Talk:Racialism/Archive1

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What is racialism?

I don't agree with this. The entry on bigotry recognises that there is a distinction between prejudice (e.g. holding hostile views towards a race or group) & bigotry (acting on those views). Racialism goers several steps further: constructing & implementing an ideology based on racist bigotry (examples Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, Ku Klux Klan). But this entry suggests that anybody who sees a distinction between racism & racialism is themself a "racist wingnut". This does not necessarily follow. (NB. I am not defending racialism, racism or bigotry, but there is a recognised & important distinction between the terms). Weaseloid 09:06, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

Rewrote it as per the above. Weaseloid 17:45, 12 August 2008 (EDT)

Er, wikipedia says racialism is the belif in diferences between the races. 122.105.221.214 06:26, 7 December 2008 (EST)

Anthropology Question

For example, racialist wiki Metapedia categorises races into "Caucasoid", "Negroid" and "Mongoloid".

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these terms that actual anthropologists use? I seem to remember reading that. --Paradox (talk) 20:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I doubt it. I doubt anthropologists even talk about race. A tidbit from the WP article I was redirected to from caucasoid: "The concept of a Caucasian race was developed around 1800. Today most scholars reject the concept because human genome studies have not demonstrated a precise genetic definition of Caucasian." ħuman 00:09, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I believe those were terms used by actual anthropologists 50 years ago. I know I had a high school teacher (10 years ago) who used them, to a mostly black class. (They thought they got off best in terms of nomenclature.) Researcher (talk) 16:42, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Is the Flynn effect real/relevant?

Lately it's been making rounds in the news that intelligence has dropped since the 19th century. --81.175.227.88 (talk) 11:27, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Links? And not to the Daily Fail, please.--ZooGuard (talk) 15:26, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

The FLR effect is not g-loaded. Read the special issue on it in Intelligence journal. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01602896/41

As for the decline since Victorian times, see: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000470

Oh God

This whole thing reeks of cognitive dissonance and outright obscurantism - The patently obvious idea that tens of thousands of years of genetic divergence should lead to some differences in both physiology and psychology is counteracted with a slew of comparisons to Nazi Germany, assertions that everyone who believes it is racist, and other cases of verbal diarrhea typical of someone presented with an uncomfortable fact. For a website specifically created to help people be more rational, this is just shameful. 130.56.71.53 (talk) 16:18, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Racialism is mainstream among researchers in the area. A survey from the 80's even showed that the plurality of experts agreed that race differences in g are partly genetic (cf. Snyderman, 1988).

I'm sorry what? researchers in what area? It's unclear if you are even referring to a geographic area or an area of study. --NonPerson (talk) 01:20, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

I understand this site has a leftist bias but..

I just find it nauseating you how can so vehemently defend evolution, yet deny subspeciation and taxonomical divisions within the human race. You people are delusional.

Odd. A quick scan of this article seems to show no denial that people can have genetic differences between each other. Or attempt to address speciation or taxonomical divisions in humans. I'm not sure what content here exactly you are objecting to. Anyway while I suppose human beings becoming multiple species is possible though quite unlikely at this point. for reasons I'll address shortly. As for taxonomical divisions I fail to see how there could be any when humans are one species. The ability of any two (fertile, different sexed) humans to interbreed shows this is the case.

Ok I promised I would mention people becoming different species. This is of course technically possible over long periods of time, speciation would probably require groups of humans to be isolated from one another ether by geography or something awful like anti-miscegenation laws(I'm a firm believer that people should be able to chose to marry for love). Geographic isolation is right out in today's world, and I don't think cultural isolation would last for more then a few hundred years which is no where near enough time for groups of people to become genetically incompatible. --NonPerson (talk) 01:12, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Merge race realism into this one?

