Talk:Race (human categorization)

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A Way Forward

¤ Here is a map that is just a mock-up of what I think would be helpful in understanding the issue of subspecies as it applies to bees. I have included examples of the sub-Saharan bee (that was released in S. America and has caused problems after hybridizing with local bees), the Saharan bee, a very robust and very gentle bee (apparently living in oases in the Sahara Desert means that you don't need to act tough all the time), the totally black bees of Morocco, the bees of Cyprus that are noted for their extreme willingness to sting, The Italians that are the most widely accepted bees for commercial production, the Carniolians (which I forgot to label) in Slovenia, the German "black" bees that were the first ones to make it to the U.S. and which form a sizeable part of the population living their lives in hollow trees and other such places, and a population of bees that lives between the Italians and Carniolians and the German Black Bees that has intermediary qualities. I have left out lots of areas just because I'm at this point only trying to see how one might present, visibly and compellingly, the information generally found only in dry charts.

See the half-tone dots.

Each kind/variety/subspecies/race (it's hard to know what to call these groups because except for the Cyprians, and maybe the Saharans, none of these bees seem to meet the formal requirements needed to be distinguished as subspecies. The Cyprians are isolated by the Mediterranean. The Saharans are isolated by the desert. Perhaps sub-Saharan bees as a group constitute a subspecies since there may be no easy way for bees to make it across the desert.

¤ I made this map by first making a tic-tac-toe grid within a circle for each kind of bee. The "5" spot in the middle represents the tendency of the bees to coat everything inside the hive with a resin they collect. It is colored something my drawing program calls "asparagus." Propolis (the resin) is made up of whatever resins the bees can find, so its color is variable. On the map, darker means a greater tendency to paint the house and the cover over the babies' cribs. The quarter circle at the top (I decided to amalgamate several "cells" because I didnt have many colors and a single cell made almost no visual impact on the final map) ranges from yellow to black, and denotes the color of the bees. The quarter circle on the bottom represents temperament in shades of red. Cyprians get a full, bright, red, the German bees get a duller red, the Sub-Saharan bees also have a prominent red. The Carniolians and the Italians get a very delicate pink, and other subspecies get intermediate colors. The other two "quarters" were supposed to represent (1) honey expended to maintain the colony over the winter (there are two strategies for survival, cut population and live on less honey, or keep a big population over winter -- that's the main difference between the Italians and the Carniolians), and (2) how nervous the bees are when the hive is opened. (The Saharans don't sting, but they are very upset when their hive lid is taken off, and they mill about on the comb which makes finding the queen difficult and impedes other tasks the beekeeper might like to perform.) I didn't have real data at hand, so these values are faked.

¤ I am missing the ability in all my modern software to do a job that is easy with an early 90s product for the Mac called "LightningPaint" -- it lets you copy one image and drop it on another image. The parts that were white in the copied portion do not get transferred onto the new location of the thing you are moving, so if you copy a picture of a red star onto a black background you dont get a black background, a square of white, and a red star. Unfortunately LightningPain does only black-and-white images, so I am stuck. Lots of programs let you make "transparent" images for web pages, but in practice I haven't found any way to make them stay transparent when they are pasted into another image, even if I save my desired-move to a gif file and then open and copy it that way.

¤ Anyway, the image above can be viewed at different sizes, giving at first the impression of a solid this-color and a solid that-color, just the way the old comic book halftones work.

¤ Cavelli-Sforza has a series of maps of the main genetic groupings that can be used to distinguish human populations by their genetic differences. If those are the things that make people belong to different [races], then the same person, providing he was at the right point on the map, might belong to a different [race] each way, i.e., he would be allied to people north of him but not east or west of him in one way, but he would be allied to people west of him but not north or south of him by another standard. These maps are very compelling if you can read and interpret them, but they may not make a hit with the average well-informed reader. P0M 04:25, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How much effort needs to be dedicated to an analysis of the older definitions of race? Consider which definitions from the table above are subject to this kind of analysis. --Rikurzhen 14:00, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

That's an interesting question, which I should take some time to think about. But in the meantime:

Which kind of "analysis" do you mean? What I am trying to do with the mock-up above is to show that there is much more variability on the ground than there is in our heads. The synthetic and creative activities of the human mind create the [races]. It occurs to me that one way of measuring the [racial] natures of various populations would be to construct a list of all the the genetic characteristics considered salient, determine the frequency of each of them, and then, without regard to what individuals happen to possess each measured characteristic, see how many individuals of [race] A one could assemble, how many of [race] B. and so forth. Suppose that a bee breeder bought 10 colonies of the pure black bees of Morocco, 10 colonies of pure yellow bees (if there is such a thing) from somewhere else, induced each colony to produce virgin queens, and bred each queen to a drone of the other [race]. The resultant bees would be neither black nor yellow, but if you sorted out their genetic constitutions you would find that you still had a 50-50 [racial] mix. We could look at some isolated population in, e.g., Borneo, and determine how many typically Chinese individuals we could fabricate by snagging the gene[s] for shovel-shaped incisors from this individual, the gene[s] for epicanthic folds from that individual, etc. We would probably learn very quickly that there would be one or two genes that are in very low supply, and that by counting their presence in the total population we could know we could assemble no more Chinese than that despite the ample presence of, say, some factor that leads to lactose intolerance early in adolescence if not before.

To me, the diagram does not match up very well with what is to be observed in reality. Part of the problem is just needing a zoom capability on the user's computer screen. The other problem is how to create an image. I think I could do what I want with map pins and a piece of window screen. I could count the number of red pins needed for a Cyprian population of "hot" bees, the number of yellow and black pins needed to represent their coloration, etc., and then throw them all in a shaker and spill them out on the screen, but then, I'd still have to stick the pins in one by one and then photograph them. Another problem, which I discovered when I tried to respond to Slrubenstein's remark above, is that it is not easy on my computer to produce a smooth gradient from one color to another -- at least in the context of the complex curves that show up on the skin color maps. I can blur the edges, but I can't blur them into a smooth gradient from one edge to the next edge. Somehow, by accident I produced a map of Cyprus that "disassembled" the tic-tac-toe images into something like pixels. That image (blow it up to see what I mean) is the least artificial-looking, the most like what I see in my mind's eye. I tried using the pre-built patterns in my several kinds of software, but they turn out to be too small in scale to work well. It looks like writing a computer program to fill the screen with dots of appropriate colors in the proper order might acturally turn out to be the easy way to go. That would be a fun program to write. I'm getting tempted. But if I were going to make that effort I would like to have some real numbers to work with. Maybe I could do something with glitter flakes and acryllic that would be a portrait of the [races] of bees but would not be a photograph or an exact likeness. What do you think? Would it be useful? P0M 18:48, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Validity vs utility?

I have suggested above that the validity question has to be aimed at a particular definition, and perhaps even to a particular population (e.g. all the people of the US; or all the people of the world). Let me also suggest that the question of validity may or may not need to be disambiguated from the question of utility. Races may be informative (valid) but only for meaningless distinctions (no utility). Races may not be valid at a global level, but have utility for US doctors. Races may be social constructs that are highly useful. And so on. --Rikurzhen 14:08, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

I have no problems with anything you have said above. (I'm rereading after reading your posting of 2 January.)P0M 08:36, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good points. Obviously I feel there is some objective validity to sub-specific grouping, but on some level it must be at least partially abstract and so partially a social construct. The idea of a perception/semantics-influenced construct grounded in at least a few solid empirical facts being highly useful is, well, highly useful. Some expansion of this in the article or a sub-article would be nice.JDG 17:41, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think the division into [races] of Italian bees from Carniolian bees would be explainable according to definitions 1 and 3 above. I'm unable to tell what 2 is actually intended to convey. Is there an alternative definition somewhere else? One of the things that came as a surprise to me, when I looked at those definitions with bees in mind, is that most of them tend to apply to aggregates but not to the individuals who constitute those aggregates. They say, in effect, "O.K., Kazuo, you say you're Japanese. In that case, the people whom you see around you are most likely to be around height x, weight y, have straight black hair... What's that, you say you have naturally curly hair? Look, I am just talking about what you are most likely to see, what you will see on average around you. I say nothing about individuals."

Pick any point in space and time, and those who have the appropriate empirical knowledge can tell you nothing about the weight of the next individual. "But he's a sumo wrestler!" Even if it's Hanida airport terminal on July 23 2005, they are going to be able to tell you the average of the characteristics of all of the people within that time period -- providing that they've done their homework. The same applies for Manhattan Island in 2005 or in 1005, but the numbers are going to be radically different. In 1005 you might find one shipwrecked Portugese cook, but his presence would not greatly affect the average measurements.

Why is this? Part of the answer lies in heredity. Part of the answer lies in history. Who resides at some small area of the earth at one period in time depends on the people who live and reproduce in the surrounding area but also on who is moving through the area.

Looking at it this way, [race] turns out not to be something "out there," but various ways that humans handle the data pertinent to what is now there. I agree with JDG that "The idea of a perception/semantics-influenced construct grounded in at least a few solid empirical facts being highly useful is, well, highly useful." Even the resultant competing groupings of humans into [races] can be helpful -- as long as people are aware of what is what. The medical uses of [race] is useful if it says, "Target public awareness advertising dollars mostly toward skin cancer in the mass media and the markets that will most likely reach whites, and tarket those dollars toward high blood pressure and hidden heart disease in the mass media and the markets frequented by blacks. But don't automatically rule out hidden heart disease in whites and don't automatically rule out skin cancer in the case of blacks." The social problem comes when some Chinese guy is attacked for being "non-Chinese" because he has curly hair. The problem disappears if everybody understands what it means to be Chinese, and the guy who is getting attacked says, "The definition of a Chinese population includes 0.7% who have curly hair. In our neighborhood, joker, I am that 0.7%." From a public mental health perspective, what seems most needed is for the average citizen to be aware that [races] are not things. They are groupings of things done by various people for various reasons. P0M 19:47, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

P0M, sorry -- I wasn't listing those three as definitions, but as example possible positions on the validity vs utility distinction. By definitions, I mean the four I listed in the table many sections above. [1] To the second point, keep in mind that summary statistics include both measures of averages and variances. Also, biomedical research is necessarily done with samples of people, not whole populations. For practical purposes any informative marker could be useful if it were predictive in medical diagnosis. Economic scarcity drives doctors to use whatever means available to diagnose; and "race" has been useful and cheap for some diseases for US doctors. The example of 2 is actually one possibility that I personally believe may turn out to be correct.[2] It may be that at a global level human genetic variation -- even with whole genome comparisions -- is clinal, but that the peopling of the US by immigrant populations has created a mixed population of people that are sufficiently different to make race a useful and valid for most people living here. [3] That position would seem to resolve the paradox from the data I've read.[4] --Rikurzhen 03:09, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

[1] I'm a little confused about which 3 and which 4 you are talking about. I was trying to deal with the material in the boxes above. So we had the same thing in mind, but now I'm confused as to which 3 you are talking about.

[2] You may be clear about what definition 3 means, because you have read it in context. I can`t make head or tail of it.

[3] That's an interesting idea, which would put the racists into a frenzy.

[4] Which paradox?

I am pretty sure that we are not in disagreement, but our language differences are playing hobb with my mind right now. Maybe I'll see things more clearly in the morning.

I've replaced the mock-up with a somewhat more successful one. I'm finding it easier to do the art side. Now I need some more specific maps and data to work with. (The bees seem simpler than the humans. At least nobody wants to kill you if you call them a Carniolian. ;-) P0M 08:36, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oops, we've confused each other. I think my basic point was that it would help the article if we were more precise as we discuss facets of race (e.g. defintions, populations where it might apply, and the criteria being considered -- utility vs validity). --Rikurzhen 23:22, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Not NPOV

Part 1

A major problem with this article is the failure to use NPOV writing. The recent additions by Deeceevoice -- I don't mean to pick on any one person -- reflect this failing. For example

"The goal of such racial designations was to concentrate power, wealth, privilege and land in the hands of a specific ethnic population in a society of White hegemony and White privilege."

Might be written:

Some historians believe that the goal of such racial designations was to concentrate power, wealth, privilege and land in the hands of a specific ethnic population in a society of White hegemony and White privilege."

I'm not a historian and I don't know if they think that or not -- just an example. --Rikurzhen 23:22, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

¤How much of the following is a quotation? Is enough being copied here to break their copyright? P0M 00:19, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

RE: Yes it is a copied work. Therefore i will remove it. We are not allowed to use copyrighted work without permission. -- Orionix 01:43, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

¤ I'm not sure, actually. It would be wrong to use that much in an article -- especially without quotation marks and citation -- but working with it paragraph by paragraph in a discussion format such as this one is probably within the "fair use" rule. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

One correction regarding A.W.F. EdwardsÕ work, he manifestly does not argue that race exists. What he is talking about is how genetic combinations can give rise to effects that are quite radical and not previsible from genetic make-up alone. Edwards is talking about the existence of patterned biodiversity using the clinatic model. He even mentions Cavalli-Sforza's "treeness" theory, which has been a root theory for clinatic studies. All Edwards is trying to do is show that we can, indeed, descry some larger patterns to human biodiversity. No modern anthro or reasonable scientist I know would deny this. What is denied is that these patterns correspond to races: i.e., stable, genetically discreet subspecies that are objectively verifiable by one and all. Races were never defined as statistical correlations between one or another characteristic: they were quite clearly defined as stable and discrete genetic packages.

¤ What if someone argues statistical correlations among a fairly large number of "marker" character- istic give us a "useful fiction", i.e., a construct that everybody realizes is just a construct, but something that gives us statistically useful information in some field such as public health. The presence of X% of these markers assigns him/her to group one, and knowing that s/he is in group one gives us statistically reliable grounds for not trying medication X (which s/he will likely be allergic to) but for trying medication Y first (which usually works and rarely has bad effects). That kind of fuzzy knowledge would be better than shooting in the dark. Whether one wants to call the group to which this individual is "fictioned" to belong a "race" or not is a matter of rhetoric as far as I can see. I'd like to scrap the word "race" because it has about as many definitions as there are speakers who use the word. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You can follow the study [1] -- Orionix 21:04, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Here again the problem is what definition of race are you referring to -- and for what population. Your last sentence seems to say that the taxonomic and population definitions fail to hold, but that the lineage definition is fine. Whereas the Britannica article says that races do not exist in "any biological sense". It is also incorrect to say -- as Britannica does -- that genetic indicators cannot divide "races" -- as we've documented in the wikipedia article they can do so approximately. The Britannic article is wrong because it states conclusions that are not supported by the data -- it goes too far. --Rikurzhen 22:55, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

¤ I am not sure that I follow Rikurzhen's presentation above. Orionix appeared to me to be talking about how people typically use the word "race," but the trouble with what he said is that, while that might have been what people had in mind, they very quickly weaseled their way out of it when real-world problem were pointed out. According to whoever the researchers were, Orionix asserts that races "were quite clearly defined as stable and discrete genetic packages." I think that is exactly what lots of people who like the idea of "race" imagine to exist in the world. They want to be able to say, "Mr. X belongs to race Y, therefore we can know without any further investigation that he has characteristics a, b, c..." Then objectivity spoils this picture by showing that 'genetic indicators can divide "races" but only approximately.' (I paraphrase what Rikurzhen says above.) What that really means, I think, is that we cannot make a set of categories such that people can reliably be assigned to them one the basis of a relatively small set of markers and yet be assured that the individuals so assigned will reliably possess the characteristics we have not ascertained by objective means. What we can do is some kind of categorization that is statistically meaningful. That, in turn, means that we can speak reliably about the percentages of group X who have characteristic S. We can know, statistically, the characteristics of the groups. What we cannot know are the characteristics of the individual. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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RE: Rekurzhen, i think you are misinterpreting the data. Race as referring to human sub-species, as was definied in the 1900s, does not exist in any physical sense. There are no genetically stable human sub-species or exclusively distinct human types. This is the basic message Britannica is trying to pass off. Human Biology is too complex to be divided into 3-9 discreet genetic packages called races.

¤ I don't think that is what Rikurzhen meant. He is trying to "save the phenomena" by diluting the very kind of claim you say he is making. To put the matter in simple terms, if you know someone is Chinese and you are a betting individual you will make money (if you can find the right mark) by betting that the individual's face will flush after a single shot of whiskey. You'll lose part of the time, but, as with slot machines, if the customers keep coming you will make a reliable "take" over the length of time you can survive before your clientelle wises up. If somebody wanted you to photograph a person's face flushing after taking one drink of whiskey, your best strategy would not be to start with people from Malawi. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

One basic fallacy i have to correct: the claim that race is a social construct is not to say that it has no meaning. Race has tremendous historical and political meaning.

¤ Right. It is always valuable to stay clear on whether we are talking about the phenomena or about the "fiction" that is being used to make predictions regarding the phenomena. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Also race is in no way universal, it's culturally constructed. Therefore race is contextual and not a fixed universal formula as was thought of in the 1900s. Edwards is talking about patterned or clinal human biodiversity. What he writes is in no way proof for race physical existence.

¤ "Race" across cultures is another interesting study. Different cultures (and different languages) have different ways to categorize people. These ways are all methods of categorizing humans. Now, to talk about, e.g., Japanese ideas of "race," we have to make up scheme for categorizing systems of categorization. So we have fictions that account for the production and maintenance of fictions. Let's see, we have a fiction and a meta-fiction. Shall we try for a meta-meta-wiki-fiction? Just kidding, bad idea. Any time a human sees "patterns" that human is making up a fiction. That's how we earn our daily bread. That is the active function of the human mind that makes us the "rational animals." Even dogs seem to do this kind of thing to some extent. One of my dogs came from a rescue home for abused dogs. When I got her she would be friendly with any female human who came around, but she was apprehensive around me and downright uncivil to any male human who came around the place. (She's getting better as the years roll on.) P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

E.g, Forensic Anthropologists are able to judge a person's race with a high degree of probability because they are working within an a priori agreed upon system of classification, wherein every forensicist looks only at certain physical data, ignoring everything else. When one does this, one can easily create internally logical racial classifications. This logic is not objective, however, in the same way that, say, the periodic table is objective. The reason is because as soon as one steps away from what is agreed upon as relevant, new racial systems can be - and are - easily constructed. Depending upon whom you ask, there are anywhere between three and thousands of human racial groups in the world. The number varies in direct proportion to the number of traits one tries to classify for. If one classifies for skin color alone, one gets about 4 or 5 groups. Skin color, hair form, facial features? Then we're talking more than a dozen. Add in blood type? Another half-dozen more. The number of races one gets is thus a direct function of the number of physical characteristics one chooses to measure as relevant for constructing race. This thus means that race is logically a function built into the eye of the classifier and expressed by his choice of ÒrelevantÓ traits to measure. It is not defined by mother nature. Even the most famous of the forensic raciologists, Dr. Gill, admits that it is philosophy that determines races, not the worldÕs natural order. He simply thinks that, for most cases which forensicists have to deal with, common-sense racial categories are good enough to get the job done. He is correct to believe this.

