What color are you?/What race are you? Are there any non whites here?

If my name was Herring I'd change it to Mackerel.

 

Yes.funny, but if your name was Caucasian could you change it to Australian Aboriginal?
One of the things that makes race valid is it's utility in description.
(Dawkins spoke to that point)

 

Um, I'll have to get back to you on that!

 

there's a couple that say black. Me? I "self-identify" as white.

 

Nationality is just a bureaucratic term that holds no organic or historical meaning. People are giving away their ethnicities. To people living outside of the US, it is more natural to speak about and identitify by ethnicity rather than race. But, Americans do not really have an ethnos, so they have replaced it with race.

 

I'm just about every nationality except Italian. Believe there is even some 'Creole' in the genealogy, unspecified heritage on that one, so who knows. In reality, who cares - I am who I am.

 

Daytona 500

 

If you wanted to self-identify as a different race and have people accept you as a different race all you would need to do is get a cosmetic makeover to look like the race you want to be.

Consider the following examples.....



In this video a guest on Tyra Banks talk show expresses his hatred for being born Black (African-American). His reasoning is that he hates his physical appearance and African-American culture (aka "Ghetto/Hood" culture) while noting that Tyra is in a different category of Black (aka an exception to the rule). He has has long admired White people and wishes he was White. Tyra Banks gives him a chance to live as a White man for a day by putting on makeup and a wig to look "racially Caucasian."

After the experiment the self-hating Black man states that he loved looking White and how he was treated. Tyra points out that he didn't really look White to her but probably "felt" White and this boosted his self-esteem.

Although genetically predominately of African descent this man identified race with culture and aesthetic appearance so much so that he wanted to change his race. You could say that he was transracial in much the same way that some people are born biologically one sex and identify with another then use surgery, makeup and clothing to look like the sex they want to be calling this identity transgender.

Neither the DNA of the transracial man or transgenders has actually changed but this does show that you can not only call yourself the race you want, embrace it as your identity but get society to accept you for what you claim to be (as long as your disguise is good enough). Transracial isn't accepted as a "real thing" by many (whatever that means) and in this case Tyra's guest has also blended self-identity with racism associating different races with different racial stereotypes (he is fine with Blacks who don't fit the negative stereotypes) so that is an understandable reason for why society would not accept this however it doesn't change the fact that some people feel this way.



Rachel Dolezal is another good example. She identifies as African-American. Unlike the real life Uncle Ruckus above she was involved in civil rights (Egalitarianism) as a local President of the NAACP in her community. However it was revealed that both of her parents are White Americans (Americans of European descent). Dolezal altered her physical appearance to look like a light-skinned or "biracial" Black woman despite having no recent African ancestry. Despite representing something positive she was widely criticized for her decision yet defended it and maintains that she is a proud African-American which many Black women disagreed with.

Both of these individuals changed their appearance to what one might call "transracial" and one did it not only as an experiment (there was also a TV series called "Black. White.") where the makeup was taken off but was able to pull off changing racial identity as a way of life. If you are already world famous looking one way like Michael Jackson, who blamed his change in appearance on the skin disease vitiligo you will still be labeled by society as the race they have always known you as but self-identified race is very much about what you see in the mirror and how you are treated more so than whether or not those categories have a biological basis.

What are we to make of people who are ancestrally of two or more geographic populations?

So-called Biracial or Multiracial folk.....



In this video Tiger Woods talks about his self-identity when Oprah asks him and his father, referencing a childhood experience where he was tied to a tree and called the N-word and a monkey how he was raised to identify. His father said he was human. Tiger called himself "Cablinasian" and expressed his dislike for being labeled by a single racial category (his father is African-American and his mother is from Thailand with both claiming some mixed ancestry). Tiger said that his genetic code doesn't define him as a person and he was born in a household with parents of different races. He is Black + Asian not just Black (echoing the "Biracial not Black damn it!" attitude of many with partial African ancestry who self-identify as Biracial or Multiracial).

But how does society treat him?

When Tiger Woods became the #1 golfer in the world and highest paid athlete he was recognized by the mainstream media as the first African-American to win the Masters. A Black First. He also experienced anti-Black racism from the public including White Supremacists on the internet who couldn't stand the fact that he married a Swedish model, a White woman who he had two children with. Tiger Woods became the face of the successful and positive Black Male role model with an interracial family despite not identifying as Black.

