Why doesn't Affirmative Action include Asians?

[jimpeel]

Sean Smith

Actually, Russ is quite correct in his remarks. I addressed this at some length at: http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3191 which I reprint here.

Might I remind Mr. Grijalva that there are only three -- count 'em -- THREE races:

Negroid

Mongoloid

Caucasoid

Every person on the face of the Earth must belong to one of these three subsets of humanity.

Mexicans are not Negroid;

Mexicans are not Mongoloid;

Mexicans are Caucasoid.

This means, for all intents and purposes, they are White.

There is no Mexican "race". There is only a Mexican culture and geographical Ethnicity just like there is only an American culture and geographic Ethnicity.

American Blacks, Whites, and Asians all make up a geographical American Ethnicity as a whole. We can hyphenate ourselves until we all turn a lovely shade of Blue but we will still be nothing more than a Blue American geographical Ethnicity.

There is no such thing as "La Raza" (The Race). This is a fabrication; but it does sound great when chanted in unison.

 

[jimpeel]

Now that women make up 51% of the American population, I am patiently awaiting my upgraded status of "minority". Will I then be eligible for Affirmative Action?

 

[Frohickey]

Yes, jimpeel. Now that you are part of the minority, you will be allowed to bear children. By what name do you want to be called... 'Loretta' is already taken.

 

[Bahadur]

Ed Brunner:

The ADL resolved many of the misconceptions associated with Jews in America. It is probably not a coincidence their history is included in this discussion. As a group who has placed a high priority on education, they exemplify the obvious alternative to affirmative action.

That, too, is a stereotype of sorts. The Jewry (if there is such thing) is not a monolithic race. Many Jewish immigrants to the US were Ashkenajic Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. As such, they brought the social ethos of such idiosyncratic cultural traditions as respect for learning. Sephardic Jews of the same period, for example, were cuturally different (less like Europeans and more like their Arab or Turkish neighbors). Even that's a broadbrush treatment as various sub-groups among Jews differed genetically, linguistically, culturally and religiously.

What I mean to say is that when we speak of "Jewish immigrants" to the US in this connection, we are speaking of Jews of a very particular regional, social and cultural backgrounds rather than Jews as a single "racial" entity.

Russ:

Hispanics are caucaisions as are East Indians.

That is incorrect. See below.

There are 3 races of Man. Caucaision, Negroid and Asian. That's it.

The idea of humanity being divided into three neat "races" is scientifically flawed. It is a remnant of the 19th Century racial theories of human origin that attempted to reconcile different branches of humanity neatly into a biblcal (the Old Testament or TNK) vision.

The reality is that humanity does not neatly divide into distinct "pure" and "racial" categories. For one thing, there probably never was a "pure race" human. For another, humans have mingled for a very, very long time through various migrations.

People CAN be categorized along genetic (biological) and linguistic (cultural), but these are very subtle and only gradually change. For example, as one travels from East Asia (say, Beijing) to Western Europe (Paris), one sees the gradually shifting nature of human differences.

A Han Chinese fits the stereotype of a "Chinese" person. As one travels west to Sinjiang, one sees people who seem mixed Turkic-Mongol-Chinese, still with strong East Asian features. As one progresses farther west, one sees Central Asians, say Tajiks or Kazakhs, who variously show mixed Turkic-Mongol-Persian features with progressively Persian and Arabic ("Caucasian" if you will) features as one nears the Middle East. As one nears Eastern Europe, one still sees Central and East Asian features, but Germanic-Slavic features become progressively more prominent. As one nears Paris, Western European (Germanic-Celtic) features become much stronger.

Mind you, what I describe here is a VERY superficial GENERAL outlook that unfolds very gradually - even then among individuals, the differences often very significant even within the same region. Then there are isolated pockets of past migrations (like Magyars, for example) that defy the "graduated shift."

Now, what adds to the confusion is the emergence of long-distance travelling during the modern times. Up to a certain point in history, long distance travel was difficult and migrations were generally gradual (except for, of course, the "eruptions" of chariot-driving and later horse-riding nomads, who though conquering empires and imparting significant impact, were rather few in number in absolute terms).

However, with long-range ships (and later airplanes), people from extreme corners of the earth were suddenly brought together to one narrow geographical spot (Chinese coolies, African slaves and European colonialists, for example), leading the primitive "scientists" of the times to declare them to be three "distinct" "races."

The modern studies of genetics and linguistics have invalidated these concepts, but VERY UNFORTUNATELY, this practice of "racial" categorization continues, in part aided by those in the authorities.

I want to know why Hispanics are a seperate race. Why aren't Irish a seperate race than Germans for example?

To some extent the "government folks" understand this. So "Hispanics" is not a "racial" category. It is an ethnic category. A person who self-declares as a "Hispanic" can also put himself in a "racial" category such as "black," "white," and so forth.

Now, why would the government knowingly tabulate "race" (a nebulous and flawed concept by now) together with "ethnicity"? To fit the politically and socially-conscious mold of "black, white, yellow, brown" and etc. Meaning, such a categorization is politically-driven, rather than scientifically-driven.

jimpeel:

Mexicans are not Negroid;

Mexicans are not Mongoloid;

Mexicans are Caucasoid.

