Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 11

Some previous discussions have been moved
Self-identification has been moved to archive 4. An NPOV dispute on article about "Race" has been moved to Archive 4. A discussion on Genus > Species > Sub-species or race has been moved to Archive 8. A discussion on the introductory paragraph, and on whether race is an exact synonym for subspecies, has been moved to archive 9. A discussion on Tannin's POV is now in arhive 9. A discussion on the new introduction is now in archive 10. A discussion on suggsted outside reading is now in archive 10.

Current discussions
"However, a distinct difference is only one of the two conditions that must be satisfied before a different form can be classified as a sub-species or even a race; the second is the lack of significant gene flow between populations. In the case of human "races", there historically has been little or no gene flow between, for example, aboriginal Australians and black Africans, between Asians and Caucasian Europeans, or between native American Indians and Hispanics. As such, interbreeding, although theoretically possible, was rare."


 * § As I understand it, there is a requirement for a kind of clear margin between subspecies, e.g. the frogs on the island are dark brown and never croak in the daylight hours and the frogs on the mainland are light green and croak occasionally all day long. One of the people who helps with the spider article does classifications professionally and he wrote me a rather "pithy" paragraph or two about the rarity of settled agreements, the difficulty of trying to make one's own categorization, etc. I would guess that one of the reasons that the professionals do not classify humans into anything other than Homo sapiens sapiens is that on an evolutionary timescale the aboriginal Australians have not been separated from the rest of us for very long.

"Hispanics" (as most Americans understand the term) are primarily of Native American Indian descent - the use of this linguistic term in a scientific sense is confusing. Plus, there is considerable evidence that intermixture between "Asians" (Mongoloids) and Caucasians is predominant among the Turkic and Uralic peoples from central Russia and Eastern Turkey though the "Stans" to Western China. Likewise most North Africans are of some degree of mixed Caucasoid and Negroid ancestry.


 * § Even in the case of the "Hispanics" (not to mention the supposedly "pure whites") there are no clear margins. Everybody except for identical twins is different (and different in as many different ways) and everybody is as pure as Ivory Soap (r). ;-) (I'm not sure about the 99.44% figure, but it's close.) P0M 14:50, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Older discussion pending archiving
§ That's an interesting statement, but I'm not sure that it makes sense. Why would it matter that "cutting-edge genetic research" threatens the belief that "race is socially constructed"? Does she believe that the idea of socially constructed race is a fabrication and nothing more? Does she believe that socially constructed race is not constructed on at least some elements of objective information with a genetic basis? If she believes that, then she might well believe that "cutting-edge genetic research" would threaten such a view since genetics tells us what we already knew anyway, e.g., that Australian aborigines are generally more closely related to each other than to Europeans. But for Australian aborigines to be statistically more likely than Europeans to have brown eyes doesn't tell the passport agent what color my eyes are, any more than does the color of my eyes tell anybody for sure what color of eyes my uncle has. Far less does such information tell us which people are intelligent or stupid, nasty or nice. How could the same "cutting-edge genetic research" endanger useful public health research? Or, to turn the question around, how could the idea that race is socially constructed bolster the usefulness of public health research? The usefulness of valid public health research (which shows, e.g., that people with ancestors from malaria-prone areas are more likely to have sickle-cell anemia) is not attacked by good research. Its usefulness can be impaired by faulty reasoning, such as accepting the socially constructed belief that anyone with dark skin has the average genetic makeup of an individual with all-African ancestry for the last N generations. [P0M]

§ There is a place for an objective account of the clinal differences that characterize groups of people who have adapted to various world environments. But calling these categories "races" inevitably confuses and contaminates them with the ideas about race that are associated with racism. To do so risks dragging down the value of the research in the minds of people who reject racism, and also risks creating the false impression that "cutting-edge science" supports the traditional ideas of race that tag individuals with value-laden ideas on intelligence, morality, etc. P0M 09:35, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * POM, with all due respect I am not sure what you mean by "doesn't make sense" and I am concerned. If you mean that the account of what anthropologists and biologists (and in this case, more specifically, Jaqueline Stevens) is not clear, that we must improve the writing, that is legitimate and constructive. --Slrubenstein


 * § I certainly think that it is not clear. It is so unclear that I do not feel confident to guess whether there is a cogent argument behind what she says. Therefore I do not think that one should take guidance from what was quoted. [P0M]


 * I thought you meant that what Jaqueline Stevens wrote was unclear. I just mean we have to distinguish between the article being unclear versus a quote being unclear.  If a quote is unclear, our job is to figure it out; if the article is unclear, we have to change it. I personally do not agree with Stevens -- but I know that her view is common among many biologists (not, I think, physical anthropologists) and must be presented in the article. Slrubenstein

But if you mean that you disagree with these positions, that is unconstructive and not legitimate -- because Wikipedia is not meant to express the views of its authors. We are writing an encyclopedia that provides accounts of what other people are saying. In the case of race, the views of biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians are paramount (as well, of course, as the views of civic and political leaders and activists). Whether you think their views make sense or not is simply not relevant. If they do not make sense to you, read a book or take a university course and when it does make sense to you you can return to this project and help us write an article that provides clear accounts of these views. If I am misunderstanding you -- if you understand their views and merely want to express them clearly, I apologize.--Slrubenstein


 * § People, as individuals, are free to take guidance from whatever sources of information they choose. I think that I am free to point out when something someone else suggests as a dictum to be attended to is incoherent or self-contradictory or has some other flaw that makes it unhelpful.


 * I do not fully agree. If the professor quoted is providing not just her personal point of view but the point of view dominant among many biologists, we need to present that POV and explain it.  If someone else in the life or human sciences (e.g. most physical anthropologists and I suspect many other biologists) holds another (critical) position, we must present that also.  But it is not for us to editorialize and declare a major position incoherant or self-contradictory -- this is our personal view and doesn't belong in an encyclopedia article.  This is what I mean that Wikipedia is not for original research or personal essays.  It is not for us to judge whether scientists' positions are helpful or unhelpful.  Not at all.  Our job is to present these positions in their context and clearly. Slrubenstein

The fact remains that biologists have largely (if not almost entirely) abandoned the concept of subspecies. Moreover, virtually all biological scientists (including anthropologists) would say that your observations that "White people are white for clearly biological reasons. The epicanthic folds of many Chinese people are heritable characteristics. The thick pads over the arch of the foot that characterize many people of African descent are heritable characteristics" are not about "race" and in no way disprove the claim that there is no biological basis for race. --Slrubenstein


 * § As I said above, "There is a place for an objective account of the clinal differences that characterize groups of people who have adapted to various world environments. But calling these categories "races" inevitably confuses and contaminates them with the ideas about race that are associated with racism." In the segment you quote immediately above I list several heritable characteristics. I did not say that they substantiate claims that there really are races of human beings. [P0M]