¤ Interesting. Is the periodic table a fiction? I think so, but it has proven to be a remarkably stable and useful fiction. It doesn't say anything about fusion or fission, however. There is something out there, and humans have managed to label it with labels that stick pretty well. But the labels did not come sewn to the elements.

¤ There are real-world characteristics that (to take an extreme case) frequently mean that identical twins will be virtually indistinguishable in any non-learned characteristic. But with multiplication comes diversity. Then humans come along and start bifurcating everything. When that isn't enough we go from "light people" and "dark people" to "4 or 5" colors. But why stop there. The skin color map this article uses originally had 8 colors, and those 8 were derived from measurements by eyeball that compared human skin colors with (I think it was) 32 colored tiles. If you make enough divisions you get to the point that the human eye cannot distinguish between, e.g., pink 32 and pink 33 on a graded scale of 100 pink tiles. Then we are back to something close to what mother nature provided us with, a continuum.

¤ The forensic assignent of discovered skulls to this [race] or that [race] are useful because they tell us not what the person was but what s/he probably looked like. "Did anybody around here disappear suddenly about 10 years ago? We have found the body of what appears to be a white male, about 5' 10" tall, maybe weighed about 150 pounds, had broken his left lower leg... Know anybody that fit that description that left the area without paying bills or telling anybody?" P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Modern biology and genetics recognizes that patterns do indeed occur in human biology and that these patterns are very relevant and often linked to other traits. What does not occur are races as these have been defined up to now in biology. Race theory presumes the existence of relatively stable, discreet human genetic packages; recognizable, stable sub-species. This does not occur with human beings. Just because one has a certain skin color does not mean that one must have a certain hair form or facial structure, etc., etc. Human biology is better conceived of as a series of interrelated but mutually separate genetic clines, not as discrete little racial packages.

No responsible anthro argues that we are all one race simply because we carry 99.9 percent of the same genetic content. The argument is entirely and exclusively regarding that .1 precent left over. That difference does not express itself in stable, discreet genetic patterns among humans. If it did, it wouldnÕt mean a damn that humans are 99.9 percent genetically homogenous. The way human genetics work, however, a black man might actually be genetically more similar to a white man than he is to another black man and this has been proven on several occasions.

Rosenberg and PritchardÕs found out that there are general patterns to human biology which can be perceived by the untrained eye and which are incorrectly codified as race. They were very clear about the fact that genetic variation within each one of those macro groups was as high as between them. They themselves do not see their work as ÒproofÓ that races exist. Their work is a proof that discrete human subspecies are indeed nonexistent. Clinactic theory amply accounts for the patterns observed by Rosenberg and Pritchard Ð a fact they well recognize Ð while racial theory cannot account for any number of observable phenomena.

¤ I'm only guessing at what you mean by "clinactic theory," but the words at least seem to fit my awareness of how one supposed [race] (Italian bees or Italian humans, doesn't matter) shades over into individuals that, if you go far enough, eventually start looking pretty different from what you started with (Swedes, for instance, or the "grey" bees of the Carnic Alps). I think that the attempt to "save the phenomena" mentioned above asserts the usefulness of the statistical profile that can be made of Carniolian bees (or humans, for that matter). Beekeepers know that Italian bees are not like "killer bees." On a good day in June you can often open up a colony of Italians that you've just gotten started by buying 3 pounds of bees, a queen, and a hive, and you will be perfectly sting-free even without gloves or veil. You can be pretty sure that if you get anywhere near colonies of certain other kinds of bees you will not do so with such impunity. But you never know when you will find a colony of Italians that will treat you as it would a marauding bear. Genetic characteristics vary from hive to hive, and behavior depends on lots of environmental factors like availability of nectar that bees of slightly different ancestry may react to differently. Still, if you are going to buy queen bees it's better to go to a reliable breeder of some of the gentler kinds. I think that is basically what Rikurzhen is trying to say about [race]. Humans are much more complicated than bees, of course. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Take note that a study of 1000 people that comes up with 375 different observable polymorphisms is in itself a very good indication that human biodiversity is a hell of a lot more complex than racial theory can deal with. Furthermore, the ability to use genetic assays to indicate where some few of a personÕs many ancestors may have originated is not at all proof of biologically stable subspecies among humans.

¤ I don't see why such a study would pertain to any particular individual ancestors. At least once you get back to the generation of one's grandparents the task of sorting out which characteristics came from which grandparent would be monumental. That's because pairs of chromosomes, after then pull apart a little ways, can twine around each other and swap ends. So you may get the head of the chromosome that came from great great grandpa and the tail of the same chromosome may come from great great grandma. The possibility that I find interesting is that one individual migrates from somewhere in Saudi Arabia at the time of King Arthur, has a bunch of children all of whom are, I don't know, resistant to the plague. The tail end of that one chromosome that contains the protective allele means a healthy child for all who get it, and even though the other characteristics get washed out in the long run, this one characteristic persists. There was mention earlier in our discussion of the "earliest common ancestor". Although the math and the exact workings of the thing remain murky to me, it suggested to me that you would not have to go back very far in human history to find a trait that was present then and that got passed down to all humans. But right now I'm just seeing possibilities. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A new study published in Nature Genetics [2] is a further proof that human beings are relatively biologically unified. If the racial thesis was correct, one would expect the exact opposite, but that isnÕt the case. Note the quotation marks. Note their correlation of ÒraceÓ to ÒethnicÓ groups. They are quite clearly talking about socially constructed groups here which is why they use the term Òethnic groupsÓ. Races can be constructed and perceived. It is no responsible scientist's argument that they don't exist. They are socially constructed, however. The Nature study could also have said that the effects of these variants were consistent across zodiac signs. Such a statement would be true. It would not, however, be proof that our basic human typologies are written in the stars. -- Orionix 01:54, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'll have to read it more carefully, but based on the N&V that study doesn't directly address the question of whether races exist.

¤ What exists, exists. [Race] is a fiction. It may be a useful fiction, if constructed in an appropriate way and kept "civilized" by frequently pruning off connotations and side-growths, but it is still a fiction. What this fiction tries to describe is real. It is the similarity amidst diversity that at least makes humans a species. It's functionally very useful to be able to distinguish humans from chimpanzees -- otherwise there might be more unofficial and unintentional hybridization experiments. But even in the case of humans and yeast cells there are family connections. They are rather remote, but knowing about them is useful too.

¤ I really think it is a mistake to argue about whether [races] exist. To do so is to confuse word and object P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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RE: I don't understand. All genetic studies make it very clear that humans cannot be typologized neither into 3-5 nor 6-9 stable and distinct sub-species or races. -- Orionix 05:26, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If you substitute genetic clade for race, then you actually can place people into arbitrarily as many groups as you wish. The terms "stable" and "distinct" are the sticky points that make it an open question as to whether those clades are truly "races". see [3]

¤ Yes, exactly. And I think you and Orionix are actually saying the same thing. Diversity is real. Genetic connections are real. Heredity is real. But the concepts that we use to talk about these things are the products of the active operation of the human mind. The concepts are things that we humans impose upon the real world to make it easier for us to "rule nature by obeying her." P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

--Rikurzhen 05:49, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

I am beginning to wonder whether the main point of what Orionix and I are saying is being ignored and blown off. The article, as it stands, is wrong because it hypostatizes race. To draw a homely analogy: Stars are real. Constellations are not real. They are human constructs imposed on real things. Stars can be organized into many different groupings that are more useful, perhaps, than the constellations, but that fact does not change the basic truth that the groupings are done by humans. P0M 07:22, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Part 2

The expectation if 85% of all genetic variation is found within each population is that the majority of disease causing alleles are found in each population. Like the Fst discussion, that doesn't shed light on population structure. -- But I'll have to read the paper more carefully. --Rikurzhen 03:51, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

---

RE: Take any population (or race) on earth, as you wish to define it, and the genetic variation will be 85-90% among each one. Now if we use genetic clines as 'races' we will find that there are basically infinite 'races' out there. -- Orionix 05:26, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I understand your point; the question -- as the race article states -- is whether in fact global genetic variation is clinal or not. That is a mostly unresolved question. But depending on the level of difference you decide is a proper cutoff, you could have anywhere from 1 race total to one race for each person (except twins). The question is whether the structure of genetic variation warrants the notion of race -- i.e., countably few groups. --Rikurzhen 05:49, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

¤ Coming back to this statement long after I wrote what is below, do you really believe that there are any instances where global genetic variation is not clinal? To imagine such a case you have to take a very restrictive view of humans over time. By that I mean that if you look at the most remote and most thoroughly cut off of all the human groups (before recent centuries at least) you probably would be looking at the native population of Australia. They apparently lived relatively unmolested for 80,000 years or so. Everything that they originally had came presumably came with a "clinal tail" connecting them with whatever other humans were moving across the globe just behind them (or maybe they accelerated through some groups that go ahead of them in the migration across Eurasia). At some point they got to Australia. They have presumably changed somewhat in adapting to that environment. Do we know that they have a single relevant characteristic that they did not carry with them? If Atlantis emerges pristine from the sea and we seed it with a single species of finch, how much diversification will be due to different microenvironments or ecological niches favoring different characteristics that were carried there among the million or so finches we boxed up and moved to that island, and how long will it take for benefitial mutations to emerge? How big and how beneficial a mutation will we have to have before we call them a different subspecies? (Remember, we also have to embargo the island so no foreign finches get on and no "native" finches get off.) Most of the characteristics that distinguish subspecies of animals are relatively superficial things like color.

¤ To come back to reality a bit, is there a single known characteristic of the aboriginal population of Australia that is unique? If there is I imagine that people would be talking about it. White skin was apparently a big beneficial mutation in Europe 20,000 or so years ago, but there is no "narrow hybridization band" surrounding Europe that I know of. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Most likely there are a number of alleles that are private to the aboriginal population of Australia, or were before contact with Europeans. --Rikurzhen 09:11, Jan 16, 2005

(UTC)

¤ It would be great to have some facts. One of the articles that Rikurzhen posted on 17 Jan. says: "There are no gene variants that are present in all individuals of one population group and in no individuals of another. No sharp genetic boundaries can be drawn between human

population groups. However, frequencies of genetic variants and haplotypes differ across the world. --http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/amp6019.pdf" -- Not quite as definitive as I would like, but very close. It indicates that some gene variants may be present in some individuals of one population group and in no individuals of another. (Some individuals in the North American population group have blue skin, but not all individuals have this characteristic, and no individuals in the Japanese population group have this characteristic.)P0M 07:36, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I guess I will have to temporarily deal with this word "clinal" even though it was semantically still-born as far as I can tell. (It should have been stifled, at the very least.) The question you mention is whether variation does or does not occur in distinct (i.e., genetically and characterologically clearly divided) classes of phenomena. If there is non-clinal variation, then on one some side of some line people all fail to have characteristic W but have characteristic X, and on the other side of that line no people have characteristic W and all people do not have characteristic X. But Rikurzhen moves us onto subjective ground with the remark: "But depending on the level of difference you decide is a proper cutoff, you could have...." Does something become "non-clinal" just because you or I say it is? That's the question that has made the biologists who have to deal with questions of whether two populations of some organism constitute two subspecies or one become convinced that "subspecies" is only useful as a handy rule of thumb. To determine the presence of two subspecies, one look for the "clear margin" or "narrow margin of hybridization" that is supposed to mark the boundary between two subspecies, who gets to say how broad a band of hybridization can be and still count as narrow? It is useful in the sale of queen bees to identify this one as an Italian and that one as a Carniolian, but if you find a colony somewhere on the outskirts of Venice, then it what it gets called may well depend entirely on who is doing the calling. Is the question really "whether the structure of genetic variation warrants the notion of race"? I think that, in itself (without deliberate analysis), genetic variation studies will show us what characteristics are there, but will not show us whether genetically determined characteristics actually cluster in the way that our commonsense ideas of race say that they will. What would you conclude if close analysis showed that in a given place and at a given time characteristic X is associated with characteristic Y 87% of the time -- but that viewed over the course of a thousand years characteristic X has been thriving and increasing in a diagonal band across India from NE to SW while while characteristic Y has been increasing and thriving in a different diagonal band from NW to SE -- and what you are actually look at is the diamond-shaped area of intersection of these two diagonal bands? Characterists X and Y appear to cluster very strongly in that limited population, but not because the two of them are linked on one chromosome or in some other "glued-together" way. Their appearance together is based on a historical contingency. Change the environment to continue favoring X but to make Y maladaptive and the "link" will weaken and disappear. P0M 03:30, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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Orionix, I'm familiar with everything you've written here -- and it is a very good argument for the low validity of older biological theories of race. However, it does not address the more recent notion that "races" are cladistic groups defined by "lineage" (i.e. extended families) as obsreved from multi-locus genetic profiling.

When one divides humans into cladistic groups, when one traces out their "true" lineage, you use the creative powers of the human mind to make another kind of constellation. It necessarily selectively disattends to certain elements to make a simplified picture which is easier to deal with than would be the real picture. In other words, it involves clustering. Which form of clustering provides the most useful of several competing forms of clustering may depend on what various users want to do with the data. The idea that some clustering exists before humans get at the data is Platonic and about 3000 years out of date. P0M 07:36, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I believe you are factually mistaken here. Clustering is a mathematical process that groups like things together. What emerges from a clustering analysis is not subject to prior expectations about the data -- unless you've selectively collected data, which is one argument against the current results in favor of "lineage". The cluster analyses of human genotypes are revealing because they group similar genotypes, which is reflective of more recent common ancestry. These groups happen to correspond -- after you go back and put labels on the genotypes -- with continent of ancestry -- although this did not have to be the case. Instead, it could have clustered people randomly so that there was no meaningful high level organization, and we would have concluded that continental labels were not objective. --Rikurzhen 19:07, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

Part 3

RE: You realized that almost all present studies put 'race' under quotation marks. Race has very little standing in modern biology as a taxonomic concept. Instead the concept of race has been replaced by the clinatic theory which deals with geographically patterned human physical diversity. -- Orionix 05:26, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

the theory that human genetic variation is clinal is as yet un-confirmed; it is an open question. if the answers were as easy and clear-cut as you imply, why would we still have conference and whole issues of nature genetic dedicated to the question? --Rikurzhen 05:49, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

¤ Seriously? Are they arguing about really sharp cut-offs or just about how many degrees of slope counts as vertical? P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Are you famaliar with the concept of data clustering? If you cluster human genotypes, the high level branches of the cluster correspond to continental groups. This is most likely because people from the same continent share a more recent common ancestor. The strength of this effect and its applicability to all people is not yet clear because we haven't genotyped enough people in enough places. --Rikurzhen 09:11, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

¤ Just a reality check here. An example of clustering, as I understand it, would be to take the northern Chinese (Han) group and cluster them with the southern Chinese (Han) group on the grounds that they are relatively "close" to each other as compared, e.g., to the distance of either group to the Japanese. I don't have any problem with the utility of such groupings. In fact, it seems to me to be a rather elegant way of constructing something that otherwise might be handled by constructing (constituting, to use phenomenologist-babble) the northern Han as one group, the southern Han as another group, and constituting an even more fuzzy third group called "those in the band of hybridization between northern and southern Han".

---

That is the presently open question: clines or clades for human biodiversity. An added complication to answering that question is the scope of the inquiry (e.g. the whole world or just the United States). This open question cannot possibly be answered yet because no one has done enough re-squencing of the human genome on a global scale to know the answer.

¤ Clines and clades come down to the same thing if you believe that characteristics are inherited, no? Are you (whichever one of us you are) maintaining that there are populations in the U.S. with sharp boundaries? Of course it is impossible to prove a negative. Even if there is currently no sharply-bounded breeding community, we may find a group of green people tomorrow that is very clannish and that nobody else wants to breed with either. Of all the groups that I can think of, blacks and whites in the old south, or Ainu and Japanese in Hokaido, would seem to be the most likely to have maintained sharp boundaries. If not skin color and other superficial and therefore easily identifiable characteristics, then what could be used by these groups to keep themselves apart? Religion? Check out the charts that show the relations of Jewish people and Arabian people genetically. Those who are closest together physically (over the long run) are closest together genetically. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If a population is slightly endogamous, as I suspect most are, then most people will share more of their alleles with each parent than if mating were random/assortive. With genetic clusters, the idea of "boundaries" is different than with phenotypes. I imagine most people in the US have most of their 6-8th generation ancestors their ancestors from the same continent. That should be enough to create a boundary that is distinguishable by genotying. --Rikurzhen 09:11, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

¤ That way of dividing people up will sometimes put numbers to our general perception that, e.g., African-Americans are different from Euro-Americans. (And sometimes it may, I suppose, divide things up in ways we wouldn't have thought of. Which reminds me: Some years back I was pretty deeply involved, time-wise at least, in C programming. People were developing computer programs to create computer programs in C to handle some messy, complicated stuff. The programs that the computers were creating were "correct" in the sense that they got the right answers and did so in frequently efficient ways, but the professional programmers who studied the resultant programs were interested to note that the structures that emerged were not like the structures that emerge when humans go at it. That, in turn, reminds me that Feinmann was able to do some of the work on the atomic bomb, and solve problems that others were having trouble with, because he used some odd-ball ways of doing calculus that the others were unfamiliar with. Different structures can get to the same result, but some structures are tidy, fast, and easily followed, while others are convoluted, time consuming, and by the time you're done you're not sure exactly what you've done.) Finding ways of putting the individual into a group that has group characteristics of medical import can be very useful. Finding ways of putting individuals into groups that have medical or other utility but that we wouldn't have just stumbled upon by looking at random characteristics with a subjective eye ("Moist, sticky ear wax! Yuck! Tastes bad, too.") will most likely have important payoffs in the world of medicine and perhaps elsewhere.

