Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 9

There are high and low achieving Blacks, Whites, and Asians. A particular level of achievement does not qualify someone as being of a particular race. Likewise there are tall and short Blacks, Whites and Asians; therefore we cannot say that having particular physical attributes qualifies one as being a member of any particular race. The same argument applies to the claim that race is used to group people by behavior. Jalnet2 23:57, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] I think that I e-mailed you (Jalnet2) before about this question, but did not receive a reply. I asked you whether you considered "race" conceptually similar to "sub-species." Judging by the change that you made in the Race article, it seems that you do regard it in that way. But perhaps I am wrong. Let's clear up that point first. P0M 00:12, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Race is not "conceptually similar" to subspecies: it is an exact synonym. While there are several ways to define a subspecies, the details of this need not concern us here, as human variation does not qualify under any of the definitions in current use Tannin 00:18, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * [P0M:] I was trying to figure out Jalnet2's position, Tannin. You make the point that I was going to make -- assuming that Jalnet2 comes out in about the same place you do. And, Jalnet2, I need to know what your operational definition for "member of race X" is. What does one look at, and how does one measure or otherwise determine it? You seem to eliminate "particular level of achievement", "particular physical attributes," and "behavior." That's fine with me. I would not divide people by race to begin with. But I would like to know how you propose to do it. You seem to think that people have been doing it successfully for some time now... P0M 00:33, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Humans are members of a certain race if they have been prevented from interbreeding with other members of the species until they have developed substantial genetic differentiation from members of other races. This depends on how you define "substantial".


 * For example, there have been roughly 100,000 years of genetic isolation between Caucasoids and Negroids, and roughly 40,000 years of isolation between Caucasoids and Mongoloids. If you define "substantial" differentiation as that which would be brought about by 40,000 years of genetic isolation, then Caucasoids, Negroids, and Mongoloids would be considered different races.  If you define it as that which would be brought about after 20,000 years of isolation, then Caucasoids and Mongoloids would be of the same race. Jews, for the most part, have maintained genetic isolation from other Caucasians for a period of several thousand years.  Do you consider Jews a separate race from other Caucasians?  Some people do, some people don't.


 * If you use the 40,000 year definition, then Negroids are humans whose ancestors have been genetically isolated for the past 40,000 years in Africa, Mongoloids are humans whose ancestors have been isolated for the past 40,000 years in Asia, and Caucasoids are humans whose ancestors have been isolated for the past 40,000 years in Europe.


 * How one classifies people as belonging to any particular race is open to debate. But there is no doubt about the fact that racial differences themselves are brought about by genetic isolation.  There is also no doubt about the fact that there is genetic differentiation between members of the different human races, and that some characteristics are more common in certain races than in others.  As long as this continues to be the case, race will exist.  Jalnet2 01:36, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] I do not believe that many people will argue against the idea that humans, having left Africa, went to remote places like Australia and, over the course of tens of thousands of years, gained heritable adaptations to their new environments. Anyway, my question is still: given an individual, how do you propose to go about classifying him/her as to race?


 * Based on what continent, or area, or population, his or her ancestors were genetically isolated in, if they were isolated in that way for an amount of time significant enough to cause genetic differentiation. The other way, though infeasible, is to use DNA tests and group people by amount of DNA held in common.  Jalnet2 01:58, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] Prior to the arrival of Western sailors, the aborigines in Australia were probably isolated for quite some time. I seem to recall 80,000 years, but maybe that is not right. Regardless, they were probably the most thoroughly isolated and for the longest time. But once the sailors got there, they were not genetically isolated anymore, no?


 * Well, you're right. If all European and Aborigine populalations were completely merged, and they were to interbreed together without reservation, then both the Caucasian race and the Australian Aboriginal race would cease to exist, and it would be replaced with an intermediary race.  So far, this has only partially happened, though.  Jalnet2 02:19, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] Please check the "critera" section of the article on subspecies. There are no subspecies of Homo sapiens, correct?


 * Perhaps because it's not politically correct to do so? And because subspecial classification of humans is becoming more difficult and less useful because of the increasing rate at which we are interbreeding.


