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That just means you can't call Africans one "race" because they hold all the genetic diversity on the planet. But it doesn't mean there's not some meaningful ge
by losvedir 2mo ago
That just means you can't call Africans one "race" because they hold all the genetic diversity on the planet. But it doesn't mean there's not some meaningful genetic grouping of populations that splintered out of Africa. Or, concretely, I'm struggling to square what you're saying with the fact that I tell my doctor I'm Hispanic because that means a higher genetic predisposition to things like diabetes.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoHispanic is probably the perfect example for this. A blonde Argentinian is probably not predisposed to diabetes. What I’m trying to say is racial categorizations don’t follow any rules based in our biology or genetics. For it to be scientific you would need to be able to categorize any given individual 100% based on some unchanging rule that is based on underlying biology. We cannot currently do that and what I’m saying is I don’t think you can come up with a rule like that without the result being hundreds of thousands of different categories of “races”.
- johnsmith1840 2mo agoI was under the impression doctors do this exact categorization all the time? Given an individual's race (looking at them and asking) and the medical literature they change their treatments if need be. Skin color and place of origin is a pretty rough but decent way to do this? If need be they could just sequence your genes, afterall isn't that exactly how they connect and learn about hereditary diseases or know that certain races of people are predisposed to certain diseases? "This man looks x and is from y and is complaining about z" I thought this was like basic medicine? You're acting like gentics is a failed research field or something kinda confused on your point here.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoFar from it, I’m saying genetics is the only true science in all of this. What I’m saying is the way we do races is subjective, arbitrary and not scientific.
- johnsmith1840 2mo agoOhhhh well that explains my confusion I thought you were saying we had nothing to tell.
- tpm 2mo ago> a pretty rough but decent way How, exactly, would we know it's a decent way? I suspect it's not really about "race" which is full of wrong meanings; it's just that "race" in the US mostly also means genetically close populations, like black people originally coming through slave trade from one of a few places in Africa and therefore sharing some similar traits. But if you scaled research to a representative sample of all "black" or "asian" (etc) people, any advantage this gives you would evaporate
- johnsmith1840 2mo agoI mean a black looking person complains about a problem and you instantly can guess that because he's black and something is more common you can come to a conculsion faster. It's not "science" but don't doctors do this stuff like every single day?
- tpm 2mo ago> he's black and something is more common you can come to a conculsion faster Certainly very fast, but is that conclusion correct? Is it really more common for "black" people, and even if so does that apply in this case? I have my doubts, having a bit of an experience with how doctors operate.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoWhat exactly is black though? Is it just dark skin or is it specifically those with African genetics? Because you have dark skinned people in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Southeast Asia, India, etc. Those people are very genetically dissimilar from Africans. In fact, in many cases, more dissimilar than someone from Africa and someone from Europe.