Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 27

A clean-up
As I already suggested, this article needs a massive clean-up from obsolete, often tendentiously distorted information (very probably coming from Mr. Alun/Mr. Slrubenstein's workshop) that makes the whole content unnecessarily messy. Some important remarks:

1. Microsatellite Fst value of 0.358 reported for leopards is incorrect; the authors report the so-called Rst values that are different from Fst. Microsatellite Fst values in big cats are usually around or below the human average (0.15)[][]
 * Firstly the article does not claim that 0.358 represents FST, it says what the paper says, that this is a measure of within to between group variation. I agree that these statistics can be misleading, it is fallacious to compare the level of within species differentiation between two species with very different ecologies. We probably should note, however, that human genetic variation is often claimed to be much less differentiated than many other species. If you want to remove discussion of measures of within to between group variation I would agree with you. Second the papers you link to are tremendously inappropriate. These papers discuss only a cat species within a single continent (South America), so it is analogous to comparing the level of differntiation within this group to that of the human population of a single continent. Humans are dispersed throughout the world, so a comparison should only be made to other species with a very large geographic range. To claim that Fst values of "big cats" is small, when the only papers ou produce are for as geographically resticted group is extremely dishonest. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, and how many mammalian species inhabiting the whole world do you know? Mouse? It doesn't matter, what a large area the species inhabits; the geographical fractionalization will lead to the process of speciation anyway - as it happened in many animals in the past. Unfortunately, the case of humans is exceptional, because animals can't use boats or store food for a long journey. But the distribution of big cats is/was still very large (leopard, tiger, lion). Furthermore, despite a very restricted geographical distribution, orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees show such a high interpopulation variation that it almost approaches the level of speciation. But this is understandable, because in contrast with humans, who quickly spreaded from Africa 50-60 000 years ago, they diverged ca. 1 million years ago.
 * It's kind of the point though isn't it? It is impossible to compare species with very different ecologies and natural histories and apply a reigid set of criteria universally. We could compare certain species of big cats to humans, as you have tried to do, but if we do there are huge problems. Cats tend to be solitary, humans live in communities, even when we look at the most geographically distributed cats they do not roam as far as humans. Humans have probably only had a global distribution for a few tens of millenia, the big cat species may have differentiated over a much longer time. Humans probably have a great deal more gene flow between geographic regions than most other terrestrial species. The only real similarity between humans and big cats it that (a) they are both large terrestrial mammals and (b) some species of big cat are quite widely geographically distributed. So in reality all this comparing FST of humans with other species is rather pointless. Indeed the only paper I can think of off hand to have done this is Templeton's 1998 paper. Measures of FST have never been used as proof of subspecific classification as far as I know. There is no evidence that mere geographic distance can produce speciation. As you point out humans are capable of migrating over huge distances, merely being globally distributed is not enough for speciation events, especially if there is a large amount of gene flow between populations, as there most certainly is and has been in the human species. Speciation events would occur only by reproductive isolation, and not by geographic isolation. Given the general rule that hunter gatherer societies tend to reproduce exogamously it seems likely that gene flow has been constant and high in the human population. Two things have lead to the relative lack of genetic diversity in humans, our relatively recent origin and the large amounts of gene flow between peoples. Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * "Human genetic variation is often claimed to be much less differentiated than many other species" - Yes, it is "claimed", but the support for it doesn't exist. Except the case of great apes (without bonobos), I am not aware of any Fst value considerably higher than that of humans. Human Fst values are comparable or higher than in big cats, whose subspecies classification is well known and established. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually the support for it does exist, you just refuse to accept it. There are at least four peer reviewed papers in the article that suppport the claim. Wikipedia does not publish original research, if experts publish peer reviewed papers they are reliable sources and so we can cite them. The fact that you persoanlly believe that there is no support for this claim is of no consequence. Care to provide a peer reviewed journal citation that states categorically that there is no support for this claim? Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

2. Shortly after this case, AVERAGE Fst value for humans is compared to the MAXIMAL RANGE of Fst in chimpanzees. A silly trick, really. As we know, the maximal range of diversity in humans can be even higher. (Although I admit that the chimpanzee study was based on microsatellite data.)
 * Not true. The usual statistic given for human between group variation is 15%, the statistics given for chimps give the whole range of differentiation, there is clearly an overlap, with humans given as 0.15 and chimps given as 0.09-0.32. It is well known that the level of differentiation between chimp populations is higher than that between human populations, this has been cited again and again by numerous papers. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Those 15% don't tell the whole truth. The difference Africa - East Asia/America routinely exceeds 0.20 in SNP studies. The distance of 0.15 between Africa - East Asia in this study comparing primates
 * 
 * is very suspicious, but not so much because it is so "small", but because the distance between Africa - East Asia is virtually always 30-50% higher than in the case Africa - Europe. Curiously, here it is the same (0.14 vs. 0.15). Since the list of authors includes the very famous name Svante Pääbo, I don't take this comparison too seriously. Not speaking about that the largest human extreme (Pygmies vs. Australian Aborigines) that was only once explicitly documented by Cavalli-Sforza (0.43, 190 autosomal genes) is not listed in any later genetic study (although I know at least one that lists Aborigines in the studied populations, but later only lists the average, as usually). The level of differentation between chimpanzees that is so frequently cited probably concerns mainly older studies of sex chromozomes. As we now know, the real differentation of great apes isn't by far so high as these studies indicated. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course the 15% does't tell the whole truth, the 15% is an inaccurate and misleading measurement, but that's not the point, the point is that this figure is given routinely by scientists and anthropologists. In truth we see greater differentiation the further we go from Africa, people living nearer to Africa are more like Africans, those living further away from Africa are less like Africans. This is the whole point of the Long and Kittles paper. Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

3. The value of "FST of 0.06-0.1 for human "races" is hardly based on any solid data. In fact, interracial comparisons routinely show values 0.10-0.15 or even higher, especially for SNPs. As far as I know, only Rosenberg et al. 2006 reported ludicrously low Fst values of 3.8% (0.04) for 377 microsatellites. The problem is that authors often don't show comparisons of single populations, but rather misleading averages based on both interracial and intraracial values. Thus, values between 0.10-0.15 would be much closer to the truth (with microsatellites on the lower end of the range). After all, see [] or [], where mostly values higher than 0.10 are reported. The real magnitude of Fst differences (by SNPs) is nicely illustrated in a recent superb clustering study of Jakobsson et al. []


 * So, the alleged "small" differences between humans can be viewed in a different light! The Fst value approaching 0.30 between Africans and Americans Indians certainly isn't the whole story; the difference between certain Africans and Australian Aborigines may be as high as 0.40.
 * You are quite right, there is no such thing as a "true" FST, it varies tremendously depending upon the type of locus measured, SNPs, STRs, indels and Alu insertions all display different evolutionary characteristics, therefore they produce different measures for divergence between groups. The point is that the so called 15% of variation found between sampled human populations is usually given for all global populations, but this measure includes some of the variation found between populations within continents, usually the amount of variation between populations within the same continent is given as between 6% and 10%, but again it does depend upon the type of locus under investigation. In truth FST is a poor measure of genetic differentiation, both Edwards ("Lewontin's Fallacy") and Long and Kittles (2003) have criticised FST as a statistical fallacy. Edwards correctly states that FST cannot be used to produce an "average" statistic for all human groups, but should only be measured on a population by population basis. Nevertheless many reliable sources do use a single average figure however statistically invalid. Long and Kittles go further and show that even measuring FST on a population by population basis is statistically invalid. They show that FST is based on two invalid assumptions. Firstly that it assumes that all populations are independent and equally diverged (ie that no population is a subset of any other population, or if you like that the populations being measured all derived from the same ancestral population and diverged equally). Secondly it assumes that all populations have the same expected gene identity. Long and Kittles show conclusively that neither of these assumptions is valid. They show that the level of diversity is greatest in Africa (containing 100% of human diversity) and lowest in the Pacific (containing 70% of diversity). So what they show is that human groups do not each hold about 85% of the human genetic variation, they show that Africa holds about 100% of the variation and that Oceania holds about 70% of the variation, with in between groups holding less variation as populations get farther from Africa. They further show that gene identity is about 0.213 in their African population, while it is 0.541 in their Pacific population, or to put it another way, individual Africans are much more different from each other genetically than individual Pacific Islanders are. They claim that it is therefore the case that FST masks a great deal of diversity. Of course it is also true that if FST masks diversity within the human species, then it also must masks diversity in non-human species. But the point is this, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, we can cite sources that criticise things like the computation of FST but we must also say what experts say, even if we disagree with them, and experts often do quote the "85%" statistic, I personally think it is a nonsense and abused statistic, but it is widely (over) used by credible academic sources. You may not like it when anthropologists say "race" is a social construct, but you don't have the right to prevent editors from including this point of view in the article, because it is constantly stated by reliable academic sources. Likewise you may not like it when geneticists and molecular anthropologists say that human genetic diversity is much lower than that of many other species, but they do say this routinely, indeed this is a something that all geneticists and anthropologists adhere to, you cannot suppress this because it does not fit your personal world view. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
 * So what a genetic statistics should we use? What do you suggest? And what studies can all those PC geneticists and molecular anthropologists list to support their claims? Perhaps Alan Templeton?
 * Or Mr. Barbujani, who successfully continued in spreading Templeton's mystifications, further misinterpreting the work of leading anthropologists of the past? 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * There is no single "genetic statistic" that can be used to infer the level of differentiation between human groups. Human population structure is very complex, the whole point of Long and Kittles and numerous other papers that attempt to show how human genes are geographically patterned is to show just how complex it is. Any attempt to give a single "simple" figure that shows how human genetic variation is geographically distributed is always going to be very far from the mark, indeed it is inevitable that it will be as flawed as the Lewontin statistic of 85% Whichever way one looks at it thhough it is clear that the bulk of variation is within group, even Long and Kittles found that their most divergent group still had ~70% of variation within group, and that Africans had ~100% of variation within group. We do not produce original research here, we say what experts say, whether we like it or not. I understand the problems with the concept of FST and I understand why the ~85% claims are not accurate, but these stateistics are frequently used, and therefore we need to cite them. You do not seem to appreciate that this is not a blog, nor is it a place for you to express your opinion, you can only say what experts have said. Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

4. First, compared with many other mammalian species, humans are genetically less diverse... - This is a mystification, of course. When compared with other mammals, humans are rather on the upper end of the range [] As I see, virtually all claims about little genetic differentation in humans are based on the comparison with great apes. (If somebody has different data, please, don't hesitate to put them here!) Even the claim that great apes are more diverse than humans is problematic. In any case, humans are, on the average, slightly more diverse than bonobos, but chimpanzees seem to be approximately 1.5-times more diverse than humans and gorillas 1.8-times more diverse []. These numbers are especially striking considering the far higher TMRCA times for great apes. In any case, great apes must belong to the most diverse mammals in the world and saying that when humans are less diverse, they are at the same time little diverse, is clearly incorrect.
 * The claim is made by reliable academics publishing in peer reviewed journals, it therefore meets Wikiepdia's criteria for inclusion. Whereas you link to the personal website of a non-expert who appears to be obsessed with promoting the concept of biological race. We use reliable sources here. Actually the nucleotide diversity of chimps compared to humans is given in the article and is comparable to the numbers you give above. Pan paniscus represents only a tiny population (~10000) that is geographically restricted, whereas humans range over the entire globe. Furthermore the numbers of humans living is far in excess of the numbers of any chimp or gorilla species (~7000000000.). Considering that many new mutations occur in every individual human born, the huge population size of humans relative to other apes should mean that we have a very large nucleotide diversity. After all, diversity increases with population size as well as population age. Considering our huge geographic dispersal (the only great ape to be globally distributed) and our massive population size (chimps and gorillas are species undergoing a bottleneck which will massively reduce diversity) the relative amount of diversity in humans appears to be exceedingly small. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Not at all "small", considering that it needed about 20-times less time to accumulate! "Reliable academics" may claim, what they want, and certainly, they can be listed in Wikipedia, but Wikipedia should also list data showing that they claims consist of pure fabrications. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually Wikipedia cannot "list data", Wikipedia only publishes the views expressed in reliable sources. If you want to interpret data that would constitute original research. The point is that you frequently come here and criticise experts who you personally disagree with, but you appear to have zero qualifications to do this, you appear to be a non-expert with no academic credibility. If you can find reliable sources that dispute the experts you are so scathing about, then please produce them. But they need to be explicit in their conclusions, they need to say that they have evidence that a specific claim is incorrect, you cannot produce a paper and say that it contradicts a specific claim if it is only your opinion that it does such a thing, the paper itself must say that it contradicts the claim. Claiming that reliable academics are fabricating results is a very serious thing to do, you should be careful because it is called libel. Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

5. The further notes in the paragraph were certainly carefully selected by Mr. Wobble - including the sentence from Long, Kittles (2003), a study that actually supports the race concept. Not too surprisingly, he even doesn't forget to quote Mr. Templeton, a man, who likes comparing apples with potatoes.
 * Long and Kittle's paper is called "Human genetic diversity and the nonexistence of biological race" and states "Four different race concepts are considered: typological, population, taxonomic, and lineage. Surprisingly, a great deal of genetic variation within groups is consistent with each of these concepts. However, none of the race concepts is compatible with the patterns of variation revealed by our analyses. and go on to say "The biological concepts of race identified in the preceding paragraph are distinct from common lay conceptualizations of race. One such lay concept postulates the existence of near-uniform groups of individuals that can be identified by a few externally visible traits such as skin color (Keita and Kittles 1997). The AAPA statement on race (American Association of Physical Anthropologists 1996) articulates a counter argument to this popular view. In fact,our findings are consistent with the key features of the AAPA view:that all human populations derive from a common ancestral group,that there is great genetic diversity within all human populations, and that the geographic pattern of variation is complex and presents no major discontinuity." To claim that either of these statements provides support for "race" concepts is absurd. The acknowledgment that there is geographically structured genetic variation within the human species is not ipso fact support for "race" concepts, it is just a statement of the bleeding obvious. The fact that Long and Kittles state clearly that the variation presents "no major discontinuity" is clearly contrary to "racial" concepts. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
 * What about another quotation from Long and Kittles? "Surprisingly, a great deal of variation within groups is compatible with biological race concepts and therefore partitions of genetic variation such as those achieved by simple statistics such as F^sub ST^ do not provide critical tests for the existence of races as defined by biologists. Four decades ago, Frank Livingstone declared the nonexistence of human races (Livingstone 1963). It is now time for geneticists and anthropologists to stop worrying about what does not exist and to discover what does exist." I know that Steve Sailer interviewed Kittles some time ago and hence I know that his real opinion of race isn't as "fuzzy" as all the politically correct babbles in his articles may indicate. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It is a good quote, in fact in the quote they specifically state that "race does not exist". Look at the quote again, they state that Frank Livingstone declared the non-existence of race, then go on to claim that we should stop worrying about what does not exist (ie race) and look at what does exist (ie a gradual dilution human variation as one moves further from Africa). I don't know what Rick Kittles opinion of "biological race" is, and I suspect you don't either, I am sceptical that you can infer anything from this article, is it the one you are referring to? There is a difference in accepting that "race" is a socially real thing, in that one can accept that there is such a thing as racial discrimination, but we are talking about "biological race". Long and Kittles draw this distinction themselves in the quote I give above. "Biological race" is the classification of people into identifiable subspecific groups, this has never been easy either for humans or for other animal species, many zoologists reject classifications below the species level all together. In 2003 Rick Kittles and Kenneth Weiss wrote the paper "RACE, ANCESTRY, AND GENES: Implications for Defining Disease Risk", it's a long and thoughtful paper and is not easily summarised, neither can any direct quote give a good indication of it's content, but it does contain all of the usual arguments used by anthropologists, taxonomists and geneticists against subspecific and racial classifications. Indeed it specifically mentions both nucleotide diversity and FST."'Along the human genome, π is generally between 0.001 and 0.002 (1 heterozygous site per 1000 to 2000 sites (15, 55, 99, 105, 164, 166, 192–195). While π is slightly higher for populations of African descent (81, 94, 122, 188, 192), nucleotide diversity even between diverse human populations is about four times lower than the level observed within chimpanzees (38, 73, 83)... The traditional, though subjective, criterion for biological subspecies is FST > 0.25 (168, 190). The percentage of genetic diversity between spot-samples from the extremes of the Old World range of human populations (sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and Europe) is about 5–15%, with the remaining 85–95% within populations as noted earlier (Table 1) (2, 5, 60, 75, 76). From available sequence data, FST would likely be three times higher among different chimpanzee populations compared to levels for different human populations on separate continents.'" Furthermore Rick Kittles co-authored a paper in 2004 "Conceptualizing human variation" which covers a lot of ground regarding the extent of human genetic variation. This again discusses FST and even the famous 85% statistic "The within- to between-group variation is very high for genetic polymorphisms (approx 85%). This means that individuals from one 'race' may be overall more similar to individuals in one of the other 'races' than to other individuals in the same 'race'. This observation is perhaps insufficient, although it still is convincing because it illustrates the lack of a boundary." More usefully it discusses phylogenetic concepts of subspecies, the most sound way to classify below the species level because it relies on systematics. They conclude "Modern human genetic variation does not structure into phylogenetic subspecies (geographical 'races'), nor do the taxa from the most common racial classifications of classical anthropology qualify as 'races' (Box 1). The social or ethnoancestral groups of the US and Latin America are not 'races', and it has not been demonstrated that any human breeding population is sufficiently divergent to be taxonomically recognized by the standards of modern molecular systematics. These observations are not to be taken as statements against doing research on demographic groups or populations. They only support a brief for linguistic precision and careful descriptions of groups under study. Terms and labels have qualitative implications....'Racial' thinking can still be found in scientific literature. Evolutionary and other biohistorical studies should be model-based and should acknowledge the ongoing legacy of 'racial' thinking." In their 1997 paper "The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence" Rick Kittles and S.O.Y Keita state "Racial thinking persists in spite of multiple lines of evidence that deconstruct racial schema and their underlying philosophy. These lines of evidence derive from analyses of serogenetic data, nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome polymorphisms, ans skeletal data. All show that the received racial categories should not be treated as bounded entities. Theory also helps in the examination of the racial construct. None of the putative races as generally understoodare breeding populations. Hence these entities are collections of various biological phenomena. They are not evolutionary units." You appear to be confused with the difference between genetic variation and classification, there can be a great deal of variation between populations from the same species without it necessarily defining these populations as different subspecies. Indeed the only reliable way to identify subspecies is to us a phylogeographic approach, and many zoologists are even starting to use the phylogenetic species concept, which would dispense with any classifications below the species level altogether (and therefore abolish all subspecies), though it would increase the number of recognised species. What Long and Kittles are really saying, which you appear not to understand, is that whether "biological race" exists or not is absolutely dependent on how we define race and nothing else. All scientific concepts are based on good definitions (and this applies to classification as much as anything else), to get a good definition the concept needs to represent a good model for what we see in the real world. Long and Kittles specifically state that the four models for "biological race" concepts that they tested do not form good models for what we observe in the real world, and so they reject these as anything like "biological race concepts".  Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

