4 ms·
This article is somehow trying to say that race doesn't exist because we found the genes for skin color? What?
by darawk 9y ago
This article is somehow trying to say that race doesn't exist because we found the genes for skin color? What?
- astrodust 9y agoThey're saying that skin color is what people think is a reliable indicator of race, but in fact, genetically speaking, it's a total mess and nothing is clear at all.
- kemerover 9y agoBut it is a reliable indicator of race. Article even says it: >The dark-skinned people of southern India, Australia and New Guinea, for example, did not independently evolve their color simply because evolution favored it. >They inherited the ancestral dark variants Dr. Tishkoff’s team found in Africans. “They had to be introduced from an African population,” said Dr. Tishkoff.
- astrodust 9y agoThere's multiple genetic factors that dictate skin tone, and the overlap between these is pretty chaotic. They even admit there's some aspects to skin tone that are still completely a mystery, there's no genetic marker(s) they can point to as the cause.
- HillaryBriss 9y agoi think the article is claiming that the skin-color-centric definition of race doesn't make sense any more: “If you ask somebody on the street, ‘What are the main differences between races?,’ they’re going to say skin color,” said Sarah A. Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania. i suppose that Tishkoff is right, but to be a bit more rigorous about it, i would be curious to see the sociological research that demonstrates that "somebody on the street" actually thinks that "the main differences between races" are "skin color." maybe people don't think that. not really sure either way.
- tptacek 9y agoI think you're answering a question the article doesn't pose. Tishkoff didn't claim to have refuted the concept of races, but rather just the notion that they were directly tied to skin color.
- darawk 9y ago> The research “dispels a biological concept of race,” Dr. Tishkoff said.
- pizza 9y agoI think there's two ways to read this: "dispels a biological concept of race" - as in, it dispels one concept or "dispels a biological concept of [human] race [because the genetics variants determining pigment predate humanity, therefore either human delineation of race predates humans, or is incoherent]"
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- HillaryBriss 9y agohuh? i'm not trying to start an argument but i think i was saying pretty much the same thing you're saying. i think we actually agree on this.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]