This means, for all intents and purposes, they are White.

That is not correct. See my response to Russ. Mexicans (a nationality, based on nation-state boundary and citizenship) are BROADLY-SPEAKING a mixture of "native Americans" (from earlier migrations from Asia), "blacks" (African slaves) and "whites" (European colonialists), and as such, show varying degrees of such a "mixture."

 

[Ed Brunner]

Ed Brunner
quote:
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The ADL resolved many of the misconceptions associated with Jews in America. It is probably not a coincidence their history is included in this discussion. As a group who has placed a high priority on education, they exemplify the obvious alternative to affirmative action.
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That, too, is a stereotype of sorts.

Of course it is a generalization, but a stereotype? NEVER!!

 

[Bahadur]

Ed Brunner:

Of course it is a generalization, but a stereotype? NEVER!!

What I meant was that the stereotype (or generalization) of the "bookish Jew" has been, to a great extent, the product of a particular kind of Jews, i.e. Ashkenajic immigrants to the US from Central and Eastern Europe, and that there were (and are) all kinds of "other" Jews with different historical and cultural backgrounds where the stereotype does not apply at all.

I guess what I am stating is that the "Jewish academic success" in the US has been a function of the idiosyncracies of a particular kind of people with certain historical, cultural and social background, rather than simply being "Jews" as defined by belonging to the Judaic religion.

Looking at it another way, let me use the example of "the Jew as the banker." There is (still today) persistent stereotype of Jews as being "financially clever." Some people with prejudices tend to cite the prominence of Jews in the financial industry as a "proof" (some of them even going further and declaring "Jewish dominance over money-making" and other nonsense).

What these sad, misguided people do not realize is that there is a historical-social idiosyncracy about that particular "trend." Namely, in Central and Eastern Europe, Jews were, for a long time, not allowed to own and work the land. Since they were also banned from the military, the government and other "traditional" avenues of livelihood, many Ashkenajim were FORCED to engage in trade and artisanship, which were decidedly "second-class" professions during the Middle Ages.

In the early modern period, as European financial system became more advanced, it became an integral tool of the ruling regime as a means to fund wars, explorations and trade. Thus many Jews became prominent as bankers and Hofjude (meaning, "court Jew"). Even though Jews were, in effect, forced into "banking" by the Gentiles earlier, now they had to bear a further prejudice as the "sinister" Shylock types who dominated money-making.

A little shade of this historical vestige ("prominence in the financial industry") remains to this day, but the historical forces have changed long ago (beginning with the Jewish Emancipation and defintely after WWII). Further aided by rapid assimilation and inter-marriages, one is as likely to find a Jewish person who is a banker as one who is a fireman or a cop or a soldier or a professor or a carpenter (and so on ad infinitum). Or even the administrator of a highly successful "gun" Web site.

However, these historical-social factors did not similarly apply to Sephardic Jews, for example, who were able to engage in "normal" professions in the somewhat more tolerant medieval Middle East (and particularly under the Ottoman Turks later on). I do not suggest that the medieval Middle East was free of prejudices or pogroms. Instead, there, Jews were, in many ways, simply one of many "peoples" of various ethnic-religious backgrounds such as Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Persians, Sunni, Shia, Zoroastrian, Christian, Animist and so on (whereas in Europe, they were largely seen in the context as an "anti-Christan" people). Thus, there never developed the notion of the Sephardic Jews as the "banker Jew" (certainly not to the extent the prejudice in Europe developed).

 

[anchored]

So, is your argument that there has NOT been a history of discrimination against Americans of Asian descent in the United States?

I wasn't arguing, I was stating fact. And your statement is not a conclusion that can be logically drawn from what I said, becuase it ignores all buit two or three words in the sentence that are important for context.

 

[Bahadur]

anchored:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, is your argument that there has NOT been a history of discrimination against Americans of Asian descent in the United States?
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I wasn't arguing, I was stating fact.

So are you now claiming that it is a "fact" that there has not been a history of discrimination against Asians in the US?

 

[jimpeel]

Bahadur

That is not correct. See my response to Russ. Mexicans (a nationality, based on nation-state boundary and citizenship) are BROADLY-SPEAKING a mixture of "native Americans" (from earlier migrations from Asia), "blacks" (African slaves) and "whites" (European colonialists), and as such, show varying degrees of such a "mixture."

Did you miss this part of the post?

There is no Mexican "race". There is only a Mexican culture and geographical Ethnicity just like there is only an American culture and geographic Ethnicity.

American Blacks, Whites, and Asians all make up a geographical American Ethnicity as a whole. We can hyphenate ourselves until we all turn a lovely shade of Blue but we will still be nothing more than a Blue American geographical Ethnicity.

 

[Bahadur]

jimpeel:

Mexicans are not Negroid;

Mexicans are not Mongoloid;

Mexicans are Caucasoid.

This means, for all intents and purposes, they are White.

I was responding to the above, which is factually incorrect.

 

[jimpeel]

Bahadur

Then what are they from the three races shown which are the only three true races that exist? Are they Negroid, Caucasoid, or Mongoloid; or are you willing to make up a fourth catagory?