 * Okay, thank you for the clarification (actually, this is what I originally thought you think) Slrubenstein

Personally, I do not care whether this makes sense to you or not, except I do not see how you can help with the article -- of course I mean just these parts of the article -- if you don't understand their views. Be that as it may, our task is to provide a clear account of current research and debates on race and NOT to provide our own ideas, or editorial comments of what we personally think about what biologists are saying. This is not a place for personal essays or original research. By the way, if you do not understand why "white" skin and epicanthic folds are not about "race," I suggest you read the article which explains that biological scientists use the term population to describe differences (over time and space) in gene frequencies. Slrubenstein


 * § I hope you will reconsider what I have said and the tone of your own remarks. [P0M]


 * I am sorry if my tone put you off. However, I stand by the content -- applied not just to you but to all of us. Slrubenstein


 * So to summarize. I continue to think that "subspecies" vs "social construct" is not the appropriate contrast in which to explain this article. -- Rikurzhen


 * § I don't get your point. There seem to be several contending understandings of the word "race." Tannin wanted to limit us to "subspecies." Others would like to limit us to "social construct." Slrubenstein has mentioned "folk taxonomies." Others have put forth the view that there are "extended family" differentiations that do not rise to the level of sub-species differentiations but do rise to the level of utility for medicine and public health. [P0M]

I think that the "subspecies" definition of human races must be a very minority opinion. -- Rikurzhen


 * § I agree. But Tannin was pretty positive in the way he expressed his opinion, so I have trouble forgetting about it. It does need to be mentioned.

Likewise, I think that the "social construct" definition is generally interpreted as strongly as Slrubenstein has stated it. -- Rikurzhen


 * § It is a very useful position because, if properly understood, it shows the connection between intersubjective knowledge (Yes, we all see the same squiggles on this oscilliscope.) and the subjective processes by which we construct meaning on top of the data. (That proves... No! It proves...) It makes us more self-aware, more willing to realize that we have an acceptable account of something -- an acceptable account that may fall apart when we get some more data. But I agree with what you say next:  [P0M]

This is why some/many geneticsts reject the "social construction" definition. From my reading, social constructionists employ three kinds of arguments to reject a meaningful biological basis for race: (1) there couldn't be a biological basis, (2) there could but isn't a biological basis, and (3) there may be but we should not study the biological basis. The argument Dr. Stevens is presented seems to be of type (3). A popular type (1) argument is that there hasn't been enough time for biolgically significant human races to evolve. A popular type (2) argument is that there happens to not have been enough genetic differentiation between people for races to have evolved. There are many published scientists who would respond "No," "No," and "No." Capturing this disagreement seems important to describing the current debate on the meaning and importance of race, but I'm not sure what central distinction would help describe these conflicting points of view. Rikurzhen


 * § I think we are saying the same thing, and I think that Peak and others will raise a caution that I tried to raise above -- something that evidently got misunderstood. The fact is that many people insist on dividing human beings into races. They are not crazy, i.e., they are not seeing things that do not exist. But there are many interpretations that can be constructed on the data. The word "subspecies" has a definition, and most people who know the definition on a professional basis say that human groups do not fit the definition. The Race article itself has a clear account. There are other people who maintain that "race is a myth" or that "race is a social construct." Their point is that there is a certain amount of objective evidence (heritable differences, "extended family" groups of inherited characteristics) and a certain amount of construction that goes on top of the data and leads to problematical conclusions and social disorders. And there are also people who maintain that -- whatever we should call it -- there are useful conclusions that doctors and public health officials can draw from the fact that an individual comes with a certain genetic heritage. That position becomes problematical for social reasons when the genetic heritage is called "race," and that position becomes problematical whenever people lose sight of the fact that information about populations (information about an individual's genetic heritage, at least as well as anybody knows it) can be statistically relevant but cannot let us draw dependable conclusions about individuals. How much useful probabalistic information one can gain by knowing that somebody's parents came from, e.g., an isolated group of Australian aborigines, I do not know. I suspect that an objective accounting of what is there would clarify the thinking of many of us. P0M 02:03, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, to clarify my position: first and foremost my position is, we should represent other's positions accurately. Now, my sense of the dominant position among anthropologists -- one shared by many biologists but I can't say all, and one consistant with that of sociologists and historians but I can't say all (many of them don't know much about evolution) -- is that the word "race" uses biological language to make fundamentally political claims and is not a useful scientific term but an important object of critical study (culturally and historically). -- Slrubenstein


 * § Strange to say, I think the above reflects strongly your own point of view. Are you asking that the article on race should reflect your view that "race" is a term that "uses biological language to make fundamentally political claims"? I would be inclined to agree, but many people who have argued with both of us would not share this belief. And I still think that it is useful to do as you yourself insist on doing, which is to represent accurately what other people have said. [P0M]


 * POM, you seem to be willfully misconstruing my point. No, I do not think the article on race should reflect my view of race; I do not think the article on race should reflect any one view.  But I do htink the article on race must be clear about the dominant view among physical anthropologists and biologists, as well as historians and cultural anthropologists, who study both race and genetic variation among and within populations -- and I believe what I provide above is a reasonable summary of that dominant view. Slrubenstein


 * There is striking and important biological variation among humans (and among all species) but words like "race" and "subspecies" that reflect a taxonomic logic are not useful and not even meaningful within the Modern Synthesis. -- Slrubenstein


 * § Again, that is your point of view. I agree that the word "race" is not useful in discussing the biological differences (but the fact is that even medical doctors writing formal articles use the word). I would say that "subspecies" is just wrong, based on the definition of the word, but enough people are confused about it that the issue needs to be discussed. [P0M]
 * I believe this is the dominant point of view among the vast majority of physical anthropologists and most biologists.

From an evolutionary point of view, it makes much more sense to analyze such biological variation in terms of changes in gene frequencies that constitute populations, which are as much statistical as actual biological "things." -- Slrubenstein


 * § How could I disagree? [P0M]
 * Personally, I am gratified that you agree with this position. But it doesn't matter whether you or I agree with this position.  As contributors to an encyclopedia article, all that matters is that we agree that this is a dominant view among biological scientists.