RE: Almost all of the human Genomic content was already sequenced. The project was completed on 21 October 2004. Project goals were to:

A) identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA,

B) determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA,

C) store this information in databases,

D) improve tools for data analysis,

E) transfer related technologies to the private sector, and address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project,

F) address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project. -- Orionix 05:26, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You missed my point -- the current project is re-sequencing of people. We've got one consensus genome sequence now, but we don't know what variation exists and how that variation is distributed. --Rikurzhen 05:49, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

¤ I think what Rikurzhen says above is correct. We know what the genes are (in terms of their chemical compositions). What we haven't done is examine the genes for alleles and then try to find out whether those alleles correlate to anything somebody would like to call "race." P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Under the lineage defition, the pattern of the alleles themselves can be used to delineate "races". --Rikurzhen 09:11, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

¤ An article on "Race" should include that information as one of the systems of categorization that humans can use to divvy themselves up. Whether people will accept that kind of division as useful and/or meaningful is one question. Whether people will generally accept that kind of division as "the true meaning of race" is another question. But we should avoid hypostatizing these schemes of division into entities. [Race], however you define it, is not something that is just "out there" with a label sewn to its lapel. P0M 19:50, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Part 4

(Although we are doing separate hap-maps for each continential population, which will be a starting point for such a study.) So anyone who claims to know with certainty that races in the lineage sense do not exist must be over-interpreting the existing data.

So the summarize... there are multiple distinctions that must be made when discussing the validity of race as we are trying to do with this article: (1) social versus biological; (2) various biological definitions; (3) global versus US; (4) and also validity versus utility.

On those point, here is my understanding:

(1) everyone seems to accept that the demarcation of races in the typological ("essentialist") sense are partially socially constructed

¤ Everything is a fiction = everything is socially constructed. The question is how much objective information is arranged by a "fiction" and how much stuff is just written in ad lib.

(2) older biological definitions have low validity on a global scale, but the lineage (extended family) definition is still plausible

¤ Surprisingly, to me, I don't understand what you mean. Maybe you mean that somebody just listed out "races" on a a priori basis? (I think there are five races. Yes, that's about the right number. Let's see now...) If you believe in hereditary, and if you think that mutations are rare and successful mutations are even rarer, then it seems that you have to explain differences in observed characteristic that are not instances of damage (broken leg, poked out eye, etc.) in terms of heredity, extended families. The problem for ideologues is that families are really extended and a white President of the U.S. ends up having black descendants. Turn that telescope around and it means that probably all of us have some unexpected ancestors back a few generations (either that or we come from extremely unimaginative stock ;-) P0M

I think the misunderstanding is that the lineage-genotype scheme need not entail all of the hypotheses associated with older definitions (e.g., there's no "one-drop" rule). Some people describe ancestry as fractional, and plot it on a graph that shows the distance of a person's genotype from the cluster majority. Most "whites" have non-trivial African ancestry for example, yet their genotypes are still strongly reflective of European ancestry. --Rikurzhen 19:16, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

¤ Plausibility is not a valid justification for belief in the existence of something. The demarcation of races in the cladistic sense is "partially socially constructed" as well. You happen to like the mixture of objective observation and human simplification and systematization of the observations that is present in the cladistic account of [race]. But your liking some fiction does not make it a fact. The cladistic account of how humans are related to each other and how their characteristics are related to each other is a fiction, albeit a relatively useful one. P0M 08:13, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Here I'm very confused by your meanging of fiction. I get the constellation example -- an arbitrary subset of stars, which as viewed from Earth forms a shape, and we call it an object -- but high level groupings of genotypes by similarity seem much more objective than abitrarily drawing lines between people. Indeed, it is the pattern of human ancestry that determines the existing pattern of genetic variation -- and human ancestry seems fairly non-fictional to me. I just don't see how a grouping of genotypes by mathematical similarlity can be called socially constructed -- whereas I see perfectly how the one-drop rule is a purely social construct. Maybe are you are arguging that race isn't a property of any individual person, but an emergent property of a group of people? Although I would think of sex as an analogy and ask if that is a property of a person or of a group -- maybe both. --Rikurzhen 19:27, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

¤ The use of the term "fiction" goes back to the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers who were instrumental in facilitating the development of physics in the 20th century. Think of it in terms of the root meaning of the word "fiction," "to form, to mold. to devise." There are very serious problems involved in how we know something is true. One of the reasons that Einstein was able to make so much progress in physics was that he was able to keep his eye on that particular ball. So there is great practical utility in this seemingly vacuous, irrelevant noodling done by would-be philosopher kings.

¤ Humans started out thinking that everything is perfectly obvious, but that certainty didn't stay with those humans who are honest and inquisitive. The study finally gets very technical in setting out the ways that we ground our knowledge. Fortunately, evolution has made getting things at least approximately right a practical necessity, and humans do a better job than other creatures (generally speaking) in at least not seeing things that aren't there. But sometimes we do see things that aren't there, or at least aren't there for other humans. That brings us to the first level of objectivity that is generally accepted as a basis for scientific knowledge.

¤ For science, it is not enough that I see ball lightning come into my living room, sit on a plastic stool, and tell me the secrets of the universe. I am convinced of it, but others are dubious because they didn't see it and they've never seen anything very much like it. Most people haven't even seen ball lightning, let alone sentient ball lightning. So, for something to be an object of study within the realm of science, it has to be something that, in principle at least, everybody can see or otherwise perceive. (Not everybody has a cloud chamber sitting idle in the hall closet, but any of us could buy one, make one, or gain access to one.) At that level, something "exists" if we all can see it, and we all can agree on some kind of consensus description. (It was about half a meter tall, give or take a cm. or so. She weighed it out as 25.0 kg., I weighed it out as 25.1 kg., ... and when we averaged the measures out we got 25.05. Given the kind of scales we are using, that's about as precise an answer as we're ever going to get.)

¤ Science demands that we have an "intersubjective object" in our sights before we can make any further determinations. We can all perceive this thing, measure and describe it, etc., and we can be reasonably sure that even after more precise measurements become possible we won't greatly change the original description. That way of grounding science in experience is generally accepted.

¤ Let's go back to the stars; they're "real." We've been watching them for thousands of years already, and with such intensity that we can identify novas that occured hundreds of years ago. We classify stars. Our nearest star, Sol, is a relatively hot star of the "main sequence" pattern development in a class that is named "g." Astronomers are more interested in the fact that there are lots of stars that fit the same general description as Sol, and not much interested in whether Sol has a "twin" somewhere. Similarly, we are interested in wolves more than (as scientists, anyway) we are interested in the individuating characteristics of any particular wolf. If you're going to be in daily contact on a friendly basis with wolves, it pays to know the general rules, e.g., "Don't step over the alpha male." The stars are as "real" as we are ever going to get. They sit there patiently, allowing us to take their mug shots over and over again.

¤ As soon as we group stars... Reread that last sentence. I didn't start out with the intent of getting to this sentence, but I read what I had just written. Focus on "we group stars". That's a clear statement to the effect that humans do something (form, mold, devise) to create the groups. To say that, e.g., the list of g class stars is a "fiction" is not to say that the list doesn't exist. (Well, actually, there are lists that different people keep and add things to on their own initiative.) Nor is it to say that the list contains stars that don't exist. It's just that it is a list that somebody made, just as your "all stars of 20th century soccer" list and my list of the "same" group may exist. Whether a certain individual goes on or stays off the list is a decision that may be obvious or it may involve marginal individuals that go on my list but are excluded from yours.

¤ Some ways of grouping phenomena may have great utility, and some ways may have lesser utility in understanding most situations but may still be the best way in special cases.

¤ There are some "social constructs" that add unsubstantiated opinion to observable fact. But as far as I know all social constructs contain some components of objective information. Rikurzhen said that "high level groupings of genotypes by similarity seem much more objective than abitrarily drawing lines between people. Indeed, it is the pattern of human ancestry that determines the existing pattern of genetic variation -- and human ancestry seems fairly non-fictional to me." The key phrase here is "more objective." It should probably be "closer to the objective" instead. The patterns are patterns that we pull out from the entire background, and the "pattern of human ancestry" is a simplified pattern that we pull out from the tapestry of real connections.

So is your point as simple as: adherents of logical positivism claim that race is a fiction? Or is it stronger, perhaps: adherents of scientific realism should nonetheless question the reality of races because the criteria for distinguishing groups and allocating people into groups is observer dependent? If so, I would suggest a more neutral statement like: a study by "Whomever" found that using X markers could determine ancestry with a false positive rate of Y; and thus a substantial fraction of individuals cannot be readily allocated into groups that correspond with their self-reported ancestry. --Rikurzhen 00:12, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

¤ My point is as simple as this: There are individuals out there that can be grouped in various ways (sometimes in competing ways I suppose) on the basis of what are generally regarded as real characteristics. The individuals are real. The constellations into which we organize them are not features of the real world, they are ways by means of which we organize real things. We say that something exists when you can find it at coordinates x, y, z, t. You cannot find a [race] the way you can find an individual bee. P0M 01:41, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ah. That philosophy is a subset of a loose group of philosophies called anti-realism. For example, you can be anti-realist about universals. Although the kind of anti-realism you are describing is common place among some thinkers, it is certinaly not something that can be merely taken for granted; so you'll have to find the right NPOV way of describing that POV. --Rikurzhen 02:56, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

¤ The article, as it stands, implicitly asserts the existence of races, just as an article about dairy cows assumes the existence of cows. An article on "domestic animals of the Martians" would assert the existence of both Martians and their domestic animals. Then people might start asking for substantiation, no? P0M 05:29, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

P0M, a gaseous igloo is a like a married bachelor, it is an analytic contradiction. I think you don't mean that race is a logical contradiction. Based on everything you've said so far, do you mean that the article should start, "people divide humans into races" rather than "A race is a distinct population of humans"? I'm not sure that is fitting with other articles; even unicorn doesn't start with "Some people have an idea about a legendary animal called a unicorn", but rather "The unicorn is a legendary creature shaped like a horse" -- yet I don't think this language implies that unicorns actually exist. Can you think of a NPOV way to make the change you're trying to get at or an example of an article that does? --Rikurzhen 06:02, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

(3) on the global scale many suggest that human genetic variation is clinal, but no one seriously suggests that genetic variation among the disparate non-random immigrant groups that comprise the US population are clinal -- opening the possibility that race is valid for populations like the US, but not for those like Brazil or the entire globe

¤ I guess this means that if we look at recent Chinese immigrants we are likely to find a low percentage of non-stereotypical Chinese genetic characteristics... Wait a minute, one of my Chinese friends in Taiwan had naturally curly hair. I wonder where 'e got that.

¤ I think you are using language in a way that is inappropriate to the historical situation. We recognize clinal (on a slope) variation when things have grown into a place and have come to an equilibrium. If we mix liquids immiscible liquids of various specific gravities in a tall cylindrical container, they will sort themselves out into a sort of "clinal" array. That's the equilibrium situation, and it tell us something about how the various substances relate to each other. If you look at humans spread out over the road from Sweden to Malaysia you'll see a clinal series of colors with no sudden breaks -- except where large numbers of people have move in and taken over. The presence of a white spot on the island of Hong Kong does not tell us anything about how populations adapt to UV levels and other environmental factors. It tells us something about the power of the British navy, the desire for empire, etc., etc. The situation in the U.S. with regard to non-Amerind populations does not tell us anything about characteristics of people adapted to a region. It tell us about populations in sudden disequilibrium with their environments. Race/lace, the question is how one should best make a system of categorization that tell us something helpful about individuals found in the U.S. If Joe Zhou could be predicted with a certain degree of statistical reliability to have certain characteristics when he lived in Hang Zhou, then he can be predicted to have the same characteristics to the same degree of statistically reliability when he is in the U.S. If there is any problem it is that a doctor examining Joe in Hang Zhou is more likely to estimate his genetic cohort than is a doctor examining Joe in NYC if the doctor doesn't inquire where he is from. Maybe the doctor will assume he is Japanese. That's partially a function of the disequilibrium situation he has been found in. But why is the utility or the validity of his [racial] identification increased when he comes to the U.S.? It seems to me that the utility is equal at best (if the doctor knows as much about that population as does the medicos in Hang Zhou) and get less useful as the spread of clustering or stereotyping increases or the specificity of the identification of his "true group" decreases due to unfamiliarity of the U.S. doctors with his actual cohort. P0M 08:13, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

(4) race may have medical and other utility even if it is biologically meaningless; or even if it were highly biologically meaningful, it might not have utility for many facets of human life

--Rikurzhen 03:51, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

¤ I take it you mean to say that some system of categorization that somebody chose to call "race" might have utility. So far so good. But, as I have said at numbing length elsewhere, such a system of categorization tells us nothing for sure about the individual. It just tries to be statistically reliable with regard to what marker characteristics go with what harder-to-determine characteristics. But, wait a minute, now you suggest that there might be a category somebody calls "race" and yet that characteristic could be non-biological? So not related to heredity? And still useful? Does that mean something like, "He is a member of the race of singers, he sings all time, so there's a betting man's chance that he can productively be employed to do act? Give the guy a screen test!"? Or does it mean something like, "He's a blanco. Must have lots of money."? I truly do not understand what you have in mind, so I'm just guessing. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Most markers used to distinguish lineage are non-functional, and so it is possible that the majority of functional alleles are equally distributed between lineage-races. Although, I think that hypothesis has been tested and falsified. --Rikurzhen 09:11, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

¤ An example of a major functional allele that isn't equally distributed would be helpful. I'd be even more interested in a major functional allele that isn't present in some population. P0M 08:13, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

¤ I wouldn't expect to find equal distribution as I doubt that (on the analogy of a teaspoon of spice dropped onto the stew pot at 3 o'clock (geographically speaking that is), another at 6 o'clock, etc.) there has not been sufficient time for the characteristics even to have spread everywhere, much less to have equilibriated with respect to environmental suitability. Suppose a mutation occurs in a temperate clime. The mutation is not particularly useful there, nor is it anywhere close to lethal. But once it finds its way to India it proves a real boon. So it will spread there rapidly. Then it will have to creep around the edges of the Indian Sea at higher lattitudes (where it will not particularly prosper) and finally it will make its way to Africa (and Malaysia and other tropical areas as well). Curly hair may be functional in some way. The kinky hair in the 60s Afro haircut looked to me like it might be extremely functional in any clime where the sun was intense, temperatures were hot, and a head without any artificial covering on it would both get UV burns and also be overheated. But by the time the curliness factor got to China it may have been out of step both with the times (since the very widely used bamboo hat may very well go back to the time when people learned to weave fish traps and other such artifacts) and with the milder environment). I'm more interested in the fact that even though most people would say it, it is not true that all Han Chinese have straight hair. (Nor is it all perfectly black, for that matter.) P0M 21:35, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This sounds awfully speculative. I don't see how it contributes to the article. What's the point? Slrubenstein 22:05, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

By "this" do you mean the assertion of the possibility that "the majority of functional alleles are equally distributed between lineage-races"? P0M 02:40, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

By "this" I am referring to the above examples of a mutation that makes its way to India, and the example of curly hair and bamboo hats. Is this original research, or do you have a citation? Slrubenstein 02:45, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I was interested in the possibility of equal distribution of functional alleles mentioned by Rikurzhen because if is turns out to be true then almost all the differences that divide people when they recognize somebody as belonging to "that other race" would be truly insignificant, and the significant few might turn out to all be things like range of skin colors. I don't know whether anything like that would need to go into the article if it turned out to be true, but I've been trying to make sure that I understand what Rikurzhen has been saying and in what ways the things that Orionix has to say may open up new areas of understanding or correct old errors. If all of the alleles that make someone a member of what the average person (in the U.S. for instance) regards as one race are also found to occur in all other races (even though at lower levels), then that would face readers with the need to square their beliefs on [race] with the facts of human diversity. I think that even if we do not exactly enjoy going over these issues time and again as new editors join the process, it is still something that we will need to do. And, of course, I will be interested to hear of any research that might move what Rikurzhen brought up as a possibility either way. Knowing what to look for can sometimes be a useful kind of knowledge. P0M 03:21, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Part 5

p.s. What Edwards' paper says is that Fst will not tell us if races exist. --Rikurzhen 23:27, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

p.p.s. For anyone interested in reading more on genetics and race, check out Nature Genetics November 2004, Volume 36 No 11s [4] --Rikurzhen 23:51, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

RE: I'd like to draw your attention to what they said in Nature:

Data from many sources have shown that humans are genetically homogeneous and that genetic variation tends to be shared widely among populations. Genetic variation is geographically structured, as expected from the partial isolation of human populations during much of their history. Because traditional concepts of race are in turn correlated with geography, it is inaccurate to state that race is "biologically meaningless." On the other hand, because they have been only partially isolated, human populations are seldom demarcated by precise genetic boundaries. Substantial overlap can therefore occur between populations, invalidating the concept that populations (or races) are discrete types. -- Orionix 03:23, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

¤ Do they give examples of the seldom-seen cases where human populations are "demarcated by precise genetic boundaries"? This is a really crucial issue, and I'm astounded to find such an assertion. What are they thinking of? Blood types? Ear wax types? (Seriously.) P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I too believe, against Rikurzhen, that the last two paragraphs are accurate. I would however accept the claim that the last two paragraphs represent only one point of view. I suspect Rikurzhen represents a different point of view. The article should accomodate both. Slrubenstein 20:56, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

¤ Please do other readers a break and sign your postings. I lost the thread of who was saying what after a while.