Perhaps a call to your nearest university anthropology department would afford an answer for you.

 

[Bahadur]

jimpeel:

Then what are they from the three races shown which are the only three true races that exist? Are they Negroid, Caucasoid, or Mongoloid; or are you willing to make up a fourth catagory?

I urge you to read my first post on this page. The concept of "race" along the lines you describe is a scientifically flawed one left over from the racialist theories of the 19th Century. There is certainly no such thing as a "true race" or "pure race" human being. Since the 1940's or so, the study of genetics has conclusively invalidated the notion of "race" along biological lines (meaning "race" is a social - not biological or scientific - construct based on genetically superficial and imprecise visual appearances).

Perhaps a call to your nearest university anthropology department would afford an answer for you.

For you, a quick look at any half-way decent encylopedia entry under "race" would do.

But if you insist, most anthropologists will be able to confirm that the notion of "race" along so-called "Caucasoid-Negroid-Mongoloid" lines is a scientifically flawed concept (I say "most" because there ARE fringe types who still hold on to this ghastly unscientific notion including, apparently, those who work for the US Census Bureau).

BTW, even the origin of the term "Caucasian" is highly unscientific today. The term was popularized by Johann Blumenbach, a German "physician" of the late 18th Century. He was an avid collector and "student" of human skulls (like the Nazi "race scientists" later on) and attempted to base his classification of "races" along such lines.

He claimed that there were five "race," namely Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, and American. After witnessing the skull of a Georgian (of Caucasus mountains, not the American South) woman and proclaiming it as the "most beautiful" among mankind, he came to decribe the "European race" as "Caucasians" - people who were the most direct descendants of the "original pure people." He viewed the rest of the "races" in his category as those who "degenerated" from this ideal in varying degrees.

Clearly, today we know that Blumenbach's notion was utterly unscientific and flawed in the extreme. Yet many Americans continue to use this incorrect term "Caucasian" to describe people of European ancestry.

 

[SodaPop]

Why doesn't it apply to Virgins?

Maybe we need a few more Virgins in College.

 

[Bahadur]

SodaPop:

Why doesn't it apply to Virgins?

Maybe we need a few more Virgins in College.

Maybe because sluts are in greater demand, particularly at fraternities.

I kid, I kid...

 

[Russ]

I don't think Asians are any smarter or dumber than people from other races. What seems to set them apart, at least many of those that came to the US, is that they work hard. Hard work is generally rewarded 9999.999999 percent of the time.

I know some Asian guys that were potheads and they didn't fair any better than caucaision or black potheads.

You really can't generalize this stuff. I judge each person one at a time.

 

[jimpeel]

Bahadur

Try this:

http://www.theoryofuniverse.com/man/races/races-skulls.htm

and this:

http://www.anatomy.uq.edu.au/Staff/scool/skull/an105skull.htm#Assessment of Racial Affinity

or this:

http://www.geocities.com/racial_myths/races.html

or this:

http://www.geocities.com/racial_myths/

and especially this:

http://www.geocities.com/racial_myths/existence.html

McGraw-Hill seems to be having a problem with your contention, also; or are they simply "racialist theories of the 19th Century"?

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072500506/student_view0/chapter5/multiple_choice_quiz.html

and then there's this from http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/race_attemptsatclassification.asp

Related: Anthropology

To classify humans on the basis of physiological traits is difficult, for the coexistence of races through conquests, invasions, migrations, and mass deportations (NOT: Which supports your contention) has produced a heterogeneous world population. Nevertheless, by limiting the criteria to such traits as skin pigmentation, color and form of hair, shape of head, stature, and form of nose, most anthropologists agree on the existence of three relatively distinct groups: the Caucasoid, the Mongoloid, and the Negroid.

The Caucasoid, found in Europe, N Africa, and the Middle East to N India, is characterized as pale reddish white to olive brown in color, of medium to tall stature, with a long or broad head form. The hair is light blond to dark brown in color, of a fine texture, and straight or wavy. The color of the eyes is light blue to dark brown and the nose bridge is usually high.

The Mongoloid race, including most peoples of E Asia and the indigenous peoples of the Americas, has been described as saffron to yellow or reddish brown in color, of medium stature, with a broad head form. The hair is dark, straight, and coarse; body hair is sparse. The eyes are black to dark brown. The epicanthic fold, imparting an almond shape to the eye, is common, and the nose bridge is usually low or medium.

The Negroid race is characterized by brown to brown-black skin, usually a long head form, varying stature, and thick, everted lips. The hair is dark and coarse, usually kinky. The eyes are dark, the nose bridge low, and the nostrils broad. To the Negroid race belong the peoples of Africa south of the Sahara, the Pygmy groups of Indonesia, and the inhabitants of New Guinea and Melanesia.

Each of these broad groups can be divided into subgroups. General agreement is lacking as to the classification of such people as the aborigines of Australia, the Dravidian people of S India, the Polynesians, and the Ainu of N Japan.