It is most definitely legitimate and vital for scientists to study variation in gene frequencies within and between populations. But it is neither accurate nor precise to think of populations as if they were subspecies or races. Slrubenstein


 * § Again, I basically agree -- I think. However, you are using the word "race" as though it means something other than population, a meaning that you and I and other people agree about. I would just say that I prefer to use "population" where many people would use "race" because the first term has a clear meaning that does not drag in unfortunate connotations. But, as you continually point out, we cannot exclude a point of view concerning race simply because it is not your or my point of view. Some researchers seem to want to use "race" where you or I would use "population" because they think it communicates more economically. I seem to recall someone saying something like, "You don't have to refer to someone as an individual whose parents were once members of the population found in Sardinia. You just call him somebody whose race is Sardinian." P0M 02:31, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Most biological scientists and virtually all physical anthropologists (by the way I am neither) would agree and that is the point. Also, most would say that population should be used in the scientific study of genetic differences, rather than race.  Yes, there are people who use race: a small number of biological scientists who either claim that race=population or that race is different than population but equally or more real, and a large number of non-scientists who use the word race (and it was in this context that I made the remark you recall).  Why many people use "race," and what they mean by it, is a matter of study for sociologists, anthropologists, and historians (and some important people in comp. lit.).  Many scholars who study how people in the west use race say that they use the language of biology to talk about political or economic differences.  This is a point made by many scholars and whould be represented as such in the article. Slrubenstein

Division of the section about division of the article

 * I have been away some days I find that a number of comments have arrived after I posted my question April 18. However, I find few commenting on the actual question of splitting the article into the different uses of the word race in different contexts. I think Slrubenstein makes important contributions in order to clarify the term, but I still don’t know his opinion on how to proceed with the article development. It is still my view that the article not I fully consistent with other articles dealing with related issues. The article itself is also unclear. The first  paragraph talks about a "disagreements over such issues as whether humans can be meaningfully divided into multiple races", while the third paragraph states that there "is in fact insufficient categorical variation to justify the classification of humans into multiple races in a strictly biological sense."The Overview part talks a lot about dividing humans into races, starts using the term "races" when races may be too precise (?). The biological classification is questioned, contradicting paragraph 3. By using strange constructions (in a encyclopaedia at least) like: "Those who continue to believe in .... point out that in determining" odd reasoning involving negroids and pygmies are presented. Still by using "" signs to soften the words used (or what the purpose must be).The History of the term ends in 1935, without mention the race issue related to WW2, and the UN and UNESCO papers trying to define the term.Later follows a new historical review (Anthropological and genetic studies of race), this time including WW2, but only partly. The more I read through it, the more confused and frustrated I feel. Is it a special US reading of the term which substantially differ from the rest of the world? Calvin Bruce Ostrum did feel so in 1995 [1] and he may be right. But isn’t this US-view already covered by the census thing?  Finally: When we are having this problems. How could this be a featured article?Arnejohs 00:04, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[Peak:] The following remarks are primarily responses to points made by Arnejohs above:

1) On splitting the article: The article was, until very recently, explicit that it was actually about "human races". The idea of adding an article on the concept of "Race" itself, or on "Race (biology)" has been mentioned from time-to-time, but all such ideas have foundered - and probably for good reason -- as the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia puts it, "the term has little scientific standing."  (My impression is that its use in zoology is confined to some communities of specialists in certain parts of the English-speaking world.) If you believe that a "split" is desirable, I would suggest you create the appropriate articles in your private workspace (e.g. User:Arnejohs/Race_(anthropology) etc). That we, we will be able to evaluate the proposal more concretely.

2) Inconsistencies within the article. No doubt there are many, but the inconsistency you attempt to identify in your first bullet item does not exist.  Perhaps the problem here is partly your knowledge of English, but if you reread the two sentences carefully, you should be able to see several reasons why there is no inconsistency. (E.g., the third para is talking about biologists, and it is only talking about "categorical" differences.)

In your second bullet item, you also write about an inconsistency which I fail to see.

3) "History of the term ends in 1935". This is certainly true of the section called "History of the term" but the article discusses the evolution of ideas since then, so I don't see any real issue here. In fact, the article makes clear that the "modern era" begins sometime around 1935, and that the section on "History of the term" is accordingly confined to the "pre-modern era".  Of course, one may take a different point of view (as I personally do), but it would probably be difficult to get consensus about significantly different alternatives.

4) "Confused and frustrated". I suspect that most people feel the same way.  I certainly agree that the article needs significant changes. My suggestion would be to remember that "race" is just a word that has been endowed with an unusually wide variety of meanings by different communities around the world at various times. For example, since some communities of biologists evidently do use "race" as an exact synonym for "subspecies", we should try to identify precisely which communities do so, while also mentioning the fact that the ICZN explicitly states that this usage is incorrect in zoology, since the ICZN states that race is an infrasubspecific grouping.

Peak 04:13, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Thank you Peak for taking time to discuss my points I think it would be a good idea to do what has been suggested from time to time, put de content into different fractions, Race_(Human), Race_(biology), Race_(US_Census), Race_(Former_use), Race_(...), and keep a complete reference in the Race article. I think that would clarify a lot. Actually it is already a good article on Race_(Human).You may be right that I am loosing fine distinctions because of poor knowledge and understanding of English. But what is the reason to excessive use of the "-symbols? To me it seems like the writers are using this to make the term less precise or when they feel that the use is not fully consistent with a common interpretation of the term in the specific context. Is it may be common to use "s as a way of representing uncertainty in the English language.Did the term reach it’s current definitions in 1935? </li><li>This is not about my frustration. The problem is that this disagreement will continue as long as we are not able to find a form covering all the views in a more transparent way. So far the discussion has not made it any clearer to me how this should be organised and worked out.</li></ol>Arnejohs 05:29, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

§ Regarding the use of scare quotes: As soon as an article make a statement such as, "Klingons are characterized by aggressive behavior," the existence of Klingons is tacitly admitted. There is no generally accepted practice in English for marking a word that may or may not have an actual referent. If you write, "An 'angel' was observed in Central Park," then you appear to cast doubt on the veracity of the reported testimony. If you write without the scare quotes then you tacitly assume the veracity of the testimony. I would prefer some convention such as, "A [Klingon] and an [angel] were reported to have engaged in a prolonged conversation in Central Park." Since many people edit the same article it is difficult to ensure consistency. Sometimes the article might use "race", 'race', and race seemingly at random. P0M 05:11, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree with Peak and POM's valuable comments about the organization. This article is and should be primarily about the word "race" as applied to humans.  I believe that the very nature of "race" (using scare-quotes to indicate that I am talking about a concept, and not specifically about what the concept represents) requires that such an article look at uses of the term by biological scientists, social scientists, and laypeople.  Such an article I think would work best if it describes commonalities and conflicts between people of different academic disciplines, and should also explain changes in how "race" and races hve been conceptualized and used over time.  Consequently, this article will have to be complicated.  nevertheless, I agree that it is poorly organized.  One reason is that there has been a long process to accommodate strikingly different points of view.  I think at this point we are very close to an NPOV article, but it sure does need reorganizing.  I know POM put some serious work into re-thinking the organization.  I've made some suggestions myself in the past, that did not appeal to many people.  I'll keep thinking aobut it but I admit it is a daunting task.  All the more reason to acknowledge and appreciate POM's attempts. Slrubenstein


 * § All I did, actually, was to pull all the topic sentences into a block of text and make a few changes in them so they could function as topic sentences are supposed to do. P0M 04:39, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

New Comment Goes Here
§ An unsigned user made the following comment, which I have move from the top of the page;


 * The idea of race DID NOT originate from the Enlightenment. People were well aware of racial differences before then. I'm sure the Romans considered the Germanic people a different race.

