Mexica wrote:And you can drone on about stone age families (Solutreans), and their impressive and particular technique of working with flint, instead of explaining how the history of humans uniting and dividing invalidates any concept of race.
If you consider it droning, don't read it. I'll explain soon how this relates to the concept of "race."
Quote:Of course, you haven't asked me to pontificate on all the things you can do; and I, come to think of it, don't recall ever asking you either.
Once again, if you consider my remarks to be pontification, you needn't read them.
Quote:But to be clear,
I didn't categorize anything. I merely reported that there are scientists (well, I gave one example) who
have categorized humans into separate groups. And there are other scientists who do argue that "broad population
categoriescan be discerned genetically when enough polymorphisms are analyzed," and that "these categories are not devoid of biological meaning." Doubtlessly, these scientists will find it disconcerting to learn that some anonymous e-persona thinks their work hasn't a scientific leg on which to stand.
Doubtless these same people will understand the point about categorization as an artificial concept, given that they are (or should be) well enough educated in the area of statistical sampling and interpretation. From the
Nature article online which you linked:
Quote:Not surprisingly, biomedical scientists are divided in their opinions about race. Some characterize it as "biologically meaningless" or "not based on scientific evidence", whereas others advocate the use of race in making decisions about medical treatment or the design of research studies.
This portrays an ambiguous response on the part of those in science, and brings out the point that this article is concerned with biomedical matters.
Quote:Race remains an inflammatory issue, both socially and scientifically. Fortunately, modern human genetics can deliver the salutary message that human populations share most of their genetic variation and that there is no scientific support for the concept that human populations are discrete, nonoverlapping entities.
The portion which i have highlighted above makes my point and in language of the same tenor which i employed myself. There is no scientific basis for a claim that distinct, discretely separate races exist.
Mexica wrote:OK fair enough, but who has argued that there are human genetic population clusters that are completely distinct from other human genetic population clusters? And, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by completely distinct--distinct in what manner?
As i pointed out earlier, and as it is expressed in the
Nature article which you linked:
there is no scientific support for the concept that human populations are discrete, nonoverlapping entities. Racists argue that there are distinct, discrete, nonoverlapping categories, which they describe as "race." They have long been abetted in this contention by "racialists." For the sake of discussion, i am using the term racialist to refer to anyone who believes that there are separate, distinct races, and which races have unique characteristics by which they can be identified--these people may or may not be racist, and that is not important to the discussion. But the claims of racialists have been used by racists to justify contentions about the superiority or inferiority of groups of people. More on that later.
Quote:"A popular political statement now is, 'There is no such thing as race.' I wonder what people think when they hear this. They would have to suppose that the speaker, if he were dropped by parachute into downtown Nairobi, would be unable to tell, by looking around him, whether he was in Nairobi or Stockholm. This could only damage his credibility. The visible differences between different populations of the world tell everyone that there is [/i]something
there."
- Alice Brues, Physical Anthropologist, University of Colorado.
That there are differences of appearance, and morphological differences (none of which are universal even within groups identified as a separate "race" is not evidence that such differences of appearance and morphology are evidence of any other significant differences between people artificially identified as members of one particular "race."
And these differences are often chimerical. Erik Reudi, or Erik the Red, a Norseman, was called Erik the Red because he had "red hair." This was sufficiently uncommon among the Norse that he was named for it. However, it is not simply among European, "Aryan" populations that red hair occurs. There are red-haired Turks in Anatolia, and they are clearly not European, even if one could safely allege that they are descended from Europeans. There are red-haired Somalis, and you'd be hard pressed to find the evidence of European migration to Somalia in historic times. And this goes to my point to the effect that there is much good inferential evidence that the human "gene pool" gets stirred up on a regular basis, and very likely was stirred up in pre-historic times as much as it has been in historic times.
The Mamluks of Egypt were the descendants of military slaves of the Turks, who took control of Egypt in the 13th century when the Ayyubid dynasty collapsed under the onslaught of the Mongols. When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, the Mamluks the French encountered were indistinguishable in appearance from the rest of the population, and were described by the French as being "black." However, we know from reliable historical records of the Seljuk Turks at Baghdad that the preferred source of the
mamluk, the military slave, was among the Caucasian tribesmen, prized for their martial skills and savagery. Just a few centuries in a hot, sunny climate made "black men" out of them.
