Race

From RationalWiki
(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
(There is a clear insinuation that race was developed by "White racists" to "justify slavery" (the PC party line). This is false and should be made clear.)
(Undo revision 1224219 by 175.193.212.64 (talk) "the PC party line" implies the existence of a "PC party" - so, where is it?)
Line 5: Line 5:
  
 
==Identification of races==
 
==Identification of races==
As [[Europe]]ans began to exert power around the globe, they directly encountered people of a variety of different appearances.  At that time, [[geographic]]al origins were a more likely way for Europeans to classify people than was race.  As European colonization and the trans-Atlantic [[slave]] trade began to define global relationships in the modern world, Europeans began to rely on the idea of biologically distinct races, including such constructions as "Negroids," "Caucasoid," and "Mongoloids," a classification system which was developed by Blumenbach based on his studies of [[Phrenology|skull morphology]] and having no connection to slavery. "Race" became further entrenched with the traffic of enslaved Africans to the New World made it a way to define who may or may not be a freeman.  
+
As [[Europe]]ans began to exert power around the globe, they directly encountered people of a variety of different appearances.  At that time, [[geographic]]al origins were a more likely way for Europeans to classify people than was race.  As European colonization and the trans-Atlantic [[slave]] trade began to define global relationships in the modern world, Europeans began to rely on the idea of biologically distinct races, including such constructions as "Negroids," "Caucasoid," and "Mongoloids," a classification system which was developed by Blumenbach based on his studies of [[Phrenology|skull morphology]]. "Race" became further entrenched with the traffic of enslaved Africans to the New World made it a way to define who may or may not be a freeman.  
  
 
This simple classification system failed in one significant area, however.  Darker-skinned Europeans from southern [[Italy]] and southern [[Spain]], [[India]]ns, and significantly Dravidic Indians clearly were not "[[Caucasian]]." but they were also not "Negroid."  To the "[[American]]," these peoples, who increasingly emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century, were clearly "[[Xenophobia|not like us]]," but were also "more like us than primitive [[black]]s."  Depending on the needs of the day, they would be tossed in with the "Negroid," or tossed in with "Caucasian."  [[Jew]]s, [[Arab]]s and Indians (from India, not [[Native Americans]] - they were just "[[Noble savage|savages]]") fell into this strange place of not belonging to any race. The US [[Supreme Court]] even ruled in ''U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind'' (1923) that Caucasian Indians were not "white" within the meaning [[immigration]] law, as, despite [[anthropologist]]s classifying them with "white" Europeans, they were not considered that in the view of the "common man" which is apparently what counted.  Seriously.
 
This simple classification system failed in one significant area, however.  Darker-skinned Europeans from southern [[Italy]] and southern [[Spain]], [[India]]ns, and significantly Dravidic Indians clearly were not "[[Caucasian]]." but they were also not "Negroid."  To the "[[American]]," these peoples, who increasingly emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century, were clearly "[[Xenophobia|not like us]]," but were also "more like us than primitive [[black]]s."  Depending on the needs of the day, they would be tossed in with the "Negroid," or tossed in with "Caucasian."  [[Jew]]s, [[Arab]]s and Indians (from India, not [[Native Americans]] - they were just "[[Noble savage|savages]]") fell into this strange place of not belonging to any race. The US [[Supreme Court]] even ruled in ''U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind'' (1923) that Caucasian Indians were not "white" within the meaning [[immigration]] law, as, despite [[anthropologist]]s classifying them with "white" Europeans, they were not considered that in the view of the "common man" which is apparently what counted.  Seriously.

Revision as of 12:01, 14 August 2013

The touchy subject of

Race

link=:category:
Key concepts
Racism and racists

The term race refers to the debatable belief that it is possible to divide people into clear, well-defined groups based on a haphazard variety of characteristics. The most usual way is to arbitrarily ascribe "race" based on skin color; although others attempt to to define it based on hypothesized common ancestry, language and self-identification. The only difference skin color makes is whether or not you will burn quickly when left out in the sun and how quickly you can produce usable vitamin D from sunlight.

Not that long ago, it made sense to talk about things like "the French race" or "the German race." Nowadays, the term ethnicity or ethnic group is often used where we used to talk about "race." This isn't just the same thing disguised with political correctness. Ethnicity takes into account cultural identification, language, and religious beliefs — you can, in principle, belong to multiple ethnic groups — rather than just "look, mommy, a painted man." It's still as arbitrary and useless as a system of classification as "race," but used in context it doesn't really pretend not to be. Race in the sense of ancestry is used when assessing suitability for bone marrow transplants however.[1]

Contents

Identification of races

As Europeans began to exert power around the globe, they directly encountered people of a variety of different appearances. At that time, geographical origins were a more likely way for Europeans to classify people than was race. As European colonization and the trans-Atlantic slave trade began to define global relationships in the modern world, Europeans began to rely on the idea of biologically distinct races, including such constructions as "Negroids," "Caucasoid," and "Mongoloids," a classification system which was developed by Blumenbach based on his studies of skull morphology. "Race" became further entrenched with the traffic of enslaved Africans to the New World made it a way to define who may or may not be a freeman.

This simple classification system failed in one significant area, however. Darker-skinned Europeans from southern Italy and southern Spain, Indians, and significantly Dravidic Indians clearly were not "Caucasian." but they were also not "Negroid." To the "American," these peoples, who increasingly emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century, were clearly "not like us," but were also "more like us than primitive blacks." Depending on the needs of the day, they would be tossed in with the "Negroid," or tossed in with "Caucasian." Jews, Arabs and Indians (from India, not Native Americans - they were just "savages") fell into this strange place of not belonging to any race. The US Supreme Court even ruled in U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) that Caucasian Indians were not "white" within the meaning immigration law, as, despite anthropologists classifying them with "white" Europeans, they were not considered that in the view of the "common man" which is apparently what counted. Seriously.

