Race is a social construct; except when it isn't

[Trausti]

At the risk of offending the liberal creationist arbiters on this forum, I direct curious minds to this recent article about a racial gap in slow-wave sleep.

What’s more, the sleep discrepancy persisted even when the researchers tried to control for economic factors: As blacks got wealthier, the gap in sleep narrowed, but did not go away entirely. “The race gap is decreased if you take into account some indicator of economics,” says Lauderdale, “but it’s not eliminated in the data that I have looked at.” Indeed, in the San Diego study, researchers also concluded that there were racial differences in sleep regardless of income.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/91261/black-white-sleep-gap

This reminded me of other racial anatomical/biological differences:

Glomerular Filtration Rate: http://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/18/9/2575/T1.expansion.html

Skulls

Teeth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinodonty_and_Sundadonty

Hair

Fingerprints: http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1002%2Fajpa.22869?r3_referer=wol&tracking_action=preview_click&show_checkout=1&purchase_referrer=www.dailymail.co.uk&purchase_site_license=LICENSE_DENIED_NO_CUSTOMER

Of course, what explains these differences if not evolution and natural selection? Do selective pressures apply to humans like all other life on this planet; or, with a nod to proponents of intelligent design, are humans special and otherwise impervious to change despite having radiated into various geographic and reproductive separate groups?

The breakup of the human family, or first human tribe, happened at least ~100,000 years ago. Here's a neat recent article from New Scientist: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830434-400-first-humans-to-leave-africa-went-to-china-not-europe/

That's certainly enough time for natural selection to do what it does to all other life: http://www.livescience.com/7971-humans-evolving-brains-shrink.html

Or maybe my observations are wrong. Maybe humans stopped evolving ~200,000 years ago when the first anatomical humans appeared. Maybe there is something about humans which indicates that despite what natural selection would suggest, and despite the ~100,000 years of geographic and reproductive separate, we are not like dogs, or birds, or ants. We are an inert species. Is there someone willing to make that argument?

 

[repoman]

I would say that while this is a rehash of things said before, this is off to a fairly good start.

Take the extremes of opinion that there is no difference at all between distinct populations (other than hair, skin color etc...) as being zero and people like Shockley or people who wrote "The Bell Curve" and "Race Realists" in general as ten. In that case I would say that most aspects of behavior or intelligence are based on distinct population are probably only at most a 1 and very rarely at a 2.

 

[fromderinside]

I would say that while this is a rehash of things said before, this is off to a fairly good start.

Take the extremes of opinion that there is no difference at all between distinct populations (other than hair, skin color etc...) as being zero and people like Shockley or people who wrote "The Bell Curve" and "Race Realists" in general as ten. In that case I would say that most aspects of behavior or intelligence are based on distinct population are probably only at most a 1 and very rarely at a 2.

Not going for it. Especially not going for it on natural science grounds. Consider the following. Humans apparently have at least eight memory regions not integrated and more attending areas, again, not all connected. Even among the other mammals many of these features seem apparent. Point is individuals and species aren't designed things. Outcomes from mutation are opportunistic and good enough is the rule of the day as far as fitness is concerned. No two humans have the same features driving their responses to whatever is taking place around them and many different regions seem active in many different people doing essentially the same thing.

This topic isn't even very well suited to social science much less natural science. So how about, as well considered as it is, this thread put in pseudo science where we can speculate about how individuals get from input to output and whether anything mentioned up to now anywhere is convincing enough to suggest there is something called intelligence that can be connected to systems of alleles.

Re: not evolving would require a rewriting of thermodynamics at the very least. Like when does change not necessarily to changes in coherent energy and incoherent energy?

Just sayin'

 

[Underseer]

At the risk of offending the liberal creationist arbiters on this forum, [...]

The what?

Oh. You're trying to come up with "scientific" excuses for your racism. Clearly only liberal creationists would dare find fault with your arguments. Except, what the fuck is a "liberal creationist"? I understand what you are trying to excuse, but I don't understand the excuse.

Wow, you even showed a picture of skull shapes. That definitely proves that you are superior because you are white. Darn those liberal creationists for arguing with you when you prove how superior you are!