¤ One question is: "What do we really find by empirical studies?" Another question is: "What are the several systems by which these data are conceptualized by (at least the most) prevalent voices in our world?" Let's look at some limit cases: (1) Humans have been divided into two or more breeding populations from the beginning of the human race. (Adam and Eve had X number of male children and Y number of female children, they formed families and each family was delivered to a different continent that was forever isolated from all other continents. (2) Humans have never been divided into "inbred" populations. Instead, they have such perfect institutions of exogamy that the genetic constitution of humans are perfectly homogeneous. What we find, in reality, is neither of these extreme. The closest we probably ever came was the Australians vs. the rest of the world during the time before the first Western sailor jumped ship. Nobody seems to write on the subject, but I think it would be enlightening to know what alleles were absolutely not found elsewhere in the world?P0M

¤ One thing we need to keep in mind in all of this is that in ordinary human life a century is a long time. But a century, or even a thousand years, is not very long to be isolated genetically. In terms of breeding groups being isolated, a separation of a hundred years is, I would guess, no more significant than a separation of a hundred minutes. If it is true that " 'Race' is today primarily a sociological designation, identifying a class sharing some outward physical characteristics," then when the language and other learned differences are abstracted from the picture there are still the biologically determined "outward physical characteristics." So there could be (and maybe there is) a definition of "race" that is purely composed on the grounds of these inherited physical characteristics.

¤ Without some real numbers to attach to these ideas, the entire discussion seems rather vapid to me. Suppose that it were found that Australian First Nations people shared a narrow range of skin colors (on a bell curve that had very steep shoulders so that, e.g., white Australian First Nations people were statistically rarer than hen's teeth), a narrow range of susceptibility to UV induced skin cancer, etc., etc. Knowledge that they also had an extreme intolerance to low levels of oxygen coupled with low barometric pressure so that it would be a virtual death sentence to force one of them on a military mission to the top of Ki8limanjaro would then be a very useful and dependable "fact" that could be assumed true for almost all practical purposes. Suppose, on the other hand, that the susceptibility of some of them to UV induced skin cancer were almost as great as that of the average citizen of Iceland while the susceptibility of others was on a par with the darkest people from Malawi, and that all other bell curves we could look at had very wide shoulders with gentle slopes, no plateau at the center, etc. If the numbers turned out that way then the utility of predictions based on their common descent would be virtually nil. But where do the real numbers lie?

¤ One real problem with the idea of [race] is that we don't seem to know the shape of these bell curves very well. Another real problem is that we don't know whether it is an accident that, e.g., people who are very light are also people who have a high tendency to retain the ability to produce lactase throughout life rather than losing it after the normal age of weening. I need to be careful about what I mean here. It is, I think, a statistical fact that in populations that have a high percentage of very light individuals there will also be a high percentage of people who will happily consume milk all of their lives. But what I am interested in is whether the capacity for continuing production of lactase can migrate to a group of people living at some remote place and yet not be accompanied by light skins. If the characteristics that human intelligence uses to constitute a [race] are "peelable", if white skins can be separated from prolonged lactase production, that makes the idea of a [race] much less interesting or useful.

¤ The rationale for importing one subspecies of honeybee to South America from Africa was that those bees were exceptionally vigorous -- in terms of honey and/or pollen production. It was the intention of researchers to cross those bees with the bees that had been naturalized to that area since the arrival of explorers and settlers sometime after 1492, and to selectively breed their progeny so as to keep the vigor of the African bees and keep the gentleness of the bees that were regularly managed by beekeepers in that area. Things got out of control, and it seems that the belligerance of the crossbred bees that escaped has been selectively favored by the environment, while little is said of the vigor of these bees in producing honey and pollen. In this case it would seem that the other characteristics of Africa bees have not stayed clustered, since it is said to be difficult to identify the Africanized bees except by assaying their temperament. (There is, I think, one other measure that can be taken in the field. The bad temperament seems to be very frequently associated with an unusual frequency of wing movements in flight. Perhaps genes governing these two characteristics are found on the same chromosome.) P0M

¤ Correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of the materials I have studied thusfar says that there is no characteristic that is welded to another characteristic. P0M 02:46, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maybe item number (5) in my list of distinctions to be made when discussing race is: whether we're describing what people mean when they talk about race in their daily lives versus how researchers might choose to re-definite race in order to have a better definition. The former is most clearly a social construct in the sense that social convention plays a part in determining what groups we draw; and truly there is no biological reason for dividing people the way the US census does. As to the latter, that is a very active question in the scientific community. The question is whether a genetic (i.e. genotype) classification system with countably few groups is valid, and if so in what ways could it be useful; also to what extent does self-described ancestry correspond to that classification system? So in that context, a discussion about phenotypes and using phenotypes for classification is somewhat beside the point. Instead, genotyping would be used: a hundred or so markers can give strong resolution. (To get absolute resolution you might need around 10^5 markers. Eventually, this kind of analysis will be relatively inexpensive.) These markers (loci) will most likely not be directly associated with any visible phenotype, but they may be linked to loci that are. No single loci is fully informative, but the combined power of dozens (or hundreds) is strongly informative. --Rikurzhen 07:42, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

For example, consider this quotation: "If people from different continents -- chosen to maximize the level of genetic differentiation among groups -- are stripped of ancestry information, how many markers are required to distinguish groups and reliably allocate individuals into these groups? For a sample of 200 individuals from sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and East Asia, correct allocation to the continent of origin with a mean accuracy of 90% requires 60 randomly selected Alu insertion polymorphisms or STRs. The mean accuracy of allocation improves to 99Ð100% with the use of a modest 100Ð160 markers. What if individuals are sampled from broader geographical regions? Rosenberg et al. studied 52 ethnic groups distributed worldwide and allocated each of 1,000 individuals into 1 of 5 different genetic clusters using 377 randomly selected STRs. Each cluster represented people whose ancestors were typically isolated by large geographical barriers: sub-Saharan Africans; Europeans and Asians west of the Himalayas; East Asians; inhabitants of New Guinea and Melanesia; and Native Americans. These studies confirmed that there is a relationship between patterns of genetic variation and geographical ancestry; with a high degree of accuracy and reliability using a relatively modest number of multilocus genotypes, individuals can indeed be allocated to groups that represent broad geographical regions. " -- [5] --Rikurzhen 07:42, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

Here again they are talking about geographically structured human diversity. Take note that a study of 1000 people that comes up with 377 different observable polymorphisms is in itself a very good indication that human biodiversity is by far more complex than racial theory can deal with. Race was never defined as a geographic correlation between one or another characteristic. It was quite clearly definied as exclusive and stable genetic types. Such types do not exist among humans. [6] Also check out the cline article -- Orionix 19:58, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Here again I must be a broken record. You are talking about race as if the definition were singular and immutable. I believe I understand fully your point: that human population structure does not support the "Essentialist," "Population," or "Taxonomic" defintions of race -- and indeed I would endorse that point of view. However, the quotation I pasted above is pretty clearly compatible with the "Lineage" defintion of race. The lineage defintion is the one presently being considered in light of emerging genetic evidence. The PDF you linked is a open-access copy of the Nature Reviews Genetics article I quoted from -- everyone interested should read it. As a side note, I believe your interpretation fo the Rosenberg data is incorrect. Using 377 randomly selected markers, they were in fact able to identify 5 genetic clusters (i.e. races by the lineage defintion) in which allocate 1000 individuals from 52 ethnic groups. The number of markers required for identity is of no consequence to the lineage definition -- because the markers are being used to infer ancestry. An alternative experiment could have simply asked the people which contients their grandparents came from -- although there would have been greater error from this "marker". --Rikurzhen 21:35, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

RE: Lineage, cline or cluster is not the same as race so why confuse oranges with apples? -- Orionix 02:17, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Here is the abstact for the Rosenberg paper: "We studied human population structure using genotypes at 377 autosomal microsatellite loci in 1056 individuals from 52 populations. Within-population differences among individuals account for 93 to 95% of genetic variation; differences among major groups constitute only 3 to 5%. Nevertheless, without using prior information about the origins of individuals, we identified six main genetic clusters, five of which correspond to major geographic regions, and subclusters that often correspond to individual populations. General agreement of genetic and predefined populations suggests that self-reported ancestry can facilitate assessments of epidemiological risks but does not obviate the need to use genetic information in genetic association studies." -- [7] --Rikurzhen 03:16, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

¤ I have no idea what is going on in the above several paragraphs. Is Rikurzhen "talking to himself"? Does it only appear that way because he has not kept a contant level of indentation? Is somebody else chipping in comments without signing? It looks that way, but if so, why not sign. Or, better, do what I sometimes do when back-and-forth gets complex. Start a paragraph as I did this one (Obviously you will want to use some other distinctive mark.)

Sorry P0M, that's a quotation from the source listed. I've changed the formatting so it should make sense. --Rikurzhen 03:16, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

¤ I am trying to get down to one brass tack -- something that I think is the crux of the matter. I will put it in dogmatic terms this time around: There is no characteristic that is inextricably associated with another characteristic, and allele frequency depends, in the long run, on the suitability to the environment of the organism that it confers. Therefore characteristics such as inherited (not independent mutation-derived) sickle cell anemia can appear at high frequencies in populations plagued by malaria regardless of the skin color, average height, frequency of spontaneous lack of wisdom teeth, or any other heritable characteristic. P0M 03:03, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think I must be confusing everybody. If someone understands what I'm trying to explain and can do so better than I can, please step in and help. --Rikurzhen 03:16, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

If all else fails, this freely accessible PDF that Orionix found might be helpful: [8] --Rikurzhen 03:38, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

¤ I just read the article. Although it added a few wrinkles it seems to me to fit in pretty well with what I have tried to say here and below. It is at least clear and honest about making an assumption to account for the appearance of a characteristic with survival value across a large geographical gap. It is very good about making one point that I think is central to the uses that one can legitimately make in the case of attributions of clade membership: If you can measure the trait directly, there is no excuse for fudging the data by "deriving" a presumed measurement on the basis of clade membership. So you should not assume that somebody is rh-positive just because of his/her ancestry. Before the baby comes the parents should get their blood tested.

¤ Now that I think I am probably on the same page with Rikurzhen I should re-read what Orionix has stated. I don't recall disagreeing with anything he said, either. P0M 04:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The "lineage" definition of race

Orionix's last question made me think that maybe I understand the source of the confusion. According to Long and Kittles (2003), one biological definition of race that is found in the scientific literature is what they call the "lineage" definition. They offer this quotation as an example of the lineage definition of race: "A subspecies (race) is a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. This definition requires that a subspecies be genetically differentiated due to barriers to genetic exchange that have persisted for long periods of time; that is, the subspecies must have historical continuity in addition to current genetic differentiation" (Templeton, 1998). This is (at least at first glance) the definition of race that I recognize as being the modern scientific definition at the heart of the current debate regarding emerging genetic data. Everything I've written above is about race in the context of this definition. I don't think it's appropriate to say that this definition isn't race, although I can imagine that this definition is limited in use to certain fields (e.g. geneticists). I believe the lineage definition should be included in the article, although it may be the most difficult to describe because it is so new relative to other definitions -- that is, there is no real consensus on whether it is valid. --Rikurzhen 07:24, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

¤ The definition Rikurzhen offers is also the one that I have foremost in mind when I try to understand what other people may mean by the term. I don't think many people would agree that we can meaningfully/correctly talk about "the race of Loglan speakers" even though people have been willing to write books on [races] of people who are most clearly distinguished from other [races] of people by the language they speak, e.g., "the Irish race." The trouble with the "race of Loglan speakers is that, as an artificial language, there is no one genetically related group of people (excepting the group of all Homo sapiens sapiens) that speaks the language in contradistinction to another group. I don't think this definition is particularly difficult to describe -- in the abstract. The trouble is that while the average Ainu person (for instance) closely resembles other typical Ainu, and looks distinctly different from the average Japanese person, the actual history of ancestries of the average Ainu shows a substantial number of Japanese ancestors -- or at least that is what the genetic evidence indicates. The Japanese-Ainu split is one of those that is very strongly reinforced by differences in appearance, language, and culture. But even in that case there is both genetic and personal historical evidence to show that the boundary is permeable. The trouble most people will have when looking at the definition Rikurzhen offers is understanding how, e.g., 30% (I think that is the right number) of "white" Americans have "black" ancestry.

¤ The other difficulty in understanding the underlying reality is that people imagine that if, let us say, an Ainu moved to the U.S. and possessed one benefitial trait that very significantly increased the survivability of his/her progeny, and also produced several traits that mitigated against survival, then the beneficial characteristic could prosper and be passed down and spread throughout the population in x number of generations and yet the negative characteristics could be weeded out. (Some negative characteristics do not rapidly get weeded out because they don't become lethal unless both of the relevant chromosomes have the gene for that characteristic.)Most people would probably assume that if an allele that made someone resistant to some serious endemic disease was found on the same chromosome that had the allele that provided for blue skin color, then people who had the resistance would always have the skin color, and vice-versa. In other words, they would incorrectly assume that because the two alleles were on the same chromosome they would be forever linked with each other.

¤ "The subspecies must have historical continuity in addition to current genetic differentiation." But we don't even find these two conditions met for all of what are casually referred to as "races of bees." There is a historical continuity between Italian bees and Carniolian bees -- both within these groups, historically with some ancestor [race], and in the not-narrow "band of hybridization." There is a genetic differentiation between the two [races], but it is not a perfect differentiation. There may have been not only a clear historical continuity among the members of the Cyprian [race], but also a sharp divergence both historically and genetically between the bees that remained behind on the mainland and the bees that first got blown or otherwise carried to that island. That situation would have fitted the definition offered above down to the time that beekeepers decided to improve their chances by importing mainland bees.

¤ In describing [race], we are actually describing various ways that humans have of categorizing individuals. We need to keep two things firmly in view: (1) the diversity that is actually there. (2) the several imprecise ways that we use to categorize people.

¤ There is a fairly rigorous connection between words and things in the case of personal pronouns. "George W. Bush" refers to a limited number of individuals, and "the George W. Bush" refers to one individual. It would be virtually impossible to put a counterfeit in his position. But "word and object" is not so neat in the case of nouns like "dog." "Is a dog with a missing ear-tip a dog?" and similar puzzles bother people who try to think carefully about conceptualization. Even so, we generally are not puzzled in practice. We don't often find human hunters carrying a horse home on the front fender of their car because they have mistaken it for a deer. We have pretty clear definitions that are very widely understood and accepted. Compared to personal names, and general names of classes of animals, names for classes of individuals that are infra-specific are actually quite murky but people may be deceived into thinking that these categorizations are on the same level of reliability as are, e.g., the kinds of domestic animals.

¤ Not only are [racial] categorizations very fuzzy, they are also very problematical. An Ainu or a Shan walking the dark streets of an American city might get shot for supposedly being a member of a hated minority. (Keep in mind that there is no majority [race], only a [race] that is in the majority in some region.) One kind of categorization that is called [racial] is used in medicine. It shares most, and potentially all, of the problems that have been outlined above: It too necessarily involves assuming things about individuals on the basis of some "tip-off" or "fingering" characteristics. All concepts are convenient fictions. Some concepts are more dependable or productive than others, but they are all fictions. We need to make it crystal clear that if somebody has all of the "salient" characteristics that "makes" him/her a member of some set, we know absolutely nothing about any of the characteristics that we haven't yet measured. P0M 23:05, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is my understanding of the differences between the four definitions. --Rikurzhen 08:26, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

Are you talking about definitions of the word "race"? Are you doing something slightly different and trying to state the rules by which individuals are categorized into [races] in several competing schemes? Do any of these "definitions" imply that [race] is an entity to be found in the real world, rather than something analogous to constellations of stars? (The stars being the entities found in inter-personal, consentual, reality, and the constellations being the constructs built by the human imagination operating on those things that most all of us can see in the nightime sky.) P0M 08:46, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Biological definitions of race.

Concept	Reference	Definition	Geno/Phenotypic	# Markers
Essentialist	Hooton (1926)	"A great division of mankind, characterized as a group by the sharing of a certain combination of features, which have been derived from their common descent, and constitute a vague physical background, usually more or less obscured by individual variations, and realized best in a composite picture."	Phenotypic	Few Markers
Population	Dobzhansky (1970)	"Races are genetically distinct Mendelian populations. They are neither individuals nor particular genotypes, they consist of individuals who differ genetically among themselves."	Genotypic	Few Markers
Taxonomic	Mayr (1969)	"An aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species, inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of a species, and differing taxonomically from other populations of the species."	Phenotypic	Few or Many Markers
Lineage	Templeton (1998)	"A subspecies (race) is a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. This definition requires that a subspecies be genetically differentiated due to barriers to genetic exchange that have persisted for long periods of time; that is, the subspecies must have historical continuity in addition to current genetic differentiation."	Genotypic	Many (60-10^5) Markers

By my understanding: --Rikurzhen 08:26, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

• The lineage definition is based on genotype, not phenotype. Thus, it could be possible that no overt phenotypic differences existed between the lineage-races, but they could be lineage-races nontheless.
• Lineage-races are fuzzy in the sense that group membership is not so strict so that all members have all the same marker values. Rather, similarity across all markers is what determines group membership. For example, a person of predominantly Chinese decent with curly hair would be considered East-Asian under the most common classification system.
• The major lineage races are often enumerated: European, African, East Asian, Native American, West Asian/Indian. Further sub-categorization is possible using additional markers. It is theoretically possible to assign a single group to each unique genotype.
• It is possible to be a member of more than one group, or even all groups; and membership can be described as fractional (e.g. 85% European, 15% African).
• Lineage-races are approximately synomous with ancestry -- thus, continent of origin of grandparents is often used in lieu of direct genetic testing to assign group membership.
• The lineage hypothesis is primarily substanitated by study of people with four grandparents from the same population; it is an open question whether these studies have missed intermediates that would blur the distinctions between groups as to make them not discrete enough to be useful at a global level.
• Rates of admixture have been strong in some places but weak in others. Populations within Europe, for example, are rather homogenous at the level of random genotype markers. US "whites" and "blacks" each have a 15-20% on average ancestry from Africa and Europe respectively. US "Latinos" are a highly heterogenous group of mixed Native-American with European or African or both.
• The concept of lineage-races seems related to the concept of genetic background from experimental genetics in non-humans (for example: [9]). It seems to be treated similarly in biomedical research.

