7 ms·
I find this meme annoying because it so often misses the point (as I'd argue it does in this particular discussion). Yes, races are largely a social concept. H
by atq2119 8y ago
I find this meme annoying because it so often misses the point (as I'd argue it does in this particular discussion).
Yes, races are largely a social concept. However, once society has defined races based on whatever phenotypes that are in fashion at the time, it turns out that yes, there is a biological and genetic basis for those phenotypes. It's conceivable that this biological basis could be targeted by some gene-based technology. Probably not very accurately, but based on past observations I'd say that racist mass murderers are not particularly likely to care about such subtleties. And that's what matters for the GP's point.
- Phenomenit 8y agoI understand what you are saying and there is definitely a difference in phenotype but from what I've read the it's not possible to make a distinction because the interrace variance is smaller than the intrarace variance. It might be hard targeting a specific race with biological tools when it's hard to specify race biologically. But yeah there is difference in people appearance depending on location of origin.
- mercer 8y agoNot disagreeing per se, but I think we often underestimate how much of our definition of 'race' is based on context, separate from our genes, such as: - where we see a person - who this person is with - what clothes the person wears - what a person smells like - body language - spoken language - the manner in which they speak (loud, soft, etc.) - the way they walk - all sorts of other cultural markers (like stance, eye contact, etc.) I suspect that all these contextual, largely non-biological factors play a huge role in how we decide a person's race. Possibly so much so that the biological markers we do have available are mostly useless. Please correct me if I'm wrong though; I am far from an expert in this area!