You stated:

For you, a quick look at any half-way decent encylopedia entry under "race" would do.

and that produced the following from: http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/r1/race.asp

race

Related: Anthropology

One of the group of populations constituting humanity. The differences among races are essentially biological and are marked by the hereditary transmission of physical characteristics. Genetically a race may be defined as a group with gene frequencies differing from those of the other groups in the human species (see heredity ; genetics ; gene ). However, the genes responsible for the hereditary differences between humans are extremely few when compared with the vast number of genes common to all human beings regardless of the race to which they belong. Many physical anthropologists believe that, because there is as much genetic variation among the members of any given race as there is between different racial groups, the concept of race is ultimately unscientific and racial categories are arbitrary designations. The term race is inappropriate when applied to national, religious, geographic, linguistic, or ethnic groups, nor can the biological criteria of race be equated with mental characteristics, such as intelligence, personality, or character. All human groups belong to the same species ( Homo sapiens ) and are mutually fertile. Races arose as a result of mutation , selection, and adaptational changes in human populations. The nature of genetic variation in human beings indicates there has been a common evolution for all races and that racial differentiation occurred relatively late in the history of Homo sapiens. Theories postulating the very early emergence of racial differentiation have been advanced (e.g., C. S. Coon , The Origin of Races, 1962), but they are now scientifically discredited.

However, the sites that I have given you heretofore are far more conclusive and informative than a mere encyclopedic definition.

For a theological dissertation on this subject, see: http://www.osterholm.info/man/

 

[PATH]

What a life I lead. I know poor Jews, sober Irishmen, ambitious blacks, hispanics who don't speak spanish, Italians who are not in organized crime, Chinese who are not rocket scientists, and so on.

Affirmative action only discriminates against another group. Equality of oppurtunity and not outcome is what we must as a nation strive for.

As for race, my people were from the British Isles. As I saw no box on the census for Atlantic Islander I simply marked Pacific Islander. My wife being of Lebanese/Syrian extraction is of course Asian. (Ancestors from Asia Minor, the other side of the Bosphorous). Children would of course be others as there is no neat category. Since I was born here I could have put down Native American but I like being an Islander. (I am not the color of a piece of loose leaf paper so I am not white).

Race is a meaningless concept to most modern anthropologists.
Australian aboriginals would fit into which of the 3 races? Skin color and features are adaptations to environmental factors. They have little other signifigance.

Affirmative action is a bogus thing for any group!

 

[Bahadur]

jimpeel:

However, the sites that I have given you heretofore are far more conclusive and informative than a mere encyclopedic definition.

The web sites you provided are, quite frankly, fringe and do not reflect the scientific analyses of the vast majority of the anthropologists in the era of genetic studies. Some of those pages even cite people like Blumenbach as "evidence" when they have been discredited a long, long time ago. Quite frankly, I question the motivation behind those who attack scientists relying on genetic studies as "race-deniers" (as in some of those web sites).

"Mere encylopedic definition," eh? Okay, let's try yet another encyclopedia, shall we (and a pretty cheap one at that)?

From the entry "Race" in Microsoft Encarta (2001 edition):

Race, term historically used to describe a human population distinguishable from others based on shared biological traits. All living human beings belong to one species, Homo sapiens. The concept of race stems from the idea that the human species can be naturally subdivided into biologically distinct groups. In practice, however, scientists have found it impossible to separate humans into clearly defined races. Most scientists today reject the concept of biological race and instead see human biological variation as falling along a continuum. Nevertheless, race persists as a powerful social and cultural concept used to categorize people based on perceived differences in physical appearance and behavior.

Interest in defining races came from the recognition of easily visible differences among human groups. Around the world, human populations differ in their skin color, eye color and shape, hair color and texture, body shape, stature, limb proportions, and other physical characteristics. However, most anthropologists and biologists regard these differences between populations as largely superficial, resulting from adaptations to local climatic conditions during the most recent period of human evolution. Genetic analysis, which provides a deeper and more reliable measure of biological differences between people, reveals that overall, people are remarkably similar in their genetic makeup. Of the genetic differences that do exist, more variation occurs within so-called racial groups than between them. That is, two people from the same "race" are, on average, almost as biologically different from each other as any two people in the world chosen at random. This high degree of genetic diversity exists within populations because individuals from different populations have always intermingled and mated with each other. Given that populations have interbred for most of human history, most anthropologists reject the idea that "pure" races existed at some time in the distant past. Today, genetic analysis has replaced earlier methods of comparing color, shape, and size to establish degrees of relationship or common ancestry among human populations.

The term race is often misunderstood and misused. It is often confused with ethnicity, an ambiguous term that refers mostly, though not exclusively, to cultural (non-biological) differences between groups. An ethnic group derives its identity from its distinctive customs, language, ancestry, place of origin, or style of dress. For example, the Hispanic ethnic group comprises people who trace their ancestry to Spanish-speaking countries in the Western Hemisphere. Although some people assume Hispanics have a common genetic heritage, in reality they share only a language. Members of an ethnic group with a common geographic origin often do share similar physical features. But people of the same ethnic group may also have very different physical appearances, and conversely, people of different ethnic groups may look quite similar. People may also mistakenly use the term race to refer to a religion, culture, or nationality-as in the "Jewish race" or the "Italian race"-whose members may or may not share a common ancestry. The term race is also sometimes used to refer to the entire human species, as in the "human race." In everyday language, the distinction between race and ethnicity has become blurred, and many people use the terms to mean the same thing.

