Racists standing up for accurate science

[bigfield]

Human races generally live together peacefully, including intimate relationships, social circles and workplaces. It's too much of a stretch to equate that high level of cooperation with the competition between subspecies of other animals.

Humans have functions of the higher brain that are often at odds with the functions of the lower brain. Us-vs-them mentality is something innate, moderated by the higher brain only in recent evolutionary history, and far from eliminated. Tribal differences among our ancestors would be displayed by only subtle cues, such as differences in language, clothing, hairstyle, jewelry, and weapons. Those differences would trigger an attitude of distrust and caution at best (appropriate for intertribal trading and alliances), or a fight-or-flight response at worst (to prepare for ambush), and, if you didn't stand entirely with your own tribe, you are likely to be killed or exiled from your own tribe. The diversity of coincident races today means that the cues distinguishing the races are drastically different, much more than subtly different. Not just drastically different skin color, but also drastically different dress, language, jewelry, and behavior. The innate behaviors that trigger the us-vs-them responses must be constantly held in check by the higher brain until habitualization. That is why expressions of racism are generally illegal in multiracial nations. Racial hatred would otherwise be largely spontaneous.

Once you remove "differences in language, clothing, hairstyle, jewelry, and weapons", people are not averse to socialising with people from other races, and live together peacefully. Tribalism exists not just between groups of people of different races, but between groups of people of the same race. Therefore, human tribalism is comparable to competition between subspecies of other animals.

Even in America, uniquely absolutist in freedom of expression, the anti-racist cultural forces are exceptionally strong, for good reason. Think of the denomination of Christianity that is LEAST likely to experience racial tensions within its own membership. You may have thought of the Unitarian Universalist church. That is the church I would have thought of. Even the UU church has experienced a drastic racial divide. Blacks fled the UU church en masse, after such things as white UU members mistaking black UU members as parking attendants in a parking garage. It is a situation that the UU church is taking great pains in an attempt to repair, bending over backwards to attract black members back in their church, and it is an unlikely goal. The vast majority of churches in America are almost completely racially uniform. People are most comfortable around people of their own race, and, because of the first amendment, the state has no power to try to diversify churches. The white members of the UU church could easily independently choose to attend black churches every other Sunday, but they generally don't.

Racial tensions between blacks and whites in the US do not serve as evidence of innate animosity between human races; those tensions exists because Africans were originally brought to the US as slaves.

 

[bigfield]

The table of contents you posted was from Volume 3, not Volume 4. The proposed subspecies division between Italians and Irish would probably fail the 75% rule, so it can be the major races, less the minor races.

Has anyone actually created a list of human subspecies based on this 75% rule?

 

[untermensche]

The table of contents you posted was from Volume 3, not Volume 4. The proposed subspecies division between Italians and Irish would probably fail the 75% rule, so it can be the major races, less the minor races.

Has anyone actually created a list of human subspecies based on this 75% rule?

The question is 75% of what?

Because if we are to say that humans can be divided into subspecies based on something like cognitive abilities we have to know all the genes involved in the production of cognitive abilities.

If we say humans can be divided based on arbitrarily selected aspects of prototypical presentation then the question is: So what?

It is a meaningless division.

 

[bigfield]

The 'major races'--Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid--are not supported by DNA analysis.

Compare the classification published in Meyers Konversationslexikon (1885-90) with the relationship of various ethnic groups based on DNA analysis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negroid#/media/File:Meyers_b11_s0476a.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recen...media/File:World_Map_of_Y-DNA_Haplogroups.png

 

[PyramidHead]

I still haven't heard a satisfying answer to what I feel is the central question about heritable traits. It is one thing to say that intelligence is largely genetic. But that in itself does not imply that it has anything to do with race. There is an enormous conceptual gulf between the existence of a phenotype that can be transmitted to offspring and that same phenotype closely co-varying with the loosely defined collection of facial and bodily features that we use to define a race. Just because intelligence is heritable and brown eyes are also heritable does not mean they are correlated, because there is far more variation in intelligence among people with the brown eyes than there is between people with brown eyes and, say, green eyes. So, studies on twins can provide support for proponents of the idea that intelligence is inherited genetically, but to say that there are relevant genetic differences between the intelligence of subgroups that are classified on completely different traits (which themselves have nothing to do with intelligence, such as skin color and bone structure) requires considerably more justification. And I have yet to see it, so I remain skeptical of the idea that racial categories tell us anything about the innate intelligence of any member of these categories.