Unfortunately for Tiger the media tore him down just as quickly as they built him up once the scandal involving his wife catching him cheating on her made news. He cheated, got caught and attacked him with a golf club. Not only did he cheat with one woman but with many, with WHITE women.





One of the common themes in the African-American community when it comes to Biracial or Multiracial identity is that people who identify as mixed race are not treated differently by their society. The biracial offspring of Black women during slavery lived as slaves regardless of how they were treated by the slave masters. Blacks had to sit at the back of the bus during Segregation. There was a White section and a Colored section. There was no mulatto or octoroon section. The One-Drop Rule was a social norm and a legal reality. Today with all of the progress American society has made legally on equal rights one of the major issues concerning race-relations is police brutality and racial bias in the criminal justice system. If you get arrested by the police they give a physical description including your sex and your race.

So how was Tiger Woods labeled when he was arrested for a DUI?



Black. Not Cablinasian. Not Biracial or Multiracial. Black with a capital B.

His self-identity was largely denied or ignored by society despite ancestrally having one Black and one Asian parent. He didn't change his appearance. He is who he is. What he writes on a U.S. census form is not the same as what the police wrote in their report nor how the media treats him.



Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States is another person who ancestrally has one Black (Kenyan) parent and one White (European-American). Rather than deny his African-American identity he embraces it as a positive. In the video above Obama mentions that he wrote a whole book about the identity crisis he experienced in his youth. In his book Dreams From My Father Obama talks about growing up in Hawaii with his father not having an active role in his life, after getting divorced from his mother when he was 2 years old and not seeing him in person until he was 10 where he visited for only one month. Obama developed an African-American identity from the way he was treated by peers, the influence of American media, hanging out with his Black friends in Hawaii and the influence of his Egalitarian minded mother. When he grew up he graduated from one of the top Universities in the world, got involved in politics, joined a Black church and married a Black woman with a traditional African-American ancestral background.

Still the race question persisted. During his run for President and throughout his Presidency Obama endured some of the worst racism imaginable from conspiracy theories involving his location of birth and eligibility to run for President, lies about sexual identity and rumors of him having sex with gay men and smoking crack while he was married to Michelle, claims that he wasn't "authentically Black" because he didn't have "slave blood," the labeling of his healthcare policy dubbed "Obamacare" as a socialist program with signs at rallies portraying him as an African witch doctor. Claims that he was a terrorist sympathizer, secret Muslim, an "ARAB!" and was indoctrinated in a madrassa. Claims that he was a Black Nationalist who hated White people including his own White Grandmother who he "threw under the bus" for writing and speaking about her prejudices against Black men who approached her on the street. There were even claims that Obama was the anti-Christ which lead to a heckler openly confronting him with the claim.

Combined with all of the lies, smears, rumors and outright character assassination several Neo-Nazi/White Supremacists were arrested for plotting to murder Obama while he was running for President and during his Presidency. In America you are not only forced to live with the label of being Black for having partial African ancestry you could also be killed for it as the assassinations of Medgar Evers and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have proven (the CIA and FBI were also involved in the surveillance of Malcolm X and believed to have conspired with the Nation of Islam to assassinate him). Obama was the President of the United States who ran on a campaign of change and unity but was treated as no different than any other Black leader with liberal views while facing criticism and personal attacks that had nothing to do with his political policies.





Now of course racialists can take these examples and say "Come on EgalitarianJay. That doesn't prove that race isn't real. A person can change their physical appearance artificially but their DNA doesn't change and mixed race people are racially ambiguous. The existence of a Negroid-Caucasoid hybrid does not change the fact that there are Negroids and Caucasoids or Mongoloids or Australoids just as the existence of mutts doesn't change the fact that their are pure bred dogs. A German Shepherd looks, thinks and behaves like a German Shepherd and a Rottweiler looks thinks and behaves like a Rottweiler. There are genetic ancestral differences that can be used to group human beings. The categories have biological reality and utility in science regardless of how people identify or label each other. And pointing this out is not racist!"