This not only led to Caucasian Indians now being ineligible for naturalized citizenship, but denaturalization of some immigrants already made citizens. Congress did not lift this restriction until 1946, when India was on the verge of becoming an independent country.[2]

Race vs. species

As there is only one extant human species, each human is genetically and physically capable of breeding with a fellow human (of the opposite sex, obviously). Therefore it is difficult to see, from an objective taxonomical view, how humanity can be conclusively and objectively sub-divided into "races" based on the varying definitions that different societies have applied over time. Even if "race" is taken to mean subspecies, no modern subspecies of humans have been reliably identified.[3] More recent (2009) studies from HUGO have determined significant shared ancestry patterns between Indians and Europeans (Caucasians) and East Asians.[4] Essentially, the term "race" is no more than a social invention, one which changes depending on the society and over time. Most people in the west will recognize "Chinese" as a race, but in China you will find Hui, Han, Miao, Zhuang, and almost countless other "races" which are — to the Chinese — just as distinguishable as black and white is in America and Europe.

Typically, race is only used by more powerful groups in an attempt to provide some legitimacy for denigrating, controlling or exploiting others. It would be more difficult to start an effective slave trade, for example, if there wasn't a way of distinguishing people (however arbitrarily) in a way to legitimise it.

Racists

See the main article on this topic: Racism

Racists exist and thrive in nearly every, if not every, country in the world. Along with religious affiliation/discrimination and nationalism, racism is among the most popular forms of tribalism in the world. Since race is arbitrary, any group of people that seek to identify "otherness" in another group of people can use racism to their own ends, by labeling the group they don't like as belonging to a certain race.

The concept of "reverse racism" is an exceptionally silly one, implying that there is one correct or even one predominant way in which racism flows (usually assumed in the Western world to be whites discriminating against non-whites, especially blacks). In reality, no one color of people have a monopoly on racism. Examples can be found anywhere.

Not surprisingly, Metapedia has different ideas.

Racist works

Apart from the various awful screeds such as Mein Kampf and the The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, there have been several scientific attempts to link race and IQ (even though both are extremely imprecise measures). The Bell Curve, a book by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, is a recent attempt at this flawed concept.

"Race-based medicine" and geographic ancestry

A topic that has been controversial (for both social and scientific reasons) is so-called "race-based medicine." Currently, some doctors may use racial profiling as a proxy for determining the geographic origins of the patient's lineage to diagnose and treat certain diseases.[5] However, this is not the same thing as race. The researchers at the Human Genome Project sum it up:

DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.[3]

The word cline[wp] is sometimes used to describe this. To put it more succinctly, as the leader of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins does:

'Race' and 'ethnicity' are poorly defined terms that serve as flawed surrogates for multiple environmental and genetic factors in disease causation, including ancestral geographic origins, socioeconomic status, education and access to health care.[6]

Sickle-cell anemia is a famous example of how race can mislead. It was originally classified as a "negro disease" due to its high incidence in blacks. However, it was later found that sickle-cell anemia, being an adaptation to the risk of malaria, was also more common in central and western Africans (but not southern Africans) as well as Mediterraneans (Turks, Greeks, etc.) and Indians. Thus, the disease was not an indication of race, but of geographic ancestry (in this case, areas where malaria was more common).[7]

It should be noted that all human classifications used in medicine are considered probabilistic heuristics and not perfectly deterministic. While research has shown that many people are extremely effective at classifying themselves based on ethnic origin[8] and so researchers may find race to be a convenient label, it fails as a source of attribution: "[R]ace as a social construct may result in differences in treatment that affect health outcomes, but such descriptive use does not imply that race can be used as a proxy for biological difference."[9]

Race will continue to exist as a cultural phenomenon; while great care should be taken in using this construct in medicine, it would be counter-productive to discard potentially useful information, such as the way in which racial identity shapes social, legal and economic outcomes. Unfortunately, the knotty history of race makes even the language used into a potential source of error - "race realists" often point to a news headline or study that uses "race" sloppily and declare it to be "evidence" of the truth of race, mastering sufficient jargon to talk about the reality of "genetic clines" and missing the fundamental mismatch between race as culture and race as genetic destiny.

See also

External links

Footnotes

  1. Bone Marrow Transplants: When Race Is an Issue
  2. Not All Caucasians Are White: The Supreme Court Rejects Citizenship for Asian Indians
  3. 3.0 3.1 Human Genome Project Information: Minorities, Race, and Genomics at the Wayback Machine (archived April 30, 2013)
  4. Mapping Human Genetic Diversity in Asia, The HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Consortium, 2009
  5. Race-Based Medicine: A Recipe for Controversy, Scientific American
  6. Francis S. Collins. What We Do and Don't Know About 'Race', 'Ethnicity', Genetics, and Health at the Dawn of the Genome Era. Nature Genetics Supplement, vol. 36, no. 11, Nov. 2004
  7. Race and Gene Studies: What Difference Makes a Difference? by Larry Adelman
  8. "Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies", American Journal of Human Genetics. Hua Tang, Tom Quertermous, et al. 2005.
  9. "Defining Human Differences in Biomedicine", PLoS Medicine. Brown M. 2007. 4 (9): e228.
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support