I want to merge race realism (an already-obsoleting euphemism; "HBD" is this year's hotness) into this article; they cover pretty much the same stuff. Objections? - David Gerard (talk) 17:06, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

They're both substantial articles in their own right without much duplicate content (AFAIK), and are not entirely synonyms terms, so I don't think merging them would be ideal. It would mean either cutting a lot of content or creating a rather over-long article. ₩€₳$€£ΘĪÐ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 18:44, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

They're pretty closely synonymous, though. It'd need to be a long article because it's a big topic. Furthermore, separate articles seems to say there's some substantive difference between the two, and there really isn't, just which term is for which time - David Gerard (talk) 10:50, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I've declared that a sub-article of this for now - David Gerard (talk) 18:01, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Hey um. I dont have enough expertise to debunk this argument. I need the help of someone smart.

Here it is. "The idea that a race must possess specific genes found only in that race and never in another race is a misconception. Racial differences are a result of patterns of differences in gene frequencies.” 10 fallacies of race denial Is this wrong, and why? I am baffled by most of the arguments in the vid but we can start on this one first.--prophetofreason 03:24, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

It's a strawman. Here on PC wiki pretending we are "all equal" (except for evil White racist Christians) is less important than science.

See here: https://right.orain.org/wiki/Arguments_regarding_the_existence_of_races#Races_have_to_be_discrete_or_the_.22single_gene.22_fallacy 211.200.178.175 (talk) 02:15, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I love that juxtaposition. "That position you've presented is a strawman of my position. By the way, here's a strawman of the position I oppose." Deliciously ignorant. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 02:18, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Umm, no, this is from the article claiming races are based on a single gene: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/File:World_Map_of_Y-DNA_Haplogroups.png 211.200.178.175 (talk) 02:38, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

"Here on PC wiki pretending we are "all equal" (except for evil White racist Christians) is less important than science." Not a strawman, I'm sure. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 02:57, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Focus on that, because you won't get far on the article relevant scientific point. 218.48.233.23 (talk) 03:17, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually equivocation might be a worse problem in this conversation than strawmen. Landmartian (talk) 03:22, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Oh, so you wanted to discuss science? I'm sorry, I was thrown off by your clear hatred for this site and strawmanning of its contents. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 03:37, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Who, me? I just meant that "equal" can mean "identical" or "worthy of equal political rights". Landmartian (talk) 03:43, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Not you. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 04:32, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

In fact you're just incapable of discussing the science, since the transparently false content on this Orwellianly named website could be debunked by a child. This is why you aren't discussing it, just skirting the question with side issues and falsehoods, and obviously being obnoxiously smug in classic chutzpadic fashion. 1.233.193.52 (talk) 05:11, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

http://zipmeme.com/uploads/generated/g1338964568942672395.jpg -BlackProg

Craniology and general article state

It is pretty clear that whoever wrote this article isn't quite on the up and up of the science here. For one thing, while crainology has frequently been criticized, and some of the very old stuff was, in fact, insane, head size and IQ actually correlate to about .15. Actual brain size studies indicate that if you use direct measures of the brain, the correlation is actually very strong - somewhere in the realm of .3 to .4. This is why IQ and height correlate - bigger people have bigger heads and bigger brains, but the correlation grows stronger the closer you get to actually directly measuring brain size. It is not really very surprising that brain size and intelligence are linked, but it is correct to say that brain size is not the sole factor in intelligence. Still, it explains a fairly large amount of the variation in intelligence. I think the article in general probably needs a revamp, though; a rant about racists is less helpful than understanding what is true, what is false, and what is not proven and what evidence exists. Titanium Dragon (talk) 05:03, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Aren't height and IQ both strongly correlated to socio-economic status in childhood? Was that controlled for in this research? --TiaC (talk) 10:06, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. The article can be vastly improved. Not only is some of it not fully scientific, but it fails to respond to many racialist arguments. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 20:27, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Darwin

"Despite making occasional use of racist tropes in common currency at the time in his writing (e.g., use of the term "savages"), Darwin's On the Origin of Species and the subsequent Descent of Man undermined many of the arguments made by racialists by demonstrating that humans were one species.[35] Darwin specifically argued that there were no clear delineations between the races and that they graduated into each other in Descent of Man. In his personal life, he was also a staunch abolitionist."

