Is Race a valid scientific category?

[Riccardo]

Of course! But no race is superior to another. Diversity make the world beautiful, until there are people who understand how to accept different cultures and believes.

 

[Rastko Pocesta]

There is only one race, the human race.

 

[Reinaert]

There is only one race, the human race.

Hear Hear!!

I agree.

YDNA research proved it!

 

[Knovas]

I think Race exists too, but I don't care who is better. Different does not necesarily mean anything else.

 

[sparkey]

Hear Hear!!

I agree.

YDNA research proved it!

How did it prove it? Different suspected "races" had different haplogroup distributions, as expected if race did exist. I suppose you could argue that it showed greater interrelationship than expected, and reinforced the idea that human genetics are a continuum across the world...

Personally, I never really use "race" when analyzing the distribution of people. It's much more useful to describe historical ethnicities and cultures, I find. But that doesn't mean that racial distinctions can't be made.

 

[Dagne]

And don't forget we are one race with Neanderthal, too! if we carry their genes

 

[Reinaert]

How did it prove it? Different suspected "races" had different haplogroup distributions, as expected if race did exist. I suppose you could argue that it showed greater interrelationship than expected, and reinforced the idea that human genetics are a continuum across the world...

Personally, I never really use "race" when analyzing the distribution of people. It's much more useful to describe historical ethnicities and cultures, I find. But that doesn't mean that racial distinctions can't be made.

Well, simply because DNA research proves we are one race.. humans.

We could argue about YDNA haplo groups, but that's in fact irrelevant.
We all have a rather limited group of ancestors as our common relationship.
And that makes "races" irrelevant.

And there may be some "Neanderthal" genes mixed somewhere, but that doesn't matter. We are ONE PEOPLE.

Think of that, before anyone destroys Mother Earth!!!

 

[Mzungu mchagga]

We will never answer that question, because there is no fixed definition of the term race. Or at least, no fixed point where to draw the line of division. As long as two partners can produce healthy and fertile offspring, they belong to the same specie. It is up to the observer to decide how many races he wants to see. In regards of humanity, the range lies between none and 6 billion.
That is why the term race is usually not used in scientific biology.

 

[Taharqa]

Any credible scientist will tell you no it isn't.

 

[Nugget]

"Race" is a social constuct used to place individuals into categories for specific purposes (positive or negative). DNA reveals the truth about individuals that can't been seen by the human eye. i am a cnancer researcher with a focus on genetics. A patient that looked "black" would enter my office and I would immediately create, in my mind, her breast cancer risk profile based on what we knew in those days. Black female = higher risk. Autosomal testing revealed what my eyes didn't see. Her complexion deceived me. She was 79% European, not African. More Caucasian than black. What does this mean for risk, response to chemotherapy, mortality and morbity? It means a heck of a lot! Race is antiquated.

 

[LeBrok]

Nugget, you're partially right. America is the prime spot of races mixing scenario, in effect creating unclear situations in this regard. In 1000 years all the world will be mixed and of one race. Unfortunately till then we have to categorize people in relation to continent of birth which is strongly connected to different evolutionary past. Forget the colour of skin, or skin deep criteria. What if your patient's DNA test came and it showed he/she is 100% African? How would you categorize the person, African? Isn't it the racial classification? And even if you did dislike it strongly, you would be a bad doctor if you didn't apply proper health statistics for Africans. So what is wrong with this if used as classification for benefit of the patient, and not as a tool of social segregation?

 

[Fire Haired]

Race does exist people try to deny it and say it is just a differnt skin color not true. Our Human family(there may have been other) began in subc shara africa about 200,000-300,00ybp. Over thousends of years differnt families formed. We have diffenrt gentic triats we have differnt features. All humans from what i can see have the same emoitional and mental abilites but we have differnt body builds.

Click here it explains the human family tree according to DNA

There are three human races Sub sahren African, Caucasian, and Oceania Mongoloid

Negroid is not a good name for sub Saharan African because some Oceania Mongoloid also have black skin and nappy hair.

 

[MtDNA]

Of course there are races. A race, by definition, is a group of people that have had an extended period of inbreeding, with very little outbreeding.

 

[RobertColumbia]

Or maybe 10,000 years ago, Noah and his family continued the human race after a world wide castrotophe. Just as possible as the above. ;oD

It's also possible that the story of Noah is based on real history, a retelling and re-retelling of stories passed down from the actual days of the mass die-off and bottleneck that has been distorted over time. If grandma kept telling you that she, her husband, Uncle George, and six other families were the only ones to survive the massive die-off that happened in the pop. 5,000 city that she lived in at age 20, maybe you'll remember it enough to tell it to your own descendants. Sooner or later, your great-grandkids decide to make the story more dramatic and re-imagine the city mayor as some sort of divinely gifted character and the City Evacuation Plan as some sort of prophecy.

