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Why is the belief that the human species has races just like cats, dogs, cows, horses, etc. so widespread in the US culture? Even anti-racism rhetoric takes th
by stefantalpalaru 12y ago
Why is the belief that the human species has races just like cats, dogs, cows, horses, etc. so widespread in the US culture?
Even anti-racism rhetoric takes this absurd proposition as a fact. Take this article for example: all the cases where the author talks about ethnicity he uses "race" instead.
- rmc 12y agoAmerican-English is weird like that.
- icebraining 12y agoNo, there's the belief that the human species has races unlike cats, dogs, etc. Just because the word is shared with the scientific concept doesn't mean it's believed to be the same thing. It's simply a remnant of the times when that was the general belief.
- stefantalpalaru 12y ago"There is great genetic diversity within all human populations. Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past." - American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 1996 - http://www.virginia.edu/woodson/courses/aas102%20%28spring%2001%29/articles/AAPA_race.pdf http://www.virginia.edu/woodson/courses/aas102%20%28spring%2...
- icebraining 12y agoYou missed my point. No, the human species doesn't have races in the scientific sense. What you shouldn't assume is that all mentions of the word "race" are referring to the scientific concept. Quoting census.gov: The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically.
- stefantalpalaru 12y agoIf this "social definition" of race is accepted and somehow washed of its original meaning, why keep on using "racism" with the obviously disconnected meaning? How is racism defined in this brave new world of semantic chameleonism? As a synonym for xenophobia?
- icebraining 12y agoI don't think it was this definition that has mutated from the original, but the scientific definition that got more precise and diverged from the colloquial use. But I'm hardly an expert, so don't assume I know what I'm talking about. As for xenophobia and racism, from UNESCO: Xenophobia and racism often overlap, but are distinct phenomena. Whereas racism usually entails distinction based on physical characteristic differences, such as skin colour, hair type, facial features, etc, xenophobia implies behaviour based on the idea that the other is foreign to or originates from outside the community or nation.
- Houshalter 12y agoThis is far from universally agreed on. >when examining the frequency of different alleles (variants of a particular gene) at an individual locus (the location of a particular gene) between individuals, it is nonetheless possible to classify individuals into different racial groups with an accuracy that approaches 100 percent when one takes into account the frequency of the alleles at several loci at the same time. This happens because differences in the frequency of alleles at different loci are correlated across populations — the alleles that are more frequent in a population at two or more loci are correlated when we consider the two populations simultaneously. Or in other words, the frequency of the alleles tends to cluster differently for different populations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genetic_Diversity:_Lewontin%27s_Fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genetic_Diversity:_Lewon... In other words people's genetics do naturally cluster into different groups.
- stefantalpalaru 12y agoThe quantitative aspect is more important than the qualitative one. Take dog races (breeds) for example: "We also showed that the genetic variation between dog breeds is much greater than the variation within breeds. Between-breed variation is estimated at 27.5 percent. By comparison, genetic variation between human populations is only 5.4 percent. Thus the concept of a dog breed is very real and can be defined not only by the dog's appearance but genetically as well." - http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2007/5/genetics-and-the-shape-of-dogs/2 http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2007/5/genet...
- Houshalter 12y agoNo one is disputing that dogs are far more genetically diverse than humans. But saying that humans don't cluster into different genetic groups is factually wrong.
- stefantalpalaru 12y agoI'm saying that genetic clusters that flow gradually one into the other and have minimal differences between them are a distinct notion from race as we see it in other animals.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y agoRace is a social construct, constructed socially in the United States.