Race only skin deep - S.J. STUDENTS DISCOVER GENETIC LINK

The first set of settlers probably found the 100F with humidity on the Cape a bit annoying. Speed that up as few.... my ex who is Afrikaner said he would never think of living in another state other than California or Hawaii (he's lived in both). My mother who is from the West Indies came up here in the 1960s when it REALLY used to snow in New York and had no idea about how cold it relly gets. Eventually she got used it but it took her at least thirty years. Granted today one can adapt faster to different climes because of advanced technology I guess.

The concept of race is purely man-made. From a biological point of view, there is no more difference between a white person and an asian person than there is between a white house cat and a black house cat.

The differences in bone structure among members of the same "race" are just as great as the differences in bone structure between races. Now, if one race had extra bones, you might have an argument....

Quite correct. Take two collies -- one white and black and the other tan. That's about the difference between human 'races'. It's a very hard to define term (more later). There is more difference between a collie and a St. BErnard than between different human 'races'.

First, a little biology lesson:

Biological Classification and the Linnaean System

Linnaeus defined the biological classification system that we still use for plants and animals, and, with relatively minor modifications, for fungi and microorganisms. It is a hierarchical system that starts with a few categories at the highest level, and further subdivides them at each lower level. The levels in the hierarchy were given names that are already familiar to you ²:

Domain
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species

Now, Humans belong to the Genus Homo.

We belong to the species Homo Sapiens:

Homo sapiens

Homo sapiens, meaning wise man was the next movement towards modern man. They existed as early as the Quaternary period (around 1.6 million years ago) and their brains showed increased growth from previous species, and exhibited more intelligence from human records.

The tools being used were becoming more sophisticated, as were the learning and habituation over generations that allowed man to easily adapt to its surroundings. The species as a whole was occupying a diverse range of continents, therefore greatly diversifying our gene pool over a long period of time.

Archaeological finds have also suggested the first use of wooden tools, like spears, through various finds across the Asian, European and African continents.

Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is a subspecies of Homo sapiens well known for its hypothesised common ancestry with man. They arrived on the scene around a quarter of a million years ago, and continued to evolve to around 30 000 BC. Due to the more recent nature of this subspecies, more information has been found out about them, although it is debatable whether Neanderthal man and our own species are one of the same or unique.

The Neanderthals were widespread across both Europe and Asia during this time. From around the time that the Neanderthals were beginning to disappear, the new modern man was offering the newest competitive advantages and ability to adapt and learn. This species is our own, Homo sapiens sapiens.

Homo sapiens sapiens

From 30 000 years ago up until this present day, our own species has exhibited the most advantageous characteristics to adapt and manipulate our environment. The skills accumulated over many generations of our species and continued favouring of advantageous characteristics via natural selection inevitably meant that our species would evolve beyond all recognition in comparison to the other species of the planet.

From this point, the species and its component skills managed to colonise all the main continents of today’s world, bar Antarctica, which still presented conditions unbearable to the species and the technology of the time.

However, more complex tools were being developed, and that has continued over the period of time where we have successfully monitored historical events in our human race.

At this point, human history in the abstract manner truly begins.

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So, there you have it -- we're all members of the same sub-species homo homo sapiens sapiens or Modern Man.

There's no point in racial definitions as they are astonishingly out of wack when it comes to individuals -- I'll go back to what I said earlier about Causians.

You say a white race. Well, there's no such thing as a white race. There are the Caucasian, Mongoloid and Afroid races or if you go to other extreme and the dictionary definition:

Race:

1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics. 2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race. 3. A genealogical line; a lineage. 4. Humans considered as a group. 5. Biology a. An interbreeding, usually geographically isolated population of organisms differing from other populations of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits. A race that has been given formal taxonomic recognition is known as a subspecies. b. A breed or strain, as of domestic animals. 6. A distinguishing or characteristic quality, such as the flavor of a wine.

Hmm.. well human 'races' are not subspecies so definition 5 is out.

Definition 2 calls Germans a separate race. So, Germans, Italians, English, Irish etc. are members of different races?

If you stick to Caucasian. Caucasians are the most multicolored race around -- we've got pale skins and brown skins. But the Mongoloid races have white skins too as well as yellowish and brown. And The Negroids have brown and black and paler members too.

What about Albinos? Are they are separate race altogether?

Ever get the feeling that liberals aren't the only one want racial issues/political concept to disappear? I sure do, esp. after reading this thread.

Blacks were discriminated against in the 50s and 60s and into the 70s. Do you agree with that or not?

Yes, I already have. In my question I said we replaced laws that discriminate with more laws that discriminate. I think it's pretty clear I agree that we had discrimination against blacks.

So, if you DO disbar a person because they're black, isn't that wrong?

Yes, that's wrong. I've already said I don't don't want the government making laws regarding race. I think the problem here is that some people don't make the distinction between government actions and the actions of free people. The Constitution prohibits government from doing things that citizens are free to do.

Biology a. An interbreeding, usually geographically isolated population of organisms differing from other populations of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits. A race that has been given formal taxonomic recognition is known as a subspecies

So the difference between a race and a subspecies is strictly a formality, I'll buy that.

