Races certainly do exist, have distinct genetic profiles and are treated separately as in the case of some diseases (eg sickle cell anaemia), predispositions such alcohol and lactose tolerance, but have difference ancestry such as the existence of Neanderthal DNA in Europeans but not Africans.
The argument that there are more genetic differences within a race than between them could equally be applied to genders as there is more genetic diversity within a gender than between them, the Y chromosome only having a small number of genes on it and some females have a Y chromosome.
The argument that racial classification was used as a tool for discrimination and therefore we should deny races makes no more sense than arguing that nuclear weapons are detrimental to the well-being of humanity and therefore declaring that E does not equal mc² in the hope that this will make the nuclear bombs go away. It won't, it is a childish and anti-scientific argument.
RobertKarlStonjek seems to be wedded to the idea that the very minor genetic distinctions that exist between what he thinks of as "races" are important. In practice such distinctions are often no greater than those that distinguish families. In essence, like climate change or holocaust deniers he views everything through the distorting lens of confirmation bias.
"But race theory stands out among all of them because it has wreaked untold misery and been used to justify barbaric acts of colonialism, slavery and even genocide. Even today it's still used to explain social inequality, and continues to inspire the rise of the far right across the globe."
-Sure. And I feel guilty about killing all those Indians too.
We can dwell on all that wreaking and justifying and miss the very real effects of the potential for speciation in the human race of animals.
The urge to diverge. The thing that enables life to inhabit new niches. In humans it inhabits embodied in the tribal dynamic ie internal amity in conjunction with external animosity.
And accepting this reality is not embracing it but understanding how it directs the behavior we see that cannot be explained in any other way. Cont>
Pundits know that humanity must accept the concept of universal tribe because tribalism endangers us all. But sociopolitics is an applied science concerned not with explaining human behavior but with modifying it.
And so we cannot expect sociopolitics to explain anything other than the critical need for continuing domestication.
For example it is obvious that homogenization is critical to the concept of universal tribe. And the mechanics of homogenization involves the ancient art of demographics ie the analysis of growth, distribution, migration, conflict.
This is no different for instance than roman efforts to homogenize the disparate germanic tribes throughout europe by spreading a religion tailored for the purpose of forgiveness and reconciliation; but on a planetary scale.
This was by the way after these tribes were driven westward by turkic peoples for the purpose of displacing the indigenes and cleansing europe.
In other words, if we accept the realities of speciation and tribalism in the human condition, we might begin to suspect that all of recorded history is the story of efforts to mitigate their effects, of trying to preserve stability and progress despite the potential for chaos and collapse.
We might suspect that our history is the result of Planning on the grandest of scales and not of mere happenstance and chronic divine intervention.
Which is the real reason that pundits refuse to acknowledge human speciation and tribalism. For they would then have to acknowledge ongoing Efforts for millenia to compensate for it.
Among other things, "scientists" not taking a lesson from what they see. They will talk about opinions once wifely held now being "discredited" and abandoned. Then go on to declare that an opinion having a popular following today automatically makes it "true", and incapable of being rejected later. The only difference between the two is that one opinion was held then, the other now. And "scientists" hold to the idea that "science" today is perfect and nothing it says is false. In fact, to say there is no sociopolitical agenda in considerations like denying the existence of race is laughable. Remember, there were those who, among other things, erected huge, free standing open space buildings and invoked philosophical considerations while others chipped stone arrowheads.
Julian's post only confirms my understanding that religionists are the most vicious bigots in the world.
What else, with gods which convince you that you are the chosen people, that the world was built for you alone to inhabit, and that only you can be good and kind and decent and just.
Common among tribalism is the perception that members of the next tribe are a little less human than yours. Religion created morally perfect beings who guaranteed you that this was so, and gave you books to remind you of the fact.
Cont... Denial of the obvious is thought to be a bulwark to racial discrimination, that the desire to believe in one world human phenotype somehow comes true if we just deny the obvious and *believe*.
Of course it is true that the differences are small, but they are consistent enough for racial identification. Forensic scientists can tell the race (generally) of a deceased individual by their DNA. Surely that is sufficient proof of the existence of distinct regional phenotypes?
Not for some. But doctors now take race into account when treating certain diseases, so, when it comes to practical situations such as forensics and medicine, the reality of racial differences must be considered.
We share more than 98% of our genes with mice...those tiny differences in genes do make a difference. But the differences between humans evolved for adaptation to the physical environment they lived in and generally make no difference in the modern urban environment and that is what counts.
Deniers of racial or regional ethnic differences ignore the fact that lactose tolerance, for instance, is regional, as is the tolerance for alcohol (many Asian people can not tolerate it the cause of that intolerance was used to develop the anti-alcohol drug antabuse), the genetic variation causing sickle cell anaemia on one chromosome only confers resistance to malaria and is found where people live in areas infested with malaria carrying mosquitoes, the genes for the eye folds found in Asian people are not found (or active) in westerners etc
Regional phenotype variations are so pronounced that there are genetic tests offered these days which can tell a person the region of their ancestry.
This is hardly surprising. Not only are their pronounced physical differences that make identification of the most diverse difference fairly straight forward but natural & sexual selection, the known mechanism of evolution, consolidate beneficial traits in isolated human populations.
RobertKarlStonjek
Dec 20, 2016http://phys.org/n...old.html