6. The clustering studies are obsolete. See http://dienekes.blogspot.com/
 * We don't cite blogs here, this is an encyclopaedia, we cite reliable sources. Clustering analyses may have their problems, but they are reliable sources and have been used by some biologists to support "race" concepts, so they are relevant to the article. Such scientists include Neil Risch, Armand Leroi. Mostly these scientists are using "race" as a synonym for "human genetic variation" though. Some journalists have also made similar claims, such as Nicholas Wade in the NY Times. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't cite blogs. I cite two recent mega-studies working with more than 500 000 SNPs that can now identify single nations genetically. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What a strange thing to do, you cited dienekes blog to support your claim, then you later claimed that you did not cite a blog? It's clear to anyone with eyes that you have linked to a blog. Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Centrum99 (talk) 01:34, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

'According to Sauer, "The assessment of these categories is based upon copious amounts of research on the relationship between biological characteristics of the living and their skeletons." Nevertheless, he agrees with other anthropologists that race is not a valid biological taxonomic category, and that races are socially constructed. He argued there is nevertheless a strong relationship between the phenotypic features forensic anthropologists base their identifications on, and popular racial categories. Thus, he argued, forensic anthropologists apply a racial label to human remains because their analysis of physical morphology enables them to predict that when the person was alive, that particular racial label would have been applied to them.'

If this isn't clinical insanity, what else is? Don't be afraid, Alun, I am slowly progressing with my work and I will post all important facts here within several weeks. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 16:07, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Why do you think Sauer's claim is "clinical insanity"? Why should I be afraid? What have I got to be afraid of exactly? I'm not entirely sure what your point is. The quote you give is taken from the article, so what point are you trying to make? This talk page is for discussing changes to the article, but you don't seem to be making any suggestions about the article. I'm not sure that you actually understand this subject at all. Sauer is pointing to the fact that it is often possible to distinguish between different groups in the USA based on skeletal remains. So what? There is nothing in what he says that is incompatible with anything I have stated. It is obvious that we can distinguish between people who derive from geographically distant parts of the world, we can easily distinguish between a west African (the region where the majority of African America ancestry derives), an European (the region where the majority of European American ancestry derives) and a native American. That's not the point of classification. The point of classification is to be able to partition organisms into well defined groups unambiguously. Sauer himself acknowledges this when he agrees that "race" is a social construct. The utility of being able to differentiate between populations derived from extreme geographical locations does not negate the fact that it is not possible to differentiate the global human population into a few discrete groups in any biologically meaningful way. In many modern societies there are populations derived from very distant parts of the world, we can distinguish these easily, but this is not possible when we look at human variation in less artificial environments. Of course as these populations become more mixed it will increasingly be difficult to distinguish any "racial" groups. Furthermore I would be extremely sceptical that Sauer could look at skeletal remains derived from a multiplicity of much closer geographic regions and correctly identify all of them. Could he perfectly distinguish between Greek, Palestinian, Egyptian and Somali skeletons for example? I doubt it. As Kittles and Weiss state "The Big Few races can seem real in samples of size N (Norway, Nigeria, Nippon, Navajo). That is, if one examines only the geographic extremes, differences appear large ... In that sense it is sometimes said that there are only four or ﬁve major patterns of variation. But if we look at geographically closer or intermediate populations, differences diminish roughly proportionately. Even our view of the Big Few might change were it not for our curious convenience of overlooking places such as India. Who are those pesky billion? One race? A mix of the other already-sampled races? A multiplicity of races, as has often been suggested?" I've made this point to you several times before, but you really don't seem to understand this at all. I get the impression that you are so blinded by your fundamentalist belief in "race" that you really are not interested in real science, you only seem interested in things that you think support your personal crusade, even tot he extent that you have cited material here that clearly contradicts what you are claiming (see above about Rick Kittles). I suggest you take your crusade elsewhere, this is an encyclopaedia, it is not interested in publishing your opinions and personal observations. Alun (talk) 18:27, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I will address all issues that you put up here. Including your "roughly proportionaly" diminishing differences. I think you will be especially interested in the Fst values that I have collected. The days of your PC propaganda are finished anyway. Centrum99 (talk) 01:58, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * You need to find reliable sources that address these issues. If you can find reliable sources that contradict what the article says then of course we can include them. Please remember we do not publish original research and any synthesis is equally considered original research. You should observe that it is not my "roughly proportional" diminishing differences, if it were my personal claim then it would of course be original research and therefore irrelevant to the article. It is our old friend Rick Kittles along with Kenneth M. Weiss who have stated this. I'm not particularly interested in the FST values you have collected, you cannot include original research in the article, neither can you collate data from disparate sources to try to prove a point, this would be a synthesis. You can only cite reliable sources, and explicitly state what the conclusions of those sources are. you should understand this by now, I've explained it over and over to you. Alun (talk) 16:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * In the meantime, can you please find the book, where Sewall Wright listed Fst values of various mammalian species? It would be fair to use it below his quotation, to avoid "original research". Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.100.61.114 (talk) 12:20, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Separate references from footnotes
Section "Footnotes" has many references that should be split off in a separate section, "References". References and footnotes offer different kinds of information, and seeing one while looking for the other is confusing. Also, it is one way to segment the long section into two. -Pgan002 (talk) 06:31, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * You would have to explain more the difference between the two. The section titled "Footnotes" is basically what other articles title "References." I don't see the need for a split myself. The documentation of arguments in the article is fairly clear. Two sections would overly complicate things. In any event there is a Bibliography Section to round out the page. This is a lot more than you see on the typical Wikipedia article.Whazstak (talk) 07:12, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that footnote no. 3 and footnote no. 45 reference the same article. It seems like it would be a lot of work to delete 45 and renumber all the notes afterward; is there some sort of automated system for doing this? Nick Theodorakis (talk) 15:50, 4 April 2008 (UTC)Nick Theodorakis

Hispanicity as a race? Please don't invent Races :-(
The article has a very profound observation: "for practical purposes, when we speak of Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S., we’re really talking about Native Americans . . . [therefore] if being Hispanic carries any societal consequences that justify inclusion in the pantheon of great American racial minorities, they’re the result of having Native American blood. [But imagine the] the impact this would have on the illegal-immigration debate. It’s one thing to blame the fall of western civilization on illegal Mexican immigration, but quite thornier to blame it on illegal Amerindian immigration from Mexico."

Right, the U.S. appropriation of the term "hispanic" to group the native americans coming from south of their border, is extremely inappropriate in a universal context. While you might find millions of Mexicans in the U.S. speaking some form of Spanish language, there are plenty of races around the world who speak this language for historical reasons. This use of the term "hispanic" is as abhorrent as if in Spain we used the label "Anglos" to refer to the millions of Africans who speak that language south of our border. It is what it is.

Please help out with folks trying to edit Hispanicity and suggest it is a RACE. I know many people confuse the term "hispanic" with a race. They seem to become confused because for example, people from Mexico tend to be homogeneous (being predominantly AMERINDIAN). But the fact that folks from Mexico are homogeneous in their being Amerindian (Mongoloid Race, Indianid subtype) does not mean that there is a Hispanic Race!!

I don't mean to criticise anyone who wants to contribute, but please don't post phrases like "[This may have been a Racial Category but it is now regarded as ethno-linguistic] something that can also been seen as a strategy by some of the categorized in order to be included in the white dominant group (as the emergence of White Hispanics points to)"

The problem with that edit is that it suggests that:

1- Hispanic "may have been" a RACIAL GROUP.

2- He's also suggesting that White Hispanics are a construct. That there are no spanish-speaking white people. In other words, that Caucasoid individuals aren't found south of the border.

3- And given #2, that if anyone born south of the border were to claim to being CAUCASOID it would just be a strategy to be accepted in the "white majority" (where they apparently do not belong)

Now this is my take. I believe that each of the FOUR MAJOR RACES: MONGOLOID, NEGROID, CAUCASOID and AUSTRALOID are equal and loved by God. BUT I love science and I get aggravated by unscientific claims (for example: THE INVENTION OF A 5TH RACE... the "hispanic" race)

No, white hispanics aren't an invention, or a strategy created by Amerindians or mixed individuals to fit into the US White category!!. White hispanics are simply CAUCASOID individuals who speak spanish or live in countries where spanish is spoken. You know how many Germans went to Argentina after WW2? Similarly, how many Jewish People took refuge in South America due to Hitler? And how many Eastern Europeans emigrated after the fall of the Soviet Union? Oh they did.

So, as I said, this is not about one race being better than another. This is about SCIENCE and not inventing races!

I actually agree with the Mexica Movement. They are a group of Amerindians (Mongoloid Race, Indianid Subtype) who are tired of being called "Hispanic", because they are Amerindian. They had their land stolen by Spaniards and calling them "Hispanics" only adds insult to injury.

Anyway, I am not advocating favoring any race over the other. Just don't invent races and keep an eye open for folks who may feel like suggesting there is a 5th race; or a linguistic group where the 4 races don't apply!

Take care, Olga --Prophetess mar (talk) 23:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I believe that each of the FOUR MAJOR RACES: MONGOLOID, NEGROID, CAUCASOID and AUSTRALOID are equal and loved by God.
 * This is an encyclopaedia, it is not about what you "believe". Furthermore you start with the assumption that there are "four major races", but this is only a single point of view. Because "races" are social constructs the number and type of "races" vary significantly depending on the point of view of the observer. You "assume" that there are "four races" and then from this assumption try to classify all groups into one of these four "races". This article should not make such assumptions about what are or are not "real races", it should discuss the perceptions of what a "race" is from the point of view of society, citing reliable sources as it goes. Alun (talk) 07:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * This article needs a section on the ontology of race to resolve this disagreement/misunderstanding. Those who argue that the problem is the invention of 'new' races clearly have not understood the main POV represented in this article about race as an invention. A little section on non-constructivist views about race need to deal with the POV that races are natural kinds, and the systems of classification used by purveyors of such views. Thus, the comments about 'hispanic' and 'latino' races can be dealt with according to the relevant ontology as necessary. Otherwise, this will become an irreconcilable edit war. Eyedubya (talk) 09:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The notion of 4 major races is a slippery concept with Hispanics in many ways although of course as a social and cultural construct, folks are entitled to self-report what they desire to report. Hispanic is often a cultural and linguistic term. The ancient Aztecs and the tribes before them like the Toltecs etc definitely do not fall under the label "Hispanic," although they may make up the majority of Mexico's descendants. Some may say they are "Mongoloid" but does this then mean that people from Mexico, including all those ancient tribes going back millenia can be neatly checked off into the same box as Chinese? I have no problem with an ontology of race but such heavy lifting I think would be better in another article where all the classification - linguistic, cultural, etc can be fully developed. Whazstak (talk) 07:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

mixed races
The article does not say much useful on the topic of mixed races. The article Caucasian race see image- lays out these arguments in detail and the picture map shows a racial distributions example, so no one can say that the topic "should not be" on Wikipedia. The work of Cavalli-Sforza [sic] shows that in places like Africa, discrete races met and intermingled. His category of Extra-European Caucasoid, incorporates the Mediterranean Caucasoid races outside of Europe proper that make up the past and present population of North Africa.

At the same time, he shows negroids from further south may have moved up into zones of mingling, to produce various mixed races in Nubia, Ethiopia and East Africa, etc. Populations from these areas do not match negro features, proving admixture of races took place. This information should be worked into the article, or are the folks here avoiding it?

Cavalli-Sforza is a respected scholar. I notice he is not referenced much if at all in the article. Anyone care to comment on why this is being left out? There was an article called Extra-European Caucasoid on Wikipedia but it is no longer found. Caucasian race has taken its place put the information is not there, and perhaps should be added back in now. Could it be that some are bury the concept? Critiques of this category anyone?Keebler2 (talk) 05:25, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Extra-European Caucasoid is still there even though the article is now a redirect. In the Talk page I argued that Cavalli-Sforza introduced the label a priori for convenience in data analysis (e.g. because there is more data on Europeans than non-Europeans) and not because he was arguing that data shows the category to be a division with a sound biological basis. --JWB (talk) 01:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Archives
Where are the archives? And the to do list? And this page severely needs to be archived. Doesn't anyone maintain it? Richard001 (talk) 08:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Evidently when the article was moved from Race to Race (classification of human beings), the subpages were not moved with it. :/ Since the talkpage was over 350K, I went ahead and archived it into the next numbers in the sequence, and provided a link to the previous subpages: Talk:Race/Archive 24 and earlier.  This might be sufficient, or someone might wish to go through all the subpages and move them to the new title.  Or, just link to the old locations from here, either way will probably work. --Elonka 19:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Article name
I'm guessing this has been discussed (where are the archives? see above), but can't we get a less lengthy name for the article, e.g. race (humans) or at most race (classification of humans) (see human being). If it was race (human) it might be taken as meaning human race, but race (humans) is hardly going to be taken as humans race is it? Think about the people that have to link to this article... Richard001 (talk) 08:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

American Indian and African ancestry
The article failed to mention the main reason that American Indian blood in Caucasian people was based on blood-quantum (one -quarter or more and you were considered Indian; less, and you were legally and socially white) and known African blood (no matter how small the amount)in a white person would render that individual legally black. It was proposed by Thomas Jefferson, whose agenda was obviously not to offend the numerous leading families of Virginia who proudly boasted of their descent from Pocahontas. Also, Indian blood was considered more assimilable than African.

To this day American Indians jealously restrict membership to their respective tribes based on blood admixture. As to Hispanics being a race, that is clearly a riduculous social invention designed to deprive Spanish-descended people of their right to a Caucasian, European heritage. Are Portuguese-Americans called Lusitanic? I am from California and I had many Mexican friends. While they all proudly claimed their Indian heritage, none of them ever denied their white, Spanish ancestors. In fact, most of them knew which region of Spain their families came from. The older generation of Mexican-Americans were always classified as "white" on all documents.I must also add that children can easily identify people by their race, therefore it is absurd to claim that there is little diversity between the three major races as some people on yhis talk page are claiming.jeanne (talk) 07:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Jeanne, the U.S. government wanted to discourage interracial marriage and prevent any further offspring from a white and black/African-American parent by enacting blood quantum laws at the first place after the Reconstruction era as a result of the US civil war. The "one drop" rule is to punish individuals who would been legally "white" to end up becoming "black" to the eyes of the law.

True, more Caucasians want to have "American Indian" blood instead of African blood, unless the Caucasian such as myself actually has a (Native) American Indian grandparent on state and federal records, the evidence of non-white ancestry would become a huge socioeconomic and emotional problem in white-American Indian families for generations to come as it did to my Mother's side.

I'm surprised not alot of Caucasians in California where I also live in don't say "I'm part Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, etc." if this is part of the multiculti diversity trend is for a white person to come out, claim non-white (mainly American Indian) blood without any knowledge of American Indian heritage and tries to make themselves look "cool", but never part-black and/or Asian?