I for one agree that believing in the existence of human races does not make someone racist. After all race was accepted as a biological reality for most of American history and that didn't stop Civil Rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from promoting racial equality. In order to have racial equality you have to believe in races. Race exists as a social reality in the minds of people raised in a culture that accepts and values race. Where race becomes a moral issue is when someone says that races are not only real and important but that people should be treated differently and unfairly because of their race. Whether we are talking about separation (Segregation or Apartheid), Oppression (slavery, genocide terrorism or denial of Civil Rights) or intolerance (not accepting a fellow human being's worth as an equal or hating them because of their physical characteristics and ancestry rather than judging their character) racist ideology has had a negative effect on the lives of many people and become an obstacle to world progress.

 

Part II


So what does science have to say about race? Why do many scientists dismiss the concept of race as a biological reality?.....

The text highlighted in blue is the key point here. Humans do differ in physical traits as a result of adapting to different environments where certain traits were more beneficial but those traits do not mirror genetic relationships and as a species the genetic variation between human populations is much smaller than between most species. So physical characteristics associated with the word race are real and ancestry is real which means that certain biological traits can be identified, distinguished and have utility in modern science and real world situations.

A population geneticist can identify Ancestry Informative Markers and give ethnicity estimates that to agree conform to self-identified race or ethnicity. A Biological Anthropologist can study the skeleton, teeth or DNA of physical remains and assess population relationship based on that. Biomedical researchers can use genetic research to identify health risks associated with genetic composition. However the small amount of genetic variation between populations and much greater variation within them does have implications for genetic relationships between people and many aspects of life that are commonly associated with racial background that have nothing to do with biology.



Question: Assume 100 Chinese men in a shower, 100 Englishmen in another shower and 100 Kenyans in another shower. Could you identify each group?

Todd Disotell: You could probably sort them out fairly well. Of course there are many....if you want to try to actually find what out criteria were we would actually find great difficulty. We could perhaps use skin color. But I would say that if we took a larger sampling of people there would be people where the skin color argument wouldn't work. If we sample them down at the genetic level where it really matters...skin color is actually a very minor trait due to relatively few loci perhaps only 5 genes are responsible for the variation in skin color. If got down to the genetic traits which are what were are talking about here, we're talking about the selection regime we're talking about what is ultimately responsible for these differences....I would probably would not be able to sort out these 3 groups of individuals if I was looking at their genes themselves.



Question: Is it possible to arrive at a biological definition of race that would be acceptable to people in your field?

Steven Jones: It's obviously true that there are geographic differences in human populations that's obviously the case, look at you and look at me! We look different. But if we were to look beneath the skin there wouldn't be a complete split. So actually the human race is remarkable compared to other primates in one way, it's so boring. We're so similar to each other from place to place.

Question: But at the same time, at the other side of the argument, one can't deny that there is a hereditary component in IQ.

Steve Jones: Oh no I think you would be extremely foolish to deny that there is a hereditary component in intelligence. It is extremely foolish to deny that there is a hereditary component in almost anything. Most things have some "heritability" as we say. You will probably some day find a few of the genes that underlie some of that heritability. But what that will tell you about Race & IQ I have no idea, I would imagine almost nothing.


The quotes from the videos above represent scientific consensus on the subject of the concept of biological race and its applicability to modern humans. Of course there is disagreement within the scientific community over whether or not biological races exist. The viewpoint of Joseph Graves, Todd Disotell and Steve Jones is more in line with what most evolutionary biologists, population geneticists and biological anthropologists think. Richard Dawkin's viewpoint is closer to that of naturalists who label all observable differences that they see within a population without concern for the degree of genetic variance.

When scientists say that race is only "skin deep" they mean that there are no major genetic differences beyond cosmetic appearance between human populations. Some traits can be of importance in certain situations such as darker skin providing resistance to sunlight or and some traits can be problematic for health such as having a genetic predisposition to a disease like Sickle-Cell Anemia or Tay-Sachs but these differences do not have social importance and shouldn't be confused with belief in racist pseudoscience (i.e. racial differences include differences in mental characteristics that determine cultural traits and have social importance).

