societal taboos
and along the way he discovered a few Expandos Technology research buy-outs (but that's another story)

Anyway:
Suffice to know - you're on the right track

[YoUDeeMan]

Why is everyone jumping on the 99.9% genetic similarity I mentioned? That wasn't the important point......

It was that the 85% of the .01% difference occurs WITHIN geographically distinct populations.

skelly...you really aren't helping yourself. In addition to what several other posters have said...your own information says that there are differences between racial types. Can you say definitively that those already identified differences are not impacting behavior?

Let's consider the differences between the European honeybee and the Africanized bees. Although the Aficanized bees are slightly smaller than the European honeybees, the two are virtually identical on the outside and very difficult to distinguish from each other. The two groups have a lot of similarities, but recently, tests have found 12 differences, so far, between their DNA. Of course, they have also found, so far, 6 different differences between different sets of California based European honeybees. Just because there are differences between the sets of European honeybees doesn't mean you can ignore the differences between the African bees and the European bees.

Something in the genetics has to explain the differences in behavior of the bees...it isn't just "cultural" because you can take an Africanized drone and mate it with the European queen and her offspring will, even in a colony of docile European bees, quickly replace the European workers while still retaining the aggressive behavior (a behavior not learned from the European workers).

As humans, we all tend to be social animals, and we tend to look for our similarities. However, looking at differences is not a bad thing either (I'd never want to marry myself). Why not celebrate our differences?

[CID1990]

The sooner we stop poo-pooing research on genetic racial differences, the sooner Pfizer can make us a pill so we'll all be hung like giraffes.

SK even you can get on board with that.

[CID1990]

If race is biological and discernible in DNA tests -- how many races of humans are there?

There are 20 major haplogroups (patrilineal through the Y chromosome).

Each haplogroup can have as many as 10 or so subclades which represent a one marker mutation from the parent haplogroup.

So genetically speaking, there can be about 120 different races of people, but these can be drilled down to 20 in the major groups, and the majority of these would be easily recognizable as distinct to the layman, although a few of them would be combined... for instance, Native Americans are of two very distinct haplogroups, but one would be hard pressed to recognize the difference between the two based on physical attributes.

Note: The matrilineal haplogroups (that begin with mitochondrial Eve about 50K years ago), based on mitochondrial DNA, fall directly into the same group history patterns. However, since over history people tended to reproduce within their own racial group (because it wasnt easy to travel from Africa to Europe to find a wife in 21,000 BCE), most of the subclades retained the primary characteristics of the main haplogroup. So even though my patrilineal ancestors originated in Saxony and my matrilineal ones began with their common mutation in Scotland, I am still a part of the I haplogroup even though my Mt DNA is of one subclade and my yDNA ancestry is of another.

However, you can look at my DNA and you can see that my patrilineal haplogroup is I, and my subclade is M223 I2b1*. You can look at this with my mtDNA result and you can immediately know one thing about me:

I am a white dude.

And there's something else-

You not only can tell the race of a person by their DNA, but you can also tell the race of each of their parents. If my mother was of African descent, my mtDNA would be of one of the "A" haplogroups (this does not mean African, it means that A was the first haplogroup, which happened to originate in Africa), and my patrilineal haplogroups would still be I.

Any questions?

[CID1990]

That is because the science is ongoing (and slowly where race is concerned because it is a third rail).

Get that, SK? The science is ongoing. Sort of like whether or not climate change is significantly anthropogenic, but that doesn't stop people like you from calling it gospel.

And in terms of racial or ethnic makeup, it most certainly can tell you what the race of the subject is, based on regional origin. What you don't see published very often is any discovery about human genetic behavior based on haplogroups. Why? That's the third rail again, because whining liberals like you start bringing up things like Hitler and eugenics and racism. That's why the only acceptable scientific discovery involves those that refute race as a biological construct. There's no grant money for anything else.

Funny story:
The grant money thing is always a good way of determining societal taboos
So a guy who was once a very close friend of mine (he's now dead - very sad) did a research paper on the exact research you could not get funded for... that's right
His study was a study of what you could NOT get grant funds on

and in so doing he clearly outlined our societal taboos
and along the way he discovered a few Expandos Technology research buy-outs (but that's another story)

Anyway:
Suffice to know - you're on the right track

This is precisely why I am a anthropogenic climate change agnostic.

I'm probably as environmentally conscious as the greenest Green, but I think the scientific process has WAY too many thumbs on the scale. It's sad, too- because we have the ability to do much better

200 years from now (provided we are not all drowned or living in Saskatchewan and Siberia) people might well look back on today as a miniature Dark Ages in terms of how science was skewed (one way or the other) based on popular opinion and moneyed interests.

Right now, the only real hard science that is uncorrupted by politics is physics and medicine... in other words, building better weapons and trying to live forever.