§ To Anon: What was the Latin word for "race" then? People have probably been aware of differences for as long as they have been self-aware. The question is how they conceptualize these differences. To answer that question we need evidence. P0M 19:47, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Anon is right -- the Romans had a notion of race. BUT the Roman notion was very very different from the modern notion. Slrubenstein

Related concepts
Interesting. But I don't agree that classifying people as Frenchmen, Britons etc. is more accurate than a broader classification. If anything, I would think that attempting to narrow definitions would ride over more differences, ignoring the changes in societies, the differences within them and the similarities to those who happen to live under a different government.

To the anonymous writer of the above paragraph: (It helps to sign postings. Otherwise it becomes very difficult to maintain a coherent conversation.) [P0M]

I think that assertions to the effect that "group X had a concept of race" can be very misleading. Mere assertions do not prove anything, anyway. Asserting that the ancient Romans had the concept of gens and the concept of natio can be justified by reference to dictionaries and to ancient Latin texts. Asserting that involved in the concepts behind these words were explanations for why this gens or that gens has a certain set of characteristics is quite another matter. In fact, if somebody argued, e.g., that Arabs are different from Jews because their lineages split with the lines of descent from Abraham, then the natural question would be why they are different. And, since they all descend from Adam and Eve, where the differences came from. Prior to the discovery of the mechanisms by which evolution occurs, there would have been no clear answers to such questions. When humans began to understand evolution it became possible to explain how human groups diverge. That being said, hereditary differences and learned differences (especially cultural differences) are frequently difficult to differentiate. The phenomena that spark interest in race are, generally speaking, very obvious differences between the people in one's own environment and the people "over there." But learned behavioral differences can be as striking, or more striking, than biologically inherited differences. So perhaps it is not surprising to see people differentiating people into what they call "races" on the basis of cultural features. P0M


 * POM, if I follow you I think that once again you are veering into the territory of primary research and away from writing an encyclopedia articles. Historians have pointed out that Romans have a concept of race, so this should be in an article.  They also point out that this concept did not mean the same thing as the contemporary concept of race -- a very important point, as it shows that the concept of race is at least culturally and historically variable, and thus suggests that it is socially constructed.  There is no doubt that the theory of evolution played a role in transforming the meaning of race; so did other historical events such as colonialism.  These are things some historians have written on, and if we can find those discussions we need to put an account of them here.  Now, the questions you raise -- what was the Roman "theory" of race, how did they account for similarities and differences, is another matter.  I do not know if any historians have studied this.  If they have, we need to reprot it; if they haven't, we can't. Slrubenstein


 * § Mere assertions, even from historians, are not worth very much in my eyes. Which of these historians has produced a coherent account, complete with citations, that shows that the Romans had something that was race and was not, e.g., ethnicity, barbarian group, or some other characterization of otherness? P0M 21:11, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[Anon:]There is one race, the human race. Join it or it will see to you. (moved from the top of this page, P0M)

Sorry POM, NPOV means that we have an obligation to provide views even if we disagree with them (although we can and should contextualize them). Review the NPOV policy. Slrubenstein


 * Uh, I think you meant to address your comment to "Anon" who tucked the message above in at the top of this talk page. I moved it here, but I don't take responsibility for it. P0M 06:57, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

I was addressing this statement: "Mere assertions, even from historians, are not worth very much in my eyes." It doesn't matter whether they are worth much in my eyes or in any contributors eyes, as this is not a place for personal essays and we must stick to NPOV. If an important scholar (or political or civic leader) expresses a view, we must provide an accurate and contextualized account of it here whether we think they are worthy or not. Slrubenstein

§ Well, let's look at what qualified scholars (who, as such, will not make mere assertions) have to say about the matter. [P0M]

§ I have started to put this talk page on a diet. Unfortunately, we sometimes seem to go in circles. And besides that, the material remaining unarchived is still rather long. So I think that what I will do is to start to summarize some of the points that keep coming up over and over again, and linking the summaries to the archived materials. P0M 15:52, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

§ To further my own education and to answer my question addressed to Slrubenstein I did a quick search for "race in Roman" and found some interesting sources of information. The first item on the list below addresses my own concerns and speaks more coherently than I was able to do above:


 * http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?docid=1G1:19178130&dtype=0~0&dinst=&author=Clarke%2C%20John%20R.&title=%22Just%20like%20us%22%3A%20cultural%20constructions%20of%20sexuality%20and%20race%20in%20Roman%20art.&date=12/01/1996&refid=ency_botnm § Search for "race" and see a brief excerpt on the danger of reading our ideas into ancient cultural institutions and artifacts.
 * http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040202/002329.html § A critique of the same article.
 * http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/classics/syllabi/previous/CLAS575Richlin.html "Was there a concept of race in Roman society? Why does that matter?"
 * http://www.semcoop.com/detail/0415927617
 * www.und.ac.za/und/classics/scholia/schol2/tho2.rtf § Questions facile equations.
 * http://booksmatter.com/b0415927617.htm § A book that looks interesting. P0M 22:59, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Within vs Between
With regard to this text: "The data indicate that there is one human species with variations comprising only aproximatly 1.5% percent of the DNA. The difference between any two groups is on average only 1/10th of a percent. (SciAm Feb 2004 Does race exist?)"