 * Carolus Linnaeus, the scientist who is maligned in the Race article, and who invented the taxonomical system itself, designated the following human subspecies:


 * Homo sapiens afer, Negroids
 * Homo sapiens asiaticus, Mongoloids
 * Homo sapiens europaeus, Caucasoids
 * Homo sapiens americanus, Native Americans


 * -Jalnet2 03:19, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] I'm copying, with some minor changes to adapt it to this discussion, from the article on subspecies:

[Subspecies:] For two or more individuals to be considered as members of subspecies of the same species, they have to belong to different groups rather than in a single varied group, the differences among them must be distinct, not simply a matter of continuously varying degree. If, for example, the population in question is a type of frog and the distinction between two groups is that individuals living upstream are generally white, while those found in the lowlands are black, then they are classified as belonging to different groups if the frogs in the intermediate area tend to be either black or white, but a single, varied group if the intermediate population becomes gradually darker as one moves downstream.

[Subspecies:] This is not an arbitrary condition. A gradual change -- called a cline -- is clear evidence of substantial gene flow between the upstream and downstream populations. A sharp boundary between black and white, or a relatively small and stable hybrid zone, on the other hand, shows that the two populations do not interbreed to any great extent and are indeed separate forms.

[P0M:] Just as the coldest day of winter may seem too different from the hottest day of summer for there to be a continuum between the two, so, if one travels by air from "darkest Africa" to Lithuania, then one may see a stark contrast between people with white skins and people with black skins. But if you walk from one place to the other you will pass over large areas of intermediate coloration. That, as I understand it, is why humans are currently classified as Homo sapiens sapiens -- with no second sub-species being mentioned. P0M 04:12, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Maybe this will help: From a biological point of view, a race is an extended family. Memebers of one race share more recent ancestors with each other than with non-members. Just how "recent" the ancestry you consider will determine the number and size of races you enumerate. The four classical human races account for some of the earliest lineage splits that are still distinguished among modern humans. Moreover, what's true of extended families is also true of races. That is, biological differences between races are merely aggregated individual differences. These differences can be striking or faint, depending on the details. And of course, the biological point of view is not by itself sufficult to explain the entire scope of race differences (just as it is not sufficent to explain differences between families.) --Rikurzhen 08:11, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] Somewhere in the voluminous archives of this talk page is the URL of a good family tree based on mitochondrial DNA. Actually, now that I think of it, there are two charts of great interest. One of them is the same as the chart on p. 237 of Watson's DNA. These investigations produce some surprises regarding which populations have majority memberships that are closely related, and which have memberships that are remotely related. For instance, I for one would not have guessed how remote people from Sardinia are from people from Italy. As I look at the chart in DNA I actually have some trouble sorting out the "four classical human races." They are there, but, for instance, some Chinese are "next door neighbors" to the English, and some Chinese are "in the next block" with "Asian Indians, New Guineans... and somewhat more remotely with the Japanese." Meanwhile, the San, Mbuti, and Hausa are off on an island of their own. All of the information in these charts is useful and would probably do much to help sincere people avoid falling into errors of reasoning that lead to mistreatment of people on the grounds that knowledge of someone's race is grounds for generating an instant "rap sheet."

[P0M:] One approach to an article on race would be to include only the information that is backed up with solid evidence. But what happens if all of the history of the formation of this idea is omitted? What happens if the information provided in an article on race is not adapted to the social context? P0M 17:41, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:]I found the source of the other chart. See Y chromosome sequence variation and the history of human populations Peter A. Underhill1, et alia © 2000 Nature America Inc. • http://genetics.nature.com

This chart, too, gives a very different picture of the "main human races".P0M 18:22, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I have a profound problem with the current introduction. Personally, were I a biologist and were I committed to using the word "race," I would use it exactly as the introduction describes. But this is only how some biologist use the term. The article should not privilege one point of view. I am assuming that a number of people would like this opening because it is a relatively uncontentious way to talk about race -- as I just said, I personally think it is a reasonable definition. The problem is, "race" is a very contentious issue and I think the article has to explain how and why from the beginning. Any introduction that privileges a relatively uncontentious approach is going to mislead many people.

The problem is not easily resolved by identifying "who" uses this definition of race, and who uses other definitions. This is not a distinction between biologists who use one definition of race and social scientists who use another -- social scientists study how biologists use race, for example. Nor is it a deistinction between a folk-taxonomy and a scientific taxonomy, or between scientists and the general public -- one of the defining features of modern Western culture is that folk-taxonomies reflect the views of scientists and scientific taxonomies reflect folk taxonomies.

Thus, there are some biologists and most physical anthropologists (who are not "social scientists") who simply reject the word "race" and instead use "population." And there are many biologists, and non-biologists who use the biological taxa, who use it in racist ways. I think that the introduction to the article must introduce people to this broader field in which people talk about "race" -- some who use it in racist ways, others who reject the term for that reason, others who redefine the term to make it un-racist. I think the current introduction really introduces only this first point of view. Without contextualizing it in terms of the other two points of view, it is misleading. Slrubenstein

[P0M:] I agree. See my remarks above Slrubenstein's.

