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The trouble with "race" is that it's pretty meaningless biologically You can find an interesting piece disagreeing with that view here: http://genomebiology.c

The trouble with "race" is that it's pretty meaningless biologically You can find an interesting piece disagreeing with that view here: http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007 http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007

Retric 18y ago
One problem is when someone in the USA is 75% white 25% black people label them black. It's not that ethnic groups don't share common traits it's just the borders are so fuzzy it's going to be hard to narrow down specifics.
- endtime 18y ago
  Some people might, especially if the person looks black, but I'm sure a lot of people would also label that person white, or mixed. There might even be people (gasp) who don't go around labeling people. * It's not that ethnic groups don't share common traits it's just the borders are so fuzzy it's going to be hard to narrow down specifics.* There are plenty of less-mixed people than the example you give. I don't think a studies invovling ethnicity necessarily have to involve every single person in the US, so people without a clear ethnicity don't need to cloud things (though studying someone of mixed ethnicity might be illuminating in some contexts).
  - Retric 18y ago
    My point is people don't consider 25% black an edge case. Having two parents that where 40% black does not make you 100% black but Americans label people that way. Take Halley Berry the "first black woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halle_Berry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halle_Berry) I would be shocked if she was more than 40% "black" at the genetic level. It would be an interesting study, but I suspect 60+% of "African Americans" to be at least 25% white in the USA. I suspect if you compared the relative percentage vs (whatever) you would see little change, because social issues tend to swamp most other issues and they tend to identify with black. My first boss was darker than the average African American, but he graduated from Yale and acted more stereotypically "white" than I do. Other classic examples would be trying to separate Arabs from Jews, Indian from white, Japanese from Chinese, etc. People like to identify with specific groups, but when you look at genetic studies anywhere up to 30% of children in married couples have a different father than they think they do. Culturally Incest is considered evil in part because genetic diversity is positively correlated with survival, but this also extends across cultural and ethic bounds. PS: Not to mention war / rape and other issues. I heard that the "Black Irish" originated from the destruction of the Spanish armada in 1588. Plenty of people swam to shore and never made it back to Spain.
tokenadult 18y ago
One problem with the kind of markers mentioned in the cited article is that they are not subject to selection pressure and not likely to be correlated with any phenotype of interest.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  The markers simply prove that race is, indeed, a definable category. This makes the question "is group A different from group B in way X?" meaningful. It proves nothing about the answer, nor is it intended to. For comparison, a less meaningful question is "are biologically NY people smarter than biologically NJ people?" The question doesn't even make sense since you can't differentiate between NY and NJ people biologically. As for whether the markers are likely or not to be correlated with interesting phenotypes, I'll wait to see data before guessing about what is likely.

Retric 18y ago

One problem is when someone in the USA is 75% white 25% black people label them black. It's not that ethnic groups don't share common traits it's just the borders are so fuzzy it's going to be hard to narrow down specifics.

endtime 18y ago
Some people might, especially if the person looks black, but I'm sure a lot of people would also label that person white, or mixed. There might even be people (gasp) who don't go around labeling people. * It's not that ethnic groups don't share common traits it's just the borders are so fuzzy it's going to be hard to narrow down specifics.* There are plenty of less-mixed people than the example you give. I don't think a studies invovling ethnicity necessarily have to involve every single person in the US, so people without a clear ethnicity don't need to cloud things (though studying someone of mixed ethnicity might be illuminating in some contexts).
- Retric 18y ago
  My point is people don't consider 25% black an edge case. Having two parents that where 40% black does not make you 100% black but Americans label people that way. Take Halley Berry the "first black woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halle_Berry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halle_Berry) I would be shocked if she was more than 40% "black" at the genetic level. It would be an interesting study, but I suspect 60+% of "African Americans" to be at least 25% white in the USA. I suspect if you compared the relative percentage vs (whatever) you would see little change, because social issues tend to swamp most other issues and they tend to identify with black. My first boss was darker than the average African American, but he graduated from Yale and acted more stereotypically "white" than I do. Other classic examples would be trying to separate Arabs from Jews, Indian from white, Japanese from Chinese, etc. People like to identify with specific groups, but when you look at genetic studies anywhere up to 30% of children in married couples have a different father than they think they do. Culturally Incest is considered evil in part because genetic diversity is positively correlated with survival, but this also extends across cultural and ethic bounds. PS: Not to mention war / rape and other issues. I heard that the "Black Irish" originated from the destruction of the Spanish armada in 1588. Plenty of people swam to shore and never made it back to Spain.

tokenadult 18y ago

One problem with the kind of markers mentioned in the cited article is that they are not subject to selection pressure and not likely to be correlated with any phenotype of interest.

yummyfajitas 18y ago
The markers simply prove that race is, indeed, a definable category. This makes the question "is group A different from group B in way X?" meaningful. It proves nothing about the answer, nor is it intended to. For comparison, a less meaningful question is "are biologically NY people smarter than biologically NJ people?" The question doesn't even make sense since you can't differentiate between NY and NJ people biologically. As for whether the markers are likely or not to be correlated with interesting phenotypes, I'll wait to see data before guessing about what is likely.