Arnejohs, if the text merely stated that within group variation was larger than between group variation, then I would agree. However, the choice to write about percentages of the total DNA sequence that vary is all but certainly an attempt to lead the reader to one conclusion. To all but the most informed reader, 1.5% and 1/10th of 1% seem like incredibly small numbers. Those particular numbers don't seem to be consistent with previously published figures -- they strike me as the lower bound on a range. Moreover, there's no need for statistics or statements that the data unequivocally indicates one thing in the first paragraph. I think I'll put the burden on others to fix the POV, so I'm going to re-revert the text. --Rikurzhen 14:20, May 12, 2004 (UTC)


 * Maybe its not clear to others why you can't just say that within group differences are smaller than between group differences and then conclude that race does not exist. Here's one reason why: this measurement does not consider the phenotypic importance of the differences. Kimura's neutral model would predict that most DNA variations are neutral, and thus probably do not have a marked phenotypic effect. However, we have some reason to believe that many of the between group differences may have become fixed as a result of selection. Thus, we have reason to believe that more of the between group difference have a phenotypic effect. The unanswered question is whether differences within vs between are equally enriched for phenotypically important variations. Would you expect there to be more variation between groups than within for races that divereged only 50-100k years ago? The answer is most likely no. Yet phenotype is a good marker for distinguishing race. Here's the second one: the smaller but still large between group variation is sufficient to re-construct the genetic divergence of human populations throughout history. Whether you call them races or not is a different matter. Continential populations consistently pop out when you put human DNA sequences into a multiple alignment algorithm. --Rikurzhen 14:39, May 12, 2004 (UTC)


 * Agree with Rikurzhen; this data belongs in one of the arguments sections, not the intro, which should summarize views, not give details of them or argue for them. This is in addition to Rikurzhen's other reasons. -- VV 20:39, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

A question of propriety
Someone added a link to an article by Richard McCulloch that, in my opinion, discussed what people should think, feel, and believe about [race], rather than discussing the nature of the phenomena that get lumped together under the term "race." I removed the link, with a note in the edit summary that was the brief version of what I just wrote above. Then the link was replaced, and a note added to the effect that the neutrality of point of view of the article was being disputed. Please have a look at the Richard McCulloch link and see what you think. P0M 22:42, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Lol, speaking of links: Franz Boas, "Race and Progress"

Ah, good ole Fraud, I mean Franz: http://www.vdare.com/francis/boas.htm


 * These links rely on an article by Sparks and Jantz, which was later shown to be mistaken. See [] for a confirmation of Boas' analysis. Slrubenstein

Heh, "channel Gould and Boas, and everything will be lovely!" Svigor 22:47, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Well i think the whole article is written in this manner, advocating one position on race. But as this is the majority's p.o.v. i'll leave it that way. Anyway, i added and external link to McCulloch's racial classification, and if you think it's objectional, please provide another one you believe to be more accurate. I'd really appreciate that. VarzaViezureMinz

I have no objection to adding this link somewhere, in principle. But it doesn't belong here. It is not a view that reflects mainstream science or policy (it uses "race" and "subspecies" in a way rejected by most scientists). It is certainly one way to illustrate a certain point of view, but placed as it is at the end it assumes an unwarrented authority. At the very least, I think some explanation must be provided as to who Mcculloch is, and for whom he wrote this. Slrubenstein


 * McCulloch: "The term race is commonly used to refer to a branch or division of the species possessing genetic traits which distinguish it from other branches or divisions of the same level." Wikipedia article: "In biology, some use race to mean a division within a species" (by the way, how do others use race in biology?). McCulloch: "... it is at a level between race and species, which will here be referred to as a subspecies" - how can one reject a distinction made for the sake of an article's clarity? Besides i don't see how anyone could object to a racial classification (let alone the extremist PC freaks) - i only put the link to McCulloch's article there because it was the most detailed one i found on the internet (i'm not a racist nutcase searching for things like this all day), i'd be glad if anyone could provide a more "scientific" one. VarzaViezureMinz

Well I am not making any accusations aginst you, But McCulloch is not a scientist, he is a racist. The use of "race" to characterize biological groups is a minority view among biologists and highly contested. I stand by my original comment, Slrubenstein


 * I myself, and i think others too, might be curious as to know where do we stand as individuals in an ethno-racial tree - maybe driven by blood mysticism, maybe after reading McCulloch's articles, or maybe for some other obscure reason that i will never understand. Shouldn't this type of information be found in an Enciclopedia, just because some (scientists) find it unappropiate? VarzaViezureMinz

There is no ethno-racial "tree." To be curious about where one stands in such a tree is like being curious about flying pigs. Now, there are people who proposed racial trees in the past, and an account of that is provided in the article. There is also material on research on populations of people. All Wikipedia articles are works in progress, and we can add to these sections -- but we should add stuff that is real, not products of whimsical imagination. Slrubenstein

§ VVM, the image of a tree does not fit the way humans reproduce. Every "twig" or tendril, on some kind of an organism that could mirror our genetic heritages, would meet and graft itself together with another tendril, and from their fusion would grow several other tendrils. The two tendrils that fuse at some point can be from anyplace in the total organism, just as long as they are groping around at the same time. You don't get a tree structure out of something like that. You get something that, if you model it with threads of a million colors, would look like a carpet made by a crazy weaver and growing from the floor up. Or imagine what would a mess of intertwining vines you would get if you seeded a pasture heavily with honeysuckle vines. The vines would twine wildly around each other, growing to the sky as the parts of the vines on the bottom lost their leaves and turned brown -- and that's all without their really grafting onto each other every few inches.

§ Another thing that might help is to get a long sheet of shelf paper and make the long edge the top. Mark "M...F...M..." and so forth all the way across the top. then assume that each M mates with the adjacent F on the top row and produces only two offspring. So draw an X below each pair and put a small m at the bottom left extremity of the X and a small f at the other terminus of the X. Then think about who will mate in the next generation. You don't want siblings getting married, or even cousins. It will be safer and more realistic to connect an m with an f that is remote from it. Lay out several other layers. It would be best to do it with a large set of artist's colored pens or pencils. If you really wanted to do something nice you could get colored strings and make a kind of fish net. When you get all done, the last node on the bottom might connect to nails on the opposite ends of your sheet -- better make that a long piece of plywood. I don't know about you, but I can trace my family back on my father's side pretty much all to Ireland, but before that how many of my g-g-ggreat-grandfathers were randy Norse invaders or itinerant gypsy tinkers I couldn't say. Family legend has it that one of them was a person of some temporal importance who achieved prominence in Russia by poisoning her first husband and marrying a more elevated one. Maybe she poisoned husband number two also, or maybe he was just old... On my mother's side it's enormously complicated, with some people coming from Wales, maybe some from England, some from France, and some with family names that could be from many places. And beyond the fifth generation all is mystery. So if I depicted this all in a kind of weaving or a messy braid, I would have strings going all over the place. Even if a high percentage of these strings were associated with someplace within 500 miles of Dublin, maybe there is a gene for knocking off spouses that I've inherited from the Russian harridan of antiquity, and maybe that would be the only unaverage, uncommon part of my genetic heritage.

