Race

[Anonymous No.5517304]

If race is a social construct why is it used in biological classifications and evidence of neoteny?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_classification)#Biological_definitions_of_race

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny#Between_races_and_among_primates

[Anonymous No.5517316]

I don't think anyone disputes that there are subtle genetic differences between groups of people with different regional ancestries. What evidence is there to the contrary that would support the 'social construct' hypothesis?

[Anonymous No.5517325]

>>5517316
>What evidence is there to the contrary that would support the 'social construct' hypothesis?

what evidence is there to the contrary that would support the "god" hypothesis?


niggers are niggers and asians are asians. there are clear evolutionary differences, and they are clearly apparent.


also sage because this could be troll

[Anonymous No.5517333]

>>5517316
fuck off to stormfront.

>>5517304
all humans are exactly the same. if you take a "black man" and have him grow up in a "white" home he will be a white man. there has been 0 evidence found that any attribute is associated to genetics and DNA.

[Anonymous No.5517337]

>>5517333
>all humans are exactly the same
but it says right in the wikipedia article that races have varying degrees of neoteny...

[Anonymous No.5517341]

The social construct argument can be taken too far.


There's a fine balance between finding the correct semantic labels to classify things, updating outdated classification systems, and using old classification systems to draw untrue conclusions for political purposes.

YOU are a social construct, for example. Your parents just plopped out this weeping bag of cells and atoms and organic molecules and shit at some point, gave it a name, a birth day based on arbitrary revolutions of the earth around the sun and rotations of the earth about its axis... the list goes on.

You don't even have the same body from day to day (See the Dawkins video about the walking dunes) so if you go far enough you can logic yourself out of existence.

It's just a matter of recognizing the conventions and tearing them down, first.

[Anonymous No.5517345]

>>5517333
I don't think anyone denies this. What evidence is there to the contrary that genetic differences between groups of people with common ancestries exist?

[Anonymous No.5517350]

>>5517333
>there has been 0 evidence found that any attribute is associated to genetics and DNA.
that is just fractally wrong, many different attributes are derived from genetics such as detecting the bitterness of vegetables.
http://live.psu.edu/story/52424

[Anonymous No.5517354]

>>5517333
also, showing pictures of different "races" to children that have not been polluted by the media (such as those that are kept in a basement till they are 10) have shown that these children cant see a difference between "races". when asked what color 2 close up pictures of skin were, one of a "black" man and another of a "white" man, the children answered :"human" to both.

the word "race" didn't even exists until the 1800s when African people where taken as slaves, before that time people didn't see as difference in skin color. (which is why you dont see painting before this time with people with different color skin).

[Anonymous No.5517355]

>>5517350
I lobe the use of the word fractally in this reply. The neologism suggests the poster is on the autism spectrum, or doesn't have access to a dictionary or thesaurus, or he does but doesn't know how to use them properly.

[Anonymous No.5517357]

>>5517350
I dont see how that point to it being genetic. we don't even have any proof that DNA exists (scientists say its so small we cant detect it with anything we have at the moment), and you are telling me it controls everything we are? is this what scientists use to replace "god" in their lives?

[Anonymous No.5517361]

Dammit, I was going to update this with some more evidence, but oh well.

Genes between different populations of humans are extremely minor compared to genes between populations of other species (e.g. chimpanzees), so any genetic differences in intelligence will probably be minor. I am aware that this does not necessarily mean that there can't be a large phenotypic difference, but in this case I have not seen any evidence to suggest that this small genetic difference has a large effect on intelligence. If you can provide such evidence, please do. (note: by evidence I mean exactly that, don't link me to some news article that explains something tangentially related to this point as proof that you're right).

IQ tests are more than likely biased toward higher levels of education. There may still be genuine differences in average intelligence among different populations, but IQ testing is not foolproof or completely reliable.

Growth of civilizations is dependent on many factors including resource availability and competition with other populations driving "arms races" in the literal sense as well as in a cultural sense (the geography of Europe and the Mediterranean played an important role in the development of civilizations there). Furthermore, there are many historic African societies that had a high degree of sophistication at one point in history, but there is not much that remains of these civilizations (e.g. Ethiopia, Ghana).