These viewpoints are clearly different:



Racial Naturalism - We can all happily agree that human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of social and human relations. That is one reason why I object to ticking boxes in forms and why I object to positive discrimination in job selection. But that doesn’t mean that race is of ‘virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance’. This is Edwards’s point, and he reasons as follows. However small the racial partition of the total variation may be, if such racial characteristics as there are are highly correlated with other racial characteristics, they are by definition informative, and therefore of taxonomic significance. - Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale

vs.





Scientific Racism - Asians are behaving like Asians. Africans are behaving like Africans. There is no other explanation other than a biological one to explain the consistency of these behavioral patterns around the world. To say that race doesn't exist can not be true because otherwise you could not be finding these predictions.....These are racially ordained behaviors. We've got to get to grips with them. We've got to stop pretending we are all the same under the skin when we are not. - J. Philippe Rushton, Race, Evolution and Behavior presentation at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Socially-defined racial groups have their basis in the idea that humans can be grouped based on their external anatomical traits with the assumption that those traits are identifiers of significant biological differences between humans and are correlated with mental and cultural characteristics. There's no question that those traits are real but they don't define who you are, what you are capable of and how you should be treated.

 

I'm a "Grey", and I come from far away.

 

If the writers of the bible, knew how many races there actually were,
Noah would have had a lot more sons.

 

Part III

I've got a little more to add to my last post....



Here we have a White Supremacist who took an ancestral DNA test and found out that genetically he was 14% Sub-Saharan African (The equivalent of being about 1/8th Black having a 2nd Great Grandparent of African descent). While ancestral DNA testing for genetic composition is not an exact science they do have the potential to contradict our racial assumptions. A lot of light-skinned Blacks (Mulattoes, Quadroons, Octoroons), descendants of White male slave masters and Black female slaves (as well as occasional Black male slaves with White women) who were phenotypically European enough in physical appearance to "pass" as White moved in to White communities and had children with White Americans so that some modern White Americans have recent African ancestry. Those that say that DNA doesn't lie and confirm that race is biologically real, who believe in White Supremacy, can test that claim by showing their ancestral DNA results and see if they have "Pure Aryan Blood."

AncestryDNA confirmed that Barack Obama was the 11th Great Grandson of John Punch, the first African legally enslaved for life in the American colonies changing the historically narrative that he had no "slave blood." This ancestry came from from his mother's ancestral bloodline. Recently Ancestry.com changed their testing methods claiming they had more advanced algorithms that could give more accurate ancestral DNA results. My own results are slightly different than they were before with my African ancestry increasing to 81%, my Northern European ancestry being more English than Scandinavian (with the Scandinavian portion coming specifically from Norway) and some of my African ethnicity estimates changing significantly with some groups disappearing altogether.

Scientific advances in genetic research and testing will no doubt lead to more interesting results and projects but they are already destroying a lot of pseudoscientific racist assumptions about human biology.

 

Many people aren't aware these popular low cost DNA ancestry tests are borderline scams.

Oh, they do a genetic test, but it isn't anywhere near as accurate or specific as they'd like people to believe.

You want to actually have a good idea who your ancestors were 5 generations ago, it's going to cost a lot more than 200 dollars.

The standard tests they give people might say you're 6% Asian or 6% African when you're really not. They're simply not accurate enough to really know.
The scientifically ignorant public is so gullible.

Generally you have to be at least 12% something for these simple basic tests to actually know with accuracy.

The reason is because these tests are only looking for a few gene markers. The more gene markers the test is looking for, the more money it costs.

 

I’m multi racial, non white, and it is a little weird to read that a forum on race relations has so few people who identify as non white.

But on the other topic that’s come up here, a more interesting one, is that yes... how you identify racially or ethnically or whatever, does have very little to do with how you are identified by others.

Yes race may be a social construct, but it’s pretty undeniable that it has real world social consequences.

 

I'm human, and the bulk of my genetic heritage is northwestern european.

 

As I've said 100 times, I don't use race socially but biologically/scientifically.
I'm am not a fan of the Colloquial use of Race. (100x)
Repeated 100x....
People who share merely dark skin are NOT the same Race. (100x)
Australian Aborigines and sub-Saharan Africans are both 'Black' colloquially, but are VERY different Races. (100x)

So why was I being Disingenuously quoted/Mischaracterized/cited/'answered' as if I was a "social" Race user?
Just an excuse for the usual/insufferable Colorful Hard Drive dumps.