"A great division of mankind,..." implies that there is a piece already cut out of the pie, whereas the reality is that we cut a piece out of the pie -- where we feel it would be most useful to cut it -- and then act like the piece was always loose, despite the fact that there are crumbs spread about perhaps a trail of filling from one piece to the next.

"Races are genetically distinct Mendelian populations...." Then races came into a quasi-existence sometime after people reached Australia and had been away from other humans long enough for some arbitrarily contrived cut-off point to have been reached, and races ceased to exist when the first white guy jumped ship and started spreading his genes about.

"An aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species, inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of a species, and differing taxonomically from other populations of the species." Possibly the most conceptually tidy of the entire group. At least it's honest when it says "aggregate" -- which clearly points a finger at the humans who do the aggregating. The fuzziness comes in most clearly when the definitions mentions individuals' "differing taxonomically" because at that point we only have to look at our own argument about the validity of the skin color tile methodology to realize that there are clear questions of human judgment and of "how much difference is enough difference to make a difference."

"A subspecies (race) is a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species...." One lineage may be distinguished from another lineage, but it takes an intelligence (if only an artificial intelligence) to do the distinguishing. There are no discrete entities of lineage within a species because any two clades have branched off from the same main branch (species). We make things distinct, but some ways of taking things apart are more esthetically pleasing or useful than others. (This realization goes all the way back to the Phaedos of Plato where he explains philosophy as the butchering of an ox or some other domestic animal by dismembering it at the joints. To him it seems that the organism is constituted of discrete parts that will just "come apart" if we see the organism clearly.)

All of these definitions involve the admission (usually in an indirect way) that humans group things into [races], that humans dismember organic connections to talk about "this branch" and "that branch" as though they had detached themselves from the tree and from their cross-grafting of branches.

None of the definitions offered can be used to justify the implication that is clearly present in the beginning of the article as it is now written -- that [races] are some things existing "out there" just waiting for us to discover them and read their divinely sewn-in labels. P0M

That's an interesting question for the field of metaphysics that is probably beyond our ability as editors to provide an answer; unless we can find an essay on the topic. Personally, I think you might be confusing a few kinds of possible distinctions in object type. There are concrete objects that are "out there" so to speak. There are objects which might be called "mere collections", such as the US army -- a mere collection of people -- although I've never seen a strong case for the difference between meaningful collections and "mere" collections. There are abstract objects that are only every thought about. There are "logical fictions" like "the average man" or "the number 3" that do not actually exist, but that we talk about in as if they do. Then there are true "fictions" like Sherlock Holmes, who does not exist in the actual world. It seems to me that races are collections, and maybe "mere" collections or people. But just as we talk about the US Army as if it were a concrete object that persists and changes over time, I don't see why we need not talk about races that way.

Then as to the second point about mind depenedence of races, I think that's a question for relativism -- and again beyond the scope of the article. There are many who take that point of view that all knowledge and all existence is mind dependent. I personally don't think that position is coherent. --Rikurzhen 18:06, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

APA issue on Race

I think these PDFs are freely available -- at least for a short time [10]. --Rikurzhen 19:24, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

The intro

I restored some material to the intro that had been removed. I restored it for three reasons. First, the other version was inaccurate -- Boas believed that races exist, and Gould and Lewontin were not students of Boas or even students of students of Boas. Second, the other version introduces a specific debate between Gould/Lewontin and Rushton, and I think coverage of this debate belongs in the body. Last but not least, my version does what needs to be done in the introduction -- briefly lay out the major points of view that inform the article. This leads me to the recent discussion between Rikurzhen and POM. I think POM's point is that some people do not believe that race exists. The simple solution I think is to make clear in the introduction that some people think races exist, others do not. I think there must be a section later in the article that provides an account of this debate in detail, which is where we can introduce Boas if necessary, Gould, Lewontin, Rushton, etc. I think as long as the article is clear from the get-go that there is controversy over whether races even exist, let alone what the term refers to, and then has some section in the body covering the controversy, then we have covered our bases. We will not find one "voice" for the article that represents these two or three contending views. I think it is reasonable to have different sections giving full account of each view, and sections giving accounts of debates. Slrubenstein 20:34, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think the new intro is accurate, and a great example of careful word choice. For example, by talking about "common race definitions" rather than just "race" in any form you can make strong accruate statements without getting into a POV problem over more contentious issues. --Rikurzhen 23:03, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

I like this version much better than the previous version because it does not begin by assuming that races exist, at least as anything other than assemblages of individuals created in different ways by different people. P0M 04:48, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Slreubenstein, the pseudo-scientific babble you have affixed to the beginning of this article is false, weasel-worded, POV rhetoric. I am going to deconstruct these two paragraphs, and unless you can provide proof that each and every statement is incontrovertibly true, I am going to replace it with statements that are.

Since the 1940s, however, most evolutionary biologists have turned away from the term "race," and, since the 1970s, most have turned away from the very concept of "subspecies"

Do you have proof of the term most? Are there any studies that show this?

for four reasons: there is very little data to suggest that contiguous subspecies ever become species;

Where is the proof? Even if your statement was true, since when is this a criterion used to establish the vailidity of a subspecies? Please review the article on subspecies and stop trying to spread nonsense.

geographically disjunct subspecies usually can be demonstrated to actually be species;

Again, I'm awating proof.

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

Can you provide examples of this?

and 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).

Again, proof?

Most social scientists, drawing on such biological research, believe common race definitions in humans have little taxonomic validity. They argue that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, and vary between cultures.

This is an utterly flagrant violation of Wikipedia's policy on weasel words. Encyclopedic writing names verifiable facts, not vague and unfounded assertions.

Jalnet2 18:32, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Jalnet thinks I use weasel words when in fact I am employing a broad, generalizing style that is typical of the introduction to any article. As I said, it is in the body where specifics and nuance belongs.

As for proof -- well, sure, look at the standard texts in evolutionary biology and you will see that they all eschew race for population: Dobzhansky, T. Genetics and the Origin of Species Huxley, J. S. Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, Mayr, E. Systematics and the Origin of Species, Simpson, G. G. Tempo and Mode in Evolution, Wright, S. 1931. "Evolution in Mendelian populations". Genetics 16: 97-159.

Now, you wrote that Franz Boas believed that races do not exist. Please provide your proof for that laughable statement. Slrubenstein 19:13, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but listing five textbooks that support that view doesn't prove your statement that "since the 1940s, however, most evolutionary biologists have turned away from the term 'race'".

I am employing a broad, generalizing style

Well, that's not what we should be doing. Jalnet2 19:55, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Slrubenstein, I'm guessing that in the intro, you are using "race" to mean the "essentialist" definition. You should make that explicit when you write what it is that certain groups are saying. --Rikurzhen 20:14, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

I changed my contribution to reflect Rikurzhen's important point. Jalnet2 deleted what I wrote but I reverted, because what s/he wrote was out and out wrong. Everytime Jalnet tries to contribute, s/he discovers some new way to get facts wrong. Slrubenstein 21:24, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Jalnet2, stop deleting my contribution. Learn to work with others. I am sure we can give you other opportunities to pimp Rushton in the body of the article. Slrubenstein 21:38, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I will not revert the addition of any verified fact. What you have written is biased and in violation of Wikipedia's policy on weasel wording in that it states opinions without sourcing them. On the other hand, my version attributes the opinions. I will not revert attributed opinion. But I will revert unattributed opinion. Jalnet2 22:01, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The recent hostilities

It seems strange to me to feel the heat level in the above exchanges. It also seems strange to me to see people arguing about what the "facts" are before it has been suffiently made clear that race is not a fact but a construction -- no, make that many competing constructions -- made on what are hopefully the same set of "facts." People do put different constructions on the facts, and therefore come to different conclusions regarding whether already seen constructions are helpful constructions to put on the facts or are unhelpful constructions to put on the facts. Some time ago a contributor visited the Spider article discussion and asked that contributors make it a model article for the provision of citations. Nothing much was heard of the matter for a while, but I think that the idea was good. I would be interested to know what each of the authorities mentioned above has to say. I would also be particularly interested to know what authorities claim that "subspecies" are in some cases actually "species." (The whole question is actually murky, for reasons I won't go into here, but I'd still be interested in having citations.)

Pending some citations, let's all cool it. P0M 01:00, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Jal requested I provide citations and I provided several, which he simply dismissed. Slrubenstein 16:23, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As peak confirms, Jal is putting factually false information into the introduction. But my point is more basic: I really do not think we should mention specific names in the introduction. An introduction should lay out the general shape of the article, and not get that specific. So I think it is inappropriate to name Jensen or Rushton -- and Lewinton and Gould in the introduction. I do realize that the earlier version was too narrow, saying "some biologists" use race as subspecies. Ruchton and Jensen are psychologists and not biologists, and I didn't mean to deny their existence (as I said, I just think adding names will overload readers as they get into the article; details go later). But I did add "psychologists" to the intro in deference to Jal, Slrubenstein

As far as general article guidelines go, do we have a balanced summary that a general reader could skim and understand? I am wary of Jalnet2's edits because s/he called Lewontin and Gould social scientists, which I (as a biologist) tend to regard as a fatal flaw. Nonetheless, putting my prejudices aside, I think that there is value in simplifying the third paragraph - I don't think the introduction to the article is a good place to discuss usage over the term subspecies.

I am also inclined to take issue with the second paragraph (which is what makes the third paragraph necessary, I suspect). While "race" has been used in biological circles to identify a grouping below "species" (and continues to be used to describe "land races" - ie, cultivated varieties of agricultural species) this usage is not widespread. The primary usage of "race" refers to human groups (and it is clearly defined as such in the first paragraph). As slrubenstein said, adding names there are likely to overwhelm a reader, but the paragraph is likely to overwhelm a reader as it stands anyway.

Additionally, I would take issue with the implication in the second paragraph that "subspecies" and "variety" are synonymous in botany. In botanical nomenclature, subspecies lies above variety (as explained in the subspecies article).

¤ I agree. I think I have fixed this part in a clear-enough way. What is actually going on, IMNO, is that some people conceive of human [races] as some botanists conceive of varieties of plants. It is significant, I think, that according to the following quotation from a university website botanists sometimes divide species into varieties without first dividing the species into subspecies, and, by so doing, indicate that the varietal differentials are insufficient to meet the strict requirements of subspecies membership. Similarly, some people who write about [race] admit that there are no extant subspecies of Homo sapiens, but assert that there are less stringently definable differentiations that still bear mention.

The "Taxon" grouping is recursive in that, for a given plant, a Rank, Name, Authority, etc., may be recorded for each level of the taxonomic hierarchy. Each rank is contained within the rank(s) above it, with the exception that infraspecific ranks (Subspecies, Variety and Form) are not required to be in a hierarchical relationship to one another (i.e. a Form does not have to be contained within a Variety or Subspecies, nor does a Variety need to be contained within a Subspecies) --http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~telenature/projects/filemap/taxon.html (My emphasis, P0M)

The introduction to the article needs work, but I don't see Jalnet2's edits as solving that problem, and they don't NPOV the article. But we do need to do this in a less confrontational manner. Guettarda 17:30, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with what you say. I think the current intro has evolved out of a concern to comply with our NPOV policy. I happen to agree with you that the use of "race" by biologists is not at all widespread. But there are some contributers here who have a different experience, and as long as their views are presented in an NPOV way (especially, admitting that there are oither valid views) I think we have to represent their views. I am glad that you have commented here and hope that you will help us improve the article, Slrubenstein 18:55, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Four claims

¤ Slrubenstein has modified the beginning of the article. Part of the modification makes it, IMNO, very much better. But the four blunt assertions (which have already come up for negative attention) remain. I will desist from deleting any of these assertions, some of which I think are wrong, but simply ask that citations be provided for them. I rank them below in order of my own incredulity:

• geographically disjunct subspecies usually can be demonstrated to actually be species

¤ Comment: Evidence is usually found insufficient to establish that two populations are actually non-clinal divisions of the same species. When is there ever evidence to suggest that two supposed subspecies are actually incapable of interbreeding or otherwise are demonstrably not even members of the same species?

• there is very little data to suggest that contiguous subspecies ever become species

¤ Comment: What is your point here? I can make 4 or 5 wild guesses, but will throttle myself and await the true answer.

• 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

¤ Comment: This part sounds reasonable, but in context with points 1 and 2 I would still like citations. If these points are relevant to what people think of as [races] then we need something very firmly grounded, not just one man's opinion. P0M 20:31, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• 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).

This might be better put as: Phenotypic and genotypic classifications do not always correspond precisely. --Rikurzhen 05:30, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

I have no objection to rephrasing it as you suggest. Slrubenstein 22:21, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Let's wait and see what Slrubenstein was trying to communicate. I think his claim is stronger than what you provide, and that his claim is correct. Unfortunately, it is muddy in itself and given in the context of even muddier assertions which make me wary of trying to fix anything until I see what he has been trying to say. P0M 05:35, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I still think this has to be modified. It has to be more specific or more general (my suggestion). As it stands, it does not seem to precisely reflect an informed opinion. The most problematic part is the phrase "is at odds with". It isn't precise enough to mean anything. Consider the example of skin color versus ancestry -- the relationship is measured as a correlation -- and the correlation is positive and "moderate" in the studies I've seen (e.g. [11]). --Rikurzhen 19:57, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

¤ Let's see his citations and work from there. P0M 20:31, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The arguments I provided came out of a conversation I had with a professor of biology at my school (specifically, he has a PhD. from the University of Michigan and is an Associate Professor of Systematic Bioloby and Herpatology; his current research involves a study of the geographic molecular variation of two widespread species, the Eastern Spadefooted Toad Scaphiopus holbrooki and the Racer (a snake) Coluber constrictor in an attempt to unravel their evolutionary history in relationship to glaciational cycles, vegetation and soils. Given this, I admit that I assumed that his comments were accurate, in good faith. If you like I can ask him for specific sources. But let's be clear about our NPOV policy: it does not matter whether any of these four claims about biology are right or wrong. This is because the paragraph in question is about biologists, not biology. The paragraph makes the claim that there are evolutionary biologists who have abandoned the notion of race and even subspecies for certain reasons. The only question here is, are these really their reasons, or are these not their reasons? It is certainly true that there are evooutionary biologists who reject race and are seriously skeptical of subspecies as useful concepts. The task in this article is to make this fact clear, and also explain why they believe this. The article also makes clear that there are biologists who still use the concept race. I have no doubt at all that they will reject the reasons other biologists have for renouncing race and avoiding subspecies. But the task of this article is not to resolve their debate, and it is not the role of any editor to judge reasons as good or bad. Let us say -- hypothetically -- that all of us reject the reasoning I included in the article. That doesn't matter. What matters is there are biologists who believe this, and we have to include their view in the article. Slrubenstein 18:47, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

¤ I could get prolix again and dispute point by point. Check with your professor of biology. I think you misheard on point 1. If I'm wrong it should be easy to come up with good citations. As for saying that "it does not matter whether any of these four claims about biology are right or wrong. This is because the paragraph in question is about biologists, not biology." I am astounded. Would you quote the one historian with a Ph.D. who claims that there was no massacre in Cambodia directed by Pol Pot? Such an allegation might be true. (I wasn't there.) But I am sure that such a claim is not the consensus of people who have studied recent Cambodian history, and I have personally interviewed (in an informal way) one witness who claimed to have lost family members. If one wanted to be absolutely NPOV one might include statements on Cambodian massacre from Pol Pot's pet historian, and statements on [racial] characteristics from some grand wizard. But you wouldn't lead with those positions knowing that the vast majority of people who have devoted their lives to getting the truth do not share those positions. P0M 20:07, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You are being illogical, by mixing up two distinct points. The first point is that we should have sources, and I agree with this. You think I misunderstood my source, or you are claiming my source is wrong, or if he is right, he can provide sources. Well, I conceded that point already. But the point that we should have sources is very different from the point that the paragraph in question is about biology, not biologists. You are simply wrong. It is about biologists, not biology. I think this mistake because at least on the evidence of these talk pages you are used to developing your own ideas (often in the form of speculation, or hypothetical or logical arguments) rather than consulting sources (even here, you bring in five sentences on Cambodia and Pol Pot which have nothing to do with this article -- nor is it relevant to how we edit this article. The only things that ae relevant are Wikipedia policies such as NPOV, no original research, verifiability, etc.). But to put such material into the article is a clear violation of our "No original research" rule. Wikipedia is simply not a place to put your ideas or my ideas -- it is not the place to put any arguments or views held by editors. It is the place to put the views of experts concerning the subject of the article. Those are the only views allowed. The introduction is stating that there are at least three views held by people (NOT including POM or any of POM's friends, or by Slrubenstein or any of his buddies, but held by people who regularly research and write about race in public arenas). In presenting one of those views, I included reasons why people who hold that view hold that view. As far as the process of editing this article whether they are right or wrong is not important and it most certainly is not my place or yours to judge whether they are right or wrong. The only thing we as editors can judge is whether this view is fringe or not (I am certain it is not a fringe view) and whether the reasons I provided are the reasons they say they have for holding their views. If you try to judge thevalidity of their claims yourself, you are violating both our NPOV policy and our No original research policy. Slrubenstein 22:14, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Other changes I would suggest:

• "a wholesale rejection of essentialist understandings of race" --> a near universal rejection of the "essentialist" understandings of race

This would make the sentence inaccurate. The word "wholesale" means they reject every component and form of this view. This is true. The word "universal" means everyone shares this view. This is patently false. Slrubenstein 22:14, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• "but also skepticism about taxonomic and lineage understandings of race" --> and later skepticism about "taxonomic" and "population" understandings of race

I think this would make the sentence innacurate. I thought the skepticism of these two views of race occured at the same time (roughly) as the rejection of essentialist concepts of race. If you only "suspect" I would ask you to hold off until you have more evidence. It is true you cite a source from the 1970s but the population view of race, for example, emerged much earlier. I believe biologists had taxonomic and lineage understandings of race before the sources you cite. I suspect that the sources are summing trends in biology from preceeding years. It is even possible that it was not until 1969 and 1979 that these specific definitions were put forward. But that doesn't mean that the basic idea was not circulating for some time. But if you are sure that it occured later, go ahead. Slrubenstein 22:14, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

comment: the "lineage" concept seems to have only emerged in the late 1990s, and so skepticism about it is the normal kind for a new idea that doesn't have enough data to convince people one way or another; i'm just guessing here, I expect people rejected the "essentialist" before anyone came up with the definitions that emerged in the 70s --Rikurzhen 20:47, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, you are right about this. Slrubenstein 22:14, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

¤ Flaming at me is not going to fix the problems with what you have written. Your text states:

This skepticism was motivated by four factors: (1) there is very little data to suggest that contiguous subspecies ever become species; (2) geographically disjunct 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) and 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).