No "racialist" denies any of this. 1.233.193.52 (talk) 05:20, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, many do. There was a whole movement on Twitter that basically said "SJW's/Liberals are Creationists" because of this same line of thinking. Own your shit bro.- BlackProg 5:31, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Homogeneous requirement

"The idea of large clusters of people that are principally homogeneous within and heterogeneous in-between in terms of genetic similarity — the latter being necessary to speak of distinct "races" — has no scientific basis and in fact there is evidence against it."

I'm not sure how homogeneous is defined here or why races require it. Can someone explain? You know there is more variation within chimps and humans than between them? What data is this statement based on? Is it just empty name calling? Is it another lame strawman? 1.233.193.52 (talk) 05:24, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Intermediate populations

"Once "intermediate" populations — people living between two greater geographical extremes — are included, you find genetic continuity, not discontinuities. Racial realists' proposed race-labeled genetic clusters all exclude "intermediate" populations; sampling and including such populations destroys any illusory genetic discontinuity."

Nothing in the reference supports this statement. No evidence has been provided "racialists" ignore mixed populations. Another lying strawman misrepresentation. Looking at this recent chart (not your map a single gene, LMAO) we can see greater discontinuity than continuity, considering the population numbers. I hope you can identify these populations. And even if there wasn't it would be a continuum fallacy. 1.233.193.52 (talk) 05:36, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

More sock IPs from mentally ill race troll Mikemikev

1.233.193.52 [[1]] and virtually all the other sock IP on this page since January, 2015 are Mikemikev. They all trace to the same South Korean ISP from Seoul.

• https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Mikemikev
• http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki:Saloon_bar/Archive234#Race_trolling_on_RW

Mike is also impersonating people on this website, including anti-racists. He does this on other sites as well:

http://www.mootsf.com/index.php?/topic/8144-racist-images/ Dust77 (talk) 11:12, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

The "original" skin color wording issues

"Lighter-skinned people could absorb more vitamin D from the Sun, giving them an evolutionary advantage." should be reworded, as the sun does not produce the vitamin D. 62.178.89.78 (talk) 23:23, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, it should be fixed. You seem wiki-competant, have you considered making an account?--TiaC (talk) 00:05, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Is it just me or is this too "soft"

It's been this way for a while, so I'm not blaming some specific edit here. As an example, the whole "usually but not always racist" tidbit seems like it's lobbing a softball for those denying their racism under the guise of "racialism" or whatever. Anyone else think this article's got a tone problem? Ikanreed (talk) 22:13, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Because not all of them are. Though most are, so 'usually' is appropriate. The very small/minuscule number of anti-racist racialist scientists still though exist. These are mostly non-hereditarian race realists i.e. those that argue races exist, but that there is no mental differences between them. There's a faction war within 'race realism' regarding this issue. Non-hereditarian racialists don't consider racial hereditarians to be genuine race realists. Instead they regard them to be neo-Nazis or white supremacists. In 2013, Metapedia was attempted to be changed into a non-hereditarian race realism project to be taken more serious. However the neo-Nazi clowns (e.g. Mikemikev, Upplysning) there didn't want this. But anyway, i'm not a non-hereditarian racialist. That was my position now years back. I accept the consensus human races don't exist whatsoever. There is no evidence for races. So the non-hereditarian vs. hereditarian race realism issue no longer bothers me. The distinction however needs to be pointed out because the non-hereditarian racialists are actually rather sane, respectable scientists. It is just that they are wrong, rather than them being bigots, Jerry Coyne is a good example. Coyne argues that human races exist, but he's an anti-hereditarian, he's has strongly criticized Nicholas Wade's book on race. Dust77 (talk) 22:37, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Do these "non-hereditarian racialists" you're talking about actually self-identify as racialists? Any examples? ωεαşεζøίɗ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 22:45, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd still prefer others to weigh in. I gleaned from the context of your recent edits that you were okay with this phrasing. Ikanreed (talk) 22:40, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