Races are SETS of features evolved over Tens of thousands of years. (100x)
BUT that even if a Pygmy was an albino, NO one would mistake him as 'white/euro/cauc.' (100x)
The "same" black hair on different races .. isn't upon inspection/analysis. It's texture is easily differentiated. (100x)

So that Race/subspecies, IN ALL CREATURES, IS, by Definition, Morphological (physical/looks) difference caused by genetic difference.
Enough difference that Groups can consistently be mixed and then reseparated with, ie, 90% (other high) accuracy back into their Race/subspecies.

Yes, with Cosmetic chicanery I too could fool people into confusing Species, much less subspecies/races.
That doesn't mean Races don't exist, and that we can't tell these Races apart without ANY Skin or hair color/cosmetics.

And that is precisely what Forensic and Physical Anthropologists do every day with Skleletal Remains Alone, and do so in legal cases.
So even if you were able to fool some people initially/cosmetically, it would not survive further analysis.

I too could cosmetically Change the two Gorilla species (gorilla and beringei) and subspecies (6 or 7) enough to fool someone's eye with some color and cosmetic chicanery.
That doesn't mean those Species, and Subspecies/Races don't exist either.
Oh No!

Note I can do this without 8 youtubes, 8 Charts/JPGs, 14 Scrolling feet, and multiple posts!
With just ONE logical post because I know what I'm talking about.

Gameover..again.. and so succinctly.
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Yes, you didn't say anything new. I also anticipated and addressed your argument outlining my views on race. You blend Racial Naturalism (Dawkins) with Scientific Racism (Rushton). Even if race were a biological reality it would not be a problem for my Egalitarian views. In fact even if Scientific Racism were valid I would still be an Egalitarian. Tim Wise wrote a great article on this referencing a lot of my arguments which I discussed with him via email.

Timwise.org - Race, Intelligence and the Limits of Science: Reflections on the Moral Absurdity of “Racial Realism”

I had a bit of fun writing an extended presentation of my views on race, self-identify and social definitions vs. biological definitions of race. So readers can have fun with that.

 

My post was for the benefit of all readers of the thread, not just you. I covered different issues concerning race and self-identity. I didn't misrepresent anything that you said.

I am a master of psychological warfare so my debate style is to write my posts in a way that is interesting and gets people's attention. You find my posts insufferable because they are colorful? Why does that bother you? Again your preoccupation with the style of my posts rather than the content says more about you than me. You have very odd posting habits which others have pointed out. For example why do you edit your posts to respond to the next comment? Why don't you just quote that post and continue the discussion? Some people might not even pick up on the fact that you do this and miss your response. You are the only person I have ever seen do this on a message board. That's highly unusual and illogical.

I've pointed out several times that the way you space your sentences and use of underlining is strange and unnecessary. One could actually call it insufferable but since I am not overly concerned with the your posting style I don't fixate on it in place of actual debate points.

 

That is unfortunately true.
But if you are a white conservative male in the USA, you are oblivious to that fact.

 

If you really want to screw with traditional pseudoscientific ideas of race, point out that so-called “black people” don’t necessarily belong to one “race” to the exclusion of others:

Human DNA sequences: more variation and less race

 

I'm from Kpax like Kevin Spacey but without the kiddie fiddling.

 

I'm black. I think at least a few people already knew.

 

Your avatar is priceless! Your posts are brilliant and your temperance in the face of ignorance is laudable.

 

Why would a person of color come to a board that mostly defends bigots? Who defends a president who sees neo nazis and white suprematists as some good people?

 

You really nailed it on "temperance". Within mere days!
If you want brilliance, try mine at the top of the page, and my other many reples/Refutations of your posts.

I am anti-Trump, but scientifically well versed.
At no time have ever advocated "white supremacism", though I have pointed there are differences among the races.. obviously.
One shouldn't paint all Race Realists as "white supremacists".
Most aren't, including Forensic Anthropologists who deal with Race in their work every day and in actual legal cases.

Oh, and I have noticed there are relatively few self-identified black or other 'non-white' posters on major general political message boards. If you see the former it's usually in mostly in the Race sections. Not sure why.
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