Continued...

 

[Bahadur]

Race, continued:

II. PROBLEMS IN DEFINING RACES

Around the world, human populations differ in their skin color, eye color and shape, hair color and texture, body shape, height, limb proportions, nose and lip size and shape, and other physical characteristics. For example, peoples of the Arctic, such as the Inuit, differ significantly in body form and skin color from Australian Aborigines. Likewise, Norwegians appear quite different from Nigerians in their skin color and hair color and texture. These easily visible differences between peoples led early scientists to attempt to define races based on outward physical appearance. Such observable traits make up a person's phenotype. In more recent times, scientists have tried to define races based on genotype, the genetic makeup of individuals. Both methods have shortcomings that illustrate the fundamental problems of racial classification.

A. Based on Physical Appearance:

Interest in classifying races flourished in the 19th century and continued in the 20th century. But every anthropologist proposed a different list of races, with numbers varying from as few as 2 to as many as 60 or more. Racial taxonomists usually divided into two opposing camps: "lumpers," who minimized the number of races; and "splitters," who divided humans into many small, local races. Early racial classification schemes were based primarily on skin color. For example, many scholars once believed all people could be classified into one of three main races: (1) Caucasoid, or "white"; (2) Negroid, or "black"; and (3) Mongoloid, or "yellow." These races corresponded roughly to the geographic areas of Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, respectively.

However, some people did not fit neatly into any of these races. For example, the original inhabitants of Australia, the Aborigines, have dark skin similar to tropical Africans. But some Aborigines have blond hair, unlike most Africans. Were they Negroid or Caucasoid? Some scholars added a new race, Australian, to avoid the problem. The peoples of southern India and Sri Lanka, who have dark skin like tropical Africans but facial features and hair like Europeans, posed a similar classification problem. Again, some scientists added an Indian race. One trait thought to be unique to Mongoloids was the epicanthic fold, a fold of skin across the inner part of the eye. But anthropologists soon discovered that certain African and Native American groups also have epicanthic folds. Should they also be classified as Mongoloid?

These examples show the difficulty in classifying races based primarily on a single physical trait: Populations that share the trait are subjectively lumped into the same race, without any scientific evidence that they are more closely related to each other than to other groups. In addition, the choice of trait is completely arbitrary. One could just as logically choose to classify races by nose shape as by skin color.

An alternative approach might classify races on the basis of particular combinations or clusters of external traits, rather than a single trait. But this approach reveals other problems. Traits that may seem uniform within a population actually vary widely between individuals, making it difficult to classify individuals into racial groups. Furthermore, physical traits are inherited independently of one another. For example, stature in a population may vary from very small to very tall and shows no relation to skin color. Each trait has a unique pattern of geographic distribution that may be unrelated to those of other traits.

Perhaps the greatest problem in racial classification involves determining the boundaries of the races. Populations from different continents or climates may differ profoundly in physical appearance, suggesting that the differences between peoples are sharp and discrete. But scientists now recognize that most human physical characteristics vary gradually and smoothly over large geographic areas. Anthropologists refer to this gradient of variation as a cline. For example, skin color is distributed as a cline, generally varying along a north-south line. Skin color is lightest in northern Europeans, especially in those who live around the Baltic Sea, and becomes gradually darker as one moves toward southern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and into northern Africa and northern subtropical Africa. Skin is darkest in people who live in the tropical regions of Africa. The lack of clear-cut discontinuities makes any racial boundary based on skin color totally arbitrary. Similar continuity exists for most other physical traits. (For more information about skin color as an environmental adaptation, see the Variation and Environmental Adaptation section of this article.)

Racial classification has generally relied on the premise that each race can be defined by a certain set of physical features that are inherited and unchangeable. But scientists now know that a population's phenotype (visible physical characteristics) can change without genetic change. For example, the average height of adult males in Japan increased an estimated 10 cm (4 in) in the span of only a few decades after 1950. This time span is too short to permit major genetic changes; changes in the Japanese diet account for the height increase. Given how rapidly some phenotypic traits can change in response to environmental conditions, they form a poor basis for defining fixed, biological races.

Race mixing highlights another problem in defining races. In the United States, the child of a white parent and a black parent is usually defined as black, because American society traditionally has not recognized intermediate racial categories. In biological terms, however, the child shares in each parent's genetic heritage equally. Until the mid-20th century, many states defined a person as black if he or she had even a small fraction of black ancestry. Most state laws specified the fraction of black ancestry that made someone black as one-fourth or one-eighth. Thus, having one black great-grandparent was sufficient to define a person as black, but having seven white great-grandparents was insufficient to define the person as white. A Virginia law (overturned in 1967) went even further, defining as black "every person in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood"-the so-called one-drop rule. These definitions were created as part of laws against miscegenation, which were designed to prohibit interracial marriage. Anthropologists today recognize that race is also culturally relative. A light-skinned African American considered black in the United States would be considered white by many dark-skinned populations of Africa. These examples show that race is socially and culturally constructed, not determined by biology.