§ To make things even more complicated than you might think, it happens that it is possible for an individual to inherit some characteristics from each and every one of his 4 grandparents, and so forth all the way back to 2 to the Nth ancestors in the Nth generation from the present one. And we all start from Adam and Eve, or was it Lucy and Ricky? ;-) P0M 03:54, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * The ethno-racial tree is not the same with an individual's genealogical tree. The idea of nation-states is older than the american meltpot. For hundreds of years people felt that their ethnical identity was a concept as real as the soil they lived upon. They were ready to die for this concept. Further more, each people has a history. Arbitrary pretending that parts of it are less important than others looks kinda sick to me. I know that my people, the Romanians, is basically an indo-european element added to the ancient European people; i know that this original population, called thracian, took some more genetic influences from latins and slavs. And before this i'm curious to know where did the indo-europeans originate from? what's our connection with the other human groups? when did we split off the other races? Claiming that there's no tree here is basically claiming that there was no root, that people originated all over the world and not in an African region as the modern science proved. I dont know why, but this reminds me of some white-power theory! VarzaViezureMinz

You now raise two important points, but you are mixing them up. To respond to your points we need to untangle them. One point is that people often imagine themselves in terms of different degrees of relationship with, or separation from, others. This is indeed an important phenomena and should be dealt with at length, but it is a cultural phenomenon. Another point is that there is a real history of genetic relationships based on migration, intermarriage, separation, and so forth. This is a biological phenomenon and can also be treated at length. But the two phenomena seldom overlap and are best treated separately. Slrubenstein


 * What are your grounds for saying that they seldom overlap? Certainly, there are cases where they fail to overlap, but why do you believe "seldom"? - Nat Krause 09:58, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * § Maybe we are getting too caught up in words here. If you make the requirements for "overlapping" sufficiently stringent almost nothing will overlap, and if you make them sufficiently lax... The important thing to see is that people can be subdivided according to a myriad different sets according to a myriad different operational definitions. Take the case of Sardinia. According to one definition, the population of Sardinia includes absolutely every human who is on the island from dawn to dusk on a certain day. Another definition might exclude tourists. A third definition might exclude any immigrants. Somebody else might want to talk about Sardinians in terms of a certain percentage of a certain set of alleles. Still another person might want to talk about Sardinians as people who look a certain way, speak a certain language, make music of a distinctive Sardinian tonality, etc., etc.


 * § The reality is that all of these classifications are active creations of the human mind. They are generally based on "what's out there," but nobody comes born with a label that says, "Certified Sardinian." P0M 14:42, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

In US for a long time a member of the "Black" race was anyone with "one drop" of "Black blood." In parts of Europe, people who for a long time were members of the same population sometimes come to be seen as memebers of distinct ethnic groups because they practice different religions. There is a lot of good critical history and anthropology on nation-building in Europe in the 19th century that shows how groups at one point in time got split apart and conceptualized as distinct ethnicities or nations, or how groups that were once distinct got merged. In many cases there will be biological consequences, of course, but these have not yet been fully documented. In any case, it was established in the early part of the twentieth century that linguistic, cultural and "racial" boundaries are usually not isomorphic, even though people often assume or act as if they are. Slrubenstein


 * Well, I notice that both of your examples are primarily historical rather than current, but nonetheless accurate. Also, with regard to national distinctions in Europe, are "ethnicity" and "nation" the same thing as race?  They are generally not defined that way nowadays.  True that "Croats" and "Serbs" came to think of themselves as different nations because of religious differences, but did they really think of themselves as different races, that is, genetically dissimilar?  I don't know.


 * I can cite other cases where common perceptions of race do overlap with historical reality, but these might seem too prosaic to worry about normally. Modern European people tend to see each other, English, Celts, Polish, Italians, etc. as more closely related to each other than to other peoples, which is basically accurate.  The Chinese see themselves as more closely related to the Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc. than to other peoples, which is also basically accurate.  European people in the 18th century apparently saw the people in the west African countries that they drew slaves from as one type, which is about right.  My Hispanic friends back in the US tended to be confused about the European or Indian nature of their ancestry, which is reasonable because the background of most people in Mexico and Central America really is a confusing mix of Spanish and native.  Certainly, there is a lot of imprecision in folk genetics, but I think to say that they are seldom accurate is too strong. - Nat Krause 09:54, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

§ There is a good map with migration routes in Genes, Peoples, and Languages by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, p. 71. It will show you what has been figured out on the basis of checking out the genetic inheritances of people. It shows a line starting from where Nigeria is now (near the west coast of Africa, just at the bottom of the big bulge, and going to a point somewhere to the east of the Caspian Sea. Then it splits and one line angles down toward Burma (and splits off after a while to head toward China) and another line angles back toward Europe. As you say, our ancestors all originated in Africa. They split into three groups already in Africa. Those three groups show different adaptations, different genetic constitutions. When the migrations reached the point where some people were staying there in the area north of Iran they must have already been adapting genetically to life outside Africa. The ones who headed into Europe had a major adaptation involving light skin color. The ones who ended up in Scandanavia ended up being quite a bit lighter than the ones who ended up in southern Italy. Nobody denies that the people who moved along different migration routes tens of thousands of years ago are all related (at least nobody that I know of personally). And you are aware that people in Romania consist of a mixture of people of somewhat different origins. No place in Europe is so remote that there has been no mixing with people from other groups. The closest to that kind of situation in Europe is Sardinia. Sardinia is not very far away from Italy and the rest of Europe, but the average citizen of Sardinia is comparatively remote, genetically, from the Italians. On the other hand, even the occasional Gypsy (whose migration route appears to come to Europe relatively recently from India) probably will be found in Sardinia, not to mention Italians, Greeks, etc.

§ If we wanted to find a group that had been really isolated long enough that there hadn't been any "fresh blood" for thousands of years, we probably would have to go to Australia, New Zealand, maybe the Fiji Islands... But we would be too late since sailing vessels and steam ships have been visiting there for hundreds of years now.

§ If we were to say that, e.g., the Maori are a "race", and all that we meant by it was that their caravan split off from ours a very long time ago and so it was rare for genetic cross-overs to occur until a few hundred years ago, and that they had picked up a few adaptations that are different from the adaptations that the Europeans picked up, we would probably be o.k. -- except that the word "race" is usually meant to suggest that there is a really major difference among groups. And when the word "race" is used it frequently is used in what you call the "white power" mode. "They not only have different skin color, nose shape, and hair texture from us, but their intelligence level is not the same as ours." (You might be interested to read what Carolus Linnaeus had to say about the "races" he described. White people were great. Every other "race" had something wrong with it, nasty about it.)

§ It would be useful if there were a word that encapsulated the reality that you depict -- that people from Sardinia have mostly relatives who all trace their ancestry back hundreds of years in Sardinia and only the occasional Finnish or Romanian or Irish great aunt or uncle. It would be a lot more accurate. "Race" won't work. Some people (who have written in this very same discussion page) believe that "race" is a synonym for "subspecies." That doesn't let there be mixture and a gradual shading from "Irish klados" to "Persian klados". And on top of that there are all of the bad connotations of "race" that we just can't expect to disappear overnight. I would like to use "klados" (Greek for "branch"), but I think the biologists have already laid claim to it in the form of "clade".