[Skjellyfetti]

Goddamnit. I need to stop getting in arguments here. I make a post and then have more comments than I could ever really respond to.

the dominance of people of West African ancestry in sprinting.

Yeah. And East Africans dominate marathons.

Are they two separate races? And separate from North Africans, US Africans, European Africans, Latin American Africans, etc?

In Haiti... someone who is light skinned from one black-skinned parent and one white-skinned parent is considered "white." In the US, the same person would be considered "black." Using science... who is right?

The highest genetic diversity in all of the human population is found in Sub-saharan Africa. As a "race"... these people are simply labled "black", "African", etc.

There is likely to be more genetic difference between two random black guys in Sub-saharan Africa than there is between one of them and a white European guy.

My point in this thread is that we divide races based on superficial and irrelevant traits (in this case, skin color -- a marker only of where a population lives relative to the equator).

That is because the science is ongoing (and slowly where race is concerned because it is a third rail).

Get that, SK? The science is ongoing. Sort of like whether or not climate change is significantly anthropogenic, but that doesn't stop people like you from calling it gospel.

The sooner we stop poo-pooing research on genetic racial differences, the sooner Pfizer can make us a pill so we'll all be hung like giraffes.

SK even you can get on board with that.

The science is ongoing... but, there aren't many scientists going in the direction of looking for racial lines in the genetic code.

And, it's not like research on genetic racial differences has always been poo pooed. It was all the rage in the first half of the 20th century

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_race_concepts" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There are 20 major haplogroups (patrilineal through the Y chromosome).

Each haplogroup can have as many as 10 or so subclades which represent a one marker mutation from the parent haplogroup.

So genetically speaking, there can be about 120 different races of people, but these can be drilled down to 20 in the major groups, and the majority of these would be easily recognizable as distinct to the layman, although a few of them would be combined... for instance, Native Americans are of two very distinct haplogroups, but one would be hard pressed to recognize the difference between the two based on physical attributes.

Note: The matrilineal haplogroups (that begin with mitochondrial Eve about 50K years ago), based on mitochondrial DNA, fall directly into the same group history patterns. However, since over history people tended to reproduce within their own racial group (because it wasnt easy to travel from Africa to Europe to find a wife in 21,000 BCE), most of the subclades retained the primary characteristics of the main haplogroup. So even though my patrilineal ancestors originated in Saxony and my matrilineal ones began with their common mutation in Scotland, I am still a part of the I haplogroup even though my Mt DNA is of one subclade and my yDNA ancestry is of another.

However, you can look at my DNA and you can see that my patrilineal haplogroup is I, and my subclade is M223 I2b1*. You can look at this with my mtDNA result and you can immediately know one thing about me:

I am a white dude.

And there's something else-

You not only can tell the race of a person by their DNA, but you can also tell the race of each of their parents. If my mother was of African descent, my mtDNA would be of one of the "A" haplogroups (this does not mean African, it means that A was the first haplogroup, which happened to originate in Africa), and my patrilineal haplogroups would still be I.

Any questions?

I agree with most of this..... with one caveat.

Haplogroups do not represent races. You have a patrilineal haplogroup of I. But, so do many Middle Easterners and North Africans. Are y'all the same race?

The haplogroups map human migrations and they do NOT reflect any general characteristics we associate with race -- you can have deep black skin and be an I.

Edit: None of the articles you linked said that genetics have no bearing on behavior (given that there ARE racial charateristics based on genetics- or how do we explain the epicanthal fold? Asians get their faces pinched in the womb?), nor do they unequivocally say that racial characteristics are not genetically based. They simply show that there is more genetic diversity within racial groups than without. This has nothing to do with COMMONLY SHARED MARKERS among racial groups. Markers which affect growth, life cycle/expectancy, and reactivity to environmental factors. If you can't see the tippy-toeing going on in those links then there's no help for you getting your head out of the sand.

Of course genetics has an effect on behavior. I'm not saying that it doesn't. I'm saying that you can't draw conclusions on behavior based on someone's membership in 6, 7, 8, or however many "races" there are. There is much, much, much more variety than the groups we differentiate as separate "races"

I'm not saying there is no difference between different people.

I'm saying the way we divide people into "races" (primarily based on skin color) is superficial and has no basis in hard science.

The traits that are expressed and are noticeable visually are very, very, very few compared to other traits -- like lactose intolerance, facial hair, early balding, risk of prostate cancer, etc. etc.

There is a TON of genetic variation -- and, we divide "races" based on traits that are most apparent at first glance. This is a division based on cultural mores and has no basis in science.

There is no link between darker skin, melanin and violence. And, with all the back-and-forth... I haven't seen anyone post anything that substantiates this link.