Definition 2 calls Germans a separate race. So, Germans, Italians, English, Irish etc. are members of different races?

Well, why not? I think humans who live in different places, have a different frequency of hereditary traits and tend to interbreed could be considered a subspecies. We know the Pennsylvania Germans tend to have their own set of hereditary traits, they interbreed (resulting in their own unique set of hereditary diseases) and live in geographically defined areas. I say they are a subspecies.

The fact that there are subspecies of humans should be obvious. But I would leave it to obsessive-compulsive biologists to actually give them formal taxonomic recognition -- not to judges, lawyers, politicians and other racial bean-counters.

If you stick to Caucasian. Caucasians are the most multicolored race around -- we've got pale skins and brown skins.

Yeah, I think Caucasians should be called the "people of color" because they have such variation in eye color, hair color and skin color.

What about Albinos? Are they are separate race altogether?

Only where they interbreed as a group and are geographically isolated.

nearly 20% of Africa is CAUCASIAN in population and in the case of North Africa have been so for thousands of years

I'm sorry, I should have made it clear that I was talking about sub-Saharan Africa.

Let's have a school where only people 5'8" and above are allowed. Dwarves are not allowed ...how can you discriminate against a person based on somethign they cannot change?

We do it all the time for very good reasons and sometimes for bad reasons. The US Air Force discriminates against pilot applicants on the basis of height (they have to fit in the cockpit). The army doesn't allow women into combat units on the front lines. Schools require certain mental standards of applicants (you can't change your IQ -- no you can't, not for long). Strip clubs only hire beautiful women as dancers and large intimidating men as bouncers. There are a lot of jobs that require good vision. (Do they have to change the job to accommodate the blind?) Men are not allowed to supervise living quarters of Girl Scout camps.

But answer this question, Cronos: If you wish to make racial discrimination in the private sector a crime, how do you enforce it? Racial quotas? Forbidding IQ tests? How do prove that a person is discriminating by race? I don't think there is any good way to do that in a free society. And I don't want the courts deciding whether or not a person's decision to discriminate is valid or not. I don't want the courts telling us we have to have homosexuals bunking with boy scouts.

The price of freedom is failure. If a businessman discriminates for bad reasons the market will punish him and he will fail.

yeah, the country of SOUTH Africa which is NOT part of the Tropics. What about Kenya or the Congo or Cameroon? CAn whites survive well there? Not really, not for the first 10 odd generations.

In recent years, whites are not doing a very good job of surviving in southern Africa either, and it has nothing to do with the climate or indigenous diseases. They are not suddenly realizing that, after umpteen generations, they don't like the climate. We have the technology now to live comfortably pretty much wherever we want but ironically the numbers of whites down there are declining.

Nor are whites exiting that continent because all of the resources they were stealing have been depleted -- Africa is still mineral-rich.

They are leaving now because (how can I put this in a nice way?) the native population has requested, in their own quaint way of expressing it, that whites leave. Whites in South Africa and Zimbabwe have been so rude as to create a prosperous civilization there, employing blacks, creating farming techniques and giving them a standard of living far superior to what they had before. The envious and spiteful response was quite natural and something that should have been expected.

I suspect the same process we are seeing there now has been repeated multiple times throughout history.

So, you support segregation. So if tomorrow there's a school only for blacks, you're okay with it?

Yes, I'm okay with it. There have been dozens of all-black colleges for years now:

http://www.uncf.org/AboutUNCF/index.asp

SAy the army also has segregation

Nope, government should stay out of racial discrimination.

and colleges and universities too and so we have 5 or 7 different streams -- for blacks, whites, white hispanics, black hispanics, East Asians, West Asians, Native Americans etc. etc.

Fine, they can do whatever turns their crank.

So, you're saying a black man could get into say Harvard in the 1930s if he had good scores? And this is at the same time that he had to join separate black regiments in the army

Yes, according to Thomas Sowell, the first black man graduated from Harvard in 1870:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20031001.shtml

"One of the silly things that gets said repeatedly is that I should not be against affirmative action because I have myself benefited from it.

Think about it: I am 73 years old. There was no affirmative action when I went to college -- or to graduate school, for that matter. There wasn't even a Civil Rights Act of 1964 when I began my academic career in 1962.

Moreover, there is nothing that I have accomplished in my education or my career that wasn't accomplished by other blacks before me -- and long before affirmative action. Getting a degree from Harvard? The first black man graduated from Harvard in 1870.

Becoming a black economist? There was a black professor of economics at the University of Chicago when I first arrived there as a graduate student.

Writing a newspaper column? George Schuyler wrote newspaper columns, magazine articles, and books before I was born.

A recent silly e-mail declared that I wouldn't even be able to vote in this year's California election if there hadn't been a Voting Rights Act of 1965. I have been voting ever since I was 21 years old -- in 1951.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were necessary for some people in some places. But making these things the cause of the rise of most blacks only betrays an ignorance of history.

The most dramatic rise of blacks out of poverty occurred before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. That's right -- before. But politicians, activists and the intelligentsia have spread so much propaganda that many Americans, black and white, are unaware of the facts.

