What if race wasn't fictional?

Post Reply New Topic

Why should I accept your opinion over Katerina Harvati's? She is a professor and director of Paleoanthropology at a major university. She is the leading expert on this subject, with almost 30 years of experience. Her published works, documentaries, and peer reviews are far from spurious.

I wish this wasn't so:

But Homo neanderthalensis is considered a separate species within the genus of Homo.

I was very disappointed when the research findings became slanted towards Neanderthals as a separate species.

I had an idealized vision of the entity known as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis---but it wasn't meant to be

What if we stopped having to wonder or figure out if race is a social construct or not?

That wasn't really meant as being aggressive, so I legitimately sometimes wonder if race really is biological in some form or if we need this knowledge at all. Besides, a lot of "race is a social construct" is used as a cover for paranoia because people are pressured not to talk about race as it were a concept.

Archaeologists have been basing hundreds of years of hominid evolution on skeletons
Genetics has turned their assumptions on its head
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -brethren/
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2014 ... t-species/

scientific evidence has already established there is no biological basis of race
There is no genetic sequence unique to blacks or whites or Asians. In fact, these categories don’t reflect biological groupings at all. There is more genetic variation in the diverse populations from the continent of Africa (who some would lump into a “black” category) than exists in ALL populations from outside of Africa (the rest of the world) combined!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bu ... ople-think

I have to tread carefully, given the WP rules. I don't make a distinction between the two, I was using tautology there for effect, echoing the original mistake. There must be a link between a population's genetics and its abilities, its strengths, its weaknesses, its behavioural patterns, physical attributes et al. To say there isn't is to say that humans are exempt from the known laws of biology.

Well, for me it would only mean that the "race" as a social construct does not fit the "race" as biological variation.

This is simplistic to lay out as "biology". The erroneous belief is that a person is black or Asian then there is some "foreign" gene. Racists get excited and jump up and down.
Skin color pertains to melanin production. A gene is activated to overproduce melanin. No missing or additional genes
Epicanthal fold in Asians is activated by a gene to over produce skin around the eyes and nose bridge causing the eye to have the "asian shape" - both gene activation/selection based on environment

Differences in physiology/performance i.e. black people are faster or don''t produce enough Vit D or Asian people don't produce muscle are due to epigenetics where genes are switched on or off based on environmental differences

Sorry but here you go too far. You deny genetics and attribute everything to epigenetics. This is not true.
There are genes responsible for producing different kinds of melanin. You can't "switch on" black genes in a child of European descent, even if it could be handy in sunny environment. A pair of blue-eyed parents cannot have a brown-eyed child. There are several "genetic markers" the researchers investigate to trace past movements of peoples.

Yes, cultures and environments are way more important factors for intelligence or behavioral patterns than genetics. But lactose tollerance or lack of it, skin cancer risk, vit D deficiency risk, getting fat pattern, muscle growth pattern, some diseases immunity or lack of it - it all comes with genes. The point is, those genes often don't fit the superficial "race" concept.

Actually they do...it's a little bit like global warming...99% of scientists are in agreement

Almost all researchers say that those phenotypic traits most commonly used to distinguish one race from another, like skin and eye color, or the width of the nose, are traits controlled by a relatively few number of genes, and thus have been able to change rapidly in response to extreme environmental pressures during the short course of Homo sapiens history.

And so equatorial populations evolved dark skin, presumably to protect against ultraviolet radiation, while people in northern latitudes evolved pale skin, the better to produce vitamin D from pale sunlight.

If you ask what percentage of your genes is reflected in your external appearance, the basis by which we talk about race, the answer seems to be in the range of .01 percent. This is a very, very minimal reflection of your genetic makeup.''

Unfortunately for social harmony, the human brain is exquisitely attuned to differences in packaging details, prompting people to exaggerate the significance of what has come to be called race

The criteria that people use for race are based entirely on external features that we are programmed to recognize. And the reason we're programmed to recognize them is that it's vitally important to our species that each of us be able to distinguish one individual from the next. Our whole social structure is based on visual cues, and we've been programmed to recognize them, and to recognize individuals.''

By contrast with the tiny number of genes that make some people dark-skinned and doe-eyed, and others as pale as napkins, scientists say that more important traits like intelligence, artistic talent and social skills are likely to be shaped by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of the 80,000 or so genes in the human genome, all working in complex combinatorial fashion.

So they are insignificant...millions (perhaps billions) over the centuries have died because of this primitive social programming

Look, it doesn’t need to have a biological basis.

That's my point, we have elevated a social construct to give it a level of importance that it doesn't warrant (or merit)

True, but we are also using a social construct to attempt censoring research on it.

Don't think so. Humans went through a population bottleneck, in which the population was reduced to a few thousand, and genetic diversity decreased accordingly http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2975862.stm. I read chimp populations a few 100 km apart are genetically more distinct than any human populations. So human population differences would have to have evolved quite recently. So what can exist depends on how quickly each of the traits you're interested in can evolve. Do you know? There is a limit to how fast traits can evolve, defined in bits per generation https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002251938570183X. Humans have relatively long generations. The genetic contribution to behavioural traits usually invovles many genes having a little influence. I think that means population differences in behavioural traits would take longer than single gene mutations like sickle cell anaemia.

Also, if there is a genetic basis to population differences in abilities and behavioural patterns, then you should expect the greatest variation in Africa, where genetic variation is the greatest https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05951. If that is not the pattern you find, you have some work to do to rescue a genetic explanation for population differences.

What censorship? there is currently a massive database of genetic differences being collected as we speak called the human genome project...I would say the opposite to censorship is occurring

The Chinese and some European countries are trying to re-write history to make it sound like Caucasians and orientals never set foot in the "dark continent"
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... ca-theory/

Professor Chris Stringer, Prof Cavalli Sforza and Prof Spencer Welles (giants in human genome research) had long ago debunked the multi-regional hypothesis and peer reviewed genetic research has simply supported their original research

There remains support for the multi-regional evolution of humans from people who are uncomfortable with the "Out of Africa" hypothesis