And yes, according to most psychiatrists that study the issue of how humans react to each other in racial terms: children can identify groups of people, but never feel a person's race, color, ethnicity (or gender, disability and appearance) isn't a "threat" to them. Hate is taught by their parents or relatives who install prejudice in these children in an early age, which is what we need to prevent racism from growing in their minds or continuing onto the 21st century. + 71.102.36.5 (talk) 11:04, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Too long... far too long
This page is too long. Can anyone actually be bothered to read all this waffle? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Binboy69 (talk • contribs) 18:17, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * it's unmanageable. If we cut it down to reasonable size, it will grow back to unreadable bloat in a couple of months. I suppose the history of this article is the best proof of how people are still obsessed with the notion of race. --dab (𒁳) 09:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I would say that this article is the best proof of how people are obsessed with the notion of "race denial". And that is why the article is too can be considered nothing but political correctness waffle. This article is PC run amok. 86.42.221.134 (talk) 14:49, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I think sections 2.2-2.5 could reasonably be moved to Race and genetics and Human genetic variation. We do need to keep some of te content here, but these sections are very detailed, we don't need that much detail in this article. What do you think? Alun (talk) 19:28, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have a few ideas of compression - I think all the history (1) could be a separate article. I think 2.1 can be compressed simply by removing 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 completely (not deleting but putting in the Human Evolution article.  2.2 also needs serious compression.  2.4 is very important but disproportionately long, can it be cut without losing anything?  These to me are the areas to work on first. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 20:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I've had a go at reducing the length of sections 2.4.1 and 2.4.2. I don't think I've removed anything major, if I've made any errors then it was done inadvertently. I've moved these sections to Human genetic variation in their entirety, and reduced their length here, so nothing is lost from Wikipedia anyway. Section 2.2 is in serious need of work as it is a hodgepodge of edits made in an uncoordinated way, it needs to be rationalised and made more fluent, this will probably reduce it's length. I feel confident to work on the genetics and subspecies sections because I'm a biologist, but less confident in other sections. Cheers, Alun (talk) 11:48, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I took care of 2.1.1 and 2.1.2. Can you rework 2.2?  I agree with you about it.  I think this is the most unweildly and problematic section.  We just cannot delete any notable view from a reliable source - but perhaps reorganizing it can allow for compression? Fixing this section will go far to improving the article.  Slrubenstein   |  Talk 18:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, we have just cut 30 kb. It is still very long, but it is evident to me that articles on complex and controvesial topics will always be longer than average articles.  Maybe now is a good time to pause and absorbe the current state of the article and think about how well it works/flows and how balanced it is. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 18:26, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

images
I am tired of the refusal to include images illustrating the notion discussed. Especially seeing that it is asymmetric, and thus betrays systemic bias. I count nine inline images illustrating Black people, one image illustrating Asian people, and zero (sic) images illustrating White people. This is unacceptable. I don't know what kind of bias this expresses, since I see no reason whatsoever to show images of people falling into the category discussed, but this has got to stop.

Especially in the "history" section, physical appearance is, of course, the one central aspect of race. The Tarim mosaic is a record of the perception of the "Central Asian" ("Caucasoid") and the "East Asian" ("Mongoloid") racial type. If you are a postmodernist, you can say that these are "only" social constructs, but guess what, this is the article to discuss said social construct, and the construct happened to be based on physical appearance. dab (𒁳) 11:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The reason images are a problem is the hypocritical selectivity of certain persons on what images are to be included. On the Black people page, a picture of Anwar Sadat was quickly removed as "non black" even though his skin is fairly dark and his mother was a Sudanese. Apparently you can't be an Egyptian and be 'blek' - heaven forbid. By contrast, the same folks have no problem including a light skinned Egyptian on the White People page. Apparently, such 'approved' models pass the race and color test with no problem when it comes to selective definitions. So until you and others are ready to apply the same standard across the board, rather than a hypocritical double-standard, I don't think you should complain.Larsposenaa (talk) 18:06, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't see the "nine" images illustrating "black" people in this article, I see two, I also see two Asian people, two of Hispanic people and two of "white" people, these eight images of people in the article are in the Law enforcement section. We know they are different races, because the FBI tells us that they are, at least according to the FBI's way of classifying "races". I don't see any other images of people at all. If your point is that there are not images of human diversity, then that's wrong because there they are, in the law enforcement section. Furthermore the claim that there is a "refusal to include images illustrating the notion discussed" is simply wrong, the notion discussed is race, there are plenty of images here that illustrate the concept of "race", and none of them are images of individual people, because the "race" concept is not about images of people, it's about populations.


 * As for the image of the mosaic. Well all I see is two men, who says they are from different "races"? What's the source? This image is from the ninth or tenth century, and yet you claim it's a "record of the perception of the "Central Asian" ("Caucasoid") and the "East Asian" ("Mongoloid") racial type", as far as I understand it the concept of "racial type" did not even exist in the tenth century, so what you're saying is anachronistic, you are projecting your modern conception of "race" onto the past as if it had any validity. As such this is just original research unless you can find a specific reliable source that states that this particular image is believed to depict "racial" diversity in the tenth century. The text of the article doesn't even mention this place in central Asia, it only mentions Europe and North Africa. Alun (talk) 12:09, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You are right. The applicable folks in the 10th century clearly recognized different peoples and nations and tribes, but did not deal in 'approved' categories like Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid etc as we have known them since the 18th and 19th centuries via European race classifiers. As for the count of 'white' people, what is this- affirmative action photo day for white people? I see FOUR of them on the FBI group photo, hardly 'exclusion' as claimed above. In fact the FBI mugshot writeup itself says there are 4 white people, one male, one female, one white Hispanic male, and one white Hispanic female. So you have 4 white people showing right off the bat, not only under American calssifications but under old school 'Caucasoid' categories as well. Where then is this so called 'shortage' or 'systematic bias' as claimed above? Besides on the White People article, you have photos of Arabs, light skinned Indians and Egyptians, light skinned Hispanics, and Central Asians all approved under the rubric of 'White'. Again, where is this so-called shortage of white faces? Using these 'inclusive' indications of 'diversity' it seems 'white' photos are very well represented in various Wikipedia race articles, and are actually allowed much more visual 'diversity' that what is tolerated for 'bleks'. Larsposenaa (talk) 18:06, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

'''Does race even exist? Or is it man made?''' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.34.50.155 (talk) 18:41, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Best to read the article; I have read separately race can be used to describe levels of sub-species in various life forms (like based on genetics).  I have also read Homo sapiens are too closely related to be scientifically considered as different races.  For those who love to simplify … if you are human, and reading this, you are African with millions of years ancestry to that continent.  Nonprof. Frinkus (talk) 20:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * the problem with this article is that it is nearly impossible to read. It weighs 160k. We might as well not have it, because nobody is going to read it as it is. It is really, really urgent to reduce this article to WP:SS at about a quarter of its current length. --dab (𒁳) 09:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Depending on your race you also have some 100.000 years of ancestry a person of another race doesn't share. --217.233.213.117 (talk) 05:28, 21 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, it is more like a maximum of 60,000-50,000 years based on several books I have read. And of course, many of these so-called "races" did split long after (for example East Asians and Central to West Eurasians (ie. White for assistance) splits could be very roughly half that number).  And I am not going into the massive mixing and remixing that is on-going ;-) .  Nonprof. Frinkus (talk) 22:01, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Is this article reliable?
How can you guys deny that the recent ancestry of any human can be inferred via bone analysis, DNA analysis, and soft tissue analysis? How can you accept that people can be grouped by their recent common ancestry and at the same time deny that race exists? This is not a neutral article. It is PC waffle and something needs to be done about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.221.134 (talk) 14:53, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Dude, its that simple - DNA analysis does not provide enough information to separate "africans" from "europeans" or whatever else, or more to the point, it shows that they are not different but the same. The closest you get to "races" is "population that has lived separated for a long time from another population" which leaves you with smth like an aborigine-asian race, an asian-american race and an afro-european race. But even that is misconstrued as...heck, read the article its all in there. This article references contemporary scientific analysis and it does it well. If you have different sources go ahead and cite them.--Echosmoke (talk) 22:27, 1 October 2008 (UTC)


 * What you said above is simply incorrect.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-16-dna_x.htm

Testing CAN be done to determine a person's racial background. Anything that says otherwise is PC, not the truth. Ryoung122 10:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * You are taking this out of context (and this is discussed in the article, under law enforcement). In the United States race usually functions as a good enough surrogate for "population" that one can identify skeletal remains or DNA evidence with races.  But this does not always work, and many scientists have argued that it would be dangerous to take this rough correlation too far, e.g. in medical research, where there are diseases that we often identify with one race even though they also occur among members of other races.  But this is using DNA evidence and the concept of "race" very narrowly, for policing purposes.  Scientists have other objectives when they conduct research, and need to verify claims that hold for all humans and not just people living in the US.  And it is there where this correlation completely breaks down.  Again, this is discussed in the article. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 14:07, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't know about the "politics" but the article goes into detail about research on DNA as well as the analysis of body morphology - often using peer-reviewed life-sciences journal articles as sources, the most reliable sources on the life sciences, I would say. It also draws on peer-reviewed journal articles from the social sciences that explores what people mean by "race" that shows how notions of race often do not involve recent ancestry but beliefs about distant ancestry - again, from the most reliabl sources in the social sciences.  You can talk about politics all you want but it sounds like a smokescreen for the fact that 86 just rejects modern science. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 00:22, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I reject modern science! Do you know any science my friend? Sense the distinctly American political bias in the article! This article should also be divided into 'race' proper and 'race' as in racism. Please learn some science! 86.42.218.29 (talk) 22:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I also noticed that those who wrote the article have been highly selective. How telling, could this article have been written by Americans by any chance? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.218.29 (talk) 22:46, 7 October 2008 (UTC)


 * This is a silly statement; this is English Wikipedia and most English speakers who are active here are Americans. But as I am sure you know American scholars are current with the best scholarship in Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Australia.  I look at this article and I see a very long list of references.  So what significant research has been left out?  How selective are you?  Have you read all the works cited in this article? Slrubenstein   |  Talk 23:06, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I think you might benefit from a lesson in biology, evolutionary theory, basic logic and taxonomy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.218.29 (talk) 23:29, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

You might also like to note the political intrusion of the US onto the science cited, but not the science you avoided, of course. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.218.29 (talk) 23:32, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Again, please provide specifics. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 00:20, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Bias
I removed and fixed the biased introductory paragraphs; they were irrelevant and cited flawed sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RachoCEGA (talk • contribs) 00:31, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * we include all significant views, especially ones we do not like, as long as they come fom verifiable sources. That you do not like them is irrelevant.  If you violate our core content polcies, you are in effect engaging in vandalism.  Please comply with ou policies. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 01:48, 9 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If that is true Slrubenstein then why do you keep removing views from professional zoologists which you don't like? Especially on Lewontin's Fallacy which deserves a special mention in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.222.154 (talk) 16:34, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * First, the first sentence makes a mainstream science claim, and provides a citation to back it up. Then you change the claim but leave the citation.  Now we have a claim that is not supported by the citation, and a citation that is being misrepresented.  Now tell me, what possible scholarly standard, on the entire planet, supports this kind of misrepresentation?  An article would be rejected by any peer reviewed journal if you tried to pull that kind of crap, adding in your own views and then providing citations that actually say the opposite.  There is an absolute lack of scholarly integrity in that.  Second, learn how to write, at least by our standards of basic style.  If you have different sections for different approaches to the topic, do not keep inserting (unsourced, I might add) argumentative material in different sections that is already covered in another section.  Third, who said I do not like the views of zoologists?  Fourth, why do you not put the views of zoologists in articles on zoology?  This article makes it clear it is not about zoologoty but about human races, and mainstream views about humans come from specialists in human evolution, human genetics, and human sociology and ethnology.  Have you seen me go around to articles on reptiles and birds adding material that pertains to the study of genus Homo?  That is what I would do if as you claim I had a bias against zoology.  No, it seems like you are a hypocrite, you have a bias against scientists who specialize in the study of humans.  Thank you for making your own bias and ignorance, as well as your intellectual dishonesty, clear. By the way guess what, Lewontin's fallacy is referred to twice in the article, once in detail.  What do you want, to have Edwards' work mentioned in every single paragraph?  Have you ever read a journal article?  that is not how good scholars write.  You discuss a particular view and source in the proper context, in relation to related discussions.  Slrubenstein   |  Talk 18:04, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Anonymous IP 86.42.222.154 from Ireland, Edwards' paper "Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy" is discussed in the article already, so it's disingenuous to claim that it is not. Indeed I have included a whole infobox Template:Infobox multi locus allele clusters that explains how Edwards' system works, this is based on the worked example in Edwards' very paper. Furthermore we have a whole article that discusses Lewontin's Fallacy which is also linked to from this article. Edwards' paper is well cited in the article, but it does not deserve "special attention", it does not invalidate any previous or subsequent theories about the concept of "race". Indeed Edwards' paper does not actually contradict Lewontin's claims regarding "race" at all. Edwards is actually making a completely different point to Lewontin, irrespective of Edwards' claims. Indeed Edwards' must have known that his paper doesn't really refute Lewontin, so I can only assume that he is being deliberatively provocative in his paper. Ultimately Lewontin's claims for ~85% between group sharing of genetic diversity are more lucidly addressed by Long and Kittles in their 2003 paper "Human genetic diversity and the non existence of biological race". In this paper they find that it's incorrect to claim that ~85% of human genetic diversity is shared between the continental regions. It's more accurate to claim that about 100% of human diversity exists in Africa, while proportionately less exists the further from Africa a population lives. That's actually what we would expect from the RAO theory, diversity has become serially diluted as we have undergone bottleneck after bottleneck with each new step from Africa.Edwards' paper is ultimately more a discussion about how we can use clustering analyses to classify human groups accurately. But even Edwards admits in his paper that in reality clusters are relative and highly subjective, they depend on how good our sampling strategy is, and what type of genetic marker one chooses to use. That's obvious from the inconsistent results that have been obtained by clustering analyses. It might not conform to your own worldview, but the article as it currently stands gives a pretty accurate overview of how biologists and geneticists mostly see the concept of "race". See Genetics for the human race in Nature Genetics. Alun (talk) 11:50, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * "It might not conform to your own worldview..." - Alun

Are you accusing me of racism? How dare you! Firstly I am not racist, secondly racism has nothing to do with whether races exist within the human species, nor do any political ideologies. Such as the one you are very probably espousing. You think that just because someone accepts that there is within-species variation in the human species they are racist...how surprising!

Why is it acceptable to mention, in the introduction, a fallacious argument which is used to argue against objective fact, without mentioning that the argument is fallacious? This is intellectually dishonest and deliberately misleading. The very fact that people use a fallacious argument should, most definitely, be mentioned in the introduction, period.

I am not surprised that you think I am arguing because of my presumed "world viewed", in actual fact I only wish that people understand that race merely refers to within-species variation and that political ideas such as superiority, inferiority and equality have no connection to race its-self. Who is biased?86.42.200.153 (talk) 18:38, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "Race" does not refer to within-species variation. There is a tremendous amount of empirical data that demonstrates that race is often, and in the past several hundred years principally, used by people to refer to various relations of inferiority/superiority among people.  The data supporting that this is how race is mostly used is very solid.  You may reject empirical evidence and scientific research, but in this article, mainstream scholarly findings are considered significant views. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 21:27, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * By the way, I find it interesting that you chose to respond only to eight speculative words Alun wrote in response to your question, word's which were apart from answers to your question and really just speculating as to why you didn't anticipate our answers to begin with. I infer that means you accept the actual answers we have given to your question, since you have no response to them.  That means the issue is resolved.  Good.  Slrubenstein   |  Talk 21:29, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * 'Are you accusing me of racism?' No I'm not, I'm saying that you might believe that the distribution of genetic diversity supports the possibility of objectively classifying humans into subsepcies, i.e. that that might be your world view. Some scientists do believe that this is the case, indeed it's one of the points of Edwards' paper. I don't think that's got anything to do with racism, it's a scientific problem, racism on the other hand is a social problem. Racism isn't the belief in "race", racism is discrimination against a group of people based on the fact that they are from a different ethnic group. Racism will exist whether biological race exists or not, because it's a behaviour and not a belief. Racism exists even between people who might be regarded as part of the same "race" by outsiders, for example an Irish person might find he is discriminated against while seeking work in England, that would be racism. I don't believe that I have accused you of any sort of discrimination, so clearly I haven't accused you of racism. I dispute your claim that Lewontin's argument is fallacious. Certainly Edwards makes this statement in his essay, but he is actually not really addressing Lewontin's argument at all. Effectively Edwards is saying something completely different to Lewontin. Edwards might have called his essay "Lewontin's Fallacy", but this does not mean that he has actually refuted Lewontin's original observation, and indeed an inspection of Edwards' paper shows that he does not really make this claim. My objection is that you have claimed that it is a "fact" that Lewontin's claim is a "fallacy", that's simply untrue, it's only true that Edwards has said that using multi-locus clustering analyses it is possible to accurately classify people. The problem is that the groups that people are classified into using these methods are not particularly robust, they are highly dependent upon sampling strategy, the type of genetic marker used and the assumptions used when calculating human demographic history (ie how much linkage disequilibrium, effective population size, population bottlemnecks etc). For example compare Rosenberg et al. (2002) with Myers et al. (2008), these papers use the same samples (HGDP), but use different computer programmes to calculate clusters and use different genetic markers (STRs vs. SNPs), they get different clusters. The compare the Rosenberg et al. (2002) paper with Rosenberg et al. (2006), in this paper they use STRs like they do in 2002, and use the STRUCTURE programme. like they do in 2002, but they add more samples, especially from India. Again they get different clusters, this time some populations clustered as "Indian" whereas before they clustered as "European". Clustering analyses are highly dependent on sampling strategies, genes used and which statistical analysis is applied to them. That was predicted and has been borne out. So we say this in the article. It's just plain wrong to claim, as you are, that a single paper by Edwards has "proved" anything. There has been much discussion of this at Talk:Lewontin's Fallacy, most population geneticists there agree that actually Lewontin and Edwards are asking scientifically different questions, and that Edwards' choice of tile is misleading. If you think what Lewontin is saying is a "fallacy" simply because Edwards says it's a fallacy, then I'm sorry but you're simply wrong. Alun (talk) 07:49, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

". I infer that means you accept the actual answers we have given to your question, since you have no response to them. "

No this is incorrect.

