Originally posted by The Lost
For the sake of clarity, I'm assuming that by you stating "race is clearly not a racial construct", you are asserting it's biological? If this assumption is wrong, let me know. Also, if race is not socially constructed and my assumption was off, how do you define what "race" is?
Imagine you're plotting some vector / combination / whatever of <insert all relevant genetic traits> vs. the human population. You would not get a uniform distribution; rather you'd get clusters or some sort of pattern. You can draw a line of best fit / circles/ squiggly lines and get categories. I think the racial groups we have now are decent ways to draw those circles.
(So yes, it is biological, but exactly where you draw the lines between races or name them is up to some license.)
Indeed, IIRC they actually did a study where they gave geneticists a bunch of genomes and asked them to categorize them and they all put them in the racial groups they were identified with (blindly).
It seems pretty obvious to me: there were several geographically very separated groups of homo sapiens that map roughly onto modern day racial designation that mostly bred amongst themselves for 99% of human history. It would be really bizarre if we didn't get gene clustering. Nor would it explain why we see clear racial distinctions in areas like medicine.
Trying to suggest that race is entirely a "social construct" is mental gymnastics. Of course some of it is socially constructed, but any real phenomena is going to lead to people developing social systems around it.
Originally posted by The Ellimist
Imagine you're plotting some vector / combination / whatever of <insert all relevant genetic traits> vs. the human population. You would not get a uniform distribution; rather you'd get clusters or some sort of pattern. You can draw a line of best fit / circles/ squiggly lines and get categories. I think the racial groups we have now are decent ways to draw those circles.(So yes, it is biological, but exactly where you draw the lines between races or name them is up to some license.)
Indeed, IIRC they actually did a study where they gave geneticists a bunch of genomes and asked them to categorize them and they all put them in the racial groups they were identified with (blindly).
It seems pretty obvious to me: there were several geographically very separated groups of homo sapiens that map roughly onto modern day racial designation that mostly bred amongst themselves for 99% of human history. It would be really bizarre if we didn't get gene clustering. Nor would it explain why we see clear racial distinctions in areas like medicine.
Trying to suggest that race is entirely a "social construct" is mental gymnastics. Of course some of it is socially constructed, but any real phenomena is going to lead to people developing social systems around it.
The way science groups races is not genetically based, to be fair. "Race" is not even accepted within biological codes of nomenclature. If we go down the genetic route, a majority of races would classify as African, considering Africa is the continent with the most genetic diversity on our planet. This isn't done because races are grouped by visible traits rather than genetic. This why all Africans are grouped into a single race (they're black).
Even "Jew" and "Arab" are used as racial terms but there is no substantial genetic difference when you compare a majority of Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Yet, with the two former words, they are used as racial terms when it's not at all genetically descriptive.
The problem with terminology is that it is seemingly far too generalizing to be useful as it corresponds to skin pigmentation and little else. It's altered so much historically, it has seemingly lost any meaningful significance when used biologically. "Race", as a term, carries a lot of weight and served some uses as informal terminology within scientific community but it's purely pragmatic. It usually is used by scientists where specificity is not a necessity (broad group studies, surveys, and the like).
When discussing differences between groups of people with separate geographical ancestries, it seems "ethnicity" would be a more fitting terminology, as "race" (especially in the context of modern scientific study) is only formal in social sciences. It has a really weak grip in modern biology, which is where most people lose their footing when trying to establish race beyond the realm of social construction. It's been phased out, in terms of of describing phenotypical traits with any concrete formality and meaning. Race has no taxonomic importance any longer within biology, is the long and short of it.
The consensus of scholars and scientists is that race is socially constructed, non-intrinsic to human beings. The biological application of it, and it's gravitas, is antiquated.
I can actually pretty much guarantee that, as much as you'd accuse "liberals" or others for causing discussions about race to be hamstrung by the sheer tautological distractions of the term "race" and where it fits as a social construct, likely anyone with even intermediate knowledge of sciences where the term is commonly used will tell you it simply doesn't apply where you'd like it to. Again, you'd be better off using "ethnicity."
To digress only for a moment, it's usually also why I dismiss people who propose or argue for scientific racism (A.K.A. "race realism"😉 because I don't have any room to debate beliefs that have been proven to be empirically false. Classifying people of varying and different genotypes/phenotypes into distinct races is (and I use this term with literal certainty) unscientific. The body of work surrounding scientific racism contains too many pseudoscientific disciplines to be even remotely taken seriously.
To conclude and go back to my recommendation of ethnicity being a preferable nomenclative alternate to use, the previous POTUS (Obama) is a black person in North America who's biracial in South Africa and the Caribbean and potentially white in some places within Latin America. Seeing as there seems to be a clear disparity in what is considered "black", wouldn't that imply that race, as opposed to ethnicity, has an incredibly strong cultural basis? I mean, among the other things I've mentioned, of course.
It seems pretty obvious to me: there were several geographically very separated groups of homo sapiens that map roughly onto modern day racial designation that mostly bred amongst themselves for 99% of human history. It would be really bizarre if we didn't get gene clustering. Nor would it explain why we see clear racial distinctions in areas like medicine.
I'd also like to address this specifically because it is incredibly lacking and is historically inaccurate. What you've proclaimed here could perhaps apply to a handful of some relatively obscure island tribes. Largely, humankind was on a genetic/cultural/political gradient. Whites weren't disconnected from differing cultures by some impassible blockade. In all actuality, the native land of Whites (Europe) is a continent (also socially constructed, funny enough) that dissolves into Asia and had to be cut off from Africa at the Suez. Typically, we all engage in a grandiose lie about it's status as a continent to "neatly" fit the historical narrative of Christendom.
Hell, you could jot a line from Iberia (or Scandinavia) to the southern apex of India all the way to Korea (locations where people have lived a few miles from each other) with an individual's religion, language, and more dissipating from majority to minority over a great deal of settlements. I mean, a peasant within the Kievan Rus' under Mongol rule? They would've had no reason to move toward getting clustered more closely with a French-Catholic peasant than with peasants from a village over who would have had differently shaped eyes than him/her by any noticeable metric. Oh, and who might care less in keeping Orthodox rituals and bear a handful of Eastern superstitions but were basically familiar.
Consider this: Between "Asians" or "Whites", who would a Sassanid nobleman be more likely to cluster together with? Precisely the same applies if you span across the Mediterranean, then south upon the Nile into Sudan and Ethiopia. A barrier didn't exists between these places. EVEN taking the most obvious one into consideration (the aforementioned Mediterranean), it was more likely to be the centre that many Empires encircled and utilized as a means to travel hastily, so they could spread to the north and south, as opposed to a border.
Originally posted by The Lost
I'm not automatically saying you're going to sit here and advocate or argue for scientific racism, as I don't know you nor have I really engaged you, but if you plan on that or even coming close? You're going to get embarrassed and I guarantee you won't like it because of how you'll look at the end and I won't like it for the time I'll have wasted.
Still waiting for this hilariously misplaced bravado to be forfilled.
Or will it be like that thread were you were presented with data sheets showing that Monkeys share more of their DNA with Africans than any other human populations and claiming to have made "valid arguments" by crying about how the data had bad implications.