 

[untermensche]

The 'major races'--Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid--are not supported by DNA analysis.

The problem with genetic analysis is we don't fully understand what many genes are doing or how features that require thousands of genes to construct can differ.

If the only differences are in superficial and apparent features the genes could vary a lot, but the differences would be completely meaningless.

 

[bigfield]

The 'major races'--Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid--are not supported by DNA analysis.

The problem with genetic analysis is we don't fully understand what many genes are doing or how features that require thousands of genes to construct can differ.

If the only differences are in superficial and apparent features the genes could vary a lot, but the differences would be completely meaningless.

We don't need to know what genes do in order to establish ancestry.

 

[untermensche]

The problem with genetic analysis is we don't fully understand what many genes are doing or how features that require thousands of genes to construct can differ.

If the only differences are in superficial and apparent features the genes could vary a lot, but the differences would be completely meaningless.

We don't need to know what genes do in order to establish ancestry.

No we don't.

But to say there are any substantial differences as opposed to mere differences in meaningless things like hair color or shape of nose we do.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I am sorry for the implicit accusation. "Church" has two English meanings, and I used both. When I said, "The vast majority of churches in America are almost completely racially uniform," I meant a single meeting place for Christians, not a denomination

Okay, apology accepted (I know it has two meanings; I had reckoned you meant "denomination" in all instances in that paragraph).

Misunderstandings aside, the question about racial tensions within the membership of a denomination remains. Do you think there is a lot of racial tension within the Catholic Church?
(if anything, my impression is that the religious in-group/out-group identification might reduce the impact the racial in-group/out-group identification to some extent, though that would have to be tested).

I think you are right. The Catholic church seems racially diverse, but no sign of racial tensions to my knowledge.

 

[ApostateAbe]

On the issue of evidence, the following papers argue that race - unlike sex and age - is only used as a cue to track alliances, and race categorization is signficantly reduced when political allegiances cut accross races:

http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/papers/2015Pietraszewski_Constituents of political cognition_Cognition.pdf
http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/papers/eraserace.pdf
http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/papers/Alliance detection and Race 2014 +SI.pdf

I haven't yet studied them; I have other priorities, but given that you clearly are very interested in race, I'd like to ask you whether you've read them, and what you think of their interpretation of the evidence?

By the way, it seems to me that many people categorize "race" in a way that does not match at all the distinction that you are making. For example, many people seem to consider Whites, Arabs, Persians and Indians (from India) as different races, or Han Chinese and Amerindians as different races. While they are also basis for such distinctions, they do not seem to match race, and for that matter, one might as well distinguish between different people classified as "White".

No, I haven't read such papers, but maybe I will, thank you. Race is an evolutionary phenomenon, and it is spectral, much like colors on an artist's color spectrum, and therefore you can have either many discrete divisions or just a few, and both such divisions would be correct, except that such divisions may be misleading especially on the edge of a division. We shouldn't think about biological races any other way. Forensic anthropologists often use a three-race scheme that covers all of the human species: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. It serves their purposes, but each division is broadly diverse. Mongoloids, for example, often refer to northeast Asians, but they may also include Native Americans, Pac Islanders or native Australians. Each of those subgroups, in turn, can likewise be divided, but the finer you divide, the more uncertainty.