§ One thing I find strange: There is all this interest in "race", but nobody can tell me what the real differences between these "races" may be. I've heard about skin color, eyelid formation, shape of the front teeth, hair texture... But all of those things are right on the interface between the human organism and the environment. White skin color is useful in northern Europe, but it gave me skin cancer in the tropics. Other than the UV issue, it really isn't important. As long as I stay indoors or wear UV protection, even UV isn't important in the modern world.

§ So, VVM, what do you think is important and different about the genetic heritages of the groups you want to call races? And remember that things like language, body language, whether one eats with ones fingers or with chopsticks, whether one stands close and talks loud when trying to be extra friendly, etc., etc., are cultural not hereditary. P0M 07:14, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * I think you're enforcing an ethno-centrist view on the subject. Should the English version of Wikipedia be based on the brittish-american culture or should it treat the subjects in a multi-cultural manner (an approach that I don't usually see fit for explaining generally human concepts, but this is the the burden of the English language :-))? There's no such fuss on the word "race" in other parts of the world, at least here in Romania, parents often jokingly curse their naughty children by saying "damn your race!". P0M, you say that race won't work for depicting genetic relationship between a group of people - but why? Just because it fell in disgrace in less than a lifetime in the US? From here, "the other side of the world", looks like the Big Brother has taken over, and everybody's frenetically working on the Newspeak.
 * As far as I know, people in such a small place as Europe is have developed different cultures to a degree unimaginable in a racially undifferentiated territory - be it multiracial, as the US, or racially unitary as Russia or China (let aside the ethnical minorities in these countries). This differenciation can't come from the national borders alone, as these came into existence rather late and changed all the time. I don't exactly know what gives birth to the difference, i have no biology studies, but i can see it with my own eyes and i'm not ready to deny the truth just because it's "trendy" and "fashionable" to do so. A couple of months ago i gave some russian folk music to a friend of mine, half russian half ukrainian by race, but born and raised in Romania, thinking of herself as a Romanian etc., and she was instantly captured by the music, never hearing before anything like that - an effect russian folk had on no other i knew. What more proof should i have needed that the collective unconcious was speaking to that girl by the means of genetic memory?
 * Really, am i getting to incoherent on this? VarzaViezureMinz


 * P0M:except that the word "race" is usually meant to suggest that there is a really major difference among groups. I think this is iffy.  It's true that, in the past, many people have believed that there were really major differences.  And yet, I figure that most people would find the statement: "the differences between different races are not major" to be more intelligible than the statement: "there is no such thing as race." - Nat Krause 09:58, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

§ I'll try to answer VVM and Nat together. This is getting complicated for one thing because a discussion page is really supposed to be to clear up issues with the article, but we frequently find we need to talk to each other about what we think because what we think guides the way we try to structure the article. There are two great difficulties with the issue of [race] (and here I use a formal device that I steal from Husserl to indicate a word or concept that we're trying to get straight on): One is that we need to get clearer on what are the real factors involved that differentiate groups of humans from each other. The other is that it is especially helpful when we have precise definitions of vocabulary that can be agreed upon. When I was in college I lived with about a dozen people who were all pretty bright. People would sit around the kitchen table and discuss things after dinner. Sometimes there would be really hotly argued issues and people would start getting angry. Frequently I could point out to the two of them that they were actually saying the same thing but using different words. With the word "race" there are very many different ideas about what it means. We would be ahead in the world if people had even worked out their own definitions because people often "know how to use a word" and still don't know exactly what they mean by it.

§ Maybe it will help to look at the divisions among us in the broadest terms. We're all primates, and we share some inherited traits with other primates. We are all Homo, but that includes the Neanderthals, and they were a different subspecies from humans. The only subspecies of Homo that is still in existance is Homo sapiens, and some people use the word "race" to name groupings on that level. ("Race" == "subspecies"), so they only speak of "the human race." The way the issue of subspecies is handled in scientific nomenclature is to say that we are all Homo sapiens sapiens. There are narrower categories because we can follow migration paths and hereditary connections but technically I guess we shouldn't call them subdivisions because they don't really divide into discrete parts. It's not like various kind of fruit piled into an aquarium, it's more like bowls of different colored jello dumped in there, and the colors bleed into each other. Some people want to call those fuzzy groups "races". Some people think learning a different language or culture from birth would make you a member of a different [race]. (So your [race] might depend on your heredity and whether you speak Frisian or English.) Other people think [race] is entirely a matter of biological inheritance. Still other people, such as the Chinese, never even had a word for it until they ran into the need to translate Western writings (and deal with Western racism). Whose definition of "race" is the correct definition?

§ Back to the article, it would be best if we could do two things: (1) characterize accurately what is really out there (biological connections, languages, cultures, etc.), and (2) characterize dispassionately how different people have categorized human individuals into various [races] based on some or all of the objective data. Neither of these objectives is easily achieved. P0M 15:14, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

VarzaViezureMinz writes, "What more proof should i have needed that the collective unconcious was speaking to that girl by the means of genetic memory?" and this makes everything clear. Answer: if you are a scientist, you need a LOT more proof. All the examples you provide exemplify a cultural discourse of "race" and examples of how Europeans biologize cultural patterns. None of this reflects biological scientific research. You accuse POM of being ethnocentric. He (she?) isn't. POM simply insists that claims about biology be backed up by biological science. The example of a woman who loves Russian music is nothing close to biological evidence. Look, pizza gives me an orgasm. This does NOT mean I have "Italian" genes in me! Slrubenstein

I've read the entire discussion block, but I don't quite get it. Could someone help me out by summarizing very briefly what the problem is? Or if you prefer: what part of the article is in question? (...other than the fact that it is itself very confusing.) If the question is collective unconcious or genetic predisposition to music preference, then I'd submit that you'd need a lot larger sample size than N=1 to support such a claim. --Rikurzhen 16:35, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)

Lack of precision
To write an encyclopaedia together on a global network is a splendid idea. Problems exist however, as the race article is demonstrating. When all existing opinions in all countries (NPOV=Average of all POVs?) shall be covered, the resulting article may both be long and confusing. It is important that the first paragraph is grasping the essential content of the term with a high degree of precision. I think the current version is not in line with this. Typical expressions are:
 * "Some feel that in this usage we may justifiably speak of ..."
 * "Many researchers in biology and genetics, however, assert ..."
 * "some use race to mean ..."
 * "Many social scientists therefore view race as ..."

Some and many say a lot, but do not necessarily deserve a place in an encyclopaedia because of that! I think the [http://search.eb.com/ebc/article?eu=401660 race article in Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. (Encyclopædia Britannica Online)] in an excellent way demonstrates my point. Rather than referring to some and many, they refer to "most researchers" and states that "Race is today primarily a ...etc":


 * "Race. Term once commonly used in physical anthropology to denote a division of humankind possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type (e.g., Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid).