[P0M:] One way to sort out complex situations like this is to examine what people were looking at in the beginning of a discussion, how they interpreted it, where they were essentially correct, and where they went wrong.

I begin to think that we are running into a peculiar US usage here. Has the term race become so loaded with other meanings in the US that biologists are afraid to use it these days? In almost all its shades of meaning, race is, at root, a biological term. (Yes, people twist and reinterpret the meaning of it a great deal, but at root it remains a fairly straightforward biological concept). Be that as it may, it would be quite silly to refuse to consider the primary meaning first - just as silly as it would be to consider a mathematical concept like average without making the formal mathematicial definition clear at the outset. Tannin 20:39, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] "Race" is a word that has strong negative connotations -- probably not only in the U.S. I believe that if it is true that "Race is not 'conceptually similar' to subspecies: it is an exact synonym," then people who are sensitive to the possibility of giving unintended support to racism might well avoid using the word "race." It is important, particularly for the U.S. readers and others that have absorbed some version or other of racism, that one can note one or two "marker traits" such as skin color or nose shape and by that means know their quality as human beings. It is ironic that in the U.S. a person with one black parent and one white parent is black and therefore bad in the eyes of some people. What is the race of a honeybee that has one Cyprian parent and one Italian parent? A reputable bee supply house would not sell Italian queens mated to Cyrpian drones as suitable for producing Italian colonies. Does one speak of the products of such a mating as belonging to one or another subspecies, to one or another race? I think not. But the word "race" is regularly misused in this way because anyone with even a lighter shade of the African coloration is capped as a "black." It has become a real issue for some people in the U.S. whether they are to be checked off as "black" or "white" on census forms. If one has one Native American grandparent, one Japanese grandparent, one white grandparent, and one black grandparent, the census type question becomes both ridiculous and also intrusive. But just try to tell the average person that "Betty" doesn't have a race. P0M 22:51, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Tannin, I respect your views, but surely you know that what is considered the "primary meaning" is itself a matter of POV. Race certainly is about biology, but that does not mean that its meaning is dictated by biologists. Biologists in the 19th century used the term in a racist way, and there are biologists in the United States and Canada who continue to use it in a racist way (and I'd be very surprised to learn this is only true of Canada and the United States; discourse is not bounded the same way states are). There are many biological scientists (for we are not just talking about biologists) who use the word "population" the way you use race. Beyond this I also think POM's points are important, Slrubenstein

[P0M:] I wonder about the historical objectivity of the first paragraph, too. Saying, "Race is a type of classification used to group members of a particular species who for a period of time have become geographically or genetically isolated from other members of that species, and as a result have diverged genetically and have developed certain shared genetic characteristics that differentiate them from other members of that species," is true, but not the only thing that can be said about race. It makes the assignment of individuals to races a rather clinical matter, an objective undertaking. In fact, however, anyone with a dark skin who appears in the visual range of people who care to make racial discriminations will likely be categorized as being of African descent -- even if they are Shan tribesmen fresh in from the Golden Triangle or natives of Sri Lanka. I believe that racial categorization has historically been made either on geographical grounds (They are all black and they are all from Africa, therefore they must be "family.") or on the basis of superficial characteristics. Just how common is it for people assigning individuals to racial categories to check on anything beyond self reporting, hair texture, skin color, nose shape... How common is it to check for agenesis, shovel-shaped incisors, padded arches of the feet, plate-form ear wax... I suspect that people only pay attention to the items that require closer than arm's length investigation when they are investigating the characteristics of a population of Chinese, a population of Sardinians, etc. I think it has only been relatively recently that one could even make the measurements necessary to assign people to races based on the criteria quoted above. P0M 01:41, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] Just did some re-checking. There is only one living "subspecies" of Homo sapiens. The Neanderthals died out long ago. So either "race" means something different from "subspecies" or else there is only one living race of humans. P0M 07:05, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[Peak to Tannin:] You wrote in an edit summary:
 * The fact that "race" is a term in standard, everyday use in all manner of biological works: just how long a list do you want?

How does one prove that All swans are white? It's pretty hard.

