Transracial?

[Trausti]

I've always had the same solution to this: Mix "races" until "race" is no longer a concept. How many of you have inter-racial couplings? Those who do are just by that and that alone doing more for race-relations than any race group barking at another ever could.

And mixed race pairings are not a new phenomenon; they are older than the race concept itself.

The ancestors of Europeans/Asians/Amerindians got it on with the Neanderthals. Oh, yeah.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I've always had the same solution to this: Mix "races" until "race" is no longer a concept. How many of you have inter-racial couplings? Those who do are just by that and that alone doing more for race-relations than any race group barking at another ever could.

And mixed race pairings are not a new phenomenon; they are older than the race concept itself.

The ancestors of Europeans/Asians/Amerindians got it own with the Neanderthals. Oh, yeah.

That must have been very exotic for them both.

 

[Politesse]

Well, more recently, one of the reasons the colonial powers started enshrining race as a social and legal concept in the first place was a bid to control marriages, common then and after, between colonizer and colonized peoples. This attempt failed notably; most American nations are majority "mestizo" in the present.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Well, more recently, one of the reasons the colonial powers started enshrining race as a social and legal concept in the first place was a bid to control marriages, common then and after, between colonizer and colonized peoples. This attempt failed notably; most American nations are majority "mestizo" in the present.

That's what most the white nationalist types are talking about when they say "genocide' of white people as well. They don't foresee ironic gas chambers for them. They see the "white race" being bred out of existence. I've had this conversation with them (along with a lot of ire) when I told them I was dating a white woman. She was a "race traitor" and was "committing genocide" (assuming she would have babies with me).

 

[Max Rockatansky]

I've always had the same solution to this: Mix "races" until "race" is no longer a concept. How many of you have inter-racial couplings? Those who do are just by that and that alone doing more for race-relations than any race group barking at another ever could.

And mixed race pairings are not a new phenomenon; they are older than the race concept itself.

Agreed. Obviously we were all one race during the time period of "out of Africa". IIRC, the current major racial divisions only go back about 50,000 years while homo sapiens sapiens go back about 200,000 years.

 

[Max Rockatansky]

Well, more recently, one of the reasons the colonial powers started enshrining race as a social and legal concept in the first place was a bid to control marriages, common then and after, between colonizer and colonized peoples. This attempt failed notably; most American nations are majority "mestizo" in the present.

That's what most the white nationalist types are talking about when they say "genocide' of white people as well. They don't foresee ironic gas chambers for them. They see the "white race" being bred out of existence. I've had this conversation with them (along with a lot of ire) when I told them I was dating a white woman. She was a "race traitor" and was "committing genocide" (assuming she would have babies with me).

A major reason why I think the "white nationalists" are deluded idiots since "bred out of existence" is a very flawed concept. In a thousand years when human beings are spread across our solar system, if sufficiently separated for a long enough time, humans will begin to evolve differences from other colonies due to geographical limits and available gene pool population.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Well, more recently, one of the reasons the colonial powers started enshrining race as a social and legal concept in the first place was a bid to control marriages, common then and after, between colonizer and colonized peoples. This attempt failed notably; most American nations are majority "mestizo" in the present.

That's what most the white nationalist types are talking about when they say "genocide' of white people as well. They don't foresee ironic gas chambers for them. They see the "white race" being bred out of existence. I've had this conversation with them (along with a lot of ire) when I told them I was dating a white woman. She was a "race traitor" and was "committing genocide" (assuming she would have babies with me).

A major reason why I think the "white nationalists" are deluded idiots since "bred out of existence" is a very flawed concept. In a thousand years when human beings are spread across our solar system, if sufficiently separated for a long enough time, humans will begin to evolve differences from other colonies due to geographical limits and available gene pool population.

And those differences would be far more vast too. Here, we got different shades of skin, shapes of eyes, etc. There they would be twice the size of each other (differing gravity from planet to planet), etc.