Alun, also see "The Ancestors Tale" and "Race: The Reality of Human Differences". I am glad you can separate racism from race by the way.

Citation 4: '"Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation lies within so-called racial groups. This means that there is greater variation within 'racial' groups than between them."' - (groups you say, how odd that this statement can't be made without using the word 'group', or a synonym of the word!).

From this it does not follow that groups have no rigor, no validity or that they don't exist etc. Ask any social scientist and they will tell you that this is merely a common fact about groups. And the fact that within group variation is greater than between group variation is just a fact about races. Notice that despite this fact about groups we can still identify groups! Also, how could one discover this fact without determining races? Also, if the inference on which this argument is based is correct then it follows that the research is invalid since the research was conducted by identifying races. If the research is invalid then the inference is invalid. So the inference invalidates itself. This point is also made in The Ancestors Tale.

Notice that if you are saying race is invalid when applied to humans you are saying it is invalid to differentiate between a person from west Africa and a person from eastern Europe. It can be done though and this is an objective fact. Also note that you will never mistake an Asian for a European, or an African or an Inuit or a Native American, no-one would. f you are saying race is invalid you are saying there is no differences between geographic populations of humans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.215.179 (talk) 11:04, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you are more than a little confused. The problem regarding "racial" classifications is not one of genetic and/or physical homogeneity within the human species, as many supporters of racial classification claim in their ignorance. No one has claimed that one cannot distinguish between say a person from west Africa and a person from say north Europe. The article does not make this claim either, I'm surprised that you seem to think it does. That's got nothing to do with "race". Indeed the article does deal with human genetic variation and how it is distributed. Differentiating between people from geographically distant parts of the world is not the same as "racial" classification, Kittles and Weiss (2003) put it better than I ever could (I strongly recomend reading this paper, it covers just about all of the real and serious problems with "racial" classification): "Isolation by distance can be portrayed in more realistic, continuous map-based fashion than tree-diagrams provide, which helps clarify why classification is so difficult (Figure 2) (Figure 3). The Big Few races can seem real in samples of size N (Norway, Nigeria, Nippon, Navajo). That is, if one examines only the geographic extremes, differences appear large because they can be seen in comparisons between graphic and tree-like presentations of the same data in Figure 3A,B. In that sense it is sometimes said that there are only four or five major patterns of variation. But if we look at geographically closer or intermediate populations, differences diminish roughly proportionately (Figure 3C) (176). Even our view of the Big Few might change were it not for our curious convenience of overlooking places such as India. Who are those pesky billion? One race? A mix of the other already-sampled races? A multiplicity of races, as has often been suggested?" You don't seem to be being consistent. Originally you were claiming the "vital" importance of saying in the article that Lewontin's observation is a fallacy, and you then say that it is a "fact" that Lewontin's argument is based on a fallacy. We are an encyclopaedia, we're interested in the substance of theories and not the promulgation of the truth as it is espoused by individual editors with a zeal to promote their own personal view of the world. The fact is that many many reliable sources really do have a problem with "racial" classification, and the fact is that amongst biologists and anthropologists only a small minority of researchers really believe that "race" is a valid taxonomic unit. Many biologists dislike the idea of classification below the species level at all. Many taxonomists are sceptical even of the value of classification above the species level. Indeed many taxonomists dislike the whole classification system altogether, and promote the idea that we should be using systematics and phylogeography to understand biological variation in an evolutionary way. Some promote the concept of the Least inclusive taxonomic unit, they would dispense completely with hierarchical taxonomies as valueless, for example they would argue that the taxomomic unit that contains all fish cannot also not contain all mammals, because mammals are clearly a derived group from fish. The only useful way to identify the relationships between groups of organisms is by inference from evolution. Now it's just plain wrong to imply that "races" are fundamental "facts" provided by "nature". No taxonomic classification is ever that, taxonomy is simply our way of trying to classify nature, and nature is not as easily and neatly classified as we would like. When there are disagreements between taxonomists about the very meaning of taxonomic units, and their relevance to biology, it ill behoves anyone to try and claim that as disputed a concept as "race" must be a fundamental "universal truth". So lets not get sidetracked into a discussion of the "obvious reality" of race. This talk page does not exist to discuss whether "race" is "real". I suggest there are many places on the internet you can go to if you want to have that discussion, but this is not one. This is a place to discuss improving the article. You made some claims about Edwards' paper, I responded to your concerns. After that you ignored Edwards' paper altogether and started making irrelevant claims regarding the "truth about race". I don't think that's related to your claims about Edwards' paper. Alun (talk) 13:31, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

"You don't seem to be being consistent. Originally you were claiming the "vital" importance of saying in the article that Lewontin's observation is a fallacy, and you then say that it is a "fact" that Lewontin's argument is based on a fallacy.["

Yes my language can be loose at times but come on for crying out loud you know what's meant. But forget that.

"Many biologists dislike the idea of classification below the species level at all."

Fine but the variation still exists as we all know, and race refers to this. This is why it makes no sense to say race doesn't exist or that it is invalid as that implies that this geographic variation doesn't exist.

"Many taxonomists are sceptical even of the value of classification above the species level."

Again fine. However, it doesn't matter whether it has value or not. Humans and chimpanzees, for example, share an ancestor and classification above the species level acknowledges this does it not? Nor does it matter whether below species has any scientific value, in that it's "useful" for some scientific purpose. Many assert that it has no use, which is fine, but it is wrong to therefore conclude that it is scientifically invalid.

"Some promote the concept of the Least inclusive taxonomic unit, "

Thank you, I shall read that as it seems interesting.

"Now it's just plain wrong to imply that "races" are fundamental "facts" provided by "nature". No taxonomic classification is ever that, taxonomy is simply our way of trying to classify nature, and nature is not as easily and neatly classified as we would like. When there are disagreements between taxonomists about the very meaning of taxonomic units, and their relevance to biology, it ill behoves anyone to try and claim that as disputed a concept as "race" must be a fundamental "universal truth"."

It is indeed much "messier" than many realise and thus very difficult to represent in an abstact manner. However species and races exist independently of human taxonomic systems. Before a species becomes a species it undergoes an intermediate stage, that stage is referd to as race. This intermediate stage, whatever we call it, is fundemental to evolutionary change so in that way, yes race is a natural phenonomon and a fundemental component of evolutary theory. This intermediate stage will always exist despite the system we choose to use.

"This is a place to discuss improving the article."

I think the article would be greatly improved if races was also discussed, briefly, from a zoological point of view, we are animals after all. It should be noted that geographic races exist throughout the animal kingdom and are not, and never have been a purely political and social idea as is indicated in the article. It is of course important to discuss these social and political ideas in addidion to this.


 * Nobody here contends that genetic variation within the human race doesn't exist. That would be denying the evidence. The position held by most anthropologists and the overwhelming majority of biologists is that genetic variation does exist, that there is a geographical variation indeed, which is best described as "clinal" rather than "clustering" and that the older concepts of "races" as they have been known in the last few hundred years, while valid social constructs, do not appropriately describe the geographical distribution of human genetic diversity. Indeed, most biologists agree that there is little enough genetic diversity in the human species that it cannot be separated into races in the zoological sense of the term. It is my observation that people here seem to be talking past each other, using the same words to mean different things. I'm jusgt stating the obvious in case it might help. :) And for the record, I'm not aware of any scientist contending that any population within the human species is showing signs of further speciation at this point. If you have references to that effect, please supply them.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:40, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * And Wobble was right, "species" do not exist in nature, nor do subspecies. Organisms exist in nature.  Species and subspecies are names we give to statistical phenomena; what name we give is a matter of convention, and the boundaries of the groups thus named are almost always fuzzy - this was established by Darwin and confirmed by work in genetics essential to the modern synthesis.  To claim that species have any kind of existence except as statistical phenomena is to reject modern science. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 20:57, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * "It is indeed much "messier" than many realise and thus very difficult to represent in an abstact manner. However species and races exist independently of human taxonomic systems."
 * Well that's just plain wrong. Indeed there are different ways of classifying species and subspecies (races), and this article actually discusses a few of them. How can a concept like species exist independently of human classification when it is human classification that defines their boundaries? Or to put it another way, if species exist outside of human classification, then it would be impossible to have different species concepts. But we do have different species concepts and each of these will produce a different set of species. The most common one in use in recent times has been the "biological species concept" (BSC), but the "phylogenetic species concept" (PSC) is getting more and more support amongst biologists because it relies on systematics (this is arguing against the PSC, but it at least shows that this debate is real and out there, irrespective of your claims that species are independent of human classification, here's a response by a biologist). Under the PSC there is no subspecies taxonomic unit. Frankly you are trying to claim that the species problem doesn't exist, against all of the evidence.
 * "Before a species becomes a species it undergoes an intermediate stage, that stage is referd to as race."
 * Not necessarily. Many species of organisms do have highly genetically divergent subspecies, often these subspecies are stable over extended periods of time, and often there is considerable gene flow between these divergent subspecies, which is why they never become separate species. The existence of long standing genetic differentiation between members of the same species that are clearly not undergoing a speciation event refutes your argument that within group differentiation is always due to a speciation event. Conversely there are plenty of examples where different species may be genetically very similar. Any recently evolved species may be extremely genetically similar to it's parental population, it depends upon how species are defined. Fundamentally there is absolutely no reason why two separate species must always be more genetically dissimilar to each other than two subspecies from the same species are. It's simply untrue to claim that genetic differentiation is always part of a speciation process, and it's simply untrue that when speciation occurs it must be the product of a long differentiational event.
 * I'm afraid you're only argument in the entirety of this thread has been "it's just true". You need to understand that some things are simply not "just true". Species and subspecies were invented by humans as a way of classifying the biological world. They are not natural entities as you claim, or at least it's probably more true to say that whether they are "natural entities" or not is the subject of some dispute. As far as I can see your argument could originally be summed up as "it's a fallacy because Edwards said it's a fallacy". Now it can be summed up as "there's differentiation so 'race' must be true". Neither of these arguments is convincing because we have reliable sources that say that the fact of differentiation does not "prove" the existence of "race". So what you appear to be saying is, "ignore all of the evidence that does not support what I am saying because what I am saying is The Truth". Sorry, we don't work like that here. Alun (talk) 07:15, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Groups of animals would exist whether or not humans were here to classify them. It doesn't matter what the hell we call them but the fact the their rank can change if a different system is used doesn't suddenly change anything about that group of animals. Also, I do not appreciate your attempt to characterize me Alun, it seems like you are trying to create a straw-man.

"And Wobble was right, "species" do not exist in nature, nor do subspecies."

So no groups of animals exist at all, evolution is false according to you. Order in nature, how ever non-discrete it is, is an anthropocentric creation? Are you seriously contending that the order created by evolution does not exist?

"I'm not aware of any scientist contending that any population within the human species is showing signs of further speciation at this point. If you have references to that effect, please supply them."

Well I didn't mean to imply that any group was currently undergoing speciation but geographic populations in the human species have in the past been undergoing the process. I do not know whether this is true today as we have wrestled the steering wheel away from natural selection somewhat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.210.123 (talk) 14:16, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Then let me be clear: I'm not aware of any scientist contending that any population within the human species is showing signs of further speciation at this point, or that there was any sign of latent speciation in the human species at any point in history since the advent of modern humans. If you have references to that effect, please supply them. Your affirmation that "geographic populations in the human species have in the past been undergoing the process" is groundless.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:53, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Anon writes:
 * "And Wobble was right, "species" do not exist in nature, nor do subspecies."


 * So no groups of animals exist at all, evolution is false according to you. Order in nature, how ever non-discrete it is, is an anthropocentric creation? Are you seriously contending that the order created by evolution does not exist?
 * Uh, you have it backwards. Reread what i said.  According to the theory of evolution species are only statistical phenomena and have no ontological reality.  If you claim species have some real existence, you are close to creationism, and very very var from the theory of evolution.  Like I said, if you have no respect for science, go edit other pages.  here, we follow mainstream scientific theory, and that includes the theory of evolution, not your crank theories.  Species are statistical phenomena and how we define and distinguish between them is largely a matter of convention.  Darwin even said, arbitrary.  Wobble was right, and you have no scientifically meaningful response to any of his comments. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 15:04, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Quite Slr. I'm not sure what anon means by "groups of animals". I don't think we are talking about animals, in groups or otherwise. I think we are talking about classification systems. Clearly classification systems are the product of human invention. If we choose to have a category of "winged animals", then this is not an evolutionary valid category, it would include pterosaurs, and birds and bats and some insects. It's still a fairly reasonable "group of animals" and it's well defined, it's much better defined than some species we could list, and its borders are quite discrete, we wouldn't have much trouble identifying organisms to include in it (though we might have to have some arbitrary definition of "wing" to decide if we include, say, Flying squirrels). I am saying that this group would have no evolutionary significance. Clearly anon thinks that this group of "winged animals" would have some sort of evolutionary significance. I wonder could be elucidate this fundamental truth to us because I'm not familiar with this particular property of evolution. Alun (talk) 08:28, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "Also, I do not appreciate your attempt to characterize me Alun" I'm not "characterising" you. Your argument consists of "I'm right and that's a fact". But actually you're not right. I've provided several links to reliable sources that directly contradict what you are saying. You have provided no evidence to support your claims. If you don't like being "characterised" in this way, then I suggest you stop behaving in this way, you could start by providing reliable sources to support what you are saying. That's how it works here, no one is going to accept what you say just because you say it. You seem to be under the impression that this is simply a place to have a conversation about taxonomy. Well it's not, you don't seem to be interested in the article any more, rather than proclaiming the "truth" about your claims. If you actually read any of the links I provide you wouldn't be making these claims for "truth". Alun (talk) 09:31, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

"I am saying that this group would have no evolutionary significance."

Of course this winged group would have no evolutionary significance. Human races do have evolutionary significance. Get over it.

"Clearly anon thinks that this group of "winged animals" would have some sort of evolutionary significance."

Are you trying to create another strawman?

You have failed to demonstrate that geographic populations of humans have:

1: Not diverged 2: Are indistinguishable from one-another

86.42.206.226 (talk) 11:15, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Nor does he need to. You may want to figure out what Alun means when he keeps using the words "clinal" and "clustering", and how this relates to the topic under discussion.  This article discusses these concepts, if you are interested in reading it.   siℓℓy rabbit  (  talk  ) 12:22, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I just had a huge long response to this, but I decided not to post it because your response was better. I know I go on and on too much. Thanks. Alun (talk) 13:43, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Human races do have evolutionary significance. Get over it.
 * Really? I note that you provide no evidence for this claim, please provide reliable sources. There are many many different "race" concepts, to claim that any particular one (or all?) holds any evolutionary significance, you'd have to define which concept you are referring to and provide evidence, in the form of a reliable source, that this concept has evolutionary significance. Many properties of some human populations have evolutionary significance that have nothing to do with "race". For example in malarial regions Sickle-cell disease is common. This is because it provides protection from malaria, so this set of diseases has an evolutionary significance, it provides a selective advantage to heterozygous people. But it is certainly not distributed by so called "race", and couldn't be considered a "racial" marker.