A final argument against basing races on phenotype is that relatively few genes determine surface characteristics, such as skin color, hair color, and facial features. For example, fewer than ten genes determine skin color. Considered against the nearly 100,000 genes that make up the entire human genome (the total of all human genes), skin color and other external features represent a trivial source of biological variation. There are many other sources of human biological variation that we cannot see, such as variations in blood type and susceptibility to certain diseases. It is of course inevitable to be influenced by what we see, and this helps to explain why people attribute so much more importance to visible physical traits.

Continued...

 

[Bahadur]

Race, continued:

B. Based on Genetic Makeup:

As scientists in the 20th century became aware of the many problems in defining races based on physical appearance, some turned to the field of genetics in an effort to define races more scientifically. Genetic analysis allows scientists to learn about differences between people at the level of the genotype-the structure of the molecular genetic material, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Genes are segments of DNA that determine the inheritance of certain traits, or groups of traits. Genetic research provides much more consistent and verifiable information about human variation than do phenotypic studies, primarily because genes are much less susceptible to rapid changes produced by the environment. In addition, genetic studies can examine a much wider range of variable traits-including those not visible to the naked eye.

Scientists first learned about the human genotype through research on proteins-substances fundamental to the function and structure of the body. Proteins indirectly provide information about gene structure because they are the main product of genes. The human body contains tens of thousands of different proteins, most of which vary in form from person to person. Protein research has focused on variation in blood groups, hemoglobin (the protein that carries oxygen in red blood cells), red blood cell enzymes, blood-serum proteins, and human lymphocyte antigens (HLA) that affect individuals' resistance to organ transplants.

The first attempts to classify races by genetic traits used the ABO system of blood groups. Blood groups determine whether any two people can successfully exchange blood through medical transfusion. All people belong to one of four blood groups (A, B, AB, or O), depending on which alleles (forms) of the ABO gene they inherited. The three major alleles of this gene, A, B, and O, are present in almost all populations of the world, but in different proportions. For example, the O allele reaches its maximum frequency among Native Americans, so much so that in South America almost all individuals have type O blood. In central Canada, type A blood is unusually frequent, type O somewhat less frequent, and types B and AB are rare or absent. On other continents one finds all blood groups, with some local variation. But the ABO blood group system lends itself very poorly as a way to distinguish races. Two populations that are remote both geographically and biologically (based on almost all other criteria), such as Germans and New Guineans, often show very similar ABO allele frequencies.

When scientists examine a large number of different genes, some distinctions between groups begin to appear more clearly. For example, one can usually find some degree of genetic differentiation between populations separated by geographic barriers, such as seas, mountains, and rivers. This occurs because geographic barriers tend to isolate populations from each other, although no barrier seems to completely prevent interbreeding of populations. The genetic differentiation observed between such populations is always extremely modest and not discernible without a thorough analysis. In most areas of the world, genetic traits, like phenotypic (external) traits, are distributed clinally-that is, they vary in a smooth, gradual pattern across geographic areas. For example, in Central Asia the transition from a European type to an East Asian type (as defined by gene frequencies) is almost continuous, making the task of drawing a boundary between "European" and "Asian" races impossible. Around the world, abrupt changes in gene frequencies are unusual between neighboring populations. The reason is that human groups, throughout history, have generally mixed and mated with one other, guaranteeing a constant flow of genes between populations.

By analyzing the data from a sufficiently large number of genes, one could identify hundreds of thousands of local populations at a minimum, each with a slightly different profile of gene frequencies. But this analysis would not answer the question of how many basic races there are. No reasonable multiplication of the list of races could cope with the observed continuity and complexity of genetic variation. Thus, most scientists have given up racial classification as a futile exercise.

The direct analysis of DNA, which became possible in the 1980s, has revolutionized the study of human variation. DNA research has shown that similarities among all people far outweigh any differences. On average, two randomly chosen individuals have 99.9 percent of their genetic material in common. Of the 0.1 percent variation that does exist, 85 percent exists within populations; only 15 percent exists between populations. In other words, almost all the genetic differences between any two people are due simply to the fact that they are different individuals. In comparison with the genetic variation observed among individuals, that between human groups, however defined, is almost negligible.

The human species has less genetic variability than many other animal species, including chimpanzees, the closest living relatives of humans. The reason is that the differentiation among humans living today probably began in the recent evolutionary past. Genetic studies suggest that all people alive today are descended from a relatively small group of humans in eastern Africa who began migrating out of Africa as recently as 50,000 years ago...

Pretty comprehensive, isn't it? Shall I go on and start citing anthropological literature in even greater depths?

 

[PATH]

I think that answer puts the race question to bed!

 

[az_ccw]

The AA stuff is not about race, ethnicity, or culture. It is pure and simply derived from racism . . . prejudice and hate.

We as humans classify other humans into "color" categories. Then we place those categories on a vertical scale . . . notoriosly with "white" on top. We can then say "who" may vote, "who" may own guns, "who" may ____________ . . . based on the color of your skin.