The Indo-Aryans are descended from "white men" who migrated from the region of the Caspian Sea in the period from 4000 to 3000 years ago. These tribesmen are believed to have derived from the same Indo-Iranian source as the Farsi and Meda who became the Persians. Go do an image search for Indo-Aryans--they are just as black as any African. The point being that differences of appearance and morphology are undoubtedly responses to environmental conditions over long periods of time, and cannot reliably be used as markers for "race."
The racialists of the late 19th and the 20th centuries not only made sarcastic claims such as your girl from Colorado does above, they went further than simply noting morphological differences, and claimed that distinct "races" were also possessed of predictable distinctions in intellect, athleticism and motor skills. In short, they provided the fodder for racists to claim that some races were inferior and other races were superior. Modern American racists point to the athletic prowess of Americans of African descent, for example, as evidence of deeply-dyed, distinct racial characteristics. All such claims ignore the lessons of history.
When the Dutch and the French set up in the West Indies, and began to exploit sugar, they originally relied upon bond labor from Europe. However, this proved unsatisfactory, as the white bondsmen and -women did not do well in the hot sunny climate doing the brutal work of cutting and pressing sugar cane, and even if illiterate, they were savvy enough to know that there was a limit to their indenture. If they survived the indenture, they expect to be paid off and allowed to go about their private business. They were suitable workers in the cane fields for both those reasons. Several different peoples were tried, including the Arawak and Carib Amerindians, and even Indian coolies from the subcontinent and Chinese coolies. But the only laboring population which survived in the climate and against the work to be done were West African Negroes. It is only in modern times that we have learned why this is. The Spanish contracted malaria when campaigning for King Carlos (the HR Emperor Charles V) in Italy early in the 16th century, and they brought it the "New World." This is very likely what killed off the Arawak and the Caribs so quickly. Other populations exposed to the disease fared as badly. But although it could sicken West African Negroes, it rarely killed them, and they were still able to work after they had recovered. Suffering the ravages of the disease usually significantly reduced their strength and energy, which gave rise to the racist chestnut that Africans are naturally lazy.
The reason they survived malaria is because of sickle cell anemia. This is widely prevalent in only two regions of the world--West Africa and the Korean Peninsula. The malarial plasmodium goes through a complex life cycle, and in one stage, it colonizes the red blood cells in the circulatory system. It does not succeed well at that stage, however, in people with sickle cell anemia. Therefore, West African Negroes with the sickle cell disease were more likely to survive malaria, or even to never show any symptoms of the disease. They became the slaves of choice in the West Indies, and by far, the majority of slaves which were brought to what became the United States came from the West Indies. Where malaria is present, the sickle cell disease is an advantageous trait. Where it is absent, it is a genetic liability. In the United States, the incidence of sickle cell disease has fallen since the days of slavery, and is now lower than in West Africa, and continues to decline.
So West African Negroes had to survive their capture into slavery. They then had to survive the voyage across the Atlantic. Thereafter, they had to survive the rigors of the sugar cane plantations. For those who were not sold directly to the Americans, but who first worked the sugar cane, landing in Virginia or the Carolinas to work the tobacco fields, or the rice or indigo plantations must have felt like they had improved their condition. So Americans of African descent were, even though not intentionally, genetically selected for their hardihood and their physical strength and coordination. Those who didn't have these traits were unlikely to survive.
Culturally, African Americans long had only two avenues to making a good living if they left the hard-scrabble farms of the South, and that was as musical performers, and later, as athletes. People from West Africa cannot be said to be more musical than anyone else, but among Americans of African descent, it offered a good living in a hostile society. When blacks had broken the color barrier of professional sports, it became another means of making a good living in a hostile society, and it became a means to earn a fame, which encouraged the ambition of young black men and women to find a career in sports. Several hundred years of surviving slavery had already helped to select for the strong and the fleet--and incidentally provided more ammunition for the racists.
My point throughout has been that the human gene pool has frequently been stirred, and very likely more often than we know; and that there is no good reason to assume that there are races which are distinct and discrete. The quote once again the
Nature article you linked:
no scientific support for the concept that human populations are discrete, nonoverlapping entities. Which is the point in saying that there is no such thing as separate races. The more the gene pool has been stirred in the past, the less likely the proposition about discrete races becomes.