 * Are you trying to create another strawman?
 * I'm trying, very patiently, to explain to you that there are many ways to classify "groups of animals". We can use extremely logical ways to classify groups of animals, such as classifying them as "animals that have wings". That group of "animals that have wings" will exist whether humans classify them or not, as you point out. It is a logical classification, we should be able to accurately classify organisms using such a system. The real point is "what is classification for"? Most biologists these days think classification systems should have evolutionary meaning. That's biologically sensible, but it's not absolutely necessary for accurate classification. But what you say tells us nothing about the evolutionary significance of classification. You should be aware that I am not being facetious, discussions regarding what derived characteristics are important when classifying organisms are extremely important, but it's still true that these derived characteristics can often be arbitrary. Mammals are defined by the mammary glands of their females, so female mammals can all produce milk for their offspring, most mammals are also viviparous, but some are not, echidna and platypuses have mammary glands but lay eggs. If the derived characteristic for mammals was viviparousness (obviously they would not be called mammals then), then platypusses and echidnas would not be mammals. The distinction is arbitrary, but it is still important when it comes to classification. So the point I'm trying to make is that your argument that "groups of animals" would still exist even if we didn't classify them, while absolutely correct, is irrelevant to the discussion. The discussion was not about the existence of "groups of animals", the discussion was about whether the groups we choose to use for classification purposes are always an accurate reflection of evolutionary relatedness. I think most biologists would readily agree that they are not, our understanding of the ecology of the overwhelming majority of organisms (not just animals) is far too limited for us to claim that our systems of classification can be anything but a gross simplification of an enormously complex set of interactions. On the other hand from a taxonomic point of view there really aren't any biological "races". Most biologists say explicitly that human genetic diversity does not meet the criteria for any human populations to be considered divergent enough to be subspecies. Now that's a fact that you conveniently choose to forget, there are no human "races" because biologists tell us that biologically speaking that classification makes no sense for humans. Alun (talk) 13:43, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I am forced to accept what Dawkins says on the issue in "The Ancestors Tale", it does make alot of sense.

I haven't really got time to disuss any of this in detail but I will make one point about your use of the term 'abrirtary'.

If we decide to use a taxonomic scheme any groups produced by that taxonomic scheme will result in non-arbitrary groups. Now if we use two different schemes to classify the same objects then the groups will still be non-abritary, despite the fact that they are different, because we use a logical scheme to determine the groups. If we wanted to produce arbritary groups then we would be making a random decision, by rolling a die for example. The very fact that we we are determining the race of an organism by a logical process, by analysing the genome, phenotype etc means that we are not making arbritary groups.

"Arbitrary

1. Depending on will or discretion; not governed by any fixed rules; as, an arbitrary decision; an arbitrary punishment.

2. Exercised according to one's own will or caprice, and therefore conveying a notion of a tendency to abuse the possession of power." - http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=arbitrary

So an arbitrary decision is one a capricious one ie, not logically determined.

If we were to use an evolutionary taxonomic scheme then there is only one correct tree of life. And of course evoution does not create abritary groups, it creates non-arbitrary, non-discrete/discrete groups.

It is false to say that race is arbitary since when we decide what race some one is we are not rolling a die. People claim that the line between races is arbitary, but this is false for 3 reasons(maybe more):

1: Lines between non-discrete races can not be drawn. The insistence that they must be drawn is the bane of what Dawkins calls the "discontinuous mind". 2: If a line could be drawn then the position of the line is not determined at caprice, or by flipping a coin, it therefore, cannot be arbitrary. 3: The insistence that continuums can not be "chopped up"(excuse my poor English but I can't think of a better way to phrase this) is a fallacy. The Continuum Fallacy, the Either-Or Fallacy, false dichotomy.

Please check the definitions of 'arbitrary' and 'non-arbitrary' because they are not being used correctly and not just by you.

So what the hell do people mean when they wrongly say race is arbitrary?

They merely mean that there is a degree of subjectivity to it. But again, and sorry for harping on at the same point, they are not making a random or arbitrary decision when they identify the race of an organism.

If we were to imagine a line like so:

A......|...........................|......B......|...........................|......C

Where A is Caucasian, B is Caucasian-African, C is African.

Now it is easy to say whether some-one is in any of the there discrete categories but what about the intermediates? Take intermediate x, he has recent Caucasian and African ancestry, not 50-50, but three of our test subjects don't know this. Now lets ask them where person x would lie on the line. Subject 1 might say he goes smack-bang in the middle of category A and B. Subject  2 might say that, "Nah, x goes a little to the left, and subject 3 might say that he goes a little to the right. This is were subjectivity comes in, but it is most definitely not arbitrariness! Our subjects our not flipping a coin. One of our subjects would not say that x is actually an Eskimo, another subject is not saying that x is Native American etc, If they were then it would be correct to say that race is arbitrary because it could not be logically determined. The position of x is non-arbitrary in this hypothetical experiment(I think you will agree that it is realistic). This minor disagreement between our subjects is exactly what one would expect and does not make arbitrary groups.

A......|...........2..1......3........|......B......|...........................|......C

I have read arguments from the camp which says race is invalid or non-existent in humans and I am not satisfied. I have also read what Dawkins(Ancestors Tale) and others say and I am satisfied by it. I am forced to accept everything that Dawkins has said on the issue. I am forced to accept that race is valid and that it is very real. I am not making my decision from a position of complete ignorance or merely accepting convention in popular culture, I have put some work in.

Please check the definition of 'arbitrary'. I hope you don't think I'm a neo-Nazi or something... :)

Also, I do not reject science at all, I do take an interest. 86.42.236.178 (talk) 18:20, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Interesting argument, but I would recommend you first familiarize yourself with WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. Also, could you please provide the page numbers in Dawkins' book where he says that races in humans have biological significance? I don't remember coming across that particular passage.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:29, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * 1) I don't think you are "forced" to do anything. What you mean is you choose to interpret what Dawkins is saying as if it supports your personal views. Indeed all we have heard from you is personal opinion. Still not citations from reliable sources.
 * 2) Who said the groups were arbitrary? It's the choice of derived characteristic that is arbitrary. If we choose "winged animals" as a distinguishing feature, then the taxon produced will not be arbitrary, but neither will it be of any evolutionary significance. The decision to choose a defining trait can be, and usually is, arbitrary, even if the groups produced are not arbitrary. But that's not the point is it. You are missing the point yet again. The point is not to produce non-arbitrary groups, the point is to produce evolutionarily valid groups.
 * 3) My use of the term arbitrary is totally correct. Arbitrary does not mean "random" as you claim. Arbitrary means "Based on individual discretion or judgment." or "Not based on any objective distinction;" It's clear that it is arbitrary whether the so called "caucasian race" includes only people from Europe, or also includes people from the Middle East and North Africa or also includes people from India, Central Asia, Somalia and Ethiopia, all of these peoples have been called White at some point in history. These decisions are arbitrary, the "line" could be drawn  at any of these places, or any place in between, and have been incidentally. How are all of these decisions evolutionarily sound?
 * 4)  An evolutionary taxonomic scheme is obviously the best way to do it. But it's not as simple as saying that "there's only one tree of life". It's still a question of guessing most of the time. That's why taxonomists rely on derived characteristics. The derived characteristic is a characteristic that all members of the clade have, and so it defines the clade. But there could be many such derived characteristics that could define the clade, then it becomes an arbitrary decision regarding which characteristic is pre-eminent. But we still have no way of knowing which of these derived characteristics is the one that best differentiated the clade. The simple fact is that our understanding of "the tree of life" is extremely poor, and therefore our taxons are very poorly defined and mostly don't represent an accurate system of classification.
 * 5) Gosh I've read some nonsense in my time, but your points 1-3 are possibly the the best examples of pure fronter gibberish I've read.
 * 6) I agree that the line cannot be drawn. But if someone wants to divide up the human populations into "races" then a line must be drawn at some place, or else we are all one big race. You claim the "line" cannot be drawn, and then you go ahead and draw it.
 * 7) Why is it not determined arbitrarily? You don't explain this, just make a bald statement. (a common fault with you, you seem to think that simply saying something makes it a "fact")
 * 8) No one has insisted that a continuum cannot be chopped up. I haven't, at least. The question is not whether it can be chopped up. The question is whether there is a sensible way to chop it up. Mostly biologists and anthropologists have concluded that human variation is so smooth that there is not really any sensible way to do this. That's the general consensus amongst biologists and anthropologists. I really don't care what you believe (as you seem to think I do). Wikipedia does not exists to satisfy your personal opinion. The fact is that the mainstream of anthropology and biology disagrees with you (and apparently Dawkins). What I find most depressing is that you don't seem to be at all interested in finding out why the majority of world experts in this subject disagree with you. Your attitude is simply "I'm right". Or more correctly "I'm right, I'm right, I'm right.. so there". We're not interested in evangelising here, we're an encyclopaedia. I suggest you take your fundamentalist zeal elsewhere where you might get a better reception. There's plenty of places out there where you can talk about "race" with others who share your faith.
 * 9) Well done! You have proved that one can arbitrarily chop up a continuum. But it doesn't really cut the mustard. Just because we can make an arbitrary decision about how to artificially package human variation does not make it "science" and it does not make it evolutionarily sound. In fact now you have two lines between your "races". You have a line that divides "race A" from "not "race A" and a line that divides "race B" from "those in between A and B". Let's say Ireland is A and The Gambia is B. Who are the people not in A or B? Where is the line drawn between A and "not A"? At the Bosphorous? At the Danube? At the Alps? Where do the people in between fit? No "race"? A seperate "race"? What are the defining characteristics? Are these clades? Humans do not fit into clades because clades represent discrete groups. A......|............people not in A or B...............|......B These two lines are just as arbitrary as the one that would fit equidistantly between A and B, and you've created a whole group of people who don't belong to a "race" at all. In that case it makes more sense to say that everybody belongs to the in between group you have drawn.  You place a person from, say Somalia equidistant from say the West African population and the West European population and say "they fall between these two races". But you have failed to say what "race" this person belongs to. So as far as I can see you are saying that most people don't belong to a "race" at all, but a few people do belong to a "race". The fallacy here is that you are simply taking people from the geographical extremes of the planet (usually a peninsula). Calling them a "race", and then calling all in between peoples "not any race". I think you have highlighted the absurdity of what you are saying better than I ever could. Thank you.
 * 10) So you've read one book and are a world expert? Give me a break. Reading a single book doesn't give you the knowledge or expertise to dismiss a scientific consensus that has been built up over decades. As I say, I don't care what you think. You say "I have read arguments from the camp which says race is invalid or non-existent in humans and I am not satisfied." Frankly I don't care. Satisfying you was not one of our core policies the last time I checked. I don't remember the bit where it says that "we need to include all relevant points of view except for when an anonymous IP from Ireland disagrees with world experts, in which case we must not include the points of view of the world experts". No that policy doesn't exist.
 * 11) I also suggest you read Witherspoon et al. (2007). It's a very good paper that shows why multi-locus allele clustering is misleading. I'd also note that even when multi-locus allele clustering has been used, the majority of people are actually classified as belonging to multiple clusters. We all live upon a continuum of variation, there is and always has been huge gene flow allong this continuum. We are not partitioned into relatively discrete subspecies that are well defined and bounded. But that is the definition of a subspecies, whether you like it or not. You need to understand that there are rules for identifying subspecies, and humans variation does not meet those rules. You can howl at the moon and gnash your teeth as much as you like because of this, but it's still a fact. It's a fact that no one here has "invented", we are not responsible for it. I'm not here to persuade you. I'm here to tell you have mainstream science sees it. If you can't accept that, then maybe that says something about you and not something about mainstream science. Alun (talk) 04:53, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Again Alun, if one is going to pick markers of any kind to differentiate between two objects then one does not roll a die or flip a coin, one is making a logical, objectively based decision. This needs to be corrected in the article. This is not a point of view, please check the dictionary.

Ramdrake: "Interesting argument, but I would recommend you first familiarize yourself with WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. Also, could you please provide the page numbers in Dawkins' book where he says that races in humans have biological significance? I don't remember coming across that particular passage."


 * Well if you consider what we would normally call races, then it is correct to say that they are different to one another because they have diverged. Please excuse me if I misunderstand you but is this not what you mean by "biological significance"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.197.145 (talk) 09:44, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


 * First, thank you for admitting that Dawkins never says human races have biological significance. Again, the fact mankind comes in different skin colors, hair textures, skull shapes, etc. doesn't mean that the arbitrary division of mankind along those lines makes any more biological sense than saying for example that humankind is divided into races based on eye and hair color. Variation isn't divergence at least from a biological standpoint. You assume that because human genetic diversity exists it is a sign that human populations have been/are evolutionarily diverging at this point. The fact of the matter is, genetic diversity within the human race is remarkably small, despite visual dissimilarities that may exist. So far, all you've been able to offer is your own opinion. Wikipedia isn't interesting in your own opinion, or mine, or that of any single other editor for that matter (unless they've been published and reviewed by reliable sources). It is interested in expert, usually mainstream opinions based on reliable sources. Period. The rest is personal opinion and belongs in a blog, not here.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:23, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Well actually I agree that when one picks markers one does not do so at random. That's not what I said. What I said was that they can be arbitrary. Arbitraryness in not the same as randomness, and if you think it is then you are simply mistaken. There may be a choice of several markers that all appear to be equally relevant for classification purposes, but for classificatory purposes it may be necessary to chose a single one of these several. That choice may well have deeper implications as we discover more about the group of organisms in question. The choice of physical attributes to classify "races" in humans in the past lead to a multiplicity of conflicting schemata, see Historical definitions of race. You have contradicted yourself, on the one hand you say that all of these schemata must be correct if we assert that are correct, but on the other hand you have stated that only one can be "evolutionarily correct". They cannot allbe correct and yet only a single one be correct. besides, the choice of "animals with wings" is not random, but it is arbitrary, and it can produce perfectly good classification systems. These systems would, of course, be totally irrelevant in evolutionary terms.
 * I'm still quite amazed that you seem to think that there is no difference between an IBD distribution and a SIM distribution. Essentially you are saying that the depictions in the image I have included in this post are indistinguishable. Well here's news for you, biology requires that there is a well defined boundary between subspecies (or "races"). that is a fact. Biology demands that subspecies be phylogeografically and phylogenetically relevant entities. That means that they must form recognisible clades, to form recognisible clades they must be bounded. That means a clustered distribution, or a SIM. Humans do not show this pattern of variation. There are good biological reasons for this, recognisible phylogeographic partitioning demonstrates a reasonable evolutionarrly significant partitioning from a geographically circumbscribed population. That's what biologists demand before they recognise subspecies. The fatc that you don't like this is irrelevant. We are an encyclopaedia, we include what is considered normal biological practice. The fact is that all of the points you demand are made, are actually made in the article. What you obviously don't like is the fact that the article gives good and detailed reasons why biologists reject this reasoning. But this article is not about your opinions, something you don't seem to be able to grasp.
 * Personally I don't know what you would "normally call races". I know that most anthropologists would disagree with you that what are normally considered "races" are done so due to biological divergence. Most anthropologists would say that what we "normally call races" are actually social constructs. To claim that something like the One drop rule has "evolutionary significance" is just plain wrong, I'm afraid, but for years it was the "marker" for a particular "race". The fact that you don't understand this point reflects your ignorance rather than the incorrectness of the overwhelming academic consensus. Alun (talk) 14:50, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

"Arbitraryness in not the same as randomness, and if you think it is then you are simply mistaken."

This is incorrect, if one makes an arbitrary decision, the decision is one made at whim, or impulse. This is what the word means.

"You have contradicted yourself, on the one hand you say that all of these schemata must be correct if we assert that are correct, but on the other hand you have stated that only one can be "evolutionarily correct"."

No I have not contradicted my self, you just misunderstood what I said.

If we were to use three different schemes to draw trees of life, then each species would have a different position in each tree. The position of each species would be determined in a non-arbitrary manner. This would result in non-arbitrary groups. Now, which of those schemes you use is an arbitrary decision and all would be correct trees. These systems as you said would be totally irrelevant in evolutionary terms.

However and if we were to make the arbitrary decision to draw a tree of life based on evolution then there is only one correct tree. In other words, we would represent on this tree, which animals evolved from which and this is what I mean when I say there is only one which is evolutionarily correct. The winged group you mentioned would not all have evolved from acommon ancestor directly, they all would have taken different routes before they evolved wings and the evolutionary tree I'm talking about would show this. Maybe I did not explain that very well. But see The Blind Watch Maker to see what I mean.

It is wrong to say that race is arbitrary as is said in the article, what they mean to say is that race can be non-discrete. If the sources use the word 'arbitrary' explicitly in this context then they are flawed. In any case, the article misuses the word, and to maintain Wikipedia's high standards this should be rectified.

"To claim that something like the One drop rule has "evolutionary significance" is just plain wrong"

I never said this. I do not agree with the one drop rule as there are intermediates Alun.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.210.171 (talk) 15:42, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


 * the decision is one made at whim, or impulse.
 * I don't think that a decision taken at "whim or impulse" can be characterised as random. A random event has no aetiology, that's whay makes it random. If I have a hankering for chockolate ice cream, I may choose to buy one on a whim or an impulse. That is not a random event, and my hankering is not a random event. But it's still a whim or impulse. If I have a set of equally good characters from which I need to select one specific character for characterisation purposes, it is incorrect to claim that the character I select is "random". I already know that all of the characters I have are useful, it becomes a matter of arbitraryness which I choose. But the one I choose is not chosen at random, it is chosen from a set that has already been deemed to have some validity. Later my choice may prove to produce a clade or taxon that is evolutionarily erroneous. I don't think your logic is very convincing.