This is a gun forum . . . how many gun laws are on the books strictly because "whites" did not want "blacks" to have guns? This method of categorizing people lead to the slaughter of millions of Jewish people in WWII. This method of categorizing is still alive and well in the country yet today! If you don't believe that, go back and read a few of the earlier posts to this very thread.

Our Government created a bunch of crazy laws to help the minorities they oppressed. Remember when women could not vote? Well, the Small Business Administration still has on its books special loans available only to Women and . . . you quessed it . . . minorities.

We, as a nation, need to be rid of all Affirmative Action laws. It is nothing more than discrimination. But beyond that . . . we need to finally accept "All men are created equal", with no conditions of the color of their skin.

Will that day ever happen . . . Yes . . . when Jesus sets foot back on this corrupt world to finally bring us peace. Notice the Bible NEVER once refers to the color of a person's skin.

May God Bless America!

 

[Bahadur]

az_ccw:

Not only do we need to rid ourselves of the so-called affirmative action, we also need to rid ourselves of the notion of "race."

If we must, we can use ethnicity to denote regional background (i.e. Western European, Sub-Saharan African, East Asian, Latin American and so forth).

 

[jimpeel]

Bahadur

The web sites you provided are, quite frankly, fringe

Fringe?? Did you miss the following?

The first site stated quite clearly"

the above pictures were taken at the museum of man - san diego, ca (2/2001)

The second http://www.anatomy.uq.edu.au/ was from the University of Queensland.

The third gave links to PBS' Nova http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/first/gill.html

The sixth was McGraw-Hill which was based upon Cultural Anthropology, 9/e Conrad P. Kottak, University of Michigan

Yeah, those are certainly some way-out-there sources all right.

Quite frankly, I question the motivation behind those who attack scientists relying on genetic studies as "race-deniers" (as in some of those web sites).

Hmmm. I believe that I have just been insulted but will wait to see what you have to say in clarification of same.

To guide you in this I will edify you with the following which is common knowledge to most of those who posted to TFL in the past.

I am a White male who is married to a Mexican/Yakima Indian woman, and have been so for the past 33 years. My children are White/Mexican/Yakima Indian.

My White/Mexican/Yakima Indian son produced a grandson for us with a Black/White woman so My grandson is Black/White/Mexican/Yakima Indian.

We have stated in the past that we sincerely hope he will one day marry an Oriental/Jewish woman and complete the circle.

That desire has been somewhat realized as my White/Mexican/Yakima Indian son is now engaged to a Japanese woman. My Black/White/Mexican/Yakima Indian grandson is learning Japanese and is desirous of becoming a computer programmer for Sony Corp. He has every desire to relocate to Japan in the future.

Basically, I have done more for racial integration, and in suppport of your contentions, with my penis than Jesse jackson and his ilk could do with a thousand school buses.

I am also one of the most hated men in America as I get the animus of every racist walking because I am a race mixer.

The one thing that the likes of Tom Metzger, David Duke, Louis Farrakahn, and the late and unlamented Kahlid Abdul Mohammed agree on is that they all hate my guts.

The facts are that you cannot produce anything in evidence of the human species having not originated from the three basic races that are listed. Your contention, and that of Encarta, is based on everyone being everything but has no basis in fact on where that "everything" came from or what it breaks down into in its simplest form.

I reject all encompassing statements like:

... most anthropologists reject the idea that "pure" races existed at some time in the distant past.

So the first guy was a mixture of .... ?

And then there's this:

The term race is often misunderstood and misused. It is often confused with ethnicity, an ambiguous term that refers mostly, though not exclusively, to cultural (non-biological) differences between groups. An ethnic group derives its identity from its distinctive customs, language, ancestry, place of origin, or style of dress. For example, the Hispanic ethnic group comprises people who trace their ancestry to Spanish-speaking countries in the Western Hemisphere. Although some people assume Hispanics have a common genetic heritage, in reality they share only a language.

Which supports my contention in the very first post I posted ... remember this part?

American Blacks, Whites, and Asians all make up a geographical American Ethnicity as a whole. We can hyphenate ourselves until we all turn a lovely shade of Blue but we will still be nothing more than a Blue American geographical Ethnicity.

For example, skin color is distributed as a cline, generally varying along a north-south line. Skin color is lightest in northern Europeans, especially in those who live around the Baltic Sea, and becomes gradually darker as one moves toward southern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and into northern Africa and northern subtropical Africa. Skin is darkest in people who live in the tropical regions of Africa. The lack of clear-cut discontinuities makes any racial boundary based on skin color totally arbitrary.

I.e.: The amount of melatonin in the skin increases as one approaches the Equator. Wow! What a revelation!

Race mixing highlights another problem in defining races. In the United States, the child of a white parent and a black parent is usually defined as black, because American society traditionally has not recognized intermediate racial categories. In biological terms, however, the child shares in each parent's genetic heritage equally. Until the mid-20th century, many states defined a person as black if he or she had even a small fraction of black ancestry. Most state laws specified the fraction of black ancestry that made someone black as one-fourth or one-eighth. Thus, having one black great-grandparent was sufficient to define a person as black, but having seven white great-grandparents was insufficient to define the person as white. A Virginia law (overturned in 1967) went even further, defining as black "every person in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood"-the so-called one-drop rule. These definitions were created as part of laws against miscegenation, which were designed to prohibit interracial marriage.