This has nothing to do with COMMONLY SHARED MARKERS among racial groups. Markers which affect growth, life cycle/expectancy, and reactivity to environmental factors. If you can't see the tippy-toeing going on in those links then there's no help for you getting your head out of the sand.

But, what are the COMMONLY SHARED MARKERS and which racial groups are you referring to?

For every COMMONLY SHARED MARKER there will be overlaps -- like your "pinched face" example.

Indians (feather) are considered a separate race from most east Asians. They share MANY of the shared markers -- physical traits like shovel shaped incisors and "pinched faces" and genetic markers.

Aboriginal australians share many "commonly shared markers" with Africans... but, are a different race.

I'm not saying there aren't COMMONLY SHARED MARKERS -- I'm saying the way we classify groups of humans into "races" is based on surface differences -- skin color, whether hair is strait or curly, whether brow ridge is prominent, etc. Visual markers are a TINY, TINY, TINY fraction of the genetic diversity.

Therefore, racial classifications based on traits visually recognizable account for a fraction of the genetic variation and are cultural and have no scientific value whatsoever.






Basically, there are differences in humans. I've never said that we're all the same, though everyone seems to think I've been arguing that.

I'm saying the divisions we have of "race" are not based on science but are culturally derived. We differentiate an Asian from Siberia as a separate race from a Native American from across the Bering Strait in Alaska. That is totally culturally derived. No one could look at their DNA and tell that they one is from Siberia and one is from Alaska. No one could look at their face or their skeletal structure and tell their "race" apart. The only way to differentiate the "race" of the two would be to know where they both lived and then we place our socially constructed definitions of race on them.


If someone wants to list all the "races" of humanity and all the "commonly shared markers" distinct to each race... I'd be happy to take a look and see if it is sufficient. I really doubt this is possible, though.

[CID1990]

Goddamnit. I need to stop getting in arguments here. I make a post and then have a **** of comments to respond to. It's exhausting.

the dominance of people of West African ancestry in sprinting.

Yeah. And East Africans dominate marathons.

Are they two separate races? And separate from North Africans, US Africans, European Africans, Latin American Africans, etc?

The highest genetic diversity in all of the human population is found in Sub-saharan Africa. As a "race"... these people are simply labled "black", "African", etc.

There is likely to be more genetic difference between two random black guys in Sub-saharan Africa than there is between one of them and a white European guy.

My point in this thread is that we divide races based on superficial and irrelevant traits (in this case, skin color -- a marker only of where a population lives relative to the equator).

That is because the science is ongoing (and slowly where race is concerned because it is a third rail).

Get that, SK? The science is ongoing. Sort of like whether or not climate change is significantly anthropogenic, but that doesn't stop people like you from calling it gospel.

The sooner we stop poo-pooing research on genetic racial differences, the sooner Pfizer can make us a pill so we'll all be hung like giraffes.

SK even you can get on board with that.

The science is ongoing... but, there aren't many scientists going in the direction of looking for racial lines in the genetic code.

And, it's not like research on genetic racial differences has always been poo pooed.

Sounds like you're a fan of early 20th century science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_race_concepts" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There are 20 major haplogroups (patrilineal through the Y chromosome).

Each haplogroup can have as many as 10 or so subclades which represent a one marker mutation from the parent haplogroup.

So genetically speaking, there can be about 120 different races of people, but these can be drilled down to 20 in the major groups, and the majority of these would be easily recognizable as distinct to the layman, although a few of them would be combined... for instance, Native Americans are of two very distinct haplogroups, but one would be hard pressed to recognize the difference between the two based on physical attributes.

Note: The matrilineal haplogroups (that begin with mitochondrial Eve about 50K years ago), based on mitochondrial DNA, fall directly into the same group history patterns. However, since over history people tended to reproduce within their own racial group (because it wasnt easy to travel from Africa to Europe to find a wife in 21,000 BCE), most of the subclades retained the primary characteristics of the main haplogroup. So even though my patrilineal ancestors originated in Saxony and my matrilineal ones began with their common mutation in Scotland, I am still a part of the I haplogroup even though my Mt DNA is of one subclade and my yDNA ancestry is of another.

However, you can look at my DNA and you can see that my patrilineal haplogroup is I, and my subclade is M223 I2b1*. You can look at this with my mtDNA result and you can immediately know one thing about me:

I am a white dude.

And there's something else-

You not only can tell the race of a person by their DNA, but you can also tell the race of each of their parents. If my mother was of African descent, my mtDNA would be of one of the "A" haplogroups (this does not mean African, it means that A was the first haplogroup, which happened to originate in Africa), and my patrilineal haplogroups would still be I.

Any questions?

I agree with most of this..... with one caveat.

Haplogroups do not represent races. You have a patrilineal haplogroup of I. But, so do many Middle Easterners and North Africans. Are y'all the same race?

The haplogroups map human migrations and they do NOT reflect any general characteristics we associate with race -- you can have deep black skin and be an I.