 * It is wrong to say that race is arbitrary as is said in the article
 * No it's not. It's arbitrary because "races" are dependent on arbitrary socially constructed fallacies and arbitrary decisions about what criteria are relevant. In South Africa one test for "race" was to use a comb, if the comb ran smoothly through someone's hair, then they were classified as "white". I can't help but notice that you ignore these examples of arbitraryness. The One drop rule is arbitrary, the "comb test" is arbitrary. These are based on socially constructed ideas of "race". These classification systems are equally as nonsensical as my example about "winged animals". They tell us nothing about evolutionary or biological reality. You have to face it, "race" has always been constructed in this sort of arbitrary way.
 * This is what Lisa Gannett writes:"The apparent consensus view among academics from diverse disciplines—the humanities, the social sciences, and the biological sciences—is that biological races do not exist, at least in humans. Biological race is a socially-constructed category. The races biologists once claimed to have discovered in nature were, in actuality, the illegitimate offspring of an invented classification scheme they had imposed on nature...There appears to be widespread agreement among contemporary race theorists that race was an ideological invention of late-eighteenth-century science. Race served to justify the continued exploitation of colonised peoples by Europeans, especially the enslavement of Africans, at a time when Enlightenment thinkers also called for the freedom and equality of ‘all men’." (Emphasis added). That's from her paper "The Biological Reification of Race" (Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 55 (2004), 323–345). Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, it is here to present the consensus view of expert academics in any given field. The consensus view amongst experts is that "race", at least as far as the human species is concerned, is socially constructed and does not represent a biologically definable taxonomic unit. Alun (talk) 18:16, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Models for human evolution
Here are some well known models for human evolution and what we would expect them to reproduce regarding "race". You'll have to forgive me my poor artistic skills. Red lines indicate gene flow between populations in different regions. Regions are Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, America and Australia.

A. Multiregional model a la Carelton Coon
This model proposes that archaic humans migrated out of Africa a million or so years ago, it proposes that modern humans evolved out of already regionally adapted archaic humans independently in different parts of the world. The problem with this model is that under it humans would be phylogeographically and phylogenetically very distinc. They would either be very well defined subspecies, or they would actually be different species. This model has no real support amongst modern scientists. But it would produce well defined clades.

B. Multiregional II
Supported by Templeton and Wolpoff, Templeton calls it the "trellis model" (as opposed to candelabra models such as Multiregional II and Replacement I), this model postulates that archaic humans are the direct ancestors of modern humans, but that anatomically modern humans did not evolve totally independently in different regions. It proposes a constant and semi-continuous and large gene flow between human continental groups. This model would not produce any races, in the sense that discrete well defined partitioning is not generated, it would produce a clinal variation due to the large proposed gene flow between different regional populations. This model does not have a great deal of support. Some genomic evidence does support this model, though the bulk of the genetic evidence does not support it. It does have well respected adherents.

C. Replecement I
One way to think about replacement is that AMH simply replace archaics. This is the sort of model that Lewontin used in his 85% of variation is within group. The problem with this model, as Long and Kittles (2003) point out, is that it assumes that all populations are independent (ie no population is a sub-group of any other population) and that all populations have the same age. Though this is a simple way of thinking about replacement, we would still expect to see a more clustered distribution of variation because all populations are thought of as discrete, no or little gene flow between populations. Even when we consider that the populations are of recent origin, it still assumes that all populations are equally diverged, so we would expect that ~15% of variation that is distributed between populations to be well defined and relatively discrete. This model proposes that eventually these populations will develop into discrete phylogenetic entities. This is not accepted by most biologists, but is sometimes used as a shorthand for replacement (see Templeton 1998).

D. Replacement II
This sort of model produces the best fit of any when Long and Kittles (2003) test the goodness of fit of several models. Still it is not a very good fit, as they state in their paper. It is simply better than the other models tested (e.g. Replacement I). This is the sort of cladogram that people like Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Noah Rosenberg like to produce. In this model we have refined many of the problems. We assume that a migration out of Africa occurred, probably to South Asia. Then there is a migration from here to Australia, and a couple more migrations from South Asia, one to East Asia and one to Europe, there is also a migration from East Asia to the Americas. It acknowledges that some groups are derived from other groups and therefore that all groups are not independent. This is a very basic and not necessarily accurate model, but there is evidence that something similar occurred from mtDNA and Y chromosome evidence. The problem with this model is that it again treats the populations as if they are totally genetically isolated from one another. It assumes that once a population is in situ it has not exchanged mates with neighbouring populations. There's no gene flow between continents. The assumption that differences between populations are the product of genetic isolation is a moot point. For example we know from Y chromosome and mtDNA analyses that sharing of genes is widespread trough the human population. Y chromosome and mtDNA haplogroups really do form phylogenetically discrete units. The problem with the assumptions of this model is that the distribution of Y chromosome and mtDNA phylogenies do not support it. Y chromosome and mtDNA haplogroups are scattered amongst continental regions. For example I recently saw an article that combined all of the Y chromosome from several populations in northern Europe and produced a phylogeny for the populations, even though the Y chromosome haplotypes were shared between the populations. That's just sloppy, the phylogenies should have been calculated by Y chromosome haplotype, as it's clear that the populations do not represent cladistically discrete entities.

E. Replacement III
This is probably the most accurate model. It produces a clinal distribution because it now recognises that there is substantiol gene flow between populations. It acknowledges that there are such things as founding populations, and that these populations have a relationship based on geography, but there are no discrete phylogeographic groups. We have a clinal distribution of variation because genes are constantly being mixed up. This sort of model is supported by the vast majority of molecular anthropologists, such as Jonathan Marks and Sarah Tishkoff. Probably the main reason why tree like models don't produce an excellent fit for Long and Kittles (2003) is that they ignore the between group genetic sharing that this model acknowledges.

Human subspecies
It's incorrect to think that we don't know what a human subspecies would look like if one existed. Indeed there are no extant human "races". But there have been human races in the past. Homo sapiens neanderthalis is a recognised human subspecies. This group of humans meets all of the requirements to be recognised as a subspecies. It was geographically isolated, there was clearly limited gene flow between this population and other human populations for a significant period of time, and this allowed it to become significantly diverged, it formed discrete phylogenetic and phylogeographic entity. So we actually do know what a human subspecies (race) would look like. Whether Neanderthals actually contributed to modern European ancestry is a bone of some contention, though the consensus is currently that they probably did not. Alun (talk) 08:06, 28 November 2008 (UTC)



You gave a very good explanation of random, I must say however, it is sometimes used synonymously with 'whim' but yes I take your point that it is not necessarily the same.

The reason I find all of this so hard to believe is because it contradicts evolutionary theory, so I cannot accept that there are no races.

Race is not always synonymous with subspecies by the way. Race can refer to lower level variation than subspecies to the best of my knowledge. I think you are making this error in your last paragraph.

I have noticed that people who insist that race is invalid seem to have a misunderstanding in two ways:

1: They use the term out of context and thus mislead themselves

They ask, for example, ''What race is Tony Blair? Or What race is Barack Obama?''

But these questions are forced and suggest an invalid answer. If we expand such a question we would see that they are actually asking the following:

Which discrete or non-discrete geographic population of phenotypically similar individuals of the human species is Tony Blair or Barack Obama? (This is probably a simplification but I'm just trying to convey a message, I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say).

However, an organism cannot be a population. This is why the question is invalid and misleads peoples thinking. They think that Blair would be Caucasian while Obama would be no race. But this is incorrect as neither can be a population.

What people mean to say is, "What is the recent ancestry of Blair and Obama?

This question is much more precise and doesn't mislead us. Obviously Obama has DNA from more than one non-discrete population and Blair has DNA from only one (I am aware that this is a simplification).

So it is fundamentally wrong to ask what race an organism is. To reiterate, a race is a population of organisms not something which an organism is. But we usually know what is meant despite the fact that the question is wrong.

2: They insist on drawing lines between races

It is simply wrong to attempt to draw a definite line between non-discrete races, we must accept that there is a degree of vagueness to it. Evolution is quite capable of operating on non-discrete populations and I am therefore quite happy to identify those populations despite the fact that they are not well bounded. If evolution doesn't give a damn about bounds, why should I? Such a practice also forces us to use the One Drop Rule but nature just doesn't play ball like that - to the discontent of those who wish to impose dichotomy on nature. Besides, animals have legs, they move around. :) Surely genetics allows to be ever more precise when identifying the approximate geographic location at which races overlap? It is my understanding that recent ancestry can be pinpointed with a high degree of accuracy.

You mentioned a study which showed which people have genes from multiple clusters. Could you point me to this? I see this as nothing but evidence of evolution, as this is to be expected and entirely acceptable within the theory.

I think that the assertion that race is invalid in humans requires me to reject evolution and I am unable to do so at present. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.215.79 (talk) 09:11, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I thought you might like to read this Alun.

http://www.goodrumj.com/Mayr.html

86.42.215.79 (talk) 14:43, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You keep missing the point. No one has said that "race" is invalid, only that your definition of race is not accepted by mainstream scientists.  Races are of course very real, but they are social constructions, not genetic populations.  You keep claiming that to reject race means to reject evolution which is absurd.  the concept "population" serves well for any claims you are making about evolution, and your own claims about non-exclusive taxonomies contradicts the theory of evolution.  Your own arguments suggest you never accepted the theory of evolution anyway.  Slrubenstein   |  Talk 15:19, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Here is the bottom line: You write, "Here are some well known models for human evolution and what we would expect them to reproduce regarding "race". " But Wikipedia is not the place to publish original research.  You can expect anything you want.  But our articles provide accounts of significant views from reliable sources, not what you "expect."  There is a huge literature on race and how and why most scholars of human evolution reject it, and all agree that if they were to use race they would not be using the word in its traditional sense and would need to redefine it.  Most scientists see no need to redefine it and just use "population" and other words that are well understood by real scientists.  I think this discussion is pointless.  If you want to publish your views, edit what you have written here and send it to Nature or Science and see if they will publish it for you. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 15:25, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Well the article does say race is invalid when applied to humans. I am considering race from an evolutionary point of view and race is valid in that context so far as I can see. I think it is important to note that races can be social constructions, but you said thay are social constructions. I know this is pedantry but it is important to be clear.

I think the website I linked above airs the views of mainstream scientists, not to mention Dawkins, who is an evolutionary biologist, so I personally, would consider these mainstream views. I guess you disagree and of course you are entitled to do so.

Surely all of you accept that race, regarding humans, is valid from an evolutionary point of view? If you don't want to talk about it then I guess that's fine. I don't mind.

I just think that people who come here for information regarding the issue will be confused, and I do not think this is fair to them. I say this because the article implies that what people see with their own eyes is an illusion. At best, misunderstandings of the word 'race' should be carified for them, in my opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.207.120 (talk) 00:19, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

"First, thank you for admitting that Dawkins never says human races have biological significance." - Ramdrake

I asked you a question, I didn't "admit" anything.

Lewontin said "...[R]acial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance..."

Dawkins says this is false, see page 418. He also says that race is not a meaningless concept on the previous page.


 * You assume that Dawkins and Lewontin are using the same definition of "race". Some geneticists such as Neil Risch and Armand Leroi  use "race" to mean something very different to its more traditional meaning. They see "race" as simply a way of describing human genetic variation. The fact that human genetic variation does exist is plain, but use of the word "race" to describe it is fraught with problems. For one thing most ideas of "race" are based on folk taxonomies. "Race" is not normally used as a word to describe human genetic variation, it is normally used to describe some arbitrary socially constructed set of groups that usually do not have any underlying biological reality. That's obvious by the absurdities of the one drop rule or the comb test. So one problem with using "race" in this way is that it is a socially loaded term that means different things to different people. On the other hand to a biologist "race" normally means subspecies. Subspecies do exist in nature and we have good examples of them. We even have examples of human subspecies, in Neanderthal man. What we don't have is modern human subspecies. This is simply because no group or popuylation of humans is anywhere near differentiated enough to be considered a subspecies from a biological point of view. That's just a fact. Risch and Leroi are effectively what Lieberman, Littlefield and Reynolds (1999) call splitters. In their view the debate over "race" amongst anthropologists of the 1960 resolved into the debate over there being essentially thousands of local "races" (splitters) or only one single human "race" with some geographic variation (lumpers). In essence we are either thousands of tiny practically indistinguishable "races" or we are one single "race". The problem with geneticists is that they know very little about the history of anthropology. In their arrogance they believe that they can come in and tell anthropologists what variation exists at the genomic level, as if anthropologists did not know how humans vary. The truth is that geneticists are encountering exactly the same problems with genomic data that anthropologists did in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with physical data. The more populations one samples, and the more markers one uses, then the more "races" one gets. If we had true biological "races" (and sometimes we don't differentiate enough when we are discussing biological race) i.e. subspecies, we would not get this pattern. Truly locally differentiated and adapted populations would remain distinct even when we samples more intermediate regions, and even when we looked at more markers. Thats' because the gene frequenciy clines would be concordant, but in fact we see discordant genetic clines. As Ossario and Duster puts it:"Assumptions about natural, essential boundaries among races are contradicted by the findings that allele frequency comparisons among human populations rarely show discontinuities that map onto racial boundaries (Marks, 2002; Molnar, 1998). Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans’ physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 30s and 50s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races (Marks, 2002). Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people." So it does depend to a certain extent if Dawkins is using "race" simply to mean "human genetic variation". If he is then he's just a splitter, but the splitters lost the argument of the sixties and now we have a much better idea of how to define a subspecies. Dawkins is still wrong of course, but it's because he's ignorant rather than malicious. There is no sensible way to categorise humans into "groups", and Risch and Leroy are also equally wrong. We can describe the variation we do see, but it is not neatly packaged as it would be in a true subspecies. What Dawkins, Risch and Leroi say about "race" is not mainstream, and it's certainly not a consensus point of view. I'm sceptical that Dawkins actually does say what you claim he is saying. On the other hand I don't accept the appeal to authority argument. We publish the consensus views of experts, in the case of "race" experts would include anthropologists, molecular anthropologists and population geneticists. The overwhelming majority of these absolutely and firmly reject the notion of biological race. Here we present the proposition that "race" is real, and expalain why mainstream science rejects it for humans. Dawkins does not have the final word on the matter, he's not an expert on this, indeed as far as I can tell the book you refer toThe Ancestor's Tale is not about "race" at all. At least it's Wikipedia article doesn't mention "race" and Dawkins' opinions about them. If you are really interested in this then I can recommend the collection of review papers Genetics for the human race published in Nature Genetics. I wouldn't accept anything published on John Goodrum's site, I visited it a few times and it's totally unreliable. Probably the most relevant review article is "Conceptualizing human variation"  Alun (talk) 13:02, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah Dawkins is just repeating the fallacy of selecting peoples from geographical extremes, and ignoring those people who don't fit into his preconceived socially constructed ideas of "race". Dawkins displays his ignorance for all to see. Alun (talk) 10:56, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist. He knows his subject!

First of all you read an edited version of what he wrote. Second, he is illustrating a point with clear examples. Third, there is a reason races are found at geographic extremes, and the reason is due to evolution. The organisms inbetween are hybrids. You are rejecting evolution!

Have a look at this image, it would be impossible to draw if races didn't exist.

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/7706/routemapswy1.gif

and here:

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/

Consider someone form Asia, now they have a recent ancestry which is distinct to mine and we both share a distant ancestor. This is race.

With all due respect, I would recommend you read some evolutionary theory.

And this "concenus" is not one held by evolutionists despite attempts to present it as such.