ETA:

Humans have functions of the higher brain that are often at odds with the functions of the lower brain. Us-vs-them mentality is something innate, moderated by the higher brain only in recent evolutionary history, and far from eliminated. Tribal differences among our ancestors would be displayed by only subtle cues, such as differences in language, clothing, hairstyle, jewelry, and weapons. Those differences would trigger an attitude of distrust and caution at best (appropriate for intertribal trading and alliances), or a fight-or-flight response at worst (to prepare for ambush), and, if you didn't stand entirely with your own tribe, you are likely to be killed or exiled from your own tribe. The diversity of coincident races today means that the cues distinguishing the races are drastically different, much more than subtly different. Not just drastically different skin color, but also drastically different dress, language, jewelry, and behavior. The innate behaviors that trigger the us-vs-them responses must be constantly held in check by the higher brain until habitualization. That is why expressions of racism are generally illegal in multiracial nations. Racial hatred would otherwise be largely spontaneous.

A couple of points:

1. The differences aren't only between races, but also within the same race. People with ancestries from different parts of the world often look different from each other in characteristic ways, even if they are the same race. People might use some of those distinctions to instinctively pick up coalitions even more than importantly than race, depending on the social environment.

2. In any case, those cues seem to depend on the social environment: for example, if different way of dressing fails to predict coalition/tribe, people are going to stop regarding different ways of dressing as a cue. On the other hand, sometimes certain ways of dressing are excellent predictors of coalition/tribe, and people will take them as relevant over other features; an obvious example are visual cues in military uniforms.

Yes, but the triggering of the us-vs-them reactions would not distinguish between cultural differences and genetic differences. The relevance of the fact that there are apparent genetic differences is that the differences can not possibly be erased, but genetic differences are not even needed if cultural displays are systemically different on average, even with internal diversity.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Humans have functions of the higher brain that are often at odds with the functions of the lower brain. Us-vs-them mentality is something innate, moderated by the higher brain only in recent evolutionary history, and far from eliminated. Tribal differences among our ancestors would be displayed by only subtle cues, such as differences in language, clothing, hairstyle, jewelry, and weapons. Those differences would trigger an attitude of distrust and caution at best (appropriate for intertribal trading and alliances), or a fight-or-flight response at worst (to prepare for ambush), and, if you didn't stand entirely with your own tribe, you are likely to be killed or exiled from your own tribe. The diversity of coincident races today means that the cues distinguishing the races are drastically different, much more than subtly different. Not just drastically different skin color, but also drastically different dress, language, jewelry, and behavior. The innate behaviors that trigger the us-vs-them responses must be constantly held in check by the higher brain until habitualization. That is why expressions of racism are generally illegal in multiracial nations. Racial hatred would otherwise be largely spontaneous.

Once you remove "differences in language, clothing, hairstyle, jewelry, and weapons", people are not averse to socialising with people from other races, and live together peacefully. Tribalism exists not just between groups of people of different races, but between groups of people of the same race. Therefore, human tribalism is comparable to competition between subspecies of other animals.

If people were not averse to socialising with people from other races, then they would. The problem is they don't. Neighborhoods of nearly uniform races are a pattern, not just in America, but all over the world.

Even in America, uniquely absolutist in freedom of expression, the anti-racist cultural forces are exceptionally strong, for good reason. Think of the denomination of Christianity that is LEAST likely to experience racial tensions within its own membership. You may have thought of the Unitarian Universalist church. That is the church I would have thought of. Even the UU church has experienced a drastic racial divide. Blacks fled the UU church en masse, after such things as white UU members mistaking black UU members as parking attendants in a parking garage. It is a situation that the UU church is taking great pains in an attempt to repair, bending over backwards to attract black members back in their church, and it is an unlikely goal. The vast majority of churches in America are almost completely racially uniform. People are most comfortable around people of their own race, and, because of the first amendment, the state has no power to try to diversify churches. The white members of the UU church could easily independently choose to attend black churches every other Sunday, but they generally don't.

Racial tensions between blacks and whites in the US do not serve as evidence of innate animosity between human races; those tensions exists because Africans were originally brought to the US as slaves.

The racial tensions within America can be intermediate evidence, but the solid evidence is that the pattern of racial tensions exist in every multiracial nation in the world.

 

[untermensche]

racial tensions

An undefined term.

Human tensions exist in every human society.

And if people have been raised to be racist those human tensions will fall along racial lines.

 

[ApostateAbe]

The 'major races'--Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid--are not supported by DNA analysis.