Surely the fact that there has been recent disagreement on this Talk page about the precise meaning of the word race in "biology" is sufficient to prove that there is disagreement about the meaning of the word in biology. If not, then I suggest you review the very extensive "Talk" history, which shows that almost everything about race (except perhaps the English spelling) is controversial. This is exactly what the preamble states. If you haven't read the NPOV tutorial, please do so. Peak 04:42, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Surely the fact that you are profoundly ignorant of normal usage in the literature is irrelevant. I told you and told you and told you, yet you still continue to mindlessly revert. Let's take a look shall we? I'm going to wander around the room picking up books at random.

First book on top of the pile (because I refer to it constantly): Michael Morecombe, Field Guide to Australian Birds. I pick it up, flick open a page at random, select a random entry. Yellow-throated Scrubwren. Leaving out the irrelevant bits, it reads as follows: "Variation: probably 2, perhaps 3 races. In NE Qld, race cairnsi is isolated. In NSW, nomonate race citreogularis may be split, intergrading in NE NSW with race intermedius, which extends into SE Qld."

Next up, a field guide to Australian fish. After a five minute look I can't find race, but then I can't find subspecies either: fish, it seems, are not so well studied. Hell - they are still finding whole new fish species in WA, so I guess that's not surprising.

Work down the pile: a history of the Battle of Alamein, no use looking there, ahh, Pizzey and Knight, The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia. Another random page. Restless Flycatcher: "Range and status: n, e, se, and sw Aust. and coastal islands: race nana from Broome (WA) through Kimberley and Top End (NT), s. to Morphett Ck-Alexandria ....." (I'll leave out the rest, it goes on to describe other races.

This stuff is as common as mud. I simply cannot understand why anyone objects to it. Tannin


 * [Peak:] Sometimes truth is in inverse proportion to certainty. The ICZN does in fact define race:

RACE: an infrasubspecific (qv) category which has no status under the Code.

INFRASUBSPECIFIC: of a category or name - of lower rank than the subspecies, and, as such, not subject to regulation by the Code (qv) e.g. form, race, variety. Article 1.3.4.



Thus, at least so far as the English-speaking international zoological community is concerned, race is not an exact synonym of subspecies.

I invite someone to modify the preamble appropriately. Otherwise, when I get around to it, I plan to do so.

Please note that I am not in any way disputing that in some communities, 'race'' is used as an exact synonym for "subspecies", or that in some communities it is used to mean a grouping based on shared ancestry at some level of analysis. On the contrary, many of us have maintained all along that much of the confusion about race stems from the multiple meanings of the word. Peak 02:01, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * I think we've already established that race has several different usages. The intro gives a short whirlwind tour of them, which is as it should be.  I think many of the things you have put in (such as the Templeton quote and the ICZN notes) could be useful contributions to this article, but in the various POV-elaborating sections, not the intro.  I understand your unhappiness with the removal of the heavy detail from the intro, but in the interests of having a bite-sized intro and keeping balance and NPOV we can't put it all in.  By the way, I think your last edit (moving the one sentence out, followed by my flow adjustment) was quite good and addressed your concerns without crossing others'. -- VV 02:13, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] Tannin, by your own words, race is an exact synonym for subspecies. Further, you stated (correctly) that “human variation does not qualify under any definitions in current use.” The Neanderthals all being dead, that means that there being only one extant subspecies there is only one extant race of humans P0M 14:50, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * That is exactly what I have been saying from the start. The fact that you refused to listen is your problem. Tannin

Tannin, please try to be a little less pretentious and arrogant.


 * It was not me that started this. I was perfectly polite until Peak started his senseless reversion campaign and then capped it off by pretending I didn't know what NPOV was. Tannin

The sentence "Surely the fact that you are profoundly ignorant of normal usage in the literature is irrelevant"
 * It's a paradody of Peak's arrogant and condescending phrasing in the post immediately above. Don't hang me for defending myself, hang the one who started it. Tannin

is not constructive, especially when you leave out of this first sentence, after "the literature" the crusial phrase "on Australian fish and birds." Tannin, I defer to your expertese on Australian fish and birds. But this is not an article on "Race in the literature on Australian fish and birds." It is a general article on "race." I fully agree that a section of the article should discuss "race" as used by zooligists, or at least field zooligists. But don't you understand why POM, Peak, and I are all concerned about how "race" is used by scientists who study human beings, and how non-scientists use the term when discussing human beings? I admit to my ignorance of Australia.


 * In broad, race is not used by scientists who study human beings as there are no human races in the biological sense of the word. (Yes, there are a few, a very few, who do not accept the general consensus on this, but they are a tiny minority.)