 * "Today the term has little scientific standing, as older methods of differentiation, including hair form and body measurement, have given way to the comparative analysis of DNA and gene frequencies relating to such factors as blood typing, the excretion of amino acids, and inherited enzyme deficiencies. Because all human populations today are extremely similar genetically, most researchers have abandoned the concept of race for the concept of the cline, a graded series of differences occurring along a line of environmental or geographical transition. This reflects the recognition that human populations have always been in a state of flux, with genes constantly flowing from one gene pool to another, impeded only by physical or ecological boundaries. While relative isolation does preserve genetic differences and allow populations to maximally adapt to climatic and disease factors over long periods of time, all groups currently existing are thoroughly 'mixed' genetically, and such differences as still exist do not lend themselves to simple typologizing. 'Race' is today primarily a sociological designation, identifying a class sharing some outward physical characteristics and some commonalities of culture and history. See also climatic adaptation, ethnic group, racism.

Could we do better? --Arnejohs 21:42, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

§ Even when people have something objective to focus on, such as a newly discovered animal specimen, there can be some disagreement among observers about how to depict the specimen. When people are constituting a kind of subject matter out of multitudinous phenomena, and everyone potentially has his or her own definition of what (in this case) race is, it is much more difficult to decide who has a "right" to participate in defining the field.That is the "political" problem that will stand in our way.

§ There is no accepted definition of the term "race," and there is no czar to decide among the many definitions that have been offered. On top of that, many of the definitions have extremely ardent supporters. So "doing better" may be impossible because of objections by those who would retain, e.g., references to language spoken as part of the definition of race, at least on the theory that some people do segregate people into races on the basis of the languages they speak and that our article has to reflect that real-world condition.

§ A correct definition of a noun should let people distinguish between individuals that fit the definition and individuals that do not fit the definition. If one person uses his definition and rules in some individuals that another person rules out by the use of that second person's definition, then even if both people call the groups formed by the rules by the same name, they are in fact not the same thing. A commonplace example of this kind of thing is when two people are compiling lists of "the ten most beautiful women in the world," or whatever. The same thing happens with ideas of race. Both the "rules" for what fits in this race or that race are different, and the application of the rules is likely to differ from individual to individual.This fact about difficulties in the use of ideas of [race] and about the difficulty of making a correct characterization of [race] has made this article a battleground for a long time.

§ Nevertheless, I think it is possible to say some useful things about commonalities among conceptions of race. It seems that adventitious characteristics are never used to define race. For instance, a common history of suffering some disease (even some heritable disease) is not used as a basis for attributing a racial identity. Most of the attributions of racial identity involve heritable characteristics that are common and similar (or are at least perceived to be) within a population Genetic inheritance is often mimiced by social inheritance, so it is easy to understand why the language that one speaks and/or other cultural factors could be taken as signs of racial identity and then be included as components of racial identity.

§ Could we do better? Pessimistically, I think even the definition that Arnejohs has provided us would be strongly disputed -- but not by me. Optimistically, I think we could do better by changing it in at least one respect (perhaps more), by pointing out how important location is to most ideas of race -- location and a history of intermarriage. Else why are the white-skinned Ainu not regarded as part of the [white race]? Why are the dark-skinned Shan people of the Golder Triangle area not regarded as part of the [black race]? P0M 06:24, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Paragraph moved here from another article
I recently cut this paragraph from the article on Race and intelligence. I was going to insert it into this article, but now it seems redundant. RK


 * Because of a population bottleneck, humans are relatively very similar at the level of genotype. Some argue that this genetic similarity disproves the existence of races. Consistent with that hypothesis, most of the total genetic variation can be found within, not between races. Nevertheless, population geneticists have studied patterns in the distribution of various genes and the functional importance of human genetic variation. Most scientists agree that genetically distinguishable populations have developed during the last 50,000 years, with episodes of genetic mixture between groups throughout. At least some of the phenotypic differences between populations (such as skin color) seem to have functional importance (such as adaptation to climate). Moreover, the distribution of many such differences follows a purely geographic continuum.

Race and intelligence
This whole portion of the article is horrific. Such a heading should immediately conclude that this is nothing but rubbish and not start of with the the statement "Many researchers have proposed and studied possible relationships between race and intelligence." And follow with "A well-known, strong dissent to this opinion can be found in the works of Arthur Jensen". All of this article clearly need a huge deal of editing. I've just started this with doing some small editing to the first paragraph of the overview and now removes the whole part about "Race and intelligence. Moravice

§ Rsther than simply cutting a paragraph or section that you do not like, it would be better to edit the material to make it better. Whether as individuals we like it or not, the fact is that there have been many arguments on this subject over the years and even centuries. Moravice's discussion above is confusing because it makes it appear that Jensen dissented when others claimed a link between [race] and intelligence. In fact, he was one of the few people who made and also defended the claim that there is a link. Where there is a clear claim that can potentially be shot down by evidence it is possible to make scientific progress. Although the idea of intelligence is murky and evaluating innate intelligence will always be complicated by nature/nurture issues, one can see the potential for creating tests that could definitely disprove supposed predictions of intelligence based on [race]. That makes the issue much more objective and "productive" than claims such as, "Orange people are nicer than Green people."

§ One of the main appeals to the idea of [race] (particularly to racists) is the belief that by observing some marker characteristic (e.g., red hair) one can make accurate predictions concerning other characteristics (e.g., ranking high in the "hot tempered" category). Strangely, intelligence is the only such allegedly [race-determined] characteristic of which I am aware. Perhaps other contributors can reduce my ignorance on this score.

§ If Moravice is perceiving the words "a well-known, strong dissent to this opinion" to imply that Jensen's assertions were well grounded (rather than merely being fervently championed), then I have to agree that the statement indicates a POV position and should be changed. P0M 23:22, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Since there is an entire article dedicated to Race_and_intelligence, it seems essential that a paragraph in this article is included to highlight and link to that article. I suggest that you withhold prejudgment about this topic until you've read more about it. Moreover, it would be unwise to limit your understanding to what's been presented in Gould's book. For example, I would consider this book review of The_Mismeasure_of_Man to be accurate. --Rikurzhen 05:17, Jul 3, 2004 (UTC)


 * The review misunderstands and misconstrues Gould's arguments. Of course, it still reflects a point of view shared by others, and should be presented in an article as such.  However, I would recommend it being presented in an article on Gould.  This review mostly repeats claims made by the people Gould criticizes, that is, points that are already presented in this article. Slrubenstein


 * I only point it out for the sake of Moravice et al that might want to delete this section from this article. Note: I have added that link to The_Mismeasure_of_Man article. --Rikurzhen 01:11, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)