Compare the classification published in Meyers Konversationslexikon (1885-90) with the relationship of various ethnic groups based on DNA analysis:

Show

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negroid#/media/File:Meyers_b11_s0476a.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recen...media/File:World_Map_of_Y-DNA_Haplogroups.png

It is important to not conflate single-allele groups like haplogroups with races, not for humans nor any species. Haplogroups are useful for some simple ancestry calculations, but they don't reflect the level of composite genetic relationship among groups. Biological races can be analyzed only by looking at hundreds of alleles at the same time, as the many alleles tend to cluster together to reflect races. The attached image reflects such an analysis, a cluster analysis from Rosenberg et al's "Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure," 2005. You can see from this image that, yes, races really can be divided into the three-race scheme of Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid, among other correct schemes of racial divisions.

Show

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Yes, but the triggering of the us-vs-them reactions would not distinguish between cultural differences and genetic differences. The relevance of the fact that there are apparent genetic differences is that the differences can not possibly be erased, but genetic differences are not even needed if cultural displays are systemically different on average, even with internal diversity.

Well, the genetic differences can be sort of erased by mixing the races. But that aside, my point is that the genetic differences (and phenotypical differences too) exist for that matter between, say, people of mostly Swedish ancestry and people of mostly French ancestry, or Italian ancestry, yet there is no sign of racial-like tension in America between those groups, which are ordinarily classified as part of the same "White" race, whereas, say, Arabs or Indians (from India) are often not classified as "White", and some racial-like tension exists.
It seems the differences in phenotype the us-vs-them mechanism latches on to may vary considerably on the basis of cultural factors (as the papers suggest), so even if the genetic differences remain, racial tension probably doesn't need to.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I still haven't heard a satisfying answer to what I feel is the central question about heritable traits. It is one thing to say that intelligence is largely genetic. But that in itself does not imply that it has anything to do with race. There is an enormous conceptual gulf between the existence of a phenotype that can be transmitted to offspring and that same phenotype closely co-varying with the loosely defined collection of facial and bodily features that we use to define a race. Just because intelligence is heritable and brown eyes are also heritable does not mean they are correlated, because there is far more variation in intelligence among people with the brown eyes than there is between people with brown eyes and, say, green eyes. So, studies on twins can provide support for proponents of the idea that intelligence is inherited genetically, but to say that there are relevant genetic differences between the intelligence of subgroups that are classified on completely different traits (which themselves have nothing to do with intelligence, such as skin color and bone structure) requires considerably more justification. And I have yet to see it, so I remain skeptical of the idea that racial categories tell us anything about the innate intelligence of any member of these categories.

There is an underlying principle that I think ought to underlie our probability judgments of genetic racial differences, and it is: absolutely any genetic variant varies in frequency among the races. This principle is confirmably true beyond all doubt if we are looking at alleles. You can compile at random a long list of any set of SNPs, go to the online 1000 Genomes Project Browser, and you will see that all allele frequencies vary among populations. If we are talking about phenotypic variations (morphological traits that vary possibly due to genetic variants, environmental variants, or both), then the pattern likewise holds. Any phenotype that varies within a race also varies in frequency or average quantity among races. Absolutely all of them. We would not expect anything else, especially given that races evolved in drastically different environments for a quarter to half of the time that the human species has existed (200,000 years), with at least a subset of drastic genotypic variations in response to these environmental variations that are absolutely undeniable (i.e. skin pigmentation, hair texture, and nose shape). Because intelligence is a highly-heritable phenotype with a strong relationship to Darwinian selection pressures, such a thing as expecting that all races have equal genetic potential for intelligence would be like throwing fifty silver dollar coins in the air and expecting them all to land on edge. It would be all the more unlikely given that populations have vastly different measured average intelligence scores and that these scores strongly negatively correlate with average skin pigmentation, as though colder scarcer environments would demand greater intelligence, as we may reasonably expect. That is really only the background knowledge, but the direct evidence makes the case even stronger. There is the statistical validation of the Jensen effect, which found that the black-white test score gap is strongly correlated with the g-loading (thus heritability) of tests. There is the transracial adoption study and ten-year follow-up study by Scarr and Weinberg, with data that showed that black children adopted into white homes had no more of an IQ advantage at the age of 17 than expected by hereditarian theory. There is the racial brain size hierarchy that matches the racial IQ hierarchy, per Rushton and per Beals, Smith and Dodd, the relevance being that brain size variations are highly heritable and related to IQ. There is the pattern of intermediate races having intermediate IQs. There is the pattern of the same racial hierarchy existing in every multiracial nation in the world, per Lynn's Global Bell Curve. The evidence really is very strong, it definitely is not the way the world should be, and it has intermediately convinced academic intelligence researchers, according to expert surveys. Over 80% of them attribute genetic differences to at least some of the cause of the black-white IQ gap, per the 2013 survey, whereas the public and the highest scientific authorities outside the field would claim it is deplorable to believe that the genetic cause is anything but 0% or uncertain.