 * 1) Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and not an anthropologist or taxonomist. His argument is actually dealt with in the article. It is not a scientific argument to claim that "people from China look different to people from Europe, so races exist". That is not a scientific or definition of "race", nor does it correctly address the existence of clines. Dawkins simply displays his ignorance. Like I said, this is dealt with in the article, and the reasons real experts don't accept it is covered. The so called "hybrid" argument is not accepted by scientists. There is no evidecne that "pure races" have existed at the extremes of continents and thet the populations in between are "hybrids" of these "pure races".
 * 2) The images simply show where new mutation arrise on Y chromosomes geographically. they tell us nothing about "race". In fact the distribbution of Y chromosme haplogroups shows us that "race" is a fallacy. If you'd read the article "Conceptualizing human variation" you would understand that. As Keita et al. state "Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA genealogies are especially interesting because they demonstrate the lack of concordance of lineages with morphology15 and facilitate a phylogenetic analysis. Individuals with the same morphology do not necessarily cluster with each other by lineage, and a given lineage does not include only individuals with the same trait complex (or 'racial type')." Indeed the example of haplogroup N1a demonstrates this nicely. N1a is a sub group of haplogroup NO, while Haplogroup O is also a sub group of this. Haplogroup NO arose in south east Asia. By your reckoning this would make Finns (~60% of men are N1a) the same "race" as Chinese (mostly O). It's also true that Y chromosome haplogroups are subject to strong genetic drift due to their small effective population size. That means that they only represent a small sub set of the amount of gene flow between populations. For example see Santos-Lopes et al. (2007), who show that using an X chromosome haplotype block, that haplotype sharing btween so called "races" is extremely large. It's also informative to read Human populations are tightly interwoven which estimates a very recent TMRCA for the human species.
 * 3) I'm not interested in your definition of "race". We don't publish the views of our editors, we publish the views of reliable sources. i don't care what you define "race" as, and I don't care what you believe. You need to understand that your personal racialist beliefs are irrelevant to the article. As I said before, there are plenty of fora on the internet where you can spout your fundamentalist beliefs, this is not one of them. You've been told the consensus of experts in the field. If you don't accept this, that says more about the your non-acceptance of science when it doesn't support your bias. That's not my problem.
 * 4) I understand evolutionary theory quite well.
 * 5) I dispute that this consensus is not held by what you call "evolutionists", can you provide evidence for this claim? None of the reliable sources that I cite could be called "creationists". They are all well respected scientists who are all considered world experts in genetics and anthropology. The reason that they do not accept human subspecific classification has any credibility is based on good evolutionary science. If you don't understand this, then I might suggest that you read some more material rather than a single source. I've provided multiple reliable independent sources, while you cite a single source and personal opinion. I don't think it's too much for me to claim that your claims lack credibility. Alun (talk) 12:47, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Alun, you like other race deniers have built a straw-house atop Moral Mountain.

"# Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and not an anthropologist or taxonomist. His argument is actually dealt with in the article. It is not a scientific argument to claim that "people from China look different to people from Europe, so races exist"."

Yes he is an evolutionary biologist who began his career as a zoologist. And he is the very person we need to ask about this issue.

People from China look different, because their DNA is different, their lineages are different. A lineage is a branch on the evolutionary tree of life. It is perfectly acceptable when you understand evolutionary theory.

"There is no evidecne that "pure races" have existed at the extremes of continents and thet the populations in between are "hybrids" of these "pure races"."

Who ever said anything about "pure races",. What would that even mean?

Hybrids exist, races exist - this is biology.

"As I said before, there are plenty of fora on the internet where you can spout your fundamentalist beliefs, this is not one of them."

Oh I am a fundamentalist because I accept evolution! When have I expressed any politics in relation to this issue? It is you who and people like you who are obsessed with politics. The situation is quite striking actually, race deniers argue from a political position, denying all the science. Racists, for once have the science on their side.

You, again are calling people who object to race denial "racist" in a very subtle manner. It is you who has a fundamentalist belief. I would be surprised, by the way, if you were more tolerant than me.
 * 1) This is not about "race denial" or "race acceptance". This is about portraying the debate that has science has had on this subject in a neutral way. You obviously think that the article should claim that human "races" are accepted in biology. That is not correct. We have relibale sources that say this. You want to include information that is not neutral by claiming something is the truth.
 * 2) There are no lineages in human genetics, that is because there is too much gene flow between populations. That is basic evolutionary fact. A lineage is a group that is reproductively isolated, i.e. it does not exchange genetic information with other populations. Humans form a single lineage. That's an fact.
 * 3) You claim that people who live between "races" are "hybrids", that implies that there are "pure races" (what you call lineages, it means the same thing). All humans are "hybrids" if you like, or we are all one "race", because we are a single lineage that is intermixed in a complex way that cannot be partitioned in any way into restricted groups.
 * 4) You claim that it's biology that "races exist". That's not true, I've supplied reliable sources that show this is not true. I don't care what your opinion is.
 * 5) No you are a fundamentalist because you refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence that does not support what you believe. You are not interested in science because you believe you know that "truth".
 * 6) I have not argued from a "political position", all of the many reliable sources I have supplied are from published scientific journals. I love the way you ignore all of the massive amounts of evidence I have provided for you to read. that shows absolutely that you have no interest in science, only in your belief.
 * 7) I didn't call anyone a "racist". Indeed you seem to be confused between the meanings of "racism", "racist" and "racialism". Before you asked me if I was accusing you of "racism", as I said before, racism is a behaviour, and I was not commenting on your behaviour, so how could I be commenting on racism. I didn't use the word "racist", you used that word. A racist is a person who believes in the superiority of a specific "race". I have no way of knowing if you are a "racist", and I did not use the word. I did use the word racialist, a racialist is someone who believes in the existence of human "races". You've already stated that you do. So I don't see a problem with using this word. I suggest that you find out what these different words mean.
 * 8) Well I'm surprised that you seem to think that Wikipedia should only publish what you believe and that it should ignore the vast amount of good scientific work that rejects the validity of human "race" classification. What you seem to believe is that we are here to promote a single point of view, and none other, and that the point of view we should promote is the one you believe in. That is not scientific and it is not how we do things here. Alun (talk) 14:02, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Let's get back to the subject at hand
You seem to be mixing up a few concepts here: as a biological concept, races do exist in many species. However, scientific consensus is that the human species isn't diversified enough genetically to include several biologically distinct races. The construct which we call "races" in humans is mainly a sociological one which emerged in the last 5-600 years, at most (trying to be generous here). It is based on differences involving skin color, hair color and facial features, for the most part. We now know that the genes controlling for that are but a very small fraction of the total genetic diversity of humans (which isn't that great compared to other species to start with), and that these genes are distributed clinally and non-concordantly geographically speaking. This observation doesn't support the existence of "races" within the human species in the biological sense. Now, if you redefine "races" to mean any kind of relatively isolated population, yes you'll find hundreds of races within the human species. However you will still not find that the "classical races" are a biologically meaningful way to partition humanity. And all of this can be true without being at odds in any way with the theory of evolution. Now, you can argue that this isn't so until you're blue in the face, but this is verifiable expert opinion. Wikipedia is about verifiable information, not about the truth as any one editor sees it.--Ramdrake (talk) 13:25, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Wobble, Ramdrake, the anon user tips his/her hand when writing "Yes he is an evolutionary biologist who began his career as a zoologist. And he is the very person we need to ask about this issue." This is one of the core problems: there are people out there who have studied wolves, rats, ants, or other species, and therefore believe that they can speak with authority about human beings.  I suspect that, being human being themselves, they think that they do not need advanced training or to do advanced research to know "the truth" about humans.  Be that as it may, I have seen this countless times.  People who ought to know better - that it takes years of training and many more years of research to claim expertise in one species ought to know that this is true for any other species, but when it comes to humans, no, they are suddenly experts.  And the real experts, the biological anthropologists who have spent their lifetimes study human population genetics and human fossil remains, or those molecular biologists focusing specifically on humans, well, their findings suddenly somehow do not count.  It is perverse but this is actually a way of turning science into religion, it is to spit on science because it devalues real research done by experts who have spent their lives analyzing the data rigorously.  Instead it oversimplifies science and turns certain scientific concepts into dogma, believing that, like magic, it is the use of these concepts without any real understanding ot how to use them, understanding that comes from rigorous training and years of research, that makes something "sientifik."  The people we need to ask about these issues are scientists, and not any old scientist, not a chemist or physicist or even a zoologist, but scientists trained in the study of human evolution and human population and molecular genetics, and scientists trained in the study of human social groups and cultures. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 14:56, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, well it's not good science to believe that there is a single model of genetic diversity for all species. Each species we encounter has a different ecology and subsequently a different distribution of diversity. It is not scientifically correct or accurate to claim that just because genetic diversity, population structure and assortative mating exist in a species, that this represents de facto "proof" of subspecific taxonomic status. If that were true then any local population, indeed any family could be considered a subspecies. Subspecific classification is defined how we as scientists define it. Currently the most accepted way to specify subspecies is by phylogeography. This has got nothing to do with human "race" and everything to do with the preservation of endangered species and subspecies. Subspecies were poorly defined in the past, but with the advent of the U.S. Endangered Species Act it has been necessary to produce a better, more formal, and more generally accepted set of criteria for understanding what a subspecies is. O'Brien and Meyr (1991) (citing Meyr (1940), Avis and Ball (1991) and Yonekawa et al. (1988)) provide a good example of this new phylogeographic definition of subspecies. "The subspecies category has been defined as 'a geographically defined aggregate of local populations which differ taxonomically from other subdivisions of the species' (6). A valuable recent modification (11) urged that the evidence for BSC subspecies designation should come from the concordant distribution of multiple, independent, genetically based traits. In an attempt to provide formal criteria for subspecies classification we offer the following guidelines: Members of a subspecies share a unique geographic range or habitat, a group of phylogenetically concordant phenotypic characters, and a unique natural history relative to other subdivisions of the species. Because they are below the species level, different subspecies are reproductively compatible. They will normally be allopatric and they will exhibit recognizable phylogenetic partitioning, because of the time-dependent accumulation of genetic difference in the absence of gene flow. Most subspecies will be monophyletic, however they may also derive from ancestral subspecies hybridization (12)." From this is is clear that humans cannot form subspecies. Firstly human groups do not display a "concordant distribution of multiple, independent, genetically based traits." When we look at how genes vary in human populations they do not follow this pattern, see my quote from Ossario and Duster above, especially: "traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation." Y chromosome and mtDNA phylogenies serve to illustrate this, if genetic traits were concordant, then the phylogeographic range of Y chromosomes and mtDNA haplogroups would be identical to each other, and also each haplogroup would be unique to each "race". We do not see this pattern, Y chromosome and mtDNA haplogroup distributions are heterogeneous. The second problem for humans with regards to this definition is that human "races" do not "share a unique geographic range or habitat", the so called human "races" are supposed to be continental, but there are humans who live on the slopes of mountains, and also humans that live at the base of river valleys on all continents, human "races" are not adapted to specific environments, because our so called "races" are all exposed to the almost infinite number of environments any single continent can provide. So clearly human "races" are not locally adapted, local adaptation would restrict a "race" to be evolutionarily evolved to a specific environment, humans do not display this type of partitioning. Thirdly human "races" do not share any phylogenetically concordant phenotypic characteristics, indeed no "races" even possess a single phylogenetically concordant characteristic, do all Europeans have blue eyes? No. Do all Europeans have blond hair? No. Fourthly human "races" do not share individual natural histories, all human groups have what is a recognisible (and often familiar) social organisation to other human groups. Fifthly, human "races" are not allopatric, there are rarely barriers to gene flow between so called "races", though there are sometimes barriers to gene flow between human groups (e.g. the Himalayas may be one), these do not represent an allopatric partitioning of our species and there is no recognisible phylogenetic partitioning to to an absence of gene flow. Lastly most subspecies will be monophyletic, but in fact it is possible to subdivide the human species into as many partitions as one likes, because the partitions are arbitrary, but this is a product of te isolation by distance that our species shows, the clinality and non-concordance of our species' variation is observable even at a within continent level, if, say, Europeans were a true subspecies, there would be genetic homogeneity within that continent, but we do not see that, we see that we can subdivide Europeans even further if we choose arbitrary divisions, so we do not get monophyletic partitioning. This indicates that our whole species is monophyletic with variation geographically distributed within this monophyletic unit, rather than many homogeneous monophyletic units. BTW a monophyletic unit can be thought of as the same as a lineage. So in fact when we look at a modern and accepted definition of a subspecies we can see that humans don't actually meet any of the criteria of subspecific classification, where even not meeting a single one would invalidate classification. Actually these criteria tend to go together, so usually if one is true they will all be true. So in fact we have good evolutionary reasons why humans are not designated as different subspecies, and therefore why we are all classified as Homo sapiens sapiens. This is what real experts in taxonomy and evolutionary biology think. Dawkins is trained as an ethologist, that is, he comes from a background studying animal social behaviour. Much of Dawkins' writing shows the influence of his training in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. One should not believe that Dawkins is more than he is, his views do not necessarily represent a settled consensus within any field of biology, and may often be at odds with more mainstream views. Clearly his belief that "race" is real simply because we can recognise differences between individuals from different parts of the world, is the product of his background in ethology. This is not a taxonomically rigorous way to think of subspecies and is certainly not recognised by mainstream evolutionary biology, which is more interested in phylogenetics and phylogeography. Alun (talk) 08:07, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Christ! What waffle from all of you. Why don't you all just admit that you dislike the word and are offended by the idea that there are different races? What makes you thnk it is some how, improper, to acknowledge that there are races? All of the evidence proves that there are races despite your basless assertions. Geographic populations can be relibale distinguished, end of story. Geneticists can determine the ancestry of anyone by analysing their genome. Antrophologists can determine a persons ancestry by analysing soft and hard tissue. Stop lieing!

The only reason so many people are lieing abpout this issus is because they have convinced themselves that formal acknowledgment of race leads to racism. And so you make a deliberate effort to censor honest refutation of you fallacious arguments. Well, it might come as a surprise to race deniers like yourselves but many people in the educated world are well aware that there are human races (granted they might not have a full understanding) and yet they are fervent anti-racists, tolerent individuals. This fact makes your effort to censor and lie completly pointless. Most people aren't even aware that a number of academics calim race doesn't exist and yet those peole aren't racists! As for extremists, they don't even care what you think. They can easily refute you claims and besides, the science is on their side.

There is alot of anxiety about this whole issue and outright denial is not a sensible manner in which to open dialogue about this. If you really wanted to combat racism and peoples anxiety about race you would make a cocerted effort to explain exactly what race is, exactly why we vary. Denial and intelectual dishonesty is not helpful.

And by the way, what makes you think professionals who have spent their lives studying animals aren't qualified to offer an opinion regarding one particular species? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.221.86 (talk) 16:38, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Because there are scientists trained and experienced in researching human beings, including human evolution, human osteology, human population genetics and human molecular genetics. I wouldn't look to them as authorities on ants or wolves; why should I consider an expert on ants or wolves to have any authority about humans when there are so many scientists who have devoted their lives to studying human biology, evolution, genetics etc.? You are just an amateur when it comes to H. sapiens, who wants to claim scientific authority, but here you dismiss research and views of real scientists who are experts on H. sapiens.  That is just weird. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 16:52, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I dismiss their views for three main reasons.

1. Because they are logically false. 2. Because their assertion that race is a social construct is politically motivated. 3. Everyone on the planet, including biologists working on H. spaiens, can consistintly identify distinct geographic populations within the species.

They regurgitate the mantra 'race is a social construct' because they think formal acknowledgment of race will be social destructive. Which says more about themselves then it does about society. Their assertions are not scientific, so why should I accept them?


 * I'd like to remind you that Wikipedia doesn't exist to disseminate "The Truth" as any one editor sees it, but to report on existing expert opinion on various subjects. If you wish to dismiss scientific expert opinion, that's fine, but please don't try to impose your bias on the other editors, or in Wikipedia articles.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:03, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Also, none of us are saying that races don't exist. They do. What we're saying (and what the overwhelming majority of experts on the subject say), is that the classical view on races (White, Black, Asian, etc.) doesn't coincide with any kind of specific biological division of the human race. This doesn't mean that one cannot reconstruct a person's biogeographic ancestry (up to a point) by using some set of genetic markers; one obviously can in many if not most cases. What that does mean is that human biogeographic diversity doesn't correspond to any kind of distinguishable splitting into any "subsepecies" of humanity. This isn't a political position; it is borne out by numerous scientific studies of human genetics.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:24, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Anon, no one here cares one jot what you "dismiss" or why you "dismiss" it. Wikipedia is not about you, or what you choose to believe. Clearly what you say about the political motivation regarding "race" is incorrect. We have provided numerous reliable sources that contradict what you say. Those sources are used in the article, and they are considered reliable according to Wikipedia's content policies. If you can't accept that then that is your problem. It is not Wikipedia's problem and it is not the problem of any editor here. I'd respectfully suggest that given your out of hand rejection of an overwhelming set of evidence from scientists that really do know what they are talking about (unlike you) regarding the debate about "race", that it is you who is politically motivated. Now you're simply displaying hypocrisy. Some time ago you got apoplectic when you though someone had called you a "racist", complaining that you were only interested in science and that calling you a racist (which no one had) was reducing the argument to politics and not science. When we show you evidence from scientists that does not support your point of view, you start making the same sorts of accusations of political bias that you complained others were making about you previously. Something I really can't stand is a double standard. Alun (talk) 19:06, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * They can easily refute you claims and besides, the science is on their side.
 * That's a hilarious thing to say. Something you have categorically proven on this talk page is that you have failed utterly to "refute" anything. I've provided numerous reliable sources that contradict what you say. You've given personal opinion and the point of view of a single scientist (Dawkins) who does not even employ evolutionary theory in his argument. If it's so easy to "refute", why can't you do it? I point out to you that simply dismissing evidence that does not conform to your own personal ideology is not a refutation. I'd also point out that it is not "scientific" to claim that "it's obvious 'race' exists because people look different". To anyone with a shred of understanding in this field the science does not support the concept of "biological race", and we have numerous scientific papers to support that conclusion. We have a whole supplemental version of Nature Genetics, one of the premiere scientific journals in the world, that discusses this, and it contradicts what you say. You remind me of the little girl on the TV show Absolutely, "yes I do know what the 'race' is... it is it's true". Alun (talk) 05:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me!? All you do Wobble, is create straw-men arguments. And appeal to authority. And refuse to use the correct definition of race, instead relying on a stupid unscientific idea of race and refuting that. Well done!