 

[Trausti]

A major reason why I think the "white nationalists" are deluded idiots since "bred out of existence" is a very flawed concept. In a thousand years when human beings are spread across our solar system, if sufficiently separated for a long enough time, humans will begin to evolve differences from other colonies due to geographical limits and available gene pool population.

And those differences would be far more vast too. Here, we got different shades of skin, shapes of eyes, etc. There they would be twice the size of each other (differing gravity from planet to planet), etc.

Well, then, we're agreed. With time and geographic / reproductive separation, new races can evolve. Whether on Earth or in our Star Trek future.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

A major reason why I think the "white nationalists" are deluded idiots since "bred out of existence" is a very flawed concept. In a thousand years when human beings are spread across our solar system, if sufficiently separated for a long enough time, humans will begin to evolve differences from other colonies due to geographical limits and available gene pool population.

And those differences would be far more vast too. Here, we got different shades of skin, shapes of eyes, etc. There they would be twice the size of each other (differing gravity from planet to planet), etc.

Well, then, we're agreed. With time and geographic / reproductive separation, new races can evolve. Whether on Earth or in our Star Trek future.

New species can. Given enough time if isolated on different planets we could have what happened in Star Trek, how they explained all the different species looking human-like.

Hmmm, bringing this thread back on topic, would it be wrong for a Romulan to claim to be Vulcan? They do have a common ancestry, though less so than black and white humans do.

 

[Bomb#20]

You still haven't described your own position.

I certainly have; you have zero basis for making that accusation. My position as I've indicated in this thread is that the human species has biological races and that race denialism is unscientific ideologically motivated nonsense. It's on a level with climate change denial. And if you require more details than that, I have described my position in more detail and Angra Mainyu gave you the links, which you evidently still haven't bothered to read. So stop making false accusations.

I apologize if you feel mis-characterized, but unless you ssy otherwise, my assumption was that you agreed with the position you seemed to be vigorously defending.

It's not about "feeling" mischaracterized; you out-and-out put words in my mouth. I do agree with the position I am vigorously defending, and to attack that position, you have repeatedly accused me of agreeing with other positions that I haven't defended at all but that you decided should be lumped together with the one I defended. That's on you. Stop it, now.

I have no idea why you think adding yet another big name, commenting on something outside their expertise, is going to help your case, whatever that is.

I added him because Toni expressed incredulity that a big name scientist would support an idea she apparently equates with gravity denial, and also because she might have been hinting that she objected to my only criticizing denialism and not having offered a positive case for the existence of races, presumably because she didn't read AM's links either, so I cut and pasted from there. That was for her benefit, not yours.

And what Dawkins was commenting on was Lewontin's argument against the existence of races. Recognizing and stomping on illogical arguments is very much within Dawkins's expertise.

Dawkins isn't even a scientist by profession, as far as I am aware,

Dawkins is 77 by profession. He's a retired Oxford zoology professor.

let alone an anthropologist. And I note that he and Mayr severely disagreed over how inheritance occurs; Mayr was outspoken about taking down the concept of the so-called selfish gene. So seeing them quoted together about inheritance is kind of funny.

That is not a dispute over how inheritance occurs. It is a dispute over how the long-term consequences of it should be analyzed.

Mind you, I actually agree with everything in the above passage. But there is sn important "if" at the end of it, and a question that biolgists resolved fairly definitively when the human genome was fully sequenced at the beginning of this century.

Are you seriously claiming that the antecedent of that important "if" -- "such racial characteristics as there are are highly correlated with other racial characteristics" -- is false?

(If you are alluding to the widely publicized failed attempt to identify race from HGP data at the beginning of this century, don't be an idiot. It is no longer the beginning of this century. The available quantity of HGP data to use as a baseline is no longer limited to 5 individuals. I'd think anyone even vaguely familiar with 23andme would know the technology to identify race from genetic tests now exists.)