 

[ApostateAbe]

The table of contents you posted was from Volume 3, not Volume 4. The proposed subspecies division between Italians and Irish would probably fail the 75% rule, so it can be the major races, less the minor races.

Has anyone actually created a list of human subspecies based on this 75% rule?

I have seen scientific sources use trinomial nomenclature for human subspecies corresponding to major human races, but I am not sure if it was based on the 75% rule.

 

[bigfield]

It is important to not conflate single-allele groups like haplogroups with races, not for humans nor any species. Haplogroups are useful for some simple ancestry calculations, but they don't reflect the level of composite genetic relationship among groups. Biological races can be analyzed only by looking at hundreds of alleles at the same time, as the many alleles tend to cluster together to reflect races. The attached image reflects such an analysis, a cluster analysis from Rosenberg et al's "Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure," 2005. You can see from this image that, yes, races really can be divided into the three-race scheme of Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid, among other correct schemes of racial divisions.

Rosenberg et al state the following in their discussion:

Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of “biological race.” In general, representations of human genetic diversity are evaluated based on their ability to facilitate further research into such topics as human evolutionary history and the identification of medically important genotypes that vary in frequency across populations...The arguments about the existence or nonexistence of “biological races” in the absence of a specific context are largely orthogonal to the question of scientific utility, and they should not obscure the fact that, ultimately, the primary goals for studies of genetic variation in humans are to make inferences about human evolutionary history, human biology, and the genetic causes of disease.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1310579/

Furthermore, the figure you presented does not support the case for dividing humans into Negroids, Caucasoids, and Mongoloids. The graph appears to show a handful of clean breaks between the geographical groups, but this is partly an illusion created by the sort order of the graph. The Yakut cluster is pretty close to the Uygur cluster, which means there is a relatively smooth continuum throughout the European and Asian clusters.

Perhaps you should show us how you have sorted these clusters into the three races.

- - - Updated - - -

Has anyone actually created a list of human subspecies based on this 75% rule?

I have seen scientific sources use trinomial nomenclature for human subspecies corresponding to major human races, but I am not sure if it was based on the 75% rule.

Then the 75% rule isn't relevant.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Rosenberg et al state the following in their discussion:

Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of “biological race.” In general, representations of human genetic diversity are evaluated based on their ability to facilitate further research into such topics as human evolutionary history and the identification of medically important genotypes that vary in frequency across populations...The arguments about the existence or nonexistence of “biological races” in the absence of a specific context are largely orthogonal to the question of scientific utility, and they should not obscure the fact that, ultimately, the primary goals for studies of genetic variation in humans are to make inferences about human evolutionary history, human biology, and the genetic causes of disease.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1310579/

Furthermore, the figure you presented does not support the case for dividing humans into Negroids, Caucasoids, and Mongoloids. The graph appears to show a handful of clean breaks between the geographical groups, but this is partly an illusion created by the sort order of the graph. The Yakut cluster is pretty close to the Uygur cluster, which means there is a relatively smooth continuum throughout the European and Asian clusters.

Perhaps you should show us how you have sorted these clusters into the three races.

