Even though 'Race' is A Social Construct, Racism Persists

Your doubt is irrelevant. If you can't counter the facts, then you must let the claim stand. Here's a peer-reviewed paper on identification of race by teeth, which the authors say is difficult but possible: http://www.ijofo.org/article.asp?is...me=2;issue=1;spage=38;epage=42;aulast=Rawlani

No one is arguing there is more than one human species extant. Race, on the other hand, would be more similar to breeds among domestic animals. Are there different breeds, with differing characteristics, different visual cues, different behaviors, etc.? Absolutely. Are there different races, with differing characteristics, different visual cues, different behaviors, etc.? Absolutely.

And yes, dogs and wolves are the same species. "For years, wolves and dogs were considered separate species: canis familiaris and canis lupus. However, more recently, scientists generally agree they are both a sub-species of canis lupus. Unlike dogs and foxes, wolves and dogs can reproduce, creating the controversial wolf-dog. When two animals can create a fertile offspring, they’re considered to be of the same species." https://www.rover.com/blog/wolf-vs-dog-whats-difference/

 

Yeah. In case you wondered, I am currently taking a diversity course and some of the material seemed like it was worth sharing with the PF. That, and I was ticked off about the Starbucks issue and how so many people were shrugging it off as nothing.
ETA: Personally, I consider myself basically a libertarian. I like anarchism, but it is not realistic in this world. Native American Iroquois Confederacy seems legit, but that is a bygone era. American classic liberalism or today's libertarianism is my brand.

 

Check this out.
How to read the genome and build a human being | Riccardo Sabatini

 

From your own link. https://biologyofbehavior.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/are-dogs-and-wolves-the-same-species/

The ability to create fertile offspring does not necessarily mean two animals are of the same species. That is a gross oversimplification. https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-22904,00.html

There is no evidence that any specific genetic variation relating to behavior, personality, etc. can be traced to phenotypic markers associated with race. You are just making things up. In fact there is far more genetic diversity between groups of people living in Africa than there is between white westerners. You are just latching on to simplistic ideas that fit your racist worldview.

 

"White" and "black" are social constructs, but genetic variation is not. Your science denialism is showing.

 

Well, it is useful in diagnosing and treatment of disease. Also for identification purposes.

Of course having a structure for ranking individuals is also useful.

 

Then again, we are all ancestors of the same group of apes, or if you go back far enough the same unicellular organism.

 

Then how do you know who is being discriminated against, who to attack for not believing you?
Liberalism seem to be a degenerative mental disease. When you start to say you can't tell the difference in racial identities, it's affecting vision as well.

 

Yet here I sit with my environmental and geospatial science degree.

 

Sure there are differences associated with geographic isolation. That does not mean what you think it does.

Come on guys. It aint that difficult.

This is all supported by studying the human genome. The modern species of humans left Africa in multiple waves over the last 50-70 thousand years. Mixed with neanderthals from Europe and Denosivans from Asia, migrating to the tip of South America by around 15,000 years ago. Since then we have all just been moving around intermarrying within the species. There is no sub-species or races. That would require complete isolation over a very long time.

 

If it did, then we would not have red birds and blue birds and dozens of varieties of finches, etc in the same country side by side- we would only have birds, and they would all basically look alike. Predominant features indicate a specific genetic combination. Unless you think what we call race is something resulting from nurture?

I agree DNA differences are small and in the details- but they damn sure are there, and differences are significant and obvious to everybody.
That does not mean inferiority- it means different.

 

It's 2018,we all have degrees.

 

We all have science degrees? Really?

 

I do, you do. Plenty of AGW deniers do too.

I don't see what your degree in environmental and geospatial science has to do with biology.

 

Delete

 

yes that is exactly why there are different races.

well true but that's because we're all the same species. Think of it as analogous to breeds of dog a chihuahua and a Great Dane are the same species they have far more similarities than differences but a chihuahua is not a Great Dane and a Great Dane is not a chihuahua if two chihuahuas mate they're not going to have great dane puppies that's essentially what a race is variances within a species it's just they're naturally occurring they weren't manipulated by generations of selective breeding.

I would say that that's total b*******. A person who is Asian if they were to breed with another Asian person they wouldn't have a black baby the baby would be Asian and there are noticeable differences they may be more subtle than the difference between a Chihuahua and a Great Dane but they're still there and those differences are genetic.

again I'm going to declare this b******* because yes you can if we base race on the different genes that evolved differently in different geographical location. Because people from here share these traits into people from their share these traits and they don't overlap those traits are where we come up with race.

All Race is a variance within species

 

Yep, there are some firms who make good business exploring human DNA and telling people "you are 50% British, 25% Italian, 10% Nigerian, 5% Jewish, 5% Indian or whatever.
Saying race traits don't exist is kinda foolish.

 

I mentioned it because you called me a science denier.

 

Already discussed this earlier in the thread. The DNA ancestry services are not all they claim to be.

 

So it's a conspiracy to affirm what everyone already knows?

 

Having a degree in science does not prevent you from denying science, as you did when you said race was not real. The science on it is very clear. You are wrong.

 

I have posted links to several scientific articles supporting my position, what have you presented, other than saying that I am wrong?