(EC x 2) Yeah. It might be best to roll back to this version, before all that weirdness happened, & go from there. Some of Dust77's edits might be worth incorporating somewhere, e.g. a section on hereditariansism. But as things stand now - claiming that not all racialists and racist - it's pretty awful. Wěǎšěǐǒǐď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 22:42, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

This work? Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 23:07, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Hell no. ωεαşεζøίɗ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 23:10, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Are you saying all 'race realists' are racists? This obviously isn't true. The majority are, but not all. The racist vs. non-racist distinction is found in the hereditarian and non-hereditarian divide I mentioned: "Furthermore, for some, but by no means all, biological racial realists, the existence of biological populations (and of the biologically grounded properties of their constituent individuals) explains and justifies at least some social inequalities (e.g., the 'hereditarians'; Jensen 1969; Herrnstein and Murray 1995; Rushton 1995; Lynn and Vanhanen 2002)." - Kaplan & Winther (2014)

Jerry Coyne argues human races exist, but he's not a racist/hereditarian (like Richard Lynn or Roger Pearson etc). Though admittedly non-racist "race realists" like Coyne are very rare. But its not accurate to claim all race realists are racists. Dust77 (talk) 00:06, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

We're not so much interested in covering the subject academically at arms length as we are discussing the profound, dangerous, pseudoscientific, and authoritarian claptrap that surrounds it. And given that so many racists are so inclined to fall on the "not racist but" train, presenting the honest case that the term is almost synonymous with racial hate groups and pretending racism is science, while ignoring bizarre edge cases is pretty okay. We don't lead our creationism article with hedging on non-religious creationists, even though they bizarrely exist. It's not an opposition to facts, but rather an opposition to overnuancing to soon that's driving my concerns here. Ikanreed (talk) 00:28, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Does Jerry Coyne self-identify as racialist? This was supposed to be an article about racialism, which - despite what everyone keeps insisting - is not synonymous with racial realism. Wéáśéĺóíď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 00:30, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Not even slightly. He was one of the actual scientists who told Nicholas Wade to fuck off and stop quote-mining their research to support his racist bullshit. Attempting to smear Coyne in an attempt to soften this article is not the actions of a good-faith editor - David Gerard (talk) 11:33, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

What's the difference? Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 00:46, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I understand your concerns. "HBD" (Human Biodiversity) bloggers like JayMan and Hbdchick try to present themselves as non-racists and respectable or "neutral". However these people are all hereditarians and hardcore racists. JayMan and Hbdchick are obsessed with mental differences between races and believe in a race hierarchy. The distinction I was making is that the hereditarians are the racists, the non-hereditarians the non-racists. Its easy to tell who is who. I've met some racists or white supremacists who try to make out they are non-racist racial realists to gain more support and seem more objective, but as soon as you ask them stuff on interracial relations and so on you get their real racist views. A good example of this is the blogger "Racial Reality" who owns Anthroscape. He's trying to pass himself off as a non-racist and moderate 'race realist', but the guy has a toxic history of posting hardcore racism across the internet. Dust77 (talk) 00:44, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

"Racial realism", "racialism" and "racial natural populationism" are all synonymous terms. Kwame Anthony Appiah has stated: "Racialism is not, in itself, a doctrine that must be dangerous", but he then points out most (but not all) racialists are racists. There are also some dictionaries that distinguish between "racialism" and "racism". Anyway, going overboard and branding all "race realists" as racists doesn't help (despite the vast majority are, but there are genuine exceptions) and actually just plays into their hands because they then claim the anti-realist consensus on human races not existing is because of Marxism or political correctness. Dust77 (talk) 02:36, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I will stick to the science, and will probably better expand the section on genetics and show why the modern genetic clustering arguments for races are false. If you also note, the resident troll here Mikemikev (and sites like Metapedia) only fixate on the genetic clustering. This has been described as the "new race realism" by Hochman (2013):