A race is a discrete or non-discrete geographic population within a species which can be reliably distinguished. But you know that, and you also know that humans qualify. I have also presented links to writings by EO Wilson, Ernst Mayer, John Goodrum and yes I referenced Dawkins. There is plenty more if you were bothered to look for them. I should also point out that you did not read what Dawkins wrote, you read an abridged version so your comments regarding his opinion are irrelevant and incorrect. You Wobble, have not presented any evidence that the species H. spaiens does not contain non-discrete geographic races. And once more you know it. Why do you continually lie and characterize? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.195.203 (talk) 12:32, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Rubbish, what I do is cite reliable sources. You choosoe to ignore sources that do not coform to your racialist stance. Wikipedia does not exist so it can promote your world view. Live with it. The points of view of the scientists you have mentioned above are already included in the article. If you'd bothered to read it you'd know that. Alun (talk) 13:03, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * BTW I give a definition of subspecies above that comes from a paper Meyr himself co-authored. So on the one hand you think Mayr is relevant when you think he supports you, but when I quote Meyr you call it "a stupid unscientific idea". Make up your mind. BTW it's Mayr and not Meyer."The subspecies category has been defined as 'a geographically defined aggregate of local populations which differ taxonomically from other subdivisions of the species' (6). A valuable recent modification (11) urged that the evidence for BSC subspecies designation should come from the concordant distribution of multiple, independent, genetically based traits. In an attempt to provide formal criteria for subspecies classification we offer the following guidelines: Members of a subspecies share a unique geographic range or habitat, a group of phylogenetically concordant phenotypic characters, and a unique natural history relative to other subdivisions of the species. Because they are below the species level, different subspecies are reproductively compatible. They will normally be allopatric and they will exhibit recognizable phylogenetic partitioning, because of the time-dependent accumulation of genetic difference in the absence of gene flow. Most subspecies will be monophyletic, however they may also derive from ancestral subspecies hybridization (12).O'BRIEN and MAYR (1991)" Alun (talk) 13:17, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Definitions of race and 'social constructions'
Your article on race says that racial categories are based on a person's visible traits,such as skin color. You failed to point out that eye color is also a racial characteristic. For example,in the European region,most people have blue eyes or brown eyes. The blue-eyed people are members of the Scandinavian race,and they tend to live in the north of Europe,the brown-eyed people are members of the European race,and they tend to live in southern Europe. Skin color cannot be the sole basis for determining race. In another part of your article about race,you imply that race can be a social construction. Obviously,that is not true,and to explore this topic,let's consider the case of the well-known musician,Michael Jackson. When Jackson was young,and just beginning his musical career,he appeared to be black. If you look at a photo of Jackson taken during this period,he looked like he was dark-skinned,indeed,he looked like a typical African-American. He apparently went to cosmetic surgeons,and over a period of several years,he got skin-lightening treatments,to make his skin look lighter. He also got cosmetic surgery on his nose,to make his nose look more European. If you look at a photo of Jackson taken later in his career,he appears to be white. His lighter-colored skin,and skinny little nose gives him a decidedly European appearance. So,race may be a social construction for Michael Jackson,but the same term cannot be used to describe a group of people. I have never heard of a group of people that changed their appearance,so they looked like they were members of a different race. Michael Jackson is an individual,and altering your racial identity may be possible for an individual,but it may not be possible for a group of people. I read an article about Japanese women who were getting cosmetic surgery,to change the appearance of their eyes,so their eyes looked less Oriental,and more European. I remember reading the article,but I don't have a copy of it. Perhaps Wikipedia users can find an article,on that subject,it may be helpful. Anthony Ratkov.


 * Comment: your "concept" of race varies from those of others, which consider basically all native Europeans to be "white." The idea of a "Nordic" race was popular in the early 20th century but lost appeal after the defeat of Nazism in WWII. Ryoung 122 14:26, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The word "race" has been tossed around in all sorts of interesting ways throughout history, but one of the most academically useful types of classification is discussed at Craniofacial anthropometry. Cosmic Latte (talk) 14:41, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Use of "concept" versus "conceptions"
As demonstrated by Anthony Eden, the correct usages of the terms:

Concept and conception are applied to mental formulations on a broad scale: You seem to have absolutely no concept of time. "Every succeeding scientific discovery makes greater nonsense of old-time conceptions of sovereignty" Anthony Eden.

Ryoung 122 14:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Race is a "concept." Different people's differing understandings of this concept are "conceptions." Slrubenstein   |  Talk 15:31, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Common sense cleanup
This topic has lots of incisive comment, but doesn't sufficiently distinguish between that intended for a general audience and that for a professional audience.

Regardless of that issue, a literate biologist needs to edit this topic and clean up the numerous run-on sentences and non sequiturs. This is the single sloppiest entry I've ever encountered in Wikipedia, and I read dozens every day. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.127.252.109 (talk) 07:20, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Quotation
In a quotation, Hausa and other non-Bantu languages are said to be "Bantu-speaking". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.34.71 (talk) 13:55, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

In the Into --- Race as a "social construct".
I don't care how many citations are there. That's nonsense. Based on that, I could figure out a person's race based on his/her personality. That statement also endorses the idea that certain personality types and behaviors can be associated with races, which would validate the phrase "acting [insert race]", which, whether or not right, I doubt would be agreed with by most.


 * You obviously seem to misconstrue the definition of "social construct".--Ramdrake (talk) 19:16, 17 May 2009 (UTC)


 * "Social construct" means something more like "the subdivision exists because that humans arbitrarily chose to subdivide themselves that way", on arbitrary and probably quite irrational criteria. ... said: Rursus ( m bork³ ) 07:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion
I've got an idea for re-writing this page. The page may be divided into three sections,that describe the three basic ways of identifying race. Number one: Visual identification. You look at a person and determine his race based on what you see,including skin color,eye color,hair color,and facial contours. Number two: Genetic identification. You determine a person's race by analyzing his DNA. Number three: Fossil identification. You determine the race of a deceased individual by examination of fossil evidence(for example,the Cro-magnon race,the Neanderthal race,and so on). --Anthony Ratkov —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.248.15.171 (talk) 04:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Neaderthals are almost certainly a separate species or at least a subspecies, not a race. DGG (talk) 20:05, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

The other meaning of Race
Through the 19th and until the mid-20th century race was used interchangeably with nationality or ethnic group. I saw a 1930 published history of Pennsylvania which wrote of the Scotch-Irish, German and English races among the settlers of that colony. It included the interesting idea that the earlier Dutch and Swedish settlers had become part of the English race. It might be worth while to add a sentence in the 19th century section or even in the earlier section which speaks to Frank race v Latin race in France.Nitpyck (talk) 05:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Request for input
People who watch this page may wish to weigh in here Slrubenstein  |  Talk 15:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Small qualm with the "race and intelligence" section
A touchy subject to be sure, so I want to address this in the talk section before making any changes. After mentioning the Flynn Effect, the article currently says: "Scholars therefore believe that rapid increases in average IQ seen in many places are much too fast to be as a result of changes in brain physiology and more likely as a result of environmental changes. The fact that environment has a significant effect on IQ undermines the case for the use of IQ data as a source of genetic information." I have three objections to this wording.

1. A strong statement like "scholars therefore believe" ought to be backed up by citation to more than one scholar, especially one whose book is called "Race Myth: Why We Believe Race Exists in America." Sounds like an interesting book, but also probably an opinionated one that doesn't establish that scholars, as a group, believe what follows.

2. Should we say "evolutionary changes in brain physiology" instead of just "changes in brain physiology?" It's not impossible for brain physiology to change over relatively short periods owing to changes in nutrition. This is an environmental effect, but it is also physiological. The author likely means that people don't evolve over just a few generations, which is certainly true, but there are physiological changes besides those from genetic evolution.

3. The fact that environment has a significant effect on IQ undermines the case for the use of IQ data as a source of genetic information only if it is impossible to establish suitable controls for studies aimed at doing that. If you can control for environmental factors, it still might be possible to detect genetic ones, if they exist. This wording makes it sound like the presence of environmental factors automatically negates the possibility of genetic factors.0nullbinary0 (talk) 21:30, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

This article is ridiculous
This article is easily the worst piece of crap on wikipedia, completely full of bias and counter bias.

1. The introduction is horrible how can you have a sentence like this garbage when trying to introduce a topic (this is an intro for a academic article, not a commercial contract clause):

"The controversy ultimately revolves around whether or not the concept of race is biologically warranted;[3][4] the ways in which political correctness might fuel either the affirmation or the denial of race;[3][4] and the degree to which perceived differences in ability and achievement, categorized on the basis of race, are a product of inherited (i.e., genetic) traits or environmental, social and cultural factors."

4. Weasle words everywhere!!! "some people say" etc etc

5. Why do we not divide this article into 2 parts (or even 2 different articles)

A. Traditional conceptions of race (pre-scientific era) - skin colour etc

B. Actual scientific differences between humans (proven) - e.g. People of West African descent can sprint faster because of higher proportion of fast-twitch fibres - Human genome project

6. This article proves that humans are all equally stupid regardless of 'race' and should be deleted. I think all you editors should take a while to relfect and it is obvious that you have let the term 'race' go to your head. Wikipedia is about building a resource for the entire human community. This article builds nothing, is useless and should be deleted and started again. Without going into post-modern theories I think we can all agree that the written word will always be biased in some way and as an extension, all knowledge is somewhat slanted (even science), mainly because humans are incapable of articulating the objective. But come on, surely something better than this filth can be recorded for such an important issue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.130.122.9 (talk) 08:20, 10 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, you could always start fixing the problems you encounter. But then, maybe it's easier to just whine about them. Hanxu9 (talk) 16:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Re: Quote from the American Anthropological Association
The article contains the following passage: "The American Anthropological Association, drawing on biological research, currently holds that "The concept of race is a social and cultural construction... . Race simply cannot be tested or proven scientifically," and that, "It is clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. The concept of 'race' has no validity ... in the human species"."

and links to this page. I wanted to quote this for use somewhere else, but then I noticed that, as far as I can see, the AAA statement linked to does not contain the text as quoted. I have highlighted in bold the only part I have been able to locate in the AAA statement. Where is the rest coming from? While I'm certainly not doubting that this correctly summarizes the official position of the AAA (this position, as well as Alan H. Goodman's extensive effort to propagate it, is well-known), I'm surprised to see something being presented as a quote when it appears that this is not the case. Perhaps I'm wrong. Can someone please clarify? Thanks, -- Aryaman (talk) 21:15, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * As far as I can tell, you are right. Can you track down who added this?  It might be that someone was paraphrasing the AAA and a later editor turned it into a quote.  But as far as i can tell you are right.  Aside from trying ro find out when this was added to the article, my suggestions are: find better /more appropriate quotes from the actual AAA statement; also consult the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (physical anthropologists ae more specifically the scientists with the most expertise on human evolution and biological variation), they have their own statement.  If for purposes outside of Wikipedia youare interested in what anthropologists have to say about race, the website for the AAA has a virtual exhibit on race (http://www.understandingrace.org/) meant specifically for general educational purposes, it is very accessible and informative. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 05:46, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I attempted to rectify this situation by replacing it with a roughly analogous passage. If it is felt that another passage from the text better reflects the core point of the paper, feel free to change it accordingly. However, I think the caveat that this was a commissioned piece composed by a select number of anthropologists and is described explicitly as not reflecting consensus among all members of the AAA is important, as to omit it gives the wrong impression. Thanks, -- Aryaman (talk) 07:35, 15 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The AAA has over 6,000 members, it cannot do anything by consensus. What is important is that the panel was appointed by and answerable to the elected leadership of the association, and their report was adopted by the AAA as representing the majority view. Anyway, I think you did a fine job! Slrubenstein   |  Talk 12:44, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Interbreeding?
The article currently contains the following passage:

"All Homo Sapiens are equally capable of cognition, communication and interbreeding regardless of appearance or location."

This seems a bit odd, considering that subspecies are "groups of actually or potentially interbreeding populations phylogenetically distinguishable from, but reproductively compatible with, other such groups". What purpose does mentioning the fact that all Homo Sapiens can interbreed ("regardless of appearance or location") serve, exactly? This seems like a thoroughly superfluous statement. -- Aryaman (talk) 10:38, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I do agree; this article is not to debate about the political correctness or anger over feelings of inferiority by congnitave contributors to wikipedia. Much is to support that human nations, those pure, and also the greater races, share unique cognitive abilities and characteristics--physically as well. Equalization of human peoples is an illogical fallacy that has been created by those interpreting various constitutional and religious texts. There is no evidence to support such a conclusion as "groups of actually or potentially interbreeding populations phylogenetically distinguishable from, but reproductively compatible with, other such groups" can not "equally capable of cognition, communication and interbreeding regardless of appearance or location." WiZeNgAmOtX (talk) 08:07, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * On the contrary there is a lot of evidence, all referenced in the article. There may be a race in isolation in the amazon, for example (Although I doubt that), but because of all the contact and interbreeding between so called "races" there are very few genetic differences between say, someone from England and someone from Lebanon.--Patton123 (talk) 12:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "anger over feelings of inferiority by congnitave contributors to wikipedia." Rolls eyes. Move along, troll. Fences  &amp;  Windows  02:51, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There are isolated tribes in the Amazon, by way of conversation. Also, your conclusion that due to interbreeding that there are few genetic differences between a man from England and a man from Lebanon is not founded in science; I give to you: . WiZeNgAmOtX (talk) 08:36, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Let me also mention that my arguement is one that is only mentioned before bashed repeatedly with off bias. If there is controversy over anthropology and genetics, then those counters should be posted in a controversy sub-article. By posting the study of racial genetics, those theories and studies of racial genetics should come primary--not triumphed over secondary counters. WiZeNgAmOtX (talk) 08:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed there are huge genetic differences between a man from England and a man from Lebanon. However there are also huge genetic differences between a man from England and his neighbour 5 miles down the road.

races as subspecies
The posted information shows bias toward the counter to there being human races as sub-species. There is no information concerning the arguement for races as subspecies. This is in violation of scientific and documentary morals, wikipedia code, and my opinion. Existing is such research to conclude that each race, nationality, etc. has different DNA. WiZeNgAmOtX (talk) 08:08, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Where is the evidence for this? You have supplied none but just made a claim. There are genetic differences between everyone, does that make everyone a different race? People from North Wales have different DNA than those from South Wales, yet they are still counted as one "race", indeed many people of african ancestory have more european genes than african ones, and vice versa. What makes them different races? T become a race a group has to evolve by itself pretty much in isolation, humans are constantly interbreeding. Take a look at this and this--Patton123 (talk) 12:39, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * My claim, the topic of this section, is "races as subspecies"; how ever, I did not post for discussion--you can not mean to argue race with me when the article is titled "race (classification of human beings)". Your issue with the labeling of peoples as races is not valid to the issue of races as subspecies. The section "races as subspecies" blatantly ignores the topic of the latter mentioned section and proceeds, following the title, to briefly mention the study of races as subspecies and then dismissively and condescendingly quote sources all in bias against the study; but the section is not concerning the debate against races as subspecies! Content regarding the topic of an article or section should out number those content of controversies or counters to that article or section. As there is limited and biased information regarding the study of races as subspecies, I will alter that section if need comes. WiZeNgAmOtX (talk) 09:05, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Stop trolling. Fences  &amp;  Windows  02:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Everybody know that there is a genetic variation within humankind, and that skin color and eye color are regulated by genes. That is not the question, however — "race" was very early defined as what is today called "subspecies", so the comparison of the term "race" to "subspecies" is one valid comparison. Now, most biologists, if not the overwhelming majority of biologists deny the validity of "race" among humans and bonobos. The reason they use is to compare the mean genetical distance of one (alleged "race") population from another population with the genetical variation within any one of those populations. If they find that the internal variation of one population is much greater than the difference between the populations, they claim that there is no objective reason to speak about subspecies when comparing those populations.


 * Now, the article is written as to reflect over different definitions of the word "race" and it's different usages. In my opinion the intro is pretty well written. For certain humans have subdivided and organised themselves by superficial traits such as skin color, and to that extent "race" exist, but the connection to genetics seems to be very weak, and the reason for this kind of organisation to exist seems to emerge almost entirely from imaginations within the humans themselves, not for any biologically beneficial reason. ... said: Rursus ( m bork³ ) 08:26, 8 December 2009 (UTC)