8 ms·

> Blumenbach's craniometric categorization ... match the prehistoric reality better Blumenbach essentially tried to split people into: Europeans, Asians, Afric

by rovolo 5y ago

> Blumenbach's craniometric categorization ... match the prehistoric reality better Blumenbach essentially tried to split people into: Europeans, Asians, Africans, Polynesians, and Americans. You can then choose features and make measurements to split people into groups which match these 5 basic geographical areas. The questions are: What do these classifications tell you? How are they useful? Are they the best ways to classify people? How are you choosing the different races? The idea that "race isn't real" stems from the idea that there isn't a single genetic metric you can use to categorize people. You can find multiple valid ways to classify people, but they won't all agree on the categorizations. > arbitrarily defined US-style castes What word should we use to describe the US social and legal definitions of Black and White?

jhgb 5y ago
> What do these classifications tell you? How are they useful? Are they the best ways to classify people? How are you choosing the different races? The very same questions apply to human paleontology -- and the same answers. You have to solve basically the same problems if you want to unravel the dawn of humanity. > The idea that "race isn't real" stems from the idea that there isn't a single genetic metric you can use to categorize people. That sounds like a very flawed approach to me. Even imperfect concepts and approaches have their utility. Just because the universe isn't black-and-white on concepts doesn't mean that no patterns emerge. > What word should we use to describe the US social and legal definitions of Black and White? I thought you already had "Anglo-Saxons" and "African Americans" for these.
- rovolo 5y ago
  > I thought you already had "Anglo-Saxons" and "African Americans" for these. Those are not the same things. For one, "Anglo-Saxon" is English ancestry. It doesn't include all White people. Second, I'm asking about what you should call the specific classification system the US use(d/s) to label people as Black and White. The US classified people on "race", which isn't exactly the same as Blumenbach's categories but did evolve out of them. > Even imperfect concepts and approaches have their utility. What is the utility of the idea of an "Ethopian" race? Are racial categories a useful tool in Anthropology and Biology (beyond the historical consequences of the idea of race)? For each any such examples, are there better tools?
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > For one, "Anglo-Saxon" is English ancestry. It doesn't include all White people. From what I can tell, the US notion of "white people" at one point did basically coincide with "Anglo-Saxon"/"Nordic" ancestry - in the broader sense, since OF COURSE there's even several meanings of the former term; for example in the abbreviation "WASP", the "AS" most certainly does not refer solely to English ancestry. So in this case think of "Anglo-Saxon" as of the "AS" in "WASP". > Second, I'm asking about what you should call the specific classification system the US use(d/s) to label people as Black and White. It sounds a lot to me like a caste system, as I already said. > Are racial categories a useful tool in Anthropology and Biology Absolutely, how else would you for example conceptualize large-scale population movements once you start to analyze population genetics in both current populations and archeological remains? Those groups are racial categories.
    - rovolo 5y ago
      > large-scale population movements ... population genetics ... Those groups are racial categories. The tool that you're using to map population migrations isn't race, it's genetic similarity of geographically close populations. What specifically is the definition of race, and how does that definition help with mapping population movement? Furthermore, those are not "categories" because they exist on a spectrum. You measure similarity as a continuous value. There doesn't happen to be natural demarcation lines between different "racial categories". Populations are composed of lots of different people who tend to be similar, but who don't fall into categories. Genetic similarities cross populations, and human populations don't tend to have neat boundaries. For example, check out this plot of genetic differences in Europe. The differences smoothly smear out over the geography. The other anchors of Beijing, Tokyo, and Yoruba are indeed separate, but that is because they are far away. You'd continue to have a spectrum connecting those geographies if the chart also measured the genetics of the connecting geography. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe#/media/File:European_genetic_structure_(based_on_SNPs)_PC_analysis.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe#/med...
      - jhgb 5y ago

by rovolo 5y ago

jhgb 5y ago

> What do these classifications tell you? How are they useful? Are they the best ways to classify people? How are you choosing the different races? The very same questions apply to human paleontology -- and the same answers. You have to solve basically the same problems if you want to unravel the dawn of humanity. > The idea that "race isn't real" stems from the idea that there isn't a single genetic metric you can use to categorize people. That sounds like a very flawed approach to me. Even imperfect concepts and approaches have their utility. Just because the universe isn't black-and-white on concepts doesn't mean that no patterns emerge. > What word should we use to describe the US social and legal definitions of Black and White? I thought you already had "Anglo-Saxons" and "African Americans" for these.

rovolo 5y ago
> I thought you already had "Anglo-Saxons" and "African Americans" for these. Those are not the same things. For one, "Anglo-Saxon" is English ancestry. It doesn't include all White people. Second, I'm asking about what you should call the specific classification system the US use(d/s) to label people as Black and White. The US classified people on "race", which isn't exactly the same as Blumenbach's categories but did evolve out of them. > Even imperfect concepts and approaches have their utility. What is the utility of the idea of an "Ethopian" race? Are racial categories a useful tool in Anthropology and Biology (beyond the historical consequences of the idea of race)? For each any such examples, are there better tools?
- jhgb 5y ago
  > For one, "Anglo-Saxon" is English ancestry. It doesn't include all White people. From what I can tell, the US notion of "white people" at one point did basically coincide with "Anglo-Saxon"/"Nordic" ancestry - in the broader sense, since OF COURSE there's even several meanings of the former term; for example in the abbreviation "WASP", the "AS" most certainly does not refer solely to English ancestry. So in this case think of "Anglo-Saxon" as of the "AS" in "WASP". > Second, I'm asking about what you should call the specific classification system the US use(d/s) to label people as Black and White. It sounds a lot to me like a caste system, as I already said. > Are racial categories a useful tool in Anthropology and Biology Absolutely, how else would you for example conceptualize large-scale population movements once you start to analyze population genetics in both current populations and archeological remains? Those groups are racial categories.
  - rovolo 5y ago
    > large-scale population movements ... population genetics ... Those groups are racial categories. The tool that you're using to map population migrations isn't race, it's genetic similarity of geographically close populations. What specifically is the definition of race, and how does that definition help with mapping population movement? Furthermore, those are not "categories" because they exist on a spectrum. You measure similarity as a continuous value. There doesn't happen to be natural demarcation lines between different "racial categories". Populations are composed of lots of different people who tend to be similar, but who don't fall into categories. Genetic similarities cross populations, and human populations don't tend to have neat boundaries. For example, check out this plot of genetic differences in Europe. The differences smoothly smear out over the geography. The other anchors of Beijing, Tokyo, and Yoruba are indeed separate, but that is because they are far away. You'd continue to have a spectrum connecting those geographies if the chart also measured the genetics of the connecting geography. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe#/media/File:European_genetic_structure_(based_on_SNPs)_PC_analysis.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe#/med...
    - jhgb 5y ago