“”Support for the biological concept of race declined slowly but steadily during the second half of the twentieth century. However, debate about the validity of the race concept has recently been reignited. Genetic-clustering studies have shown that despite the small proportion of genetic variation separating continental populations, it is possible to assign some (geographically separated and not recently admixed) individuals to their (or their ancestors’) continents of origin, based on genetic data alone. Race naturalists have interpreted these studies as empirically confirming the existence of human subspecies, and by extension biological races. However, the new racial naturalism is not convincing. The continental clusters appealed to by race naturalists are arbitrary and superficial groupings, which should not be elevated to subspecies status. Moreover, the criteria applied to humans are not consistent with those used to define subspecies in nonhuman animals, and no rationale has been given for this differential treatment.

Dust77 (talk) 03:30, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

That's "Icelanders and Ashkenazi are genetic groups, 'Negroes' are not". It takes quite amazing quote-mining to call that "race realism", or to attempt to co-opt Jerry Coyne of all people to the label - David Gerard (talk) 11:34, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Heh, a Jewish group with "nazi" in the name. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 11:47, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

"Despite a common straw man argument from racialists..."

"no scientist denies that race captures some genetic or phenotypic variation within Homo sapiens, instead the consensus is that it does not capture enough of it, or capture it in a good enough fashion to justify the recognition of human races in taxonomy."

"Sesardic in 2013 documented a strawman deployed by Hochman which claimed that race naturalists believed in what he called a "strong" interpretation of race, some operationalisation of which captured all human variation. He also claimed that nobody disputed the "weak" interpretation, that race concepts are informative to some degree. Both claims are false.

"Well, let’s see. Consider typical statements made repeatedly by leading racial constructionists that race is biologically "meaningless" (AAA, 1994; Fish, 2002, p. 138; Gould,✡ 1996, p. 379; Marshall, 1998, p. 654; Rose,✡ 2002; Schwartz, 2001), that "race as biology is fiction" (Smedley & Smedley, 2005), that "race is the phlogiston of our time" (Montagu,✡ 1964, p. xii ; similarly Hirschfeld,✡ 1998, p. 36), that "race" is a concept like unicorn (Fish, 2002, p. 138), that "the reality of human races is [ ... ] destined to follow the flat Earth into oblivion"( Diamond,✡ 1994 ; a similar claim is also made by physical anthropologist A. Goodman✡ in the 2003 PBS educational documentary "Race: The Power of an Illusion"), etc." (Sesardic 2013)" 1.227.149.41 (talk) 14:40, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

https://right.orain.org/wiki/Arguments_regarding_the_existence_of_races#.22Strong_interpretation.22_or_perfect_informativity_strawman 1.227.149.41 (talk) 14:43, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

That's Sesardic's straw man:

“”Sesardic states that his aim is merely to show that race is not “biologically meaningless,” but it is unclear what his target is here; the idea that ‘race’ has no biological correlate? No significant contributor to the debate defends this view. Sesardic attributes the claim that race is ‘biologically meaningless’ to Robert Schwartz... Schwartz argues that race is biologically meaningless only in the sense that it is too imprecise as a medical category.

“” When social constructionists say that race is ‘biologically meaningless,’ they mean that racialized groups do not constitute subspecies. Race naturalists, however, interpret such phrases to mean that ‘race’ has no biological correlate, a position which is clearly mistaken.

