4 ms·
Person of race A and race B have two children. People tend to think child 1 is race A, people tend to think child 2 is mixed race AB. In the social sense, it co
by jamilton 3y ago
Person of race A and race B have two children. People tend to think child 1 is race A, people tend to think child 2 is mixed race AB. In the social sense, it could be said that child 1's race is race A, even though genetically it's probably more like AB.
Another common situation: People of race A think child 2 is race B, people of race B think child 2 is race A. And you can imagine more complex examples with more races and more generations. In this manner the categorization of race is primarily social.
- kybernetikos 3y agoAnd this (and more) happened multiple times in effectively everyones ancestry.
- faeriechangling 3y agoAnother observation is that if we ignore the existence of race AB, a person of race A with "mixed" genetics, and a person of race B with mixed genetics, may be closer to eachother genetically than other members of race A and B (since as you say, they're closer to race AB, not A or B). Defining discrete categorisations for things that exist on a continuum is definitionally arbitrary and misleading. Don't tell that to psychiatrists though, who do EXACTLY what is being criticised here and slap people who exist on a continuum with an arbitrary label, and yet the DSM-V is still taken seriously by the scientific mainstream.