Statement (1) is an irrelevancy. It may or may not be true. Without citations, it's impossible to say.
Statement (2) is a bold assertion behind which there is no proof. Where are your citations?
Statements (3) and (4) seem reasonable to me, but I still would like citations. P0M 22:48, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I suggest we compress paragraphs 2-4 of the intro into a couple sentences and append them to the end of paragraph 1. Because the validity question now has its own article, we can leave those details out of the main article intro. Here's my suggestion for a new intro. Edit away. --Rikurzhen 23:22, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

A race is a distinct population of humans distinguished in some way from other humans. The most widely observed races are those based on skin color, facial features, ancestry, genetics, and national origin. Racial groupings are often controversial due to political and sociological implications. Since the 1940s, many evolutionary biologists have made a wholesale rejection of the "essentialist" understandings of the term "race." Since the 1970s, there has been increased skepticism about "taxonomic" and "population" understandings of race. Since the 1990s, new information from human genomics has focused the discussion of race on the ancestry or evolutionary "lineage" definitions of race.

¤ Can we change "essentialist" somehow? The average well-informed reader is not going to understand this word as it is intended in this context. P0M 23:40, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

typological? --Rikurzhen 23:46, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I used "essentialism" because it was in Rikhurzhen's chart. Also, I think it is a good word for this reason: "essentialist" is the word most commonly used, at least in the United States. If people (at least in the US) do not understand the word, it is (in my experience) because they do not understand the concept. The only thing to do is either explain in in one sentence, and provide a link to the Essentialism article. Slrubenstein 00:15, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As for "flaming" POM I am not sure what he means. But I do have to respond to his being "astounded" by my desire to comply with Wikipedia policy. He either (1) misunderstands me, or (2) misunderstands Wikipedia policy. If we are going to claim that there are biologists who reject race and are skeptical of subspecies, we must explain why they do/are. I provided four reasons. I do not object to Rikurzhen's compression of the paragraph, but at some point in the body we have to explain why biologists and other evolutionary scientists take this position. I agree with POM that citations are good. I only pointed out that any citations would provide examples of biologists claim these things -- not examples that prove that the claims are correct. This seems obvious to me, but the way POM replied to me seemed to be a nonsequitor. I wrote ""it does not matter whether any of these four claims about biology are right or wrong. This is because the paragraph in question is about biologists, not biology." and POM was "astounded." I still do not understand why. An example about Cambodia just doesn't explain to me why this statement about biologists is "astounding." Slrubenstein 00:15, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

¤ I am dismayed by your use of an irrelevancy, by your lack of evidence (particularly for points 1 and 2), and your attitude toward your lack of evidence. If you have the citations to ground your claims, particularly in points 1 and 2, please supply them. P0M 01:01, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I made a few changes to the opening paragraph, that I think are very important. First, it is not just racial groupings, but the idea of race itself, that is controversial. Second, I change "many" to "most" evolutionary biologists, which I think is accurate given the way Rikhurzhen narrowed the prediate. FInally I reinserted the social science sentence -- to exclude it would be suggest either that race is not an important object of study in social sciences, or that social sciences are not as important as biology. Either, of course, would be wrong. Slrubenstein 00:42, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That looks good, but I get the feeling that social science has something more to say than about taxonomic validity. I don't know what it is, but I originally left it out for that reason. It'll be up to someone else to figure out if that is correct. --Rikurzhen 00:48, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to help, but here's a quotation from [12]. A paper worth reading. --Rikurzhen 01:38, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

"In the 1950s many zoological taxonomists became dissatisfied with the subspecies as a way to understand variation10, 12, 13. Criticisms included (i) the nonconcordance of traits, which made it possible to produce different classifications using the same individuals; (ii) the existence of polytopic populations, which are the product of parallel evolution; (iii) the existence of true breeding populations (demes) within previously delimited subspecies; and (iv) the arbitrariness of criteria used to recognized subspecies10. In addition, some traits were found to be clinally distributed, making the creation of divisions arbitrary."

I continue to be confused by POM (although he accused me of flaming him, he seems to be flaiming me). "I am dismayed by your use of an irrelevancy," Huh? What could be more relevant, than the reasons why some scientists reject the notion of subspecies? This is entirely and highly relevant. "by your lack of evidence (particularly for points 1 and 2)," Well, I told you who gave me the information, and when you asked for more sources I said I will check and get them. Isn't this an example of reasonable discussion? Why must you insult me? "and your attitude toward your lack of evidence." My attitude towards my lack of evidence is simple, and clearly stated: I will ask my source for published citations. I have in fact done so, although he has not yet gotten back to me. I must say, I am astounded by your utter lack of patience and good faith. I agreed that citations are important, I said I would ask for them, I have asked for them. What is wrong with this "attitude?"

Words edited out make total structure go wonky

Jalnet2 had:

Frank Miele and Vincent Sarich (authors of Race: The Reality of Human Differences) argue that races are indeed valid and have the logical status of fuzzy sets.

That statement was in a context that stated that most people now argue that [races] are useless ways of categorizing people.

Eric deleted the words "are indeed valid", observing in the edit summary that "Hispanic" is pretty stupid as a category (my words, not his). He is right about that, of course, but the fact remains (and at least Jalnet2 has given us authors if not full citations to check) that those people have gone all out to make the claim that [races] are valid if the categories are viewed as fuzzy sets. If they are reputable researchers, then I think it is fair and appropriate to give their views equal billing. Besides that, what they are saying is just another way of stating what Rikurzhen has been educating us about for months now. (So, anticlimax, I put the removed words back. Let's hash this question out on the discussion page before handling it in some less collegial way.) P0M 16:33, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with POM's comment here. I only add that the specific mention of this book and its authors should go in the body of the article. Slrubenstein 16:46, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If you know something about fuzzy set theory anything could be defined as a fuzzy set as well as an euclidian set : {Pierre, Paul and Jacques} is an Euclidian set defined by enumeration. It exists as any other random set can be defined but what sense would it have ? Like anybody I could design people as White, Black or Asian as well as well as blond-haired, brown-haired or red-haired or small or tall. All these are could be viewed in mathematics as fuzzy sets.

Reference material : http://www.tech-sol.net/humor/blondes1.htm

-)

Ericd 16:51, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I didn't revert because of mention of fuzzy sets. (Not all sets are fuzzy, no? But I'm going off point again.) I reverted because the paragraph was of the general form:

Some people say race is a very problematical way to categorize humans

Reasons

Some people say [race] is a useful way to categorize humans -- if you treat [races] as fuzzy sets.

Reasons

Your edit disturbed that balanced structure.

P0M 17:45, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The article doesn't say races equate to fuzzy sets. It says Sarich and Miele say they equate to fuzzy sets. Jalnet2 16:56, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm a little lost here. I understand what you are saying, but whose critique are you directing your words against? I quoted your version, Slrubenstein agreed it was structurally better, but wanted the scholarly apparatus moved down in the article. Then Ericd said something that I don't quite get, but it didn't assert that the article says that races equate to fuzzy sets, does it? Or did I get up too early after going to sleep too late? P0M 17:49, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well I was schocked by the "indeed valid". You can define fuzzy sets about anything. For instance I can define fuzzy sets of "attractive girls", of "boring people", "left wing extremists". This doesn't add any objectivity to the concept it's still subjective. And my fuzzy set of "attractive girls" can be very different from yours. I don't see in wich way fuzzy sets theory could validate the concept of race.

Ericd 01:29, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The statement was: "Frank Miele and Vincent Sarich (authors of Race: The Reality of Human Differences) argue that races are indeed valid and have the logical status of fuzzy sets," right? I don't think that Miele and Sarich were trying to say that fuzzy logic somehow validates an idea about race. I think what they were saying was that even though people have pounded the "essentialist" idea of races to the point that it doesn't appear to be valid, that doesn't mean that there is nothing out there that can be usefully categorized. If you will follow back through the earlier discussions on this "talk" page, I think you will probably conclude that this is the kind of idea that Rikurzhen has been championing. I'm not saying that he's right. (See the quotation I give of something Cavalli-Sforza says, below.) But they do have another way of organizing data about human genetic connections that depends on "data clustering" (I hope I've remembered the right technical term.) One of the characteristics of that kind of data organization is that it can tell you what average values you will get for a given population (assuming that you've got some kind of baseline data to work from), but it will not tell you with anything other than a statistical likelihood what you will find in the case of an individual. So, back up a minute. Miele and Sarich say that there is some kind of coherent data that can be strained out of genetic or other studies of the characteristics of a population, but that the sets of data so constituted do not have sharp edges. So they're not going from fuzzy sets to fuzzy groups of people. They are finding fuzzy groups of people and letting the form of categories they make be fuzzy in order better to fit with reality. They aren't saying that the theory of fuzzy sets could validate the concept of race. P0M 06:00, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I reverted this for two reasons:

• Where is the Wikipedia policy that says names should go in the body, not the intro? Wikipedia:Neutral point of view says to attribute opinions; I can't find any provision that says they only need to be attributed in certain sections of the article.

It is not a rule. It is my judgement as an editor. If you do not see the logic in my judgement, let me explain it to you. If you provide citations, I will start providing citations for competing views. In order to explain what these sources claim, we need to add descriptions. The consequence will be an introduction that is overly complicated. I am not saying your contributions should be cut from the article. Put them in the body, where you can explain them fully. Slrubenstein

I agree both that we need citations and we need to avoid bloating the introduction. Therefore I propose that the best and most mutually agreeable solution would be to move the information, with citations, to the body of the article. But leaving it in the intro without citations is unacceptable since entering opinions without attributing them is far from encyclopedic and against Wikipedia policy. Jalnet2 17:55, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Why say "evolutionary biologists" support X, yet also say "some scientists" support Y? To be fair, we need to use the word some either on both sides of the argument or neither. Jalnet2 16:53, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Scientists" is more inclusive. When I wrote "evolutionary biologists" it is because I am not sure to what extent other scientists shared this view. When I wrote scientists, it is because I know scientists from a variety of fields share this view. Slrubenstein 17:03, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not disputing the change from "scientists" to "evolutionary biologists". I'm disputing the use of the word "some" in one case but not the other. Jalnet2 17:55, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Some oppose to most when they are a minority and a majority. Ericd 17:16, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

But nobody has yet proven which view is held by the majority and which by the minority. Jalnet2 17:55, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Slr, is there any other way to handle this? It does give the appearance of trying to weigh one side more than the other, even though that is not the intent. P0M

If the problem is "some" versus "many" versus "most" I suggest changing them all to "many" which will provide the parity that Jalnet2 seems most concerned with. I still, however, feel strongly about not naming authors in the intro. I agree with Jalnest that we should provide sources. But there is simply no need to provide them in the introduction. We are working on an entire article, the articel should have a structure. The introduction introduces the positions, but it is in the body that these positions are explained, and that is the place to provide citations. This is common style. Slrubenstein 18:14, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I still, however, feel strongly about not naming authors in the intro.

On what basis do you feel this way? As I have already stated, Wikipedia policy is to attribute opinions, and I cannot find any exemption for opinions that are stated in the article lead.

If you're worried about bloating the introduction, then I have two proposals to make:

1. Move the paragraph in question to the body of the article
2. Slim down other parts of the paragraph besides the citations. For example, we could slim down the actual viewpoints of the scientists involved in the argument. Presenting lengthy and unattributed opinions is not an option as long as it is against the Wikipedia policy stated at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view Jalnet2 19:22, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

But I do not believe that many scientists still use race. Jalnet2, what stats to you have on numbers? I have yet to meet a biologist or physical anthropologist who believes that most of them still believe in race. POM, what is your experience in this matter? Slrubenstein 18:18, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have yet to meet a biologist or physical anthropologist who believes that most of them still believe in race.

But do you actually have proof that most don't believe in race? We need to avoid generalizations like "most scientists" and "many scientists" until we get proof.Jalnet2 19:22, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In answer to Slrubenstein's question to me immediately above: I would be able to offer only an opinion on the percentages for what various people state in public that they believe. Such an answer would not give an objective measure of actual beliefs. We probably cannot get proof unless qualified individuals have taken great care in designing and executing a polling strategy to get such information, and have published that data somewhere.P0M 21:21, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Race -> Human races

Was this move discussed? Did I miss the discussion? Not saying it's a bad thing necessarily, but isn't this a pretty major page to move without consultation? Guettarda 19:00, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It was also made without fixing broken redirects and in violation of our naming conventions. So I moved it back. --mav 20:48, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Grand Paper Chase

I have found one quotation that may at least give us an answer from authority on what people then and now have believed about [race].

History and Geography of Human Genes, Cavalli-Sforza et al., p. 17f:

The American anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942) was among the first to throw considerable doubt on the evolutionary stability of quantitative phenotypic variations like stature, limb measurements, and in general most anthropometric traits.... In any case, confidence in anthropometry remained unshaken for a long time and may still be strong in the most conservative quarters."

Ibid., p. 19:

"The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise for reasons that were already clear to Darwin. Human races are still extremely unstable entitities in the hands of modern taxonomists, who define them from 3 to 60 or more races."

Ibid., p. 19:

"By means of painstaking multivariate analysis, we can identify 'clusters' of populations and order them in a hierarchy that we believe represents the history of fissions in the expansion of the whole world of anatomically modern humans. At no level can clusters be identified with races, since every level of clustering would determine a different partition and there is no biological reason to prefer a particular one. The successive levels of clustering follow each other in a regular sequence, and there is no discontinuity that might tempt us to consider a certain level as a reasonable, though arbitrary, threshold for race distinction."

Jal's edits

I am surprised to see Jal order me to explain my changes in the talk section, when I have been doing just that. Be that as it may, I kept his removal of the scare quotes (they were not intended to scare) but have restored the paragraph in question to the introduction. It belongs in the introduction for two reasons. First, it is an important element of the article's NPOV because it lays out the major different views; without it, all that is left is the view that races are real. Second, it suggests to the reader what is to come in the body, which is indeed the function of introductions. Jal's major concern has to do with the proportions of people holding these views. Until we can get adequate sources, I am sure we can word this section appropriately. Finally, I restored useful content J deleted. J. deleted it because there was no source. J., you are quite right to ask for a source. But you are quite wrong to delete it before giving someone a chance to provide a source. I have restored it and have added a source. Tomorrow I should be able to add other sources. Learn to work with others. Slrubenstein 01:02, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My problem was not that you moved it to the intro. I disagree that it should be in the intro, but I will not object if it is moved into the intro. The reason why I reverted this is that that edit removed some of the attributions at the same time it moved the paragraph up. It was the removal of the attribution that I objected to. Jalnet2 01:06, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I really would like to achieve a compromise. I will not revert again, but I beg you to consider my objection to the sources. I understand that the policy of citing sources and verifiability is very important to you. I hope you understand that it is equally important to me. I just think that you are being overzealous in your desire to follow the policy. I believe as I am sure you do that all of the major claims in the article should come from a cited source. I simply believe that the citations need not be placed every time a point is made. The points made in the introduction are (or should be) more fully explained in the body. It seems to me that providing sources there -- or (to follow the style of most encyclopedias, and many article here at wikipedia) providing a brief citation linked to the list of sources at the end of the article, fully satisfies our policy of citing sources. I know of very few -- in any -- articles that provides sources in the introductory section. And this is not because the introductions are void of content. It is simply that the sources are placed at the end. The "cite sources" policy does not require that sources be placed everywhere. I ask others to chime in. Slrubenstein 01:17, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It is very explicitly stated at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view that opinions should be attributed. I agree that not everything needs a citation; obvious, non-controversial, and well-known facts probably do not need them. Without attributions, the paragraph in question is not listing facts. It is listing opinions. Jalnet2 01:27, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You are flat-out wrong that a sentence that is not followed by an attribution is not a fact, it is an opinion. Facts remain facts whether you provide attributions or not.

But you continue to miss my point. Don't you see, I am agreeing with you! Yes, every view (not the same thing as opinion, by the way) must be attributed in the article. This does not mean they ahve to be attributed in this paragraph. This paragraph lists facts. The attributions must be included in the article. But they should not be in the introduction.

Please do not respond by telling me that without attribution the are not facts, because I have said over and over and over again that these claims should be attributed to a source. Whatever we are disagreeing about, it is not what you keep saying it is. Slrubenstein 01:37, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You are flat-out wrong that a sentence that is not followed by an attribution is not a fact, it is an opinion.

I did not say that.

Yes, every view (not the same thing as opinion, by the way) must be attributed in the article. This does not mean they ahve to be attributed in this paragraph.