 

'Race is a social construct' means this: your DNA does not determine your behavior. Or, to be more precise, that portion of your DNA that determines your external appearance -- skin color, say -- is not linked to that portion of your DNA that influences your behavior, assuming there is such (and it's a reasonable assumption). There may be a statistical correlation, however.

Thus, if we take a certain group with a shared genetic inheritance, and find that, on average, they score significantly above or below average on some sort of test of behavior -- we cannot conclude that every member of that group will score that way. (However, it may be more, or less, statistically likely that an individual of that group, selected at random, will have a score closer to the mean for that group, than an individual taken from the whole human population.)

We may note that a particular group with a particular distribution of DNA tend, on average, to exhibit certain behaviors ... but 'some' is not 'most', and 'most' is not 'all'.

'Racism' is a vague term, but I take it to mean two things: a denial of the above proposition, added to a dislike of all individuals of a certain genetic background, regardless of their individual behavior.

Thus, if you are alone in an elevator in your apartment building in New York City, and at one floor, three young Black males get in, even the most self-righteous 'anti-racist' virtue signaller on this forum will, rightly, feel some apprehension -- if he does not know them. But if you feel apprehension, knowing that they are your dentist neighbor's college-student grandsons, then you're exhibiting 'racism'.

Of course the US is a paradise of racial toleration compared to most of the world. This is due to its particular history and material circumstances, which have been amazingly favorable compared to the history and circumstances of most peoples.

Racism need not take the form of violent aggression, or any public form at all. The Chinese know they're superior to the rest of us, but they don't let this knowledge express itself as dislike or contempt, any more than you would feel dislike or contempt for your dog.

If another genetic group does not threaten your own group's domination of its territory, and if it obeys your laws and generally behaves well, your own group's 'racism' toward it will diminish. Witness the Japanese in the United States during, and then after, World War II. (There are some amazingly racist movies and cartoons of the Japanese produced during the war.) Or witness the white attitude to American Indians -- at worst, a slightly amused gentle contempt. But if the numbers were reversed -- if there were hundreds of millions of angry Indians, resentful at the loss of their land, surrounding the US -- then the white attitude towards them would be like the Israeli attitude to the Palestinians, a perfectly parallel case.

Current white 'racism' in the US is mainly a result of the appalling behavior of the Black underclass, and runs directly counter to the official ideology of the US, which is a generalization of the capitalist view of the world: everyone's a potential customer and/or employee: if you've got the money to buy, or the labor-power to sell, the capitalist loves you. Even right-wing Republicans would love to have a credible Black conservative candidate to represent their Party.

As the world slowly and painfully knits together, due to the triumphal spread of the capitalist market to every corner of the globe, this capitalist view will triumph, aided by the slow homogenization of culture we can see among upcoming generations. In a hundred years or so, we'll all be Sino-American cultural hybrids, with some Bollywood mixed in.

It's a rational view, because co-operating in buying and selling things is much more lucrative for most of us than fighting over territory and girls and whatever you could steal after overrunning your rivals. For a few thousand years, if you had a numerous tribe and the horses to mount up a large number of young men, it made sense to invade and conquer your neighbors, rather than walking behind a water buffalo all day. The loot, the excitement, the women!!!

But in the age of nuclear weapons and God-knows-what-else-they're cooking up, it's no longer a rational behavior.

 

No, it doesn't. "Race is a social construct" means that the concept of race has no basis in biology, that it was purely invented by humans because muh bigotry.

I don't think your race determines your behavior either, but you don't see me argue that race doesn't exist except in our bigoted minds. That's insane.

I have no idea why people who think of themselves as "anti-racists" have the most ridiculous, reality denying position you can think of. Don't they know that if you do that then racists will win the debate, right?

Why are they arguing that race doesn't exist and not that races exist and are equal?

 

I don't think we're really in disagreement.

The 'race is a social construct' idea comes from some well-meaning anthropologists in convention some years ago, who hoped to give a scientific underpinning to anti-racist views. It's a shaky proposition on which to base your politics, even if your politics are well-meaning, because -- what if it was NOT a 'social construct'? What if there were very easily-identified genetic differences that made all X's more similar to each other than all Y's? Would that justify X's lynching Y's, or Y's keeping X's out of college or not hiring them despite the X in question being the best qualified?

Or ... suppose you did an extensive analysis of the DNA of all the members of a KKK Klavern, and showed them that they differed from each other far more than some of them differed from the Black down the road ... that only in the one tenth of one percent of their DNA that controlled skin color and nose shape and hair characteristics, did they share some similarity. Would that change their behavior towards Blacks?

Fear and distrust and contempt and suspicion towards other tribes may be perfectly justified by past history. The point of modern society is to create an environment where it is no longer justified.

A Jew who was chased home from school by Irish hooligans shouting 'Christ-killer' is naturally going to have the temptation to brand all the Irish as priest-ridden ignoramuses, even if his rational mind says "They're not all like that". The answer is not to say "None of them are like that", which was false at the time (I don't know about now), but to stop them being like that.

When you say 'races exist and are equal', you need to clarify something: do you mean 'races exist and the members of those races should have equal rights', or do you mean 'races exist and are equal in all desirable human qualities such as intelligence, law-abidingness, etc'.? Because the latter is so obviously not true that no one will believe you and it cuts across the correct response, which is to say that everyone should have equal rights regardless of what 'their race' exhibits as average behavior.