Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up humanity?

[Rakomu]

So, I'm intrigued, does race (whatever that may mean) exist? The left generally says nope and the right generally says yes. Is looking at external characteristics useful in any medical way? Is it meaningful to group everyone with black skin together? Is it an inaccurate way of dividing up humanity? What would the better ways be? I'd like to hear your views!

 

[IBSpify]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

does race (whatever that may mean) exist?

Yes, though the differences between races are so insignificant that it really doesn't mater much.

Is looking at external characteristics useful in any medical way?

Actually yes, for example people with red hair have a recessive gene on chromosome 16 which causes a change in the MC1R protein. one side effect of this (besides the lack of ability to tan) is that they require greater amounts of anesthetic.

Is it an inaccurate way of dividing up humanity?

That depends I suppose on the purpose of dividing up humanity. As the question stands there is no real way to answer it, if your proposing we divide up people based upon the amount of melanin in their skin, then yes it's an accurate way of dividing them, if your dividing them based on mental ability it's an inaccurate way of dividing them.

What would the better ways be?

Again we're dividing them on what basis? without knowing this there is no real significant manner to answer this question.

 

[AdmiralPeacock]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

Misfired post.. :lol:

edit: Now I can answer.

does race (whatever that may mean) exist?

Yes and No - As vulgar as the baggage attached to the word "race" in this context is, it's still probably a little more PC than Breed.

The left generally says nope and the right generally says yes.

Assuming you mean Left = Liberal/Progressive and Right = Conservative then it's hardly surprising - a good measure of xenophobia is inherent in a conservative position.

Is looking at external characteristics useful in any medical way?

Yup - Sickle Cell is more common in certain "races" than in others.

Is it meaningful to group everyone with black skin together?

By "meaningful" do you mean "correct" or "morally right" or "good"? I mean, grouping everyone with black skin together because you hate anyone different from yourself is meaningful - not a nice meaning...

Is it an inaccurate way of dividing up humanity?

Yes and no - there area categorical advantages to classifying humans into various groups and sub-groups... but there are some serious solution disadvantages to do so.

What would the better ways be? I'd like to hear your views

No Idea. Probably base it more on Genetics than race.

 

[SynapticMisfire]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

So, I'm intrigued, does race (whatever that may mean) exist?

Yes and no. Yes, if you mean "are there genetically distinct subgroups within Homo sapiens?", and no if you mean "is there a master race / are blacks inherently inferior / is race mixing wrong / are races immutable" etc. Race is a rather fuzzy term, like 'kind' in creationist nomenclature, and it's useful to draw up a more precise definition of what you mean by race when having a conversation about it.

Is looking at external characteristics useful in any medical way?

Race, in a modern scientific sense, isn't something that's determined by skin tone, but by ancestry, and in practical terms, by analysis of a broad range of genetic markers in cases where ancestry is unknown. Suppose for a moment that a dog breeder selectively bred a line of cocker spaniels that had short black and white spotted fur, just like a dalmatian. It would be absurd to claim that the cocker spaniels were now dalmatians; they'd have a superficial resemblance to dalmatians, but everything 'under the hood' would still be in keeping with their cocker spaniel heritage and a genetic test would quickly reveal this.

A vet treating these cocker spaniels that resemble dalmatians would be doing a poor job if he or she checked the dogs for medical conditions common to dalmatians, such as deafness, bladder stones and hyperuricemia, but didn't check for medical conditions common to cocker spaniels, such as otitis externa and progressive retinal atrophy.

Is it meaningful to group everyone with black skin together? Is it an inaccurate way of dividing up humanity? What would the better ways be? I'd like to hear your views!

A sound scientific treatment of race doesn't group people into well defined, immutable categories, but rather recognises that races blend into each other due to gene mixing at geographical boundaries and via migration, invasion and other mechanisms. Introduce an actual dalmatian into the line of cocker spaniels and you'll have something in-between, bridging the genetic gulf between dalmatians and cocker spaniels, and even without such mixing, the line of cocker spaniels could diversify over time into multiple distinct lineages which could later merge with each other, split again, go extinct, acquire new traits, lose old ones and generally change over time until the term 'cocker spaniel' is no longer sufficient to describe a particular group of cocker spaniels, and it becomes necessary to create more specific terms such as English cocker spaniel and American cocker spaniel.

 

[Squawk]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

So, I'm intrigued, does race (whatever that may mean) exist?

I'm gonna go with no, and I'll justify it as follows.

The only way I can think to define race is to catagorise people based on a given physical trait or set of traits. Choice of those traits is entirely arbitrary. Skin colour has been used often in the past so it's tempting to presume that we can use skin colour to define race. I'd submit that bloody type would be a much better way to divide the species than is skin colour.

You can group humans on an infinite number of characteristics. I for one am all in favour of doing so in order to better understand certain aspects of physicality. The red hair/anasthetic phenomena mentioned above would be one such instance (that I know nothing about), but I'd look to other areas. Why are all top level male sprinters (with very few exceptions) black? It sure as hell isn't anything to do with skin colour, but it could well be that skin colour in those men is an indicator of some other shared characteristic for which we could derive an evolutionary history. Try doing that study without getting called a racist though...