Where is the Wikipedia policy that says this?

because I have said over and over and over again that these claims should be attributed to a source

Fine, then let's keep the attributions and stop arguing about it. Jalnet2 01:47, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to add my view here that I fully support the citing of sources, but it's standard scholarly and journalistic (and, I believe, encyclopedic) practice to leave sources out of the intro, unless you're actually quoting. An intro is usually a general glance over the subject matter, telling the reader what s/he can expect to read more about in the body of the article, where sources should be cited. To have sources cited so far up front looks, somehow, unprofessional and rushed. SlimVirgin 08:47, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

If you want to mention the most prominent people to kick off the race-doesn't-exist (or at least race-isn't-taxonomically-useful) school of thought, I have no problem with saying "Many scientists, most notably Franz Boas, began to question the...", but citing works that don't warrant independent mention in the intro is taking Wikipedia:Cite your sources too far. Some people might be noteworthy for the intro, but I don't think any specific books are. -- Schaefer 12:11, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Let me point out the crucial issue: Jalnet2's so-called sources are not at all sources for the sentences in question, they are examples but do not themselves serve as sources for the claims being made. Slrubenstein 16:50, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What I hope is an uncontroversial question

The article currently has one sentence that bugs me when I try to think about where one would go to find a citation to bolster it. "Since the 1970s, there has been increased skepticism about "taxonomic" and "population" understandings of race." I think that this sentence is wrong because nobody that I can think of has ever said anything to the effect that the right way to think about [races] is to equate them to populations. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that a population is not an understanding (or a close synonym) for a [race]. A Mendelian population is one comprised of individuals who mate freely with one-another. One finds such a population (and frequently it is convenient to take a geographically bounded region like Sumatra) and then studies a valid statistical sample of that population (or all of that population if you've got lots of money) to learn what it is possible to learn about the genetic composition of its members. (C-S, p. 20ff) But maybe I'm wrong and somebody can help my feeble mind and save me from the sin of thinking for myself by pointing to a place in the literature of the field where somebody says something that starts out something like, "The way to understand what race really means is to learn what studies of populations tell us, which is....."

A case in point where population is used as I would expect it to be used appears in Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics by Jenny Reardon: "Dobzhansky, would continue to find race useful (Provine, et al. 1981). 'Races,' he argued in his classic Genetics and the Origin of Species, 'may be defined as Mendelian populations of a species which differ in the frequencies of one or more genetic variants, gene alleles, or chromosomal structures.'" (emphasis added) [13] -- Patrick0Moran

Re:: I also think that race (as was definied by human biologists in the 20th century) and population is not the same thing. In human biology, race was definied as subspecies. Since humans are not dogs, horses or chimpanzees, the very concept of subspecies is wrong. Clines or populations are not exclusive or discrete and therefore are valid concepts for describing human biological diversity. What genomic tests have proved about human beings is that our biodiversity is patterned and not expressed by discrete types. [14] -- Orionix 14:45, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What on earth is Slrubenstein doing?

I want to let people know that for the next half hour or so I am going to be doing a lot of work on the article. I do not believe that any of this should be contentious. Much of what I am doing involves reorganization -- I am moving all the historical material up front. I also want to put the sections on anthropology and population genetics, and biology, closer together. Most of all, I want to respond to Jalnet's insistance on sources. I plan on developing some of the claims he and I have been arguing over, and I will add citations (to be clear, my goal is not to prove Jalnet2 wrong; my goal is to comply with his requests). I know that many people have been working very hard on this article for some time. I promise, I plan on being very respectful of people's work and will cut material only if it is clearly redundant, and only if doing so won't damage the flow or clarity of the article. Slrubenstein 17:45, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Let us know when you're done. --Rikurzhen 19:07, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

I am almost done. I certainly am at the point where you can go over what I have done and comment. I have cut very little. I got rid of headings that distinguish between biological and anthropological approaches, because biologists and physical anthropologists do talk to one another, read one another's journals, and cite one another. I have tried to organize the material more or less historically, because debates today very much come out of research in the past, and research in the past was reacting against earlier views. I have put the stuff on ethics and politics together. I have also added much more detail on how scientists came to reject race, with many citations already put in the bibliography (this largely to comply with Jalnet2's point, which was quite valid).

There is one section left to write, and it gets at yesterday's issue of contention: trends in the way scientists use terms. I have some statistics. Although I feel good about the reorganizing I just did, I am honestly not sure where to put this new section. So I will just put it in, and if you/others feel it belongs elsewhere in the article just go ahead and move it. 10 more minutes, Slrubenstein 19:31, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I am done for now. I still want to add some more material on debates concerning race and human evolution, but I am sure no one will object to that and it fits easily into the article. I am not sure when I will get to it, so this concludes my intense work on the article. Thanks, Slrubenstein 19:48, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't going to suggest this, but it seems like it might be needed after all... We probably need to make it crystal clear that the debate isn't about whether human races "exist" (in the loosest sense) but whether races are in some biological way valid. Even if they are not biologically valid categories, I don't know of anyone who says they aren't cultural important categories; for example in the context of racism. --Rikurzhen 21:33, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Page name

Since User:Maveric149 chose to move this page back to Race, can we, in the interest of sanity, have a proper discussion about what the page should be named? I didn't like the unilateral move to Human races, but nor am I too thrilled with another unilateral move back here. Aren't page moved supposed to follow discussion?

Since we're here, for the purpose of discussion, can I propose that the page be moved to Human races? Guettarda 20:51, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I second that motion. P0M 08:56, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm a newcomer to this article, so I don't know what's already been discussed, but I'd say "Human Races" implies that the concept of race has been accepted, and here's some information about the different races, whereas "Race" suggests that the concept will be discussed and has not necessarily been accepted, as does "Human Race". SlimVirgin 20:59, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

I wish that you were right about that optimistic picture. I have been brought up short many times by the reactions of people who appear to have some reason for insisting on upholding the validity of racial classifications. Saying "the human races" would certain imply that the races are out there just waiting to be found and properly described. Saying "the human race" indicates that we have Homo sapiens sapiens and that's it. But saying, "Now we're going to discuss race," and following it with something like, "Humans are divided among 3 races," also hypostatizes these classificatory schemes. My understanding is that the objective information we have available to us pertains first to individuals. Beyond that, all we have is that information as massaged in various ways into various conceptual cubbyholes. You can't talk about classification of individuals with talking about classifying them into two or more groups. So, requirements about official article names aside, our real need is to talk about individuals on one hand, various competing systems of classification on the other hand, and then the various groups of people that result when the several systems of classification are employed. Then we need to talk about the utility of these groupings and the drawbacks implicit in them.P0M 08:56, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't think there is any doubt about the existence of the concept of races; rather the debate surrounding human races is whether races are valid biological categories for the human species or whether they are socially constructed. --Rikurzhen 21:43, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

They are clearly constructed, all of them. The question remains whether any of them have practical utility (validity?=grounded on evidence). Whether we divide a group into two halves or into a thousand different categories that shade more gradually the one into the other, we have constructed the fences we put between them. There is nothing wrong with that unless we forget that we put up the poles and wires ourself and start imaging that the fences were put there by God and therefore are never to be taken down or moved. What people really need to be cautioned about when discussing some of these ideas like "race," is that a system of categorization can have utility in one context (e.g., medicine) and yet have nothing to say in another context (e.g., moral rectification) P0M 08:56, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I personally think it should be "race" because physical anthropologists and biologists see human beings as animals and the general conceptual framework of evolutionary biology and population genetics should apply equally to humans and dogs and cockroaches. I recognize that some zoologists, biologists, and anthropologists might use "race" differently; this article should cover that. Also, Mav has been around a long time and knows quite a bit of biology, and although I have disagreed with him in the past, I always assume he has a good reason for what he does. I wouldn't change this back to "human races" until whoever thinks we should do that has heard him out. Slrubenstein 21:36, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The article is mostly now about human races, so the move makes some sense. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure most people only think of human races in association with the word "race". Since there is already a subspecies article, the move to human races seems to be unneccessary. --Rikurzhen 21:43, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Just as a thought experiment, what would your reaction be if the authorities decided we must entitle the article "Human Races"? P0M 08:56, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Keep the title Race. It's consistent with the Wikipedia naming convention on the use of singular nouns, and most wikilinks that point here are going to do so through the word race, so might as well have the article right there instead of having it go through a redirect from Race to Human races. -- Schaefer 04:21, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Is there an article on "gear tooth"? Some things can be considered as individuals, and some things only have meaning in conjunction with other things.

Who is Ashley Montagu?

Why is he so important that he needs mention in the intro? Wasn't Franz Boas more influential? --Rikurzhen 03:04, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

It's still a problem to equate race and population

I raised this question above, and most people seem to have chosen to ignore it. The present text states:

By the 1960s, data and models from population genetics called into question taxonomicunderstandings (sic) of race, and many have turned to the concepts of populations and clines instead.

Saying it this way makes "population" a virtual synonym for "race". It isn't.

The variation in a species is often grouped according to geographical region....A group of individuals who are potentially interbreeding, who occupy a local area, and who make up a basic breeding unit of our species is called a breeding population or sometimes a deme. It is the unit that evolution acts on, and its genetic composition is the result of several interacting factors in the environment which tend to limit variability to a specific range. (p. 37)

To me, as to many others, it seems that the only useful way of grouping individuals for anthropological analysis is to group together the people participating within the same circle of matings. (Hiernaux (1964:32) quoted on p. 114 (Emphasis added.)

Formulating things this way makes a population a very low-baggage "target" for analysis of characteristics. Nothing is assumed about the population on the grounds of prior belief. The black people are not first sorted out as "the blacks," and the white people are not first sorted out as "the whites." All that one studies is some group such as "humans who reside in Madagascar." So population is not race, it's what scientists have used in order to avoid talking about race, i.e., in order to select a subset of humanity to study that relates the people studied to their natural environment.P0M

-- Races, Types, and Ethnic Groups, Stephen Molnar, Prentice-Hall, 1975. P0M 09:58, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

POM, you misunderstand. The point is not that populations are races; the point is that many scientists do equate race with population. Many don't. Both points of view have to be discussed in the article. The article does indeed represent both views. Slrubenstein 14:57, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As far as race is a Social built concept that can't be defined on a genetic basis this a weak concept from scientific POV. This one of the reason why I clain that the studies about race are intelligence are biased at start as they ask a bad question from an epistemologic and methodologic POV. Instead of using a Social built concept that need to be operationnalized it's more rigourous to start from something less conceptual and more objective like "people whose parents where born in Asia". Ericd 13:13, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Again, it doesn't matter what you think. Many people do see race as a social construction, and their view must be represented in the article. This is our NPOV policy. Slrubenstein 14:57, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Many people do see race as a social construction, including me, and their view must of course be represented in the article. What I think is not the matter. My English is limited to deal with some subject. If races are social built this makes races a human creation instead of something that exist in nature. Let me give a sample the concept "flying saucers" exist and could be viewed as a human built. This doesn't mean that flying saucers exist (as well as it doesn't deny their existence). But making research on the concept of flying isn't the same thing as having a real flying saucer to dismantle it's engine. "People whose parents where born in Asia" exists and agreement on the definition is easy to find : it's already operational for a researcher. If you make research on race and especialy if race is a explicative variable in your analysis you use something that has the nearly same status as a "flying saucers" for the large majority of scientists.

Ericd 18:52, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maybe P0M and Ericd are saying that we've failed to represent the "race is a social construction" POV correctly. I'm not certain, but I think the article gets it correct. Just as an example, if you want to study racism, the subject of your study can be how people deal with "the social construct called race", and yet you don't have to think you're studying a fiction. Or are the researchers that take the "race is a social construction" POV actually divided over that issue? How do they treat the statement "blacks receive poorer medical care than whites in the US". Is it like, "unicorns have longer horns than minotaurs"? That wasn't my impression. --Rikurzhen 19:15, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Exactly my POV, at least in the begining. If you study the "belief in the existence of flying saucers around the world" there's no need that flying saucers exists. If you study "the influence of flying saucers on Earth climate" it has some senses only if they exists. If you study the difference of income between Black and White you don't need to believe that races have a biological existence. That's were I find some logical fallacy if not bad faith in "Race and intelligence" studies : it suggest some biological determism. However most of relate self proclaimed race with IQ a concept that is (short version) considered as valid because it has a strong predictive value of carreer success. To be a bit excessive the author claim that "Whites are more intelligent than Blacks" but what he demonstrate is that "People who considers themselves as White have more chances to get higher income than People who considers themselves as Blacks". Ericd 19:42, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Rikhurzen that the article represents the social construction view fairly. Aside from providing an account of how evolutionary science led many to take the social constructionist view, the article provides two case studies on the social construction of race. My impression of POM and Ericd's point is different from Rikurzhen -- but if I am wrong I hope EricD or POM will correct me. But my interpretation is that they reject the NPOV policy. They observe that the claim that races are biologically real, and the view that they are social constructions, are in conflict (some philosophers would say that they are not, but that should be taken up in the article on social construction. Let us say that POM and Ericd are correct that they are perhaps even mutually exclusive. It sounds to me like they are saying that if race is socially constructed, then it cannot be biological, and therefore to claim that it is biological is wrong, and so the claim should not be in the article. But as I have said before to POM, even if POM or Ericd have convincing arguments that this claim (or if you prefer, the claim that populations cannot also be races -- it doesn't matter) is wrong -- and even if they can provide books that say that it is wrong, that in no way means that the biological view must be removed from the article. Nor do any of us have a right to editorialize and insert into the article that our own view is wrong. Our opinions of the studies cited in the article are simply irrelevant, as long as those studies come from credible sources. Period. Any other stance is a violation of our policy. Slrubenstein 00:58, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am not discussing about my opinion on the study I am discussing about our understanding of these studies. My understanding is that those who consider race as a social construction are denying (or at least are neutral about) the existence of race from a biological POV. I don't think it's pure opinion or original research :

http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/race.htm

You can also read Social construction it provide sources about the concept of social construction.

Ericd 10:35, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for clearing things up. I think you are right. But so what? The article makes this very clear, that people turned to viewing race as a social construction after rejecting it as a biological concept. It's in the article. Shouldn't we move on? Slrubenstein 15:42, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Also, saying in the intro that many have turned from race to population "instead" does not at all mean that these scietists equate race with population. The sentence says in a very straightorward and direct way that they turned from race to population -- clearly these are different concepts and the article explains why. Slrubenstein 18:13, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

recent edits

I made three recent edits. First, I removed Ashley Montagu's name from the intro. Although I admire him, if we put in his name we need to put in many others -- and his name is already prominent in the body.

Second, I change "minority" and "majority" to "many" in both cases; the specifics are in the body and it is actually more complicated than majority and minority.

But now we have a study to back up the claim. If you want to remove the words minority and majority, then refute the study that

See below Slrubenstein 17:49, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Third, I removed a redundancy in the section on "lack of consensus." It makes it clear that scientists are divided, and then it says, "moreover, most laypeople ..." and someone put in "and scientists..." -- this is illogical and poor style. If you already talk about scientists in detail and then have a paragraph on laypeople you shouldn't repeat the point about scientists. Slrubenstein 15:02, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't Lieberman 1992 show that the majority of scientists believe in the concept of race? How can we say most laypeople believe in race, without any studies to back up that claim, yet we can't say most scientists also believe in race, even when we do have a study to back up that claim?

The study shows that physical anthropologists, who are the preeminent scholars of population genetics and race, are actually split. It just makes sense to be general in the introduction and go into the specifics in the body. You know you are starting to sound like someone who has read only the first couple of paragraphs. I know that you haven't, but that is what this sounds like. Slrubenstein 17:49, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If find it weird that you have insisted on saying things like Since the 1940s, most evolutionary biologists have made a wholesale rejection of the "essentialist" understandings of the term "race", even without anything to back up the claim "most", but now that that we actually have a study to show that the reverse is true, you insist on deleting the claims. Jalnet2 17:36, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Are you serious or are you mocking me? The Leiberman material makes it clear that the kind of definition of race was not specified. But you are now suggesting that IF a majority of scientists use race, THEN they mostly believe in the essentialist definition of race? Thius is neither logical nor supported by any evidence. At least, none that you have shared. Why do I make the claim that there has been a wholesale rejection of essentialist definition of race? Because in all the literature I have read since the 1940s I have found not a single evolutionary scientist who has promoted the essentialist definition of race. Let me know what evolutionary scientist embraces this approach and we can cite it. Good luck looking. Slrubenstein 17:45, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Also, you reinserted this: "Nevertheless, the belief that human races exist remains almost universal amongst lay audiences and the majority of scientists (Lieberman 1992)" Why? Don't you see how stupid it sounds to say "A majority of scientists use race. Physical anthropologists are evenly split. Textbooks are declining" and THEN "Nevertheless ... a majority of scientists ..." Why repeat the very first claim of the section? It is redundant. And why use the word "nevertheless," which suggests a contrast? You can't say "a majority of scientists use ... nevertheless, a majority of scientists use ..." It just sounds -- ridiculous! What possible point are you trying to make -- aside from disrespecting the English language? Slrubenstein 17:49, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm.. I don't know if the joke works in English... But they are some opinions that I share with myself. Ericd 20:05, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You are acting in bad faith

Jalnet, it is insulting that you revert my edits with a note demanding I answer your arguments in the talk section. I have always explained my edits in the talk section. Instead of falsely claiming that I do not, why don't you take the time to read and, if possible, think about my explanations. Slrubenstein 18:19, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Slr, you can ramble and BS all you want. I only want to comply with Wikipedia policy. I find your assault on the truth quite disgusting, frankly. Jalnet2 18:25, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You should read Wikipedia policy. Your views (and mine) of the truth are not relevant here. Our task is to write well-researched, NPOV articles. It is evident that I have done considerable research as I have added much content and many citations to this article. I have no problem saying that you have worked as much on the article as I have, in terms of number of edits. But tell me, have you ever done research? Have you ever added any substance to this article? Have you added citations? What, really, have you done, except constantly push your own point of view? As a look through the history of the article will show, I have added material on various points of view, all based on credible sources. I have explained my changes in a logical and reasonable way. I have invited you to back up your own claims. And your response -- is to be obnoxious. I am not impressed. Slrubenstein 18:42, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Comment: The NPOV policy is a problem and i would say it prevents wikipedia from representing the most acceptable theories. Fact is, however, that the vast majority of scientists do not equate race with population. -- Orionix 14:59, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A 1985 survey (Lieberman et. al. 1992)

Was the survey conducted on a US sample or international sample ? Can't find anything on how this survey was conducted. Ericd 19:09, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

US, I think. I will check, and then put in the info. Good point! Slrubenstein

I didn't match how perverse was the question "Do you disagree...". Scientists are prudents this means that a lot those who have no opinion may have answered No. Ericd 21:39, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

how many SNPs in humans?