Sesardic justs sets up a straw man of Schwartz (who only denies race as a medical category, Schwartz himself describes the fact race captures small phenotypic differences, why does Sesardic not mention this?). Note also Montagu on his list. Montagu accepted there are genetic differences between populations, coining the term genogroup. "Race" obviously captures a small amount. No one has ever denies this. The whole Rightpedia page is just claims of "straw man" that don't even exist. It is actually Sesardic using those fallacious 'knock them down' arguments that no one subscribes to. Dust77 (talk) 15:04, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Say, perhaps you guys can tell me. Race is supposedly a phenotypic thing, right? Then how is the "white race" a thing when its definition is basically "can't be too dark or look too foreign" (which various people interpret in various ways)? How can I phenotypically distinguish between this mythical "white race" and everybody else with a light skin colour? 141.134.75.236 (talk) 18:59, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Rightpedia acknowledges that subspecies (races) do not exist in humans

"Race realists however have argued against the concept of subspecies applied to humans, simply because no populations are allopatric, or isolated enough. Populationists in contrast consider races to be dynamic, constantly changing populations by which differ in the frequency of their genes." [end quote on the 'arguments for races' page]

If you're not arguing for subspecies in humans, then what are you arguing for? As the current racialism page on RW points out: new concepts and definitions of race poorly resemble how race is applied to non-humans in the subspecies sense. If we are going to be objective about science, why do racialists treat non-humans and humans differently in this regard? No explanation is ever given. Sesardic never responded on this point when Hochman repeated this question to him like 4 times. Dust77 (talk) 19:08, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I see you wrote that.[2] Thanks, I'll put in something correct. 1.227.149.35 (talk) 21:29, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Please point out anything else you've written in the article. It's invariably garbage that should be deleted. Thanks. 1.227.149.35 (talk) 21:35, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Regarding "race being applied differently to humans", no I think a genotypic and/or phenetic similarity concept is standard Linnaean taxonomy as applied to animals. The race concept was originally cladistic and is now primarily similarity based, as in other animal taxonomy. Please don't reference your own strawmen when speaking for race realists. Thanks. 1.227.149.35 (talk) 21:39, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

lol. You aren't a race realist dumbass but a troll/loon (hence you are banned on all actual race realist sites). At least when I identified with race realism 2 years back I knew what it was; here is Spencer an actual academic race realist states:

"...no new racial naturalist tries to use genetic clustering results of human populations as evidence that humans have subspecies." - Spencer, Q. (2014). "The unnatural racial naturalism". Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 46: 38-43

It contrast you are a clown arguing for a position not even in the racial realism literature. By definition there are no subspecies (race) in humans (populations are not genetically differentiated enough, and excluding populations like the Samaritans and Amish, they aren't reproductively isolated enough). This is why race realists had to invent new theories and concepts and re-define race: ecotype, genetic clustering etc. Dust77 (talk) 22:01, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

From that Rightpedia page section: "Human races can have large genetic differences such as Sub-Saharan Africans are genetically closer to bonobos than other humans,[1][2] yet they are wrongly classified as the same species." This is totally false as you yourself probably know, it was added by A Wayatt Man (the guy who claims to be your buddy there but was posting about you and other Metapedia users at Encylopedia Dramatica the whole time on a secret account, leaking JuniusThaddeus details, Thaddeus even posted something like :"A Wayatt Man did a better job and was better company that Atlantid"). Secondly there's no valid arguments for races there at all. Here's what Dobzhansky said about predictive value: "Any apparent discontinuity may serve as a basis for construction of a natural classification" but he then cautions: "A classification is the more natural the larger is the number of discontinuities it subsumes in each division." So what Hochman (2013) states is true. Putative human races like "White", "Mongoloid" captures far too little variation to be recognized as a useful category in biological science. Dust77 (talk) 23:31, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

A short note

I'm the one who added the note on megalencephaly some time ago. I think it's also worth noting that although brain size is normally not a factor in intelligence, having microcephaly does have a very negative effect on cognitive abilities. So basically, noting that while the extreme ends of brain size are relevant to intelligence, anything in between is not. 24.186.49.177 (talk) 06:35, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

