4 ms·
Why Do So Many Researchers Still Treat Race as a Scientific Concept?
- airbreather 6y agoHow to define race, it's a genetic cluster often brought about by a closed or isolated population. Think how we got all the dog breeds of today from the six(?) basic ones little more than a hundred years ago, here the differences are reinforced by "breeders" and the desire for "papers", in human societies the differences are reinforced by vaguely definable social conventions. Now I am sure soemone/s will find plenty of reasons to be offended by my comment, feel free to be offended, but I am not saying any particular closed group of genes are better than any other, just that they will have differences and specific strengths and weaknesses. We own a short legged dog (English staffy), it tries hard and gets to remarkable speed considering, but no way it can run as fast as a whippet. And there you see how it is only a short trip down a very slippery slope to apartheid, that sounds good in theory, but could never work as long as humans won't be equally generous to a stranger as to someone they identify with.
- pasabagi 6y agoExcept... there are very few genetic clusters in humanity, aside from a few island populations. Race is used to describe something completely different. If it was like dog breeding, you'd say that the people who come from Pitcairn Island are one race, then those who come from the Shetland Isles are another, then the Sentinel Islanders are another, and the royal families of europe are another, then there's the rest of us, who've been interbreeding forever. This is obviously not how race is used. How it is used is some loose mix between melanin, nose and eye shape, and hair type. Does that make sense? Of course not - and why should it? The people who came up with the idea also burned people at the stake for witchcraft.