 

[RobertColumbia]

...
In Africa, there is no way to confuse a Bantu (Central and South Africa; slightest fairer skin, round face, flat nose) from an Ethiopian (face/skull closer to Caucasoid, smaller nose, squarer face and much darker skin than Bantu).

I would put the Arabs in a separate division from Caucasoid, Negroid or Mongoloid. Dravidian people (originally from Southern India) are also a separate division. But today's Indians are mainly a mix of Caucasoid Aryans and Dravidians, which explains how two Indians can look completely different (some with skin as fair as a Mediterranean, others as dark as an Ethiopian + different features).

So is there races or subdivisions within humans ? Yes. Can we scientifically classify them, as we would classify different species of plants and animals (e.g. the hundreds of races of dog or horses) ? Yes. Can we crossbreed them and get new races ? Yes. There is no reason humans should be different from other life beings.

Good point. I think that racial classification can exist, but that the idea that there are exactly four, and no more, distinctive races is obsolete and/or ideological. IME, Ethiopians have a very European-looking face, probably a result of the fact that Ethiopians, Arabs, Greeks, and Berbers are all descendants of a mixed population of all of their ancient progenitors. West Africans (e.g. Nigerians) are often a similar color to Ethiopians but look much less European. India is also problematic from a "four races" perspective because you end up with people who are not "white" in terms of color but who are ancestrally, culturally, and linguistically linked to European populations.

 

[Tomenable]

Apparently there is still a real ongoing debate on the issue in question.

This guy wrote 193 pages challenging the idea that race doesn't exist - John Fuerst, "The Nature of Race: the Genealogy of the Concept and the Biological Construct’s Contemporaneous Utility", 2015.

PDF (193 pages): http://openpsych.net/OBG/wp-content...-Constructs-Contemporaneous-Utility-Final.pdf

Abstract:

http://openpsych.net/OBG/2015/06/the-nature-of-race/

Racial constructionists, anti-naturalists, and anti-realists have challenged users of the biological race concept to provide and defend, from the perspective of biology, biological philosophy, and ethics, a biologically informed concept of race. In this paper, an onto-epistemology of biology is developed. What it is, by this, to be "biological real" and "biologically meaningful" and to represent a "biological natural division" is explained. Early 18th century race concepts are discussed in detail and are shown to be both sensible and not greatly dissimilar to modern concepts. A general biological race concept (GBRC) is developed. It is explained what the GBRC does and does not entail and how this concept unifies the plethora of specific ones, past and present. Other race concepts as developed in the philosophical literature are discussed in relation to the GBRC. The sense in which races are both real and natural is explained. Racial essentialism of the relational sort is shown to be coherent. Next, the GBRC is discussed in relation to anthropological discourse. Traditional human racial classifications are defended from common criticisms: historical incoherence, arbitrariness, cluster discordance, etc. Whether or not these traditional human races could qualify as taxa subspecies – or even species – is considered. It is argued that they could qualify as taxa subspecies by liberal readings of conventional standards. Further, it is pointed out that some species concepts potentially allow certain human populations to be designated as species. It is explained why, by conventional population genetic and statistical standards, genetic differences between major human racial groups are at least moderate. Behavioral genetic differences associated with human races are discussed in general and in specific. The matter of race differences in cognitive ability is briefly considered. Finally, the race concept is defended from various criticisms. First, logical and empirical critiques are dissected. These include: biological scientific, sociological, ontological, onto-epistemological, semantic, and teleological arguments. None are found to have any merit. Second, moral-based arguments are investigated in context to a general ethical frame and are counter-critiqued. Racial inequality, racial nepotism, and the “Racial Worldview" are discussed. What is dubbed the Anti-Racial Worldview is rejected on both empirical and moral grounds.

 

[Tomenable]

And here the opposite view (but there is nothing informative here, I'm very disappointed):

Michael Yudell et al., "Taking race out of human genetics...", 2016:

http://www.sun.ac.za/english/facult...cuments/taking race out of human genetics.pdf

I guess that whether race exists or not really depends on how one defines the whole concept.

But we should apply the same standards to humans, as to the rest of the Kingdom Animalia.

=====================

The Limits of Democratization:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmWIOByI3FU#t=2m32s

 

[D.L.M]

All humans are different, but there are genetical characteristics (e.g. hair/eyes colour, size, facial trait, etc.) that enable us to categorise them into groups. It is not as simple as saying there are 3 main races (Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid). Looking at the people of India, Central Asia and the Middle East, we clearly see that it is more complex. But even within (what's looks like) a clear-cut group, there are many 'subcategories'. For example, among Caucasoids (=Europeans), we can notice very clearly the difference between the North Germanic type (tall, blond, blue eyes, smaller nose, squarer face...) or Celtic type (blue eyes, dark or red hair, rounder face), and Italic type (dark hair and eyes, taller and longer nose, deep features), Hispanic type (less pronounced features than Italic), Greek type (straight nose, sometimes blue eyes), etc.