If someone would be kind enough to add this somewhere, it'd be great; it's quite understandably locked down at the moment. 24.186.49.177 (talk) 20:48, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Any takers... ? 24.186.49.177 (talk) 22:08, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

If someone has a problem with noting this, just say so. 24.186.49.177 (talk) 21:26, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I keep seeing this and going "I'm not sure how much I care about the relevance of this claim" but feel it's rude to dismiss a good-natured edit in that way. So I keep on hoping someone else will take care of it. Sorry 'bout that. At any rate, the point you're trying to make is that using brain size in any way is medically naive? Ikanreed (talk) 21:35, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Basically, yes. It's only the very extreme ends (microcephaly and megalencephaly) of brain size that directly impact intelligence, which we can acknowledge may seem counterintuitive if you're unfamiliar with neuroscience. Don't mind the wait, just wasn't sure if there was an issue I was missing. 24.186.49.177 (talk) 22:02, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, then, got an exact wording to use? Ikanreed (talk) 22:10, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm thinking something like this, after the sentence on Neanderthals; "It is only when a person has an extremely small brain, as with conditions such as microcephaly, that absolute brain size has any negative impact on cognitive functions." 24.186.49.177 (talk) 23:29, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Article finish

I'm done with the main page/article. All racialist claims for the existence of races have been dealt with. There are no abrupt genetic breaks/discontinuities between continents, and only 1.53% of genetic variation that shows a geographical pattern is not explained by geographical distance, i.e. 'clusters', but these only exist at the very local level. They don't support "Mongoloid", "White" etc.

Mikemikev has been trolling this site on hundreds of socks for years, but he isn't a real racialist/race realist (Metapedia even banned him). The arguments he's used here don't reflect what is even in the race realism literature (which I've dealt with). Any actual academic arguing for race like Spencer or Sesardic, would be embarrassed by him. I mean above he's linking Jewish stars to people's names in an attempt to discredit them. Anything Mikemikev writes should be totally ignored. Dust77 (talk) 13:19, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Well done on your recent extensive adds - this article is shaping up really nicely, and with some polish will be a good go-to reference - David Gerard (talk) 10:30, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

So neither of you are going to challenge spalktalk's video/thesis on Race Realism? And all of those Rushton medical journal's displaying the innate aggression in those with darker skin color? That's too bad...I think I might have the time soon. ^{— Unsigned, by: Pentrazemine / talk / contribs} 23:50, 24 February 2015

spalktalk is a white nationalist youtube blogger, not a scientist. His stuff has been debunked. And Rushton's research on skin colour is pretty irrelevant to the race debate. Even if he could demonstrate dark skin = innate aggression, how does this pertain to the existence/non-existence of human races? Dust77 (talk) 00:54, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

It might be useful to get a debunking of Metapedia's "Arguments regarding the existence of races", which has some pretty common ones. FüzzyCätPötätö (talk/stalk) 01:03, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Just written by a total idiot very similar to Mikemikev (the guy who wrote that also has an Enclopedia Dramatica entry like Mike, he's another high-profile troll). Note how he throws around the term "straw man" nearly every paragraph (also see Metapedia's page: race where this is used when no such straw man even exists). And his only source for this is Sesardic. However Sesardic has been debunked multiple time by Hochman. Look above where Mikemikev claimed there was a straw man, then read Hochman's debunking. lol. Anyway quoting Sesardic in no way helps "race realists". Sesardic's "race realism" is incredibly weak that it overlaps with social-constructionism about race. When Hochman asked Sesardic how many races there are, he responded thousands. He thinks race is just a population (e.g. English, Dutch Australian Aborigines, Amish). So Hochman doesn't even regard Sesardic's "race realism" to be "real". Dust77 (talk) 04:15, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Your arguments are just the usual lame fallacies.

https://right.orain.org/wiki/Arguments_regarding_the_existence_of_races#Impossibility_of_counting_races