 

[Bomb#20]

I'm not sure you understand what "specialist" means? ... Mayr was an ornithologist, not an anthropologist. ... But being the finest sushi chef in the world doesn't necessarily make you an equally good baker. I would not take my word for it on a question of bird classification, for instance, despite being a reasonably well-accomplished anthropologist.

Oh for the love of god. Dismissing Mayr as not qualified on human evolution because he was an ornithologist makes exactly as much sense as dismissing Darwin as not qualified on human evolution because he was an expert on barnacles.

Here is Wikipedia's list of Mayr's books:

Systematics and the Origin of Species, from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist
Birds of the Southwest Pacific: A Field Guide to the Birds of the Area Between Samoa, New Caledonia, and Micronesia
Animal Species and Evolution
Populations, Species, and Evolution
Evolution and the Diversity of Life
The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology
The Growth of Biological Thought
Toward a New Philosophy of Biology
Principles of Systematic Zoology
One Long Argument
This Is Biology
The Birds of Northern Melanesia
What Evolution Is
What Makes Biology Unique?​

As you can see, he wrote a lot more about life in general than about birds.

Do you think you should, since likewise my "specialization is life" and that includes birds?

No, your specialization is not life. Your specialization is humans. When I say Mayr's specialization was life, I do not mean because birds are alive; I mean because Mayr was a master of biology as whole on a level that very few other biologists could match.

Moreover, when you claim expertise because you're an anthropologist, that means you acquired expertise in one or more aspects of humans. Human taxonomy is unlikely to be one of them given your apparent attitude toward the field. So I draw your attention again to the above link.

"Ernst Walter Mayr (5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005) was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, philosopher of biology, and historian of science.​

As you can see, he is the author of two books on taxonomy. As you can see, they are not books on bird taxonomy. You appear to have no basis for thinking you are more of an expert on the application of taxonomy to humans than Mayr was.

[For readers not up on the technical jargon, "taxonomy" and "systematics" are words for classification.]

And as I pointed out, I think arguments from authority are irrelevant in any case, that isn't how we decide whether something is true or not.

Quite so; if you recall, I brought him up only because you brought up the irrelevant fact that you're an anthropologist.

... should I make a few suggestions of useful names and quotes, so you have better quality tu quoques ready the next time you are trying to divert the conversation from the scientific paucity of your position?

But I am doing nothing of the sort and you have no reason to think I am. I have already posted a substantive scientific argument in support of the reality of human races and Angra Mainyu linked to it*. The mere circumstance that you decline to read it is no basis for accusations of scientific paucity.

You, in contrast, have not posted a substantive scientific argument against the reality of human races, at least not in this thread. If you have done so in another thread, feel free to link to it.

(* I posted quite a few more that unfortunately became inaccessible back when the forum changed from freeratio to talkfreethought.)

There are some ideologues who define it as racist to think biological races are real. Are you one of them?

Obviously.

Yes, I guess you obviously are, since you called Mayr a racist, and he was nothing of the sort, and redefining the word is the only way you could possibly delude yourself into thinking you weren't simply libeling him.

It was a philosophical standpoint long before it was an insult, and a well-respected one at every level of academics. It was once the only philosophical standpoint we had to explain human biological and cultural diversity.

What was a respected philosophical standpoint was the doctrine that some races are superior to others. That races exist isn't a philosophical standpoint at all; it's just recognition of facts on the ground.

But If you want to throw back the clock of the biological sciences to the 20th century, don't be surprised if people are inclined to call a spade a spade. What do you want to call a belief in "biological races" that persists long after the concept has been disproven?

But the concept hasn't been disproven; it's merely become unfashionable among a self-selected subculture that's decided it knows better than everybody else and is willing to accept mind-blowingly illogical arguments in order to maintain its pride in imagined superiority. Normal people are flabbergasted when they find out the existence of races is even controversial.