During a talk today the speaker mentioned that humans have SNPs at 1 in 200 nucleotides. They are without a doubt an expert, but this conflicts with the source on that number (1 in 1000) I used for the text in the article. To add to the confusion, I've read elsewhere that humans have around 10 million SNPs on average, which is closer to 1 in 200 than 1 in 1000. If the 1 in 200 number is true, the whole paragraph about chimps versus humans is suspect. How should this be handled? Should we just cut the whole paragraph? --Rikurzhen 01:38, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Wilson and Brown

The text says: Zoologists Edward O. Wilson and W. Brown then challenged the concept from the perspective of general animal systematics, and further rejected the claim that "subspecies" were equivalent to "races"" (Wilson and Brown 1953).

Should that be?: Zoologists Edward O. Wilson and W. Brown then challenged the concept from the perspective of general animal systematics, and further rejected the claim that "races" were equivalent to "subspecies" (Wilson and Brown 1953).

Not sure if that makes a difference. --Rikurzhen 23:02, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Uh, well, maybe it doesn't make a difference, but I think your phrasing is better --I have to run can you make the change? Slrubenstein 23:05, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Rikurzhen 23:12, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Size limits and Sub-articles

After the restructuring of the article, the total size is again > 32kb. The policy suggestion is to create sub-articles. However, we seem to have done so much integrating of material that the existing sub-articles race in biomedicine and (especially) validity of human races have mostly been covered in the main article. Any suggestions on what to do? --Rikurzhen 01:38, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

In this instance, I strongly hesitate to create sub-pages (which policy used to oppose -- oh how the winds shift!). Race is such a controversial topic, and I think many people have worked very hard to achieve NPOV, I fear that any spinning off would really wreck the article. The only possibility I see would be an article that consists solely of the intro and the section on the lack of consensus; spin off every other section, and put in the links here instructing people that for an NPOV account of race they would have to read each sub-article. I would find this acceptable -- but not ideal. Slrubenstein 17:00, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

totally disputed?

Can someone explain in what way the article is "totally disputed?" What is inaccurate? What POV is being argued here? Slrubenstein 19:04, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

First of all, the accuracy of the claim "Since the 1940s, evolutionary scientists rejected the view of race according to which a number of finite lists of essential characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races.", is disputed, because without quantification, the implication is all evolutionary scientists, and this is clearly false.

Second the neutrality of this entire article is disputed since it gives too much credence to, and spends too much space explaining the claim that race does not exist - a fringe belief which is being pressed by P.C. pseudoscience radicals and which is rejected most scientists. (Lieberman 1992). I don't believe the 20th century argument that race does not exist is important enough, or has enough credence among serious academics and intellectuals to even warrant a mention in the introductory paragraph. Yet the introduction spends 139 words explaining "race does not exist" arguments and 27 words explaining the mainstream view. If explanation of anti-race ideas is confined to a single section in the body of the article, as it was several days ago, I will consider retracting my dispute as to the neutrality of this article.

The numerous objections and concerns I have raised in the preceding paragraphs are also rationale behind the dispute header.

Slrubenstein, I don't care how much meaningless ramble and BS you write back, as I am not removing the dispute header until the article is edited into a mutually agreeable version. This mutually agreeable version states only verified facts and spends an amount of space in the article on each argument proportional to the credence each argument has among academia. Jalnet2 19:53, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

First, you do not understand English grammar. The sentence does not suggest "all;" you would have to include the word "all" to mean that. Slrubenstein 20:50, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Second, even if the sentence said "All..." I think it iaccurate. Please provide an example of an evolutionary scientist from the post war period who advocates an essentialist view of race. Slrubenstein 20:50, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The article represents all views. Your claim that the view that races do not exist is a distortion of the article. I don't think any view expressed in the article claims that races aren't real. It does provide the view, held by at least half of all physical anthropologists if not more, that race is not a useful concept in studying human evolution or variation -- and this is NOT at all a fringe theory; the clinal and population views of human variation are founded in established, mainstream science. Also, it provides the view that races are not biologically real, but are socially real. This too is a widely held view in social science and the humanities, not fringe. Slrubenstein 20:50, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Your own ignorance and prejudice have poisoned you. The opening section does not devote 27 words to the mainstream view and 139 to an opposing view. It devotes 27 words to a concept that is simple to describe, and 139 words describing something that is more complicated. Slrubenstein 20:50, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Let's see what others think -- I will step back. But don't think I will ever cave into the bullying of a science-hating ideologue. I said earlier that I have never seen any edit of yours that reflected solid research. Spread your ignorance on a blog or something. Here, we have standards. Slrubenstein 20:50, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would have to take issue with the use of Lieberman et al. as anything other than a historical source. They present data collected 20 years ago (1984, mostly). Twenty years before that segregation was still in place. More importantly, they present data from a time when the idea of regional continuity was still generally accepted - that Homo sapiens had evolved from Homo erectus across its range. Things have changed in the last 20 years. At the time no serious scientist would have given much credence to the idea that humans could trace a common ancestor 100,000 years ago...most thought that there had been somewhere closer to 1,000,000 years - lots of time for serious divergence. It was a bitter battle, but once the Out of Africa hypothesis won, people adapted their beliefs. In addition there has been a wealth of genetic studies which have undermined the idea of race, that show that there is no biological basis for "race". Scientific opinion is not frozen. I would be deeply disappointed by my colleagues if I were to learn that more than a handful of them believed that race (in humans) was a biologically valid distinction.

Additionally, I might take issue with Lieberman et al.'s question (as presented in their paper). Most people use the word "race" to designate different ends of a cline, espceially when they come back into contact (like in the Americas). And there has to be a biological basis for differences - different levels of melanin, for example, are biologically (biochemically) based. To ask if there is a biological basis for "race" could easily be interpreted as asking if there is any biological basis for the categories called "race". That is very different from asking if there is enough difference among human populations to separate them into races. I don't know the full context of the questionaire that they used, I can't speak about potential biases within it. But I have no evidence whatsoever to consider that the "mainstream view" among scientists is that which Lieberman et al. published (and, incidentally, published in a science teaching journal; you have to ask why it ended up there and not is a "real" journal). Guettarda 21:19, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with all of your comments including you dissatisfaction with Lieberman et. al. When I put that information into the article I tried to make clear what the limitations of the data are. Still, it is the most recent survey I know of. If you know of any published, citable source that is better or at least more recent, by all means add it. Slrubenstein 21:45, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not saying it shouldn't be there, I'm just saying it's not enough to hang a whole {{totallydisputed}} tag Guettarda 21:47, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

sorry, I didn't mean to sound defensive. I really agree with you, and know you weren't calling to delete it. But I also know it isn't ideal. I was just asking if you knew of anything more recent we could add, usefully? Slrubenstein 22:23, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As of today the mainstream scientific view is that there's is no scientific way to identify biological races. Scientists may believe something else but the belief of scientists is not science. For instance if 90 % of scientists believe in God this doesn't this is not a scientific evidence of the existence of God. The current disagreeement show that there's no widely acknoledged theory of biological races. Ericd 21:55, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"At PhD. granting departments, the figure for physical anthropologists was slightly higher

   * agree - 50%
   * disagree - 42%"

Even if the survey was unbiased (what I doubt). 42% isn't especially marginal. They are 42% of pseudoscience radicals in PhD. granting departments ?

Ericd 22:10, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I may be misunderstanding you, but I think you miss the point. First, professors were surveyed in four different departments at a varieto of institutes of higher education. A majority agreed with the sentence, although the percentage of people who disagreed was still significant. Second, they analyzed the data for a more limited group that they took to be the elite (physical anthropologists at PhD. granting institutions). There point is not that more still aree with the sentence than disagree; their point is that the percentage in this select group that disagree is much higher than the percentage that aggregates scholars from all different departments and institutions. They aren't just contrasting people who disagree and agree; they are contrasting specialists at the top schools with a broader more open pool. Slrubenstein 22:23, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My expression in English may lack some midtones. But I think this time you missed the point. This was in response to Jalnet2. Jalnet2 stated that those who disagreed (the 42%) where "pseudoscience radicals". Its OK to me that the opinion of top level scholars appears constrasting with the global sample.

Ericd 22:47, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My apologies -- thanks for setting me straight. Maybe I need to pay more attention to J27's prattle. This may be the only patriotic thing I will ever say here, but the idea that 42% of the physical anthropologists at PhD. granting universities in the US are "pseudoscientists" is just so overwhelmingly absurdly arrogant and, well, pathetic. Slrubenstein 23:37, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

NPOV dispute - call for a vote

What is the consensus? How many agree that this article deserves the label, and how many do not? Please read Jalnet2's comments and slrubenstein's replies. (Obviously my opinion is that the tag is undeserved). Guettarda 21:24, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Explanation: (from Wikipedia:Dispute resolution)

1. First resort: talk to the other parties involved
2. Discuss with third parties
3. Conduct a survey
4. Mediation
5. Requesting an advocate
6. Last resort: Arbitration

I'd say this issue has reached the third point, hence the poll. Guettarda 22:27, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That process applies to disputes themselves, not the dispute tag. Jalnet2 23:08, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This article doesn't deserve the label. Ericd 21:43, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Since when can a vote be used to determine the appropriateness of a dispute tag? Jalnet2 21:49, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Since when is Jalnet2 the dictator of Wikipedia? If you are the only one who challenges it's NPOV and accuracy, maybe we need to create a new warning, "Jalnet2 does not approve of this article." Slrubenstein 22:09, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If that's the way you want to do things, we might as well preface the current article with a header that reads "This article represents the opinion of Slrubenstein". Jalnet2 22:12, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have tried to have a reasonable conversation about this with Jalnet2 over, and over, and over again, explaining my changes each time. He has never had a substantive response to any of my objections to his edits, or explanations for my own. All he can do when confronted with well-informed and well-reasoned explanations is to call it "rambling BS." So I am happy to see what the results of a poll are. That said, if anyone else takes real issue with the edits I made I will be glad to give my reasons, if they so request. Slrubenstein 22:35, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the tag should be removed. SlimVirgin 21:53, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

It's ridiculous that now you want to argue over the dispute tag itself. Historically, dispute tags have been used on Wikipedia when at least one person has a serious and good faith dispute with an article and lists his or her reasons for the dispute. Considering that 84% of biologists share my opinion (Lieberman 1992), I think that my dispute is most certainly reasonable and in good faith. I refuse to be forced to further justify and argue over the dispute tag. If you want to get rid of it, edit the article into a mutually agreeable version. Jalnet2 23:08, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Dude, I bet you didn't even know about this study until I posted it. Have you read it? Do you understand it's analysis? And here is the real zinger -- you are accusing an article of being biased, and you use a statement from the article itself as an example of a view that is not represented in the article? If you learned this statistic from the article, I am sure others will too which is exactly why the article is not POV. Sheesh -- how can anyone claim a point is not represented, and then tell us that he knows his point is right because the article itself says makes the point? Slrubenstein 23:42, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You just made a Freudian slip when you said the article isn't NPOV. Jalnet2 00:06, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You are entitled to insert the tag, although I don't think it meets the criterion of if there are more than 5 dubious statements listed for the {{disputed}} tag (Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute), let alone the {{totallydisputed}} tag you added.

Twenty years ago 73% of the animal behviourists sampled agreed with assertion that there was a biological basis for race. That is not the That is a historical datum based on a small survey conducted before a wealth of new information came from molecular methods. Ten years ago many people agreed with Wolpoff, but as the data solidified his position (which does not even necessitate an acceptance of race) became a minority one. If you want the article to say that most scientists accept that race is a valid concept, I am afraid the onus should be on you to justify that statement. It may be one that people hold in private, but I don't see it discussed in the literature. I may be mistaken, I realise that it is possible that my colleagues harbour this view and simply do not talk about it, or that I have a confirmation bias and interpret what is said in the context of my own beliefs. But those beliefs were formed on the basis of data. It's hard to hold a view that race is biologically valid unless you ignore the molecular data. That is not to say that it isn't a useful way of categorising disparate groups - like black and white Americans. But I very much doubt that the forensic scientists who can (usually) identify race from a skeleton would have an easy time if they were working in Algeria or Morocco. More to the point, if the variation within groups exceeds the variation between groups, what objective basis can you use to separate the groups?

As I explained above, I am just trying to follow the steps outlined for dispute resultion. Steps 1 and 2 are no longer relevant. So the third step is to conduct a survey. That isn't ridiculous, it's policy. Guettarda 23:47, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

US versus world

I've made this observation in the past, and I see Guettarda just made it again, so I think I'll bring it up for discussion. If you consider the studies of genetics/population structure and race, the findings seem to fall into a pattern: for studies of the US population, racial groups are seemingly confirmed by genetic clustering and for the global population the number of difficult to classify individuals is significant enough to cause some to argue against the biological validity of racial classification. I think it is worth nothing this difference -- prominently -- providing this doesn't count as original research. --Rikurzhen 00:18, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

I think there are two separate issues here. One of them has to do with whether you can identify different populations genetically. I have seen studies (can't recall where, can't provide refs) that can identify the German-French language boundary genetically, or the England-Wales boundary. There is enough genetic differentiation among populations to pick up once you select the right microsats. So it's no surprise that you can pick up differences between populations with distinctive ancestries like the "races" in the US. But that doesn't mean that there is some real biological separation in the human species.

Tang et al. were able to distinguish a Hispanic "race". I don't see anyone arguing that such an entity exists - not when it can include anything from Argentines of pure German heritage, half-Lebanese like Shakira and pure-blooded Mayans. Nonetheless, they sampled people who called themselves Hispanic and were able to distinguish them from other groups (although, if you look at their data these are Mexicans - 411 of their 412 Hispanics came from Starr County, Texas).

The paper showed that you can distinguish groups. They make the (seemingly obvious) statement: Thus, for example, Hawaiian Chinese bear much more genetic resemblance to Chinese from Stanford, CA, and from Taiwan than they do to Hawaiian Japanese..

The America vs the world idea is valid because you are not comparing populations with a history of contact. Just because you can distinguish people from different "races" doesn't mean that "race" is real. You would get the same effect if you sampled the ancestral populations along the cline that produced them. Sample Nigeria, England and China and you will find large differences, and your MDS will separate out different groups. They correspond to your definitions of race and voila, race is real. Sample every kilometre from London to Beijing and you will conclude that there is no such thing as race. You will find some sharp boundaries, but I'm guessing that the people on either side of the boundary will still be more similar to one another than they are to other people 200 km away on their own side of the boundary.

Race works in America (or France, or Japan) because the populations sampled have geographically distinct origins and (with the exception of African Americans and white Americans) have little history of interbreeding. And since an awful lot of white Americans have only been there a few generations, even that interbreeding is unlikely to show up.

For race to work you need sharp boundaries. In populations with a history of contact, these boundaries don't exist. If you can't draw a line, or even define a "hybrid zone", then what objective criteria do you have to define races? If you can draw sharp lines, as you can in America, you still can't call race "real" because you have transplanted people from their native range and thrown them all together. The fact that people thrown together can mix to the point where you can't define race any more (like many Brazilians, Trinidadians, South Africans) strengthens the point that there is no such thing as race, only clinal variation. IMHO, of course ;) Guettarda 00:57, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay. Questions of interpretation aside (i.e. does this count as race or not). It seems like this would help the average reader greatly if they knew that answers could vary depending on whether you consider the US population or the global population. --Rikurzhen 01:49, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, yes, absolutely. I agree. It would be very helpful to people to understand why something that anyone can see just by looking around them is rejected by (many/most/some) scientists. Guettarda 15:12, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree, but conditionally. It seems to me that it is not a matter of global versus US but rather global versus local; that is, in any number of places if you are limiting yourself to a relatively small (I only mean in comparison to the global population) group that has some degree of social boundaries (I think in the past five hundred years this has become at least as important as geographic boundaries), you may be able to identify discrete lineages (I still think it is another question as to whether scientists choose to call these discrete lineages "races").

I think, though, that there is one other thing that should be noted: I think the answers depend on who is asking the question and for what purpose. Evolutionary scientists argue over whether it is meaningful or useful to use the word race. But police and physicians are not evolutionary scientists. They are not seeking to understand complex patterns in the distribution of genetic differences among humans, or trying to reconstruct human evolutionary history. Cops just want some superficial and popularly widespread way to identify people, and physicians want to assess risk relative to the local population. For cops and physicians, I can see how "race" could be very useful even if it is "scientifically wrong". Slrubenstein 16:48, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's not that obvious that anyone that anyone can see. I'm of French/Swiss and Italian origin however I was often believed to be a Tunisian in Tunisia. I suppose I could be mistaken as hispanic in the USA. In Tahiti a lot of tahitians looks White while other looks more like Asian. And I have met a pseudo-tahitian that was from Algiers working as a guide. In fact a lot of non physical sign language, clothing, behaviour have a role people perception. Ericd 01:11, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Dispute tag

Jalnet, as you put the tag back up, you should probably provide some evidence for your view that a majority of evolutionary scientists do not reject "the view of race according to which a number of finite lists of essential characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races," which is one of the points you object to and which you feel the intro implies. Can you therefore provide the names of evolutionary scientists who do not reject this view? Also, could you give us some idea of which academic discipline you come from yourself, so that we have an idea what your background is regarding this topic? Finally, I have a concern about this edit you made [15] where you deleted the word "pseudo-scientific" from a sentence about Hitler's views on racial purity, calling it POV. It would be helpful to explain why you did that i.e. whether you believe Hitler's views on race were based on legitimate science. I'm asking these questions because I see you've been objecting to this article's contents for months, and I'm wondering whether explaining your own position, rather than objecting to other people's, might help to resolve the dispute. SlimVirgin 04:34, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe any article should support or oppose any political faction. I only want to write a neutral article that is in compliance with Wikipedia policy. As I have stated numerous times already, a neutral article lists only verified facts and devotes an amount of space explaining arguments proportional the credence each argument has among academia. This article will be disputed until it meets those basic requirements. As for proof that the majority of scientists do not reject race, see Lieberman 1992. Additionally, if you wish to insert a statement, the onus of proof is on you to prove it, not for others to disprove it. Jalnet2 01:52, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Three revert rule

Whatever the merits of the current food fight, Jalnet has reverted the page 5x in 20 hours. Isn't there some rule in Wikipedia about that? Guettarda 02:02, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)