Even barring all above arguments, you are still only talking about differences among AVERAGE IQ. There will still be many individuals of African race that are much more intelligent than most white people. This means that you cannot justify any racially based policy because there will be members of every race who are highly intelligent and members of every race who are incredibly unintelligent. This means that all policies should judge a person individually, not based on their racial background. (This includes affirmative action)

>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.5517364]

>>5517361
what the fuck does any of this have to do with race existing?

[Anonymous No.5517366]

>>5517361
wat.

protip: stop being such a fanatic

[Anonymous No.5517372]

>>5517357
Ya trolling now?

Or just stuck under a big rock for the past few hundred years or so?

[Anonymous No.5517374]

>>5517372
Was this ever *not* a troll thread?

[Anonymous No.5517384]

>>5517355
English is a social construct and as of such telling a person who to or not to use a word is merely your opinion. Fractal as an amplifier word has become popular and as of such it should not be viewed down upon by the ivory towers of /sci/.

[Anonymous No.5517393]

>>5517341

Race is definitely, DEFINITELY a social construct, no two ways about it.

If there is any validity in categorizing people according to ancestry, you'd trace a line from Europeans back to the Bantu tribe in Africa, while other diaspora populations could be traced back to different tribes, within Africa.

So some African tribes would be in the same category as Europeans, and others with certain Asians. And in fact, Africa does contain the greatest genetic diversity of any continent, even though it too is heavily mixed.

The only evidence we have of phenotypes that tend to be diaspora specific are those adaptations with respect to disease immunities, digesting indigenous foods, and allowing humans to cope with the climate. That last one has manifestations in the outward appearance of humans, leading the so called 'race realists' to (incorrectly) conclude that because facial morphology and skin color can be correlated with occupying a geographic niche, than so can virtually any phenotype, intelligence as well. We know this can't be the case, because human intelligence, the intelligence of modern hominids that distinguishes us from other apes, evolved in Africa. So the diverse climates within the African continent have been selecting for traits such as intelligence at least as much as for humans in any other part of the world.

Even with those traits that have been selected for given human diaspora occupying different environmental niches, the category of race still is not informative given that there does not exist a single distinct diaspora population in isolation; all have bred to blend with the rest of humanity. Moreover, populations in each race can be found occupying any given geographic niche. Asia and Europe and Africa and the Americas all have humans, with the same diaspora ancestry, adapted for diverse environmental niches.

[Anonymous No.5517394]

Phenotypic differences in humans exists across a broad gradient across and even in between continents, with no subcontinent having a monopoly on any trait; any line that is drawn to distinguish one race from another is necessarily arbitrary given the overlap and that ancestry is a poor indicator of race.

[Anonymous No.5517395]

>>5517384
Perhaps your view is also just your opinion, and just as easily discredited.

[Anonymous No.5517403]

>>5517393
do you even know how racial classification works?

[Anonymous No.5517418]

>>5517403
there is no standard system of classifying races. that you would suggest there is makes me think you're rather uneducated on the matter.

you can make up a scientific system if you want.
some people use haplogroups and various genetic markers.

mostly, we categorize people into different races every day based upon our ideas of how a person's appearance should match their behavior.

either way, the distinctions are entirely man-made; there is nothing objective or natural about how this is determined.

[a strong ai No.5518000]

the argument that race is a social construct is nonsense. The fact that race is correlated with things (like IQ) makes it a meaningful categorization. A useless categorization would not have a correlation with anything.

[Anonymous No.5518050]

Native Americans were wiped out by smallpox and other diseases PRECISELY because there were genetic differences from the Europeans. Their demise due to disease was a combination of the fact that they had limited genetic diversity originally, so they had no genes that helped resist smallpox, where as Europeans had genes present in the population that helped a much larger percentage to fight off the black death. Humans have genetic differences, different races have been shown to have varying susceptibility to diseases and other ailments.