Race is such a sensitive issue that it's very difficult to start to divide the population up and not be labelled racist, regardless of intent or motive, and yet to date I haven't seen a definition of race that I deem both applicable, and derogatory.

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

As I understand it all the other "races" are more closely genetically related to each other than different populations of Africans are. I heard recently on a science/skeptical podcast that there are certain places in Africa where neighbouring populations look superficially similar but are in fact more closely related to Europeans than they are to each other.

I'd therefore say that the concept of race has very little scientific use if it's going purely on how people look. A far more useful way of dividing people would be along genetic lines, although even that could of course have unwanted ethical implications...

 

[Anachronous Rex]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

Others on this forum have already answered the question satisfactorily in my estimation, but there are a few things I'd like to add:

It's not medically useless, sickle-cell anemia has already been mentioned. There are also races more prone to various cancers, usually due to a single gene common in that population, it's useful to know that. A lot of diseases are linked to the y-chromosome, patrilineal heritage can greatly effect your risk of, for instance, colorblindness.

Of course, anyone can have sickle-cell anemia, some races are just more prone to the disease for obvious reasons. Anyone can have a gene that renders you more vulnerable to one or more types of cancer, and you can still get cancer even if you don't, some races just have a higher incidence of one such gene. And considering how often the y-chromosome breaks down on its own, colorblindness (particularly the red-green variety) can happen to anyone.

So while these sort of things are medically relevant, it's not really preferential to be of any one race over another most of the time. On the rare occasion that it is preferential, its almost always because of superficial environmental reasons: You don't want to have pale skin in a sunny climate, you don't want to be too dark in a sunless climate (at least until recently, vitamin D supplements work wonders); sickle-cell is useful in the company of certain parasites, really narrow eyes (even for Native Americans or Asians) help the Inuit see at distance despite snow-glare, etc.

These differences, however, have surprisingly little to do with race at all. Superficial changes in appearance (exempting the example of sickle-cell, of course), are very easily achieved. There is a lot of Asian DNA in Europe, but you wouldn't know it to look at Europeans. Similarly I've heard it said that there is as much or more genetic diversity present in the African Continent then in the rest of the world combined, and yet most of them tend to be lumped together because of a similar skin color.

 

[borrofburi]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

Race is an invention we humans impose on an otherwise unordered nature... Does it exist? Depends on what you mean by exist.

Is it meaningful? I think not: different peoples have different dividing lines for race and different numbers of races. Something so abritrary strikes me as rather meaningless.

 

[FaithlessThinker]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

Ultimately we're all african.

On the sidelines, I'm thinking the world will become one race again as inter-racial marriages become more commonplace, mixing up races and blurring the lines between them. It's like mixing different water colours in a single bowl. At first they maybe distinct, but as the mixing continues, they blend into each other and slowly become one colour. (This is just a hypothesis I thought of today.)

 

[FatStupidAmerican]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

"Race is only cultural"

~Lanny Hertzberg

 

[Spartan - 063]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

Thinking about this issue makes me think about the documentary I saw a few nights ago called 'Race and Intelligence - Science's Last Taboo' by the BBC TV presenter Rageh Omarr. I think it was based on how the primary cause for changes in intelligence was due to behavioural and environmental factors, and that there is very little difference based on race since the genetic makeup between races is staggeringly similar.

 

[Inferno]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

One of the last chapters in Jerry Coyne's books "Why Evolution is true" is entitled "The tricky question of race".

But to Biologists, race - so long as it doesn't apply to humans! - has always been a perfectly respectable term. Races (also called "sub-species" or "ecotypes") are simply populations of a species that are both geographically separated and differ genetically in one or more traits. There are plenty of animal and plant races, including those mouse populations that differ only in coat color, sparrow populations that differ in size and song, and plant races that differ in the shapes of their leaves. Following this definition, Homo Sapiens clearly does have races. And the fact that we do is just another indication that humans don't differ from other evolved species.

BTW, between 10-15% of genetic differences are present between races and the rest within races.

I'd really recommend the book.

 

[nasher168]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

Ultimately we're all african.

Telling that to neonazis is a great way to pass time.

 

[AndroidAR]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

The associate dean of biological studies at my university that did research on this, and I think what he determined was that there was more genetic variation within races than between races. He's published 2 books on the subject.
His wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_L._Graves

I too personally think that race is mostly social construct. I'm in the process of researching if an innate xenophobia exists in humans, and if varying degrees of it might streamline explanations of sociological and cultural phenomena, from race all the way down to cliques (which I used as a starting point).

 

[obsidianavenger]

Re: Does race exist or is it a poor way of dividing up human

The associate dean of biological studies at my university that did research on this, and I think what he determined was that there was more genetic variation within races than between races.

this is what i've heard.

personally i think that most traditional notions of race as defined by physical appearance are bankrupt, but that a more nuanced version based on genetics can be useful, for example, in medical applications. however, until genome sequencing becomes the norm we're pretty much stuck using appearance as a proxy in that regard or instituting tests for specific genes.