Perhaps racism is not an issue in Australia (yes, I know that racism is a seperate article, but it is called "racism" because it is predicated on assumptions about "race" which is very much the concern of this article) -- although from what I have read of the treatment of Australian and Tasmanian aborigenes, I would have thought that there has been a tremendous discourse of "race" as applied to human beings is essentializing ways. Well, that is neither here nor there since this is not an article specifically about Australia. I do not know anything about Peak and POM, but I can tell you that in the United States and Latin America the word "race" is generally not used the way you use it, except by some biologists; most scientists use the word "population" and "race" is used in a very different way. From what I have read this is true in France, and at least used to be true in Germany. Let's all agree that Peak is ignorant of fishes in Australia, but I am sure he knows things of which you (and even I!) are ignorant.

I asked a colleague of mine who is a tenured professor in biology, and has published in peer-reviewed articles. I do not say this to intimidate anyone; I am just trying to avert Tannin's reckless accusations of ignorance. My colleague replied (I asked about subspecies too, which is why he addresses this term):


 * Under the modern synthesis of evolution by Mayr, Dobzshanski, etc. the use of RACE as a term for a geographically delineated population (formally recognized as subspecies) was dropped. Evolutionary biologists haven't really used that word since the 1940's although it may pop up here and there.  AND moreover, since the 1970's even the taxonomic category of SUBSPECIES has become very unpopular for four very good reasons:


 * 1. very little data to suggest that contiguous subspecies ever become species
 * As I understand it, the literature does not contain even one single documented case of a pair of contiguously distributed subspecies of bird. I imagine that the same applies to other taxa (including mammals), as the contiguous distribution itself is very powerful evidence to suggest that we are not looking at a race at all but simply a variation within a single population.


 * 2. disjunct (geographically) subspecies usually can be demonstrated to actually be species


 * 3. subspecies were often recognized on the basis of only 2-5 phenotypic characters which often were just adaptations to local environments and didn't reflect the evolutionary differentiation of populations as a whole


 * 4. with the advent of molecular techniques to get a better handle on genetic introgression (gene flow), the picture afforded by looking at genetic variation was often at odds with the phenotypic variation (as is the case with looking at genes versus percentage of epidermal melanin in human populations)

Now, Tannin, I have never objected to including your definition as one of the possible definitions of race. I only said that it should not be privileged. I, Peak and POM have tried to explain, numerous times, why. Please stop asking repeatedly why we don't agree with you. Given how much effort we have made to explain ourselves, your insulting demeanor really is uncalled for.Slrubenstein

[Peak:] Thank you, Slr. I would like to add that, however common the use of the word race may be in the study of honeybees, fish, birds, plants, and so on, Tannin has made a much broader claim about biologists as a whole. Do virologists use the term at all? When botanists use the term, does it have the exact meaning of "variant" or of "subspecies" or something else, or is there a shade of meanings? Rather than engaging in revert wars and trading insults, can we see the evidence, especially from international organizations that offer definitions of technical terms? Peak 16:55, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * If you want to replace the word "biology" with the word "zoology" that is fine by me. I have not done so because that then requires that, in order to retain accuracy, we probably then need to add a subsiduary clause saying "and also in botany" - and who knows in what other sub-fields of biology? I know it applies in the areas I have some knowledge of, whether it applies to others as well I do not know. Tannin

Race as a type of intraspecies classification is fine, but otherwise the current intro still ignores all of my, Peak's, and POM's objections. Slrubenstein

Are you talking about the first para, SLR? If so, then I don't like it either. Indeed, a re-write of the entire intro would be a good thing, IMO. Tannin

About the first para, yes, we agree. About the rest -- Tannin, thank you for your considered reply. I'm sorry I did not realize the history behind the antagonism -- obviously, we should all be civil. In my experience here, though, sarcasm and tit-for-tat have never helped a situation. In any event, I appreciate your clarification. The problem remains, however. Some biologists do use race in a way that I now see all of us would reject. But they still do -- I remember a year or two ago having a several day feud with JDG who insisted on the biological reality of race among humans as the scientific view. Moreover, most humans who use the word "race" use it to talk about humans and make assumptions about biology. We may disagree with these assumptions; most scientists may. My point is that the article must address all these issues, and the introduction must introduce the entire article. It cannot privilege the zoological use of "race" as the "primary" meaning. This is actually where we started, Tannin-- I responded to your point and tried to explain (politely) why I objected, and you responded by asking how anyone (which I took to include me) could disagree with you, which seemed to be dismissive of my attempt to explain precisely that earlier. I hope you see my point. Slrubenstein