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A genetic test to see whether someone has ancestry from Melenasia or Sudan or Scotland is likely to give a different result than casual visual classification. T

A genetic test to see whether someone has ancestry from Melenasia or Sudan or Scotland is likely to give a different result than casual visual classification. The latter is what we commonly call "race".

barry-cotter 8y ago
I can tell the difference between German and Irish people at better than chance and you think people can’t tell the difference between Melanesians, Caucasians and Sub Saharan Africans? Bone structure, skin tone, hair colour and hair texture don’t give as much information as a whole genome sequence but telling the difference between an East Asian and a West Eurasian isn’t rocket surgery. By the same token it’s not hard to tell the difference between an Ethiopian and a Nigerian, or a Swede and a Spaniard, on average.
- nathan_long 8y ago
  > You think people can’t tell the difference between Melanesians, Caucasians and Sub Saharan Africans? Get someone to show you pictures and have you identify them. I bet you'll make a lot of mistakes. Historically, not only can people not tell the difference objectively, they decide what the difference is subjectively. In the United States, the child of a white slave owner and a black slave, if their parentage was known, was ... black. People of "mixed race" might be deemed a different race than their own full siblings, based on which visible characteristics they got from which ancestor. Even today, people migrating from one country to another are often surprised that their racial classification is different in the new country than at home.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    >> You think people can’t tell the difference between Melanesians, Caucasians and Sub Saharan Africans? > Get someone to show you pictures and have you identify them. I bet you'll make a lot of mistakes. I’m going to sleep now but if you find ten pictures of each I’ll be happy to do your survey. I’m sure many others would be too if you put it on surveymonkey. The overlap in skin tone alone between Caucasians and the other two groups is ~0 so I doubt there would be any mistakes there. I’m sure there would be many more mistakes between Melanesians and Sub Saharan Africans but even just going on whether they have a broad nose or not you’d get pretty far distinguishing SSA from Melanesians. I’m not claiming perfect distinction. I’m claiming that doing better than chance is unremarkable. These groups are visibly different on average. Some groups the population values don’t even overlap. The shortest adult Maasai is taller than the tallest adult Pygmy. > In the United States, the child of a white slave owner and a black slave was... black. Who cares about the historical American caste system, with its one drop rule? The social construction of race is a real thing and so is the fact that different ancestry groups are different, and can be distinguished, on average and subject to error. Pretending ancestry is entirely socially constructed is crazy. If you get thirty pictures, 10 East Asian, 10 West Eurasian, and ten people who are first generation crosses from both populations, there is very unlikely to be any mislabelling of the base population individuals.

barry-cotter 8y ago

I can tell the difference between German and Irish people at better than chance and you think people can’t tell the difference between Melanesians, Caucasians and Sub Saharan Africans? Bone structure, skin tone, hair colour and hair texture don’t give as much information as a whole genome sequence but telling the difference between an East Asian and a West Eurasian isn’t rocket surgery. By the same token it’s not hard to tell the difference between an Ethiopian and a Nigerian, or a Swede and a Spaniard, on average.

nathan_long 8y ago
> You think people can’t tell the difference between Melanesians, Caucasians and Sub Saharan Africans? Get someone to show you pictures and have you identify them. I bet you'll make a lot of mistakes. Historically, not only can people not tell the difference objectively, they decide what the difference is subjectively. In the United States, the child of a white slave owner and a black slave, if their parentage was known, was ... black. People of "mixed race" might be deemed a different race than their own full siblings, based on which visible characteristics they got from which ancestor. Even today, people migrating from one country to another are often surprised that their racial classification is different in the new country than at home.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  >> You think people can’t tell the difference between Melanesians, Caucasians and Sub Saharan Africans? > Get someone to show you pictures and have you identify them. I bet you'll make a lot of mistakes. I’m going to sleep now but if you find ten pictures of each I’ll be happy to do your survey. I’m sure many others would be too if you put it on surveymonkey. The overlap in skin tone alone between Caucasians and the other two groups is ~0 so I doubt there would be any mistakes there. I’m sure there would be many more mistakes between Melanesians and Sub Saharan Africans but even just going on whether they have a broad nose or not you’d get pretty far distinguishing SSA from Melanesians. I’m not claiming perfect distinction. I’m claiming that doing better than chance is unremarkable. These groups are visibly different on average. Some groups the population values don’t even overlap. The shortest adult Maasai is taller than the tallest adult Pygmy. > In the United States, the child of a white slave owner and a black slave was... black. Who cares about the historical American caste system, with its one drop rule? The social construction of race is a real thing and so is the fact that different ancestry groups are different, and can be distinguished, on average and subject to error. Pretending ancestry is entirely socially constructed is crazy. If you get thirty pictures, 10 East Asian, 10 West Eurasian, and ten people who are first generation crosses from both populations, there is very unlikely to be any mislabelling of the base population individuals.