As to what to call it, what the heck are you thinking? How is that an argument? Do we need a word to label the belief in elephants? Do we need a word for those who believe in continental drift -- a concept that was likewise accused of persisting long after the concept had been disproven?

If for some silly reason you do need a word for it, may I suggest coining "breist"? "Racist" is already in use for something else; and there's no logic to using it as you do. What, do you think we call a person who believes monarchs exist a "monarchist"? To bring it back to biology, do you think a "cladist" is someone who believes clades exist? A "racist" is someone who thinks some races are better than others, or who discriminates against people on account of their race. The only reason anyone would choose to repurpose it as you do is to libel people. That's unethical. If for some reason you decide you need a word to label people who believe it's fun to launch model rockets, I politely suggest you not choose the word "arsonist".

I don't call anyone racist, generally speaking.

Yes, you do. You called Ernst Mayr a "racist ornithologist". And you obviously didn't do so to alert people that he thought races exist; that had already been pointed out. By process of elimination, you did it to attempt to discredit him in the minds of readers, through attempted guilt-by-association with white supremacists.

 

[Politesse]

Well, more recently, one of the reasons the colonial powers started enshrining race as a social and legal concept in the first place was a bid to control marriages, common then and after, between colonizer and colonized peoples. This attempt failed notably; most American nations are majority "mestizo" in the present.

That's what most the white nationalist types are talking about when they say "genocide' of white people as well. They don't foresee ironic gas chambers for them. They see the "white race" being bred out of existence. I've had this conversation with them (along with a lot of ire) when I told them I was dating a white woman. She was a "race traitor" and was "committing genocide" (assuming she would have babies with me).

It was always inherent to nationalist ideology, the idea of fictive purity. It is, of course, biologically meaningless. But as a social and political construct, it creates a sense of shared emotional collectivism than has moved nations. Usually, on top of other ones.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

(* I posted quite a few more that unfortunately became inaccessible back when the forum changed from freeratio to talkfreethought.)

But fortunately, recently a lot of stuff has become accessible again. For example: https://frdbarchive.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=209686

There are plenty more.

 

[Trausti]

Well, then, we're agreed. With time and geographic / reproductive separation, new races can evolve. Whether on Earth or in our Star Trek future.

New species can. Given enough time if isolated on different planets we could have what happened in Star Trek, how they explained all the different species looking human-like.

Hmmm, bringing this thread back on topic, would it be wrong for a Romulan to claim to be Vulcan? They do have a common ancestry, though less so than black and white humans do.

Oh, the OP. Well, could I simply change my subspecies from homo sapien sapien to homo neanderthalensis? As my ancestors were from Eurasia, I've got ~2% Neanderthal. I'm more Neanderthal than Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee.

 

[Trausti]

Heh. Apparently, race can also be deduced from the female pelvis.

Birth canals are different all over the world, countering a long-held evolutionary theory

Lia Betti, a biological anthropologist at the University of Roehampton in London and evolutionary ecologist Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, measured the pelvises of 348 female human skeletons from 24 different parts of the world. The birth canals were far from carbon copies of each other. Those of women from sub-Saharan Africa and some Asian populations were overall narrow from side to side and deep from front to back, whereas Native American women had wider canals. Native Americans and Europeans also had the most oval-shaped upper canals, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Well, maybe Rachel Dolezal can't be transracial after all. Wrong pelvis, sister.

 

[Arctish]

Well, then, we're agreed. With time and geographic / reproductive separation, new races can evolve. Whether on Earth or in our Star Trek future.

New species can. Given enough time if isolated on different planets we could have what happened in Star Trek, how they explained all the different species looking human-like.

Hmmm, bringing this thread back on topic, would it be wrong for a Romulan to claim to be Vulcan? They do have a common ancestry, though less so than black and white humans do.

Oh, the OP. Well, could I simply change my subspecies from homo sapien sapien to homo neanderthalensis? As my ancestors were from Eurasia, I've got ~2% Neanderthal. I'm more Neanderthal than Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee.