- - - Updated - - -

Has anyone actually created a list of human subspecies based on this 75% rule?

I have seen scientific sources use trinomial nomenclature for human subspecies corresponding to major human races, but I am not sure if it was based on the 75% rule.

Then the 75% rule isn't relevant.

I know that the set of authors Rosenberg et al themselves disagree with application of the data to biological races. However, they have no authority over how the data "should" be applied. The data can be used for anything. And, on the matter of races, it is most certainly far more reasonable to use data that compiles the frequencies of thousands of alleles than to use just data of just one or a few alleles, as in haplogroups. If you want to disconfirm races, then, given the principle of race within evolutionary theory, you must use either Rosenberg et al's data or something akin to it, not haplogroups. There really are spectral boundaries between the races, regardless of race scheme. If we were to divide the races into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid, then the Uygurs could go into either Caucasoid or Mongoloid, as they are intermediate between the two groups. It does not follow that races are either non-existent or any less relevant, no more than colors on the color spectrum. See the  continuum fallacy for a fuller explanation of why.

"Then the 75% rule isn't relevant." Does not follow. It is the standard rule for subspecies in the field of taxonomy. If subspecies were proposed for humans (and, yes, there have been many such proposed subspecies divisions for humans), then there would be no alternative be no alternative but to use the 75% rule, and major human races most plainly meet that criterion for subspecies classification.

 

[bigfield]

I know that the set of authors Rosenberg et al themselves disagree with application of the data to biological races. However, they have no authority over how the data "should" be applied. The data can be used for anything. And, on the matter of races, it is most certainly far more reasonable to use data that compiles the frequencies of thousands of alleles than to use just data of just one or a few alleles, as in haplogroups. If you want to disconfirm races, then, given the principle of race within evolutionary theory, you must use either Rosenberg et al's data or something akin to it, not haplogroups.

I can't simply ignore the fact the Rosenberg et al expressly state that 'Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of "biological race."'

There really are spectral boundaries between the races, regardless of race scheme. If we were to divide the races into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid, then the Uygurs could go into either Caucasoid or Mongoloid, as they are intermediate between the two groups. It does not follow that races are either non-existent or any less relevant, no more than colors on the color spectrum. See the  continuum fallacy for a fuller explanation of why.

There is no accommodation for intermediates in the Konversationslexikon.

The clusters do not support the categories of Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid: Several of the classifications described in the Konversationslexikon are refuted by Rosenberg et al's analysis: Papuans are classified as Negroid but Rosenberg et al shows they are quite distinct from African clines; American clines are shown as distinct from Asian clines, yet the Konversationslexikon classifies all Americans as Mongoloid.

Rosenberg's analysis also omits many populations, notably Australians, North Americans, Sami and Finns, Polynesians and Micronesians, but also many European, Southwest Asian and African populations. As stated by the authors, Rosenberg et al did not intend for the data to be used to classify people into races or defend the three race system; if that had been their aim then it would be essential that they sample more populations to get a complete picture.

"Then the 75% rule isn't relevant." Does not follow. It is the standard rule for subspecies in the field of taxonomy. If subspecies were proposed for humans (and, yes, there have been many such proposed subspecies divisions for humans), then there would be no alternative be no alternative but to use the 75% rule, and major human races most plainly meet that criterion for subspecies classification.

But subspecies already exist for humans. All modern humans are Home sapiens sapiens, and there is also Homo sapiens idaltu, and extinct subspecies. I doubt these subspecies are based on the 75% rule.

 

[ApostateAbe]

"Then the 75% rule isn't relevant." Does not follow. It is the standard rule for subspecies in the field of taxonomy. If subspecies were proposed for humans (and, yes, there have been many such proposed subspecies divisions for humans), then there would be no alternative be no alternative but to use the 75% rule, and major human races most plainly meet that criterion for subspecies classification.

But subspecies already exist for humans. All modern humans are Home sapiens sapiens, and there is also Homo sapiens idaltu, and extinct subspecies. I doubt these subspecies are based on the 75% rule.

It is based on the rule that we are all one people under the heavens. No other species has one and only one formal subspecies classification.