There is a lot of political mileage to be gotten by convincing blacks that they owe everything to the government and could not make it in this world otherwise. Dependency plus paranoia equals votes. But blacks made it in this world before the government paid them any attention.

Nor has the economic rise of blacks been speeded up by civil rights legislation. More blacks rose into professional ranks in the five years preceding passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than in the five years after its passage.

What moved blacks up was a rapid increase in education. There was certainly discrimination but, in many fields that demanded higher levels of education, there were not that many blacks to discriminate against in the first place.

Moreover, even if certain laws and policies may once have served a purpose, that does not mean that these laws and policies should last forever, in total disregard of their counterproductive effects today. For a California election in 2003 to be held up by the federal government because of what happened in Mississippi decades ago is ludicrous.

Finally, the argument that anyone who has benefited from affirmative action should never oppose it is as illogical as it is ignorant of the facts. I certainly benefited from the Korean War, which led to my being in the military and therefore getting the G.I. Bill that enabled me to go to college.

Does that mean that I should never be against any war? Was it wrong of me to be against the Vietnam War after I had personally benefited from the Korean War? Are the duties of a citizen, not to mention the duty to be honest and truthful, to be over-ridden by what happened to benefit me personally?

Some of the things I advocate would ruin me personally if my recommendations were followed. For example, I am totally opposed to the environmentalist extremism that has made it an ordeal to try to build any kind of housing -- much less "affordable housing" -- on the San Francisco peninsula. But if such restrictive policies were repealed, the inflated value of my home would be cut at least in half.

Is myopic selfishness supposed to be a moral obligation?"

About "Celtic" peoples

From the book "Kingdoms of the Celts" by John King:

"We have to be careful in all these discussion not to confuse culture with race. There is no Celtic race, not even the Iriah, who are hte most CEltic of nations. Studies of blood groups in Ireland show that about a quarter of the genes of the people in the Republic are derived from Anglo-Norman and Englsish settlers. There is an unusually high incidence of blood group O in the western parts of IReland and a common trait of the unusual combination of dark hair and light eyes, both of which may be derived from pre-Celtic stock. The other common Irish attribute of red or fair-red hair is probably Nordic in origin, followign the invasions of the Vikings.So, "Celts" aren't really an ethnic group -- especially true when you consider that the term Keltae owes more to Romans and Greeks trying to describe these northern barbarians.

THe term GERMAN itself is strange. It's derived from the Latin word GERMANUS meaning genuine or authentic. The early Romans used this probably (we don't know for certain) to call the GErmans REAL Celts (which is strange since there was not a very strong basis beyond language to call Celts, celts).

Thanks Dan for clearing that up. I misunderstood you.

THanks for this really interesting post. We do seem to have diverged quite a bit from the main point, but I think we've learnt a lot, well I have, googling around:

Here's something from http://www.fsark.com/Multicultural/race.html

The notion of biological race is based on the premise that there are significant biological variables that can be used to separate one group of homo sapiens from another. Initially there were three racial categories proposed: negroid, mongoloid, and caucasoid. The variables used for this system were visible, external features such as skin color, hair color/texture and facial features. There are numerous problems with this taxonomy that only slowly came to light. First, members of each of these "biological races" can reproduce with members from any of the other two groups. For example, a female caucasoid and male mongoloid can produce a child together. The offspring would then need to be classified as a combination of the two races (CM). Meanwhile, the offspring of a mongoloid and negroid, (MN) could reproduce with the CM, resulting in a NCM. The net result here is obvious. The initial characteristics that were used to separate the "races" as if they were monumentally different are quickly dissolved. Hence, one must conclude that those biological variables really are not that significant.

A second natural criticism of the tripartite racial division of homo sapiens is that some groups do not fit into any of them. The Australian Aborigines are the most clear cut example of this. They have hair color and texture that would place them in the caucasoid race but skin color that would locate them in the negroid race. When researchers were confronted with this apparent anomaly they performed what is called a secondary elaboration (a secondary elaboration is done to rationalize a disparity in something where it was claimed there were none): they created a fourth race, australoid.

At this point it became fairly obvious to the scientific community that "race" was an arbitrarily assigned label. Even the apparently sound categories of caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid look very suspicious when one considers this classification system came out of Europe when the known world consisted of Europe, Africa and Asia.

The notion of biological race was not discarded at this point. The scientists, rather than thinking the notion of biological race was defunct, simply believed they were using the wrong variables to classify the races. At the same time new medical technology allowed scientists to exam biological features that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Among these new variables were blood type, sickle cell, and lactase enzyme. These features are distinct and significant. However, when homo sapiens are labeled with these three variables there is a complete lack of alignment of the variables. For example, a certain blood type does not consistently have sickle cell and the lactase enzyme. We find no systematic collation of variables. When the features of skin color, hair, facial features and even finger print types are thrown in the entire classification system loses credibility. The currently accepted conclusion is that biological race is arbitrarily imposed regardless of the variables selected: it is not a valid scientific concept and should be dismissed.

Note: this topic is from 2/09/2004. Thanks CobaltBlue.