I know a guy with an ancestor who came over on the Mayflower and is a distant relative of Daniel Boone. At what point will his family no longer be allowed to mention that part of their ancestry?

What about Sally Hemings' descendants who fought for, and won, the right to be buried in the Jefferson family graveyard at Monticello? Are they not allowed to say that one of their ancestors was a white man?

 

[Trausti]

Oh, the OP. Well, could I simply change my subspecies from homo sapien sapien to homo neanderthalensis? As my ancestors were from Eurasia, I've got ~2% Neanderthal. I'm more Neanderthal than Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee.

I know a guy with an ancestor who came over on the Mayflower and is a distant relative of Daniel Boone. At what point will his family no longer be allowed to mention that part of their ancestry?

What about Sally Hemings' descendants who fought for, and won, the right to be buried in the Jefferson family graveyard at Monticello? Are they not allowed to say that one of their ancestors was a white man?

This is why I identify as big beautiful trans Black lesbian woman in a wheelchair. Don't deny my ancestry.

 

[Arctish]

Oh, the OP. Well, could I simply change my subspecies from homo sapien sapien to homo neanderthalensis? As my ancestors were from Eurasia, I've got ~2% Neanderthal. I'm more Neanderthal than Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee.

I know a guy with an ancestor who came over on the Mayflower and is a distant relative of Daniel Boone. At what point will his family no longer be allowed to mention that part of their ancestry?

What about Sally Hemings' descendants who fought for, and won, the right to be buried in the Jefferson family graveyard at Monticello? Are they not allowed to say that one of their ancestors was a white man?

This is why I identify as big beautiful trans Black lesbian woman in a wheelchair. Don't deny my ancestry.

You didn't answer the questions. Is that because you don't have an answer or because you prefer to just post random thoughts?

 

[Politesse]

Heh. Apparently, race can also be deduced from the female pelvis.

Birth canals are different all over the world, countering a long-held evolutionary theory

Lia Betti, a biological anthropologist at the University of Roehampton in London and evolutionary ecologist Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, measured the pelvises of 348 female human skeletons from 24 different parts of the world. The birth canals were far from carbon copies of each other. Those of women from sub-Saharan Africa and some Asian populations were overall narrow from side to side and deep from front to back, whereas Native American women had wider canals. Native Americans and Europeans also had the most oval-shaped upper canals, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Well, maybe Rachel Dolezal can't be transracial after all. Wrong pelvis, sister.

I take it you didn't actually read the article you're quoting; it doesn't actually say anything about race being the causative factor in the differences they observed.

 

[Max Rockatansky]

A major reason why I think the "white nationalists" are deluded idiots since "bred out of existence" is a very flawed concept. In a thousand years when human beings are spread across our solar system, if sufficiently separated for a long enough time, humans will begin to evolve differences from other colonies due to geographical limits and available gene pool population.

And those differences would be far more vast too. Here, we got different shades of skin, shapes of eyes, etc. There they would be twice the size of each other (differing gravity from planet to planet), etc.

Agreed. Skin tones could vary from albino translucent to dark brown, perhaps green or other colors depending upon the atmospheric and water content.

- - - Updated - - -

A major reason why I think the "white nationalists" are deluded idiots since "bred out of existence" is a very flawed concept. In a thousand years when human beings are spread across our solar system, if sufficiently separated for a long enough time, humans will begin to evolve differences from other colonies due to geographical limits and available gene pool population.

And those differences would be far more vast too. Here, we got different shades of skin, shapes of eyes, etc. There they would be twice the size of each other (differing gravity from planet to planet), etc.

Well, then, we're agreed. With time and geographic / reproductive separation, new races can evolve. Whether on Earth or in our Star Trek future.

Agreed. In the modern world, we're all connected, but if separated for thousands of years, new "races" would evolve.