Even within one of these groups, we could divide further. E.g. The Frankic Germanic type is not the same as Scandinavian Germanic or Anglo-Saxon Germanic.

Things get more complicated once we look at mixed race regions, like the South of Germany (Celtic, Germanic and Latin, possibly with a bit of Slavic).

I this regard I am quite surprised at the ethnic homogenity of North East Asia (China, Korea, Japan). Some Japanese clearly have Ainu features, but otherwise they are almost impossible to tell appart (much more difficult than to tell two Germanic group apart).

In SE Asia, Indonesian and Malaysian are very easily distinguishable from Thai or Burmese, who are also easily disntinguishable from the Khmer (Cambodians). But there are so many ethnic tribes in Northern Thailand, Laos or Vietnam that it complicated things quite a bit.

In Africa, there is no way to confuse a Bantu (Central and South Africa; slightest fairer skin, round face, flat nose) from an Ethiopian (face/skull closer to Caucasoid, smaller nose, squarer face and much darker skin than Bantu).

I would put the Arabs in a separate division from Caucasoid, Negroid or Mongoloid. Dravidian people (originally from Southern India) are also a separate division. But today's Indians are mainly a mix of Caucasoid Aryans and Dravidians, which explains how two Indians can look completely different (some with skin as fair as a Mediterranean, others as dark as an Ethiopian + different features).

So is there races or subdivisions within humans ? Yes. Can we scientifically classify them, as we would classify different species of plants and animals (e.g. the hundreds of races of dog or horses) ? Yes. Can we crossbreed them and get new races ? Yes. There is no reason humans should be different from other life beings.

I strongly agree with this post.

 

[Minty]

I can clearly see a difference between different races of people. If somebody said that Africans were discriminated that is why they are behind others today. How do we explain the evolution in European Jews, particularly the Ashkenazim of northern and central Europe. In proportion to their population, Jews have made outsize contributions to Western civilization. A simple metric is that of Nobel prizes: Though Jews constitute only 0.2% of the world’s population, they won 14% of Nobel prizes in the first half of the 20th century, 29% in the second and so far 32% in the present century. There is something here that requires explanation. If Jewish success were purely cultural, such as hectoring mothers or a zeal for education, others should have been able to do as well by copying such cultural practices. It’s therefore reasonable to ask if genetic pressures in Jews’ special history may have enhanced their cognitive skills.
Just such a pressure is described by two economic historians, Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, in their book “The Chosen Few.” In 63 or 65 AD, the high priest Joshua ben Gamla decreed that every Jewish father should send his sons to school so that they could read and understand Jewish law. Jews at that time earned their living mostly by farming, as did everyone else, and education was both expensive and of little practical use. Many Jews abandoned Judaism for the new and less rigorous Jewish sect now known as Christianity.It’s reasonable to ask if genetic pressures in Jews’ special history may have enhanced their cognitive skills.
Botticini and Eckstein say nothing about genetics but evidently, if generation after generation the Jews less able to acquire literacy became Christians, literacy and related abilities would on average be enhanced among those who remained Jews.
As commerce started to pick up in medieval Europe, Jews as a community turned out to be ideally suited for the role of becoming Europe’s traders and money-lenders. In a world where most people were illiterate, Jews could read contracts, keep accounts, appraise collateral, and do business arithmetic. They formed a natural trading network through their co-religionists in other cities, and they had rabbinical courts to settle disputes. Jews moved into money-lending not because they were forced to do so, as some accounts suggest, but because they chose the profession, Botticini and Eckstein say. It was risky but highly profitable. The more able Jews thrived and, just as in the rest of the pre-19th century world, the richer were able to support more surviving children.
As Jews adapted to a cognitively demanding niche, their abilities increased to the point that the average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is, at 110 to 115, the highest of any known ethnic group. The population geneticists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran have calculated that, assuming a high heritability of intelligence, Ashkenazi IQ could have risen by 15 points in just 500 years. Ashkenazi Jews first appear in Europe around 900 AD, and Jewish cognitive skills may have been increasing well before then.
The emergence of high cognitive ability among the Ashkenazim, if genetically based, is of interest both in itself and as an instance of natural selection shaping a population within the very recent past.

 

[lee1962]

I would say that race definitely exists. I've got Asperger's syndrome, a condition that mainly affects people of northern European heritage. There are many other illnesses or conditions that are race-specific.