All you do is copy paste Hochman and ignore Sesardic's refutation. In short you are a liar. 115.92.163.135 (talk) 05:17, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

"5. Race counting An old argument that is often used to support social construc- tionism about race is connected with the question about the ‘‘true’’ number of human races. Hochman also thinks that this is amajor difficulty for the biologica l concept of race. For example, Neil Risch and his collabora tors talk about fivemajor continen tal races: Afri- cans, Caucasians , East Asians, PacificIslanders and Native Ameri- cans (Risch et al., 2002 ). But each of these fivegroups could be divided further into subgroups of different ancestry, which would apparently have agood claim to be also called ‘‘races’’. So, how many races are there really: 5, or perhaps 10, or maybe 25, or some other number? Suppose that none of these answers is intrinsically more plausible than any other. Would it follow from this that there is somethin g wrong with the idea that race is abiologica l concept? Not at all. Take, analogou sly, the classification of people into age groups: children, adolescents , young adults, middle-aged people, old peo- ple. This seems to be a perfectly valid and objective taxonomy, de- spite the fact that each of these fiveage groups could also be subdivided further, or that people could actually be classifiedinto age groups in a different way. But being just one of many ways to categorize people by age does not make the system fade into a realm of mere social constructions . In some sense it is odd that the objection based on the number of races keeps reappearing because Dobzhansky defused it already half a century ago: ‘‘Boyd has recognized five,and Coon, Garn, and Birdsell nine or thirty or thirty-two races. Does it follow that some of these classifications are necessarily wrong? No, all may be right’’ (Dobzhansky , 1962, p. 266 )."

Claiming multiple levels of race defined by genotypic or phenetic similarity have different numbers, and that this invalidates the concept, is an obvious fallacy which could be used to attack any taxonomy. In short, you are an irrational lying fool. 115.92.163.135 (talk) 05:21, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Right, which is why no biologist has trouble counting/distinguishing the number of subspecies in non-humans. Are there biologists claiming there are 20, 50, 400, or 9999 subspecies of Panthera tigris? Good luck finding those you clown. Sesardic just invents retarded/false straw man claims and then "straw man" becomes your buzzword. There is no straw man here at all, because subspecies (races) by definition are meant to have clearly demarcated boundaries. Humans fail this criterion & you are the pathological liar as always:

"It is critical to note that genetic differentiation alone is insufficient to define a subspecies or race... definitions require that genetic differentiation exists across sharp boundaries and not as gradual changes, with the boundaries reflecting the historical splits. These sharp boundaries are typically geographic, but not always." (Templeton, 2013) Dust77 (talk) 08:40, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

RW should lock these pages again, to stop Mikemikev trolling here. And I don't know why you still bother coming here Mike. You've been banned on hundreds of socks since 2011. It's a waste of your own time. Its also stupid you want to debate this when you admit you're a neo-Nazi, and you have an internet history logged at Encyclopedia Dramtica of extreme racism, and anti-Semitism. I mean your internet history is far too toxic for anyone to take you serious. Just a google of your name and it brings up you're a neo-Nazi. You've basically discredited yourself with your own online posts.Dust77 (talk) 09:13, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Templeton is full of crap, a liar, and a PC clown. What does Templeton have to say about this.

"A classic example of ring species was the Larus gulls' circumpolar species "ring". The range of these gulls forms a ring around the North Pole, which is not normally transited by individual gulls.

The European Herring Gull (L. argentatus argenteus), which lives primarily in Great Britain and Ireland, can hybridize with the American Herring Gull (L. smithsonianus), (living in North America), which can also hybridize with the Vega or East Siberian Herring Gull (L. vegae), the western subspecies of which, Birula's Gull (L. vegae birulai), can hybridize with Heuglin's gull (L. heuglini), which in turn can hybridize with the Siberian Lesser Black-backed Gull (L. fuscus). All four of these live across the north of Siberia. The last is the eastern representative of the Lesser Black-backed Gulls back