Edit: None of the articles you linked said that genetics have no bearing on behavior (given that there ARE racial charateristics based on genetics- or how do we explain the epicanthal fold? Asians get their faces pinched in the womb?), nor do they unequivocally say that racial characteristics are not genetically based. They simply show that there is more genetic diversity within racial groups than without. This has nothing to do with COMMONLY SHARED MARKERS among racial groups. Markers which affect growth, life cycle/expectancy, and reactivity to environmental factors. If you can't see the tippy-toeing going on in those links then there's no help for you getting your head out of the sand.

Of course genetics has an effect on behavior. I'm not saying that it doesn't. I'm saying that you can't draw conclusions on behavior based on someone's membership in 6, 7, 8, or however many "races" there are. There is much, much, much more variety than the groups we differentiate as separate "races"

I'm not saying there is no difference between different people.

I'm saying the way we divide people into "races" (primarily based on skin color) is superficial and has no basis in hard science.

The traits that are expressed and are noticeable visually are very, very, very few compared to other traits -- like lactose intolerance, facial hair, early balding, risk of prostate cancer, etc. etc.

There is a TON of genetic variation -- and, we divide "races" based on traits that are most apparent at first glance. This is a division based on cultural mores and has no basis in science.

There is no link between darker skin, melanin and violence. And, with all the back-and-forth... I haven't seen anyone post anything that substantiates this link.

This has nothing to do with COMMONLY SHARED MARKERS among racial groups. Markers which affect growth, life cycle/expectancy, and reactivity to environmental factors. If you can't see the tippy-toeing going on in those links then there's no help for you getting your head out of the sand.

But, what are the COMMONLY SHARED MARKERS and which racial groups are you referring to?

For every COMMONLY SHARED MARKER there will be overlaps -- like your "pinched face" example.

Indians (feather) are considered a separate race from most east Asians. They share MANY of the shared markers -- physical traits like shovel shaped incisors and "pinched faces" and genetic markers.

Aboriginal australians share many "commonly shared markers" with Africans... but, are a different race.

I'm not saying there aren't COMMONLY SHARED MARKERS -- I'm saying the way we classify groups of humans into "races" is based on surface differences -- skin color, whether hair is strait or curly, whether brow ridge is prominent, etc. Visual markers are a TINY, TINY, TINY fraction of the genetic diversity.

Therefore, racial classifications based on traits visually recognizable account for a fraction of the genetic variation and are cultural and have no scientific value whatsoever.






Basically, there are differences in humans. I've never said that we're all the same, though everyone seems to think I've been arguing that.

I'm saying the divisions we have of "race" are not based on science but are culturally derived. We differentiate an Asian from Siberia as a separate race from a Native American from across the Bering Strait in Alaska. That is totally culturally derived. No one could look at their DNA and tell that they one is from Siberia and one is from Alaska. No one could look at their face or their skeletal structure and tell their "race" apart. The only way to differentiate the "race" of the two would be to know where they both lived and then we place our socially constructed definitions of race on them.


If someone wants to list all the "races" of humanity and all the "commonly shared markers" distinct to each race... I'd be happy to take a look and see if it is sufficient. I really doubt this is possible, though.

You obviously skipped the parts that were inconvenient to you, played a little semantics, did some "you say potayto I say potahto", did some backpedaling, and even gave us a little good ol Baptist science denial. And some of what I wrote just skipped right over your head.

I'll just leave you to believe in whatever it is you believe in.

[Chizzang]

You obviously skipped the parts that were inconvenient to you, played a little semantics, did some "you say potayto I say potahto", did some backpedaling, and even gave us a little good ol Baptist science denial. And some of what I wrote just skipped right over your head.

I'll just leave you to believe in whatever it is you believe in.

Now YOU know how I feel
when I discuss why I think it's so important to talk to fundamentalists about Evolution...
and the Scientific Method
(how do you like it?)

Because they (Fundamentalists) don't even seem to grasp that the concept of GOD can be discussed - and one could even believe in a higher power - and still accept the very observable Evolution

You're welcome


Now continue

[CID1990]

You obviously skipped the parts that were inconvenient to you, played a little semantics, did some "you say potayto I say potahto", did some backpedaling, and even gave us a little good ol Baptist science denial. And some of what I wrote just skipped right over your head.

I'll just leave you to believe in whatever it is you believe in.

Now YOU know how I feel
when I discuss why I think it's so important to talk to fundamentalists about Evolution...
and the Scientific Method
(how do you like it?)

Because they (Fundamentalists) don't even seem to grasp that the concept of GOD can be discussed - and one could even believe in a higher power - and still accept the very observable Evolution

You're welcome


Now continue

Egalitarianism at all costs acts a lot like fundamentalist religion.

I suppose we all have our own