Politics, politics, politics. A white, blue-eyed, blond Africaner from South Africa is an African-American here in America.

The human species has less genetic variability than many other animal species, including chimpanzees, the closest living relatives of humans.

Hmmm. Doesn't this single statement disavow the endangered species theory of this sub-species vs that sub-species such as the Stevens Kangaroo Rat debacle in California? If there is no distinct subset of humans there can, by definition, be no subset of rats either. Now that I would go along with readily!

 

[Bahadur]

jimpeel:

I reject all encompassing statements like:


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
... most anthropologists reject the idea that "pure" races existed at some time in the distant past.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uh, isn't your statement an "all encompassing statement" itself?

Basically, I have done more for racial integration, and in suppport of your contentions, with my penis than Jesse jackson and his ilk could do with a thousand school buses.

Fine and dandy (I am in a "mixed" marriage and have a "mixed" family as well). But ignorance of scientific facts and analyses is, sometimes, fully compatible with finding members of other ethnic groups sexually attractive.

Yeah, those are certainly some way-out-there sources all right.

Ah, but the information contained therein is not necessarily endorsed by these larger organizations, and was merely presented as "*a* point of view."

The amount of melatonin in the skin increases as one approaches the Equator. Wow! What a revelation!

Apparently, though, you missed the more subtle implication of the statement - which is that superficial appearance differences (like skin tones) are very recent environmental adaptations rather than biological "racial" (if you will) origin differences.

The facts are that you cannot produce anything in evidence of the human species having not originated from the three basic races that are listed. Your contention, and that of Encarta, is based on everyone being everything but has no basis in fact on where that "everything" came from or what it breaks down into in its simplest form.

Sigh... From my earlier post, the section titled "A. Based on Physical Appearance" demonstrates why categorizing "race" based on physical appearances is faulty, as it gives numerous facts about the scientific invalidation of some of the arbitrary "racial" physical characteristics.

The section titled "B. Based on Genetic Makeup" shows that genetic evidence is against the "race as sub-species" nonsense. Otherwise, how do you explain the following:

The direct analysis of DNA, which became possible in the 1980s, has revolutionized the study of human variation. DNA research has shown that similarities among all people far outweigh any differences. On average, two randomly chosen individuals have 99.9 percent of their genetic material in common. Of the 0.1 percent variation that does exist, 85 percent exists within populations; only 15 percent exists between populations. [emphasis mine]

If there are really "races," wouldn't the genetic differences be greater between such population groupings rather than within. Yet the opposite is the case. But I suppose you'd just "reject it all," wouldn't you?

My contention is not that "everyone is from everything." Rather, it is that the physical differences you see on humans are from rather recent specific regional environmental adaptations that have NOTHING to do with the perceived notions of biological "race." On the contrary, every so-called evidence from the past of the existence of "race" has been invalidated by recent scientific breakthroughs like DNA and other methods of biological studies.

BTW, even those who refuse to admit the DNA evidences and still proclaim "race" as a valid biological sub-division do not claim that there are only three races (i.e. your "Caucasoid," "Mongoloid" and "Negroid"). The reason those three were prominent in earlier, more primitive studies of "race" was because early Europeans were first cognizant of peoples from Europe, Asia and Africa - before they began to make voyages to other, more distant, parts of the world. The prevalence on the part of many to see "distinct races" also has to do with patterns of human migration and conflict (for example, the human populations of sub-Saharan Africa and China were linguistically much, much more diverse at one time before the Bantu expansion and Han Chinese expansion, respectively, displaced a great majority of these diverse groups, whose vestige still remains in the form of certain linguistic remnants incompatible to Bantu and Han Chinese languages). Because people are generally very poorly informed and educated about these population displacements, they do not realize that the supposedly "uniform"-looking population characteristics (often arbitrarily mislabelled as racial characteristics) are a very recent phenomenon associated with conquest and the subsequent widespread settlement of a particular group of people (like Bantus) in a given region (like sub-Saharan Africa).

I've already explained earlier that the origin of the term "Caucasoid" isn't even scientific, and that it evolved from a bizzarre cranial fetish of an 18th Century "physician" (who pronounced the cranial remains of a Caucasian Georgian woman the most "beautiful" and "ideal," and that the rest of humanity simply degenerated from this "pure" Caucasian race, thus making the Europeans or "Caucasians" in his term that closest thing to this "pure" race).

So the first guy was a mixture of .... ?

Sigh... You really don't get it, do you? Who says that there was "the first guy"? Or is it that you believe Adam was "the first man" and then his (and Noah's) descendants Ham, Shem and Jephtha divided neatly into the three "races"?

I hate to make a cross-spiecies comparison, but do you believe that the different breeds of dogs are also a biological sub-species "pure" categories too (which is nonsense as every "pure" breed is a mixture of various different strains of proto-dogs and earlier dogs)?