 

[Peez]

Underseer:
Wow, you even showed a picture of skull shapes.

Too bad the image shows only one of each, as if any differences seen there can be ascribed to "race". Epic fail.

Let us see how this works:

I conclude that Japanese are taller than Russians.



Peez

 

[Jokodo]

<snip>Or maybe my observations are wrong. Maybe humans stopped evolving ~200,000 years ago when the first anatomical humans appeared. Maybe there is something about humans which indicates that despite what natural selection would suggest, and despite the ~100,000 years of geographic and reproductive separate, we are not like dogs, or birds, or ants. We are an inert species. Is there someone willing to make that argument?

We're very much like ants: If we manage to stay around for 120,000,000 years while also doing away with global communication, we sure will split into countless species. Some pairings of extant ant species are trace their last common ancestor back to before birds were around.

Meanwhile, we've only been around for 1/1000 of that time, and without reproductive isolation for any length of time. Feel free to call back in 119,900,000 years.

 

[fromderinside]

Underseer:
Wow, you even showed a picture of skull shapes.

Too bad the image shows only one of each, as if any differences seen there can be ascribed to "race". Epic fail.

Let us see how this works:

I conclude that Japanese are taller than Russians.



Peez

I dunno. Their flags seem to be the same height.

 

[untermensche]

Humans may differ a little in physical appearance, far less than dogs, but for complex traits like cognitive abilities there is no sustainable evidence of significant "racial" differences.

 

[Trausti]

At the risk of offending the liberal creationist arbiters on this forum, [...]

The what?

Oh. You're trying to come up with "scientific" excuses for your racism. Clearly only liberal creationists would dare find fault with your arguments. Except, what the fuck is a "liberal creationist"? I understand what you are trying to excuse, but I don't understand the excuse.

Wow, you even showed a picture of skull shapes. That definitely proves that you are superior because you are white. Darn those liberal creationists for arguing with you when you prove how superior you are!

Huh? It's about differences that arose over ~100,000 years of geographic and reproductive separation. Do you contend that there are no differences in skull shapes among the human races? Are you aware that the gender and race of an individual can be determined by the skeleton alone? How do you think that came about?

It's not about "superior" it's about acknowledging that evolution and natural selection apply to humans as much as to all life on this planet. And this is what I'm getting at. There are some who are happy to trot out evolution and natural selection as a cudgel against religious creationists; yet, when it comes to their own deeply held beliefs - political or social - then the special exceptions employed by the likes of Behe are put into full deployment. It's hypocritical. If you accept evolution and natural selection as correct, then you must also accept the implications of what that means. Humans did not get a wavier. Science is not meant to make you feel cozy with your shibboleths. Every bit of our biology and behavior is affected by evolution and natural selection. Otherwise, we'd all have the cognition and behavior of an amoeba.

 

[Canard DuJour]

At the risk of offending the liberal creationist arbiters on this forum,

Ohhh k, shoulda stopped reading here.

I direct curious minds to this recent article about a racial gap in slow-wave sleep.

What’s more, the sleep discrepancy persisted even when the researchers tried to control for economic factors: As blacks got wealthier, the gap in sleep narrowed, but did not go away entirely. “The race gap is decreased if you take into account some indicator of economics,” says Lauderdale, “but it’s not eliminated in the data that I have looked at.” Indeed, in the San Diego study, researchers also concluded that there were racial differences in sleep regardless of income.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/91261/black-white-sleep-gap

This reminded me of other racial anatomical/biological differences:

Glomerular Filtration Rate: http://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/18/9/2575/T1.expansion.html

Skulls

Lol

Teeth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinodonty_and_Sundadonty

Hair

Fingerprints: http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1002%2Fajpa.22869?r3_referer=wol&tracking_action=preview_click&show_checkout=1&purchase_referrer=www.dailymail.co.uk&purchase_site_license=LICENSE_DENIED_NO_CUSTOMER

Of course, what explains these differences if not evolution and natural selection? Do selective pressures apply to humans like all other life on this planet; or, with a nod to proponents of intelligent design, are humans special and otherwise impervious to change despite having radiated into various geographic and reproductive separate groups?

The breakup of the human family, or first human tribe, happened at least ~100,000 years ago. Here's a neat recent article from New Scientist: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830434-400-first-humans-to-leave-africa-went-to-china-not-europe/

That's certainly enough time for natural selection to do what it does to all other life: http://www.livescience.com/7971-humans-evolving-brains-shrink.html

Or maybe my observations are wrong. Maybe humans stopped evolving ~200,000 years ago when the first anatomical humans appeared. Maybe there is something about humans which indicates that despite what natural selection would suggest, and despite the ~100,000 years of geographic and reproductive separate, we are not like dogs, or birds, or ants. We are an inert species. Is there someone willing to make that argument?

I doubt it. The 'social construct' bit refers to categorization into a finite few races, since people in different times and places make different categorizations and categorize individuals differently. Not human biodiversity

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Underseer:
Wow, you even showed a picture of skull shapes.

Too bad the image shows only one of each, as if any differences seen there can be ascribed to "race". Epic fail.

Let us see how this works:

I conclude that Japanese are taller than Russians.



Peez

Yup, my mother was 5'8". My father was 5'6".

Thus I conclude women are taller than men.

 

[ronburgundy]

At the risk of offending the liberal creationist arbiters on this forum, I direct curious minds to this recent article about a racial gap in slow-wave sleep.

What’s more, the sleep discrepancy persisted even when the researchers tried to control for economic factors: As blacks got wealthier, the gap in sleep narrowed, but did not go away entirely. “The race gap is decreased if you take into account some indicator of economics,” says Lauderdale, “but it’s not eliminated in the data that I have looked at.” Indeed, in the San Diego study, researchers also concluded that there were racial differences in sleep regardless of income.

It is curious that you chose to exclude the very next two sentences after the part you quoted, which were:

[P]It should be noted, however, that researchers concede their attempts to control for economic indicators are far from perfect. “We know our measures for adjusting for socioeconomic status are still somewhat limited,”[/P]

IOW, their results show that economic factors are a confound and that they impact sleep, and that all their efforts to control for this are insufficient and still allow for that to be the sole explanation. Controlling for current income (which is all they are doing) does not control for the many pathways by which a lifetime of differences in income and the income of the neighborhoods one lives in impact the psychological factors that impact sleep. IOW, it is likely that only a small fraction of the non-biological variance tied to economics is accounted for, which could easily mean that if all that variance was controlled there would be zero racial differences left.
In addition, economics is just one of many other environmental factors. Being a racial minority in a highly racist society is another. That include not only direct experiences on the current environment but the residual effects of centuries of it including slavery that manifest in sub-cultural differences.
In fact, the research you cited but only cherry picked to support your ideology showed that "more discrimination meant less slow-wave sleep. “If you can take out that discrimination piece, the average African-American and the average Caucasian look at lot more similar,” she says. “It’s not perfect, but in terms of sleep, a lot of the disparity goes away.” The cited article also reports that "“I have never seen a study that hasn’t shown a direct association between neighborhood quality and sleep quality,” Hale tells me. “Those two are linked.” And black families are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods, even if they are middle-income."

Take economics, neighborhood, discrimination, and being a minority hated by many in the majority around you into account all at the same time, and there is probably almost no difference left for biological "race" to account for, even despite the measures of all these things being imperfect.

 

[Canard DuJour]

In addition, economics is just one of many other environmental factors. Being a racial minority in a highly racist society is another.

Indeed - one you do not control for by switching parents (somebody needs to tell Lynn, Rushton et al).

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

In addition, economics is just one of many other environmental factors. Being a racial minority in a highly racist society is another.

Indeed - one you do not control for by switching parents (somebody needs to tell Lynn, Rushton et al).

I agree with that. I think it would be more honest to try to come up with experiments and analyses that include such race factors each time one is trying to determine differences by race and ascribing it to genetics or some other inherent factor. It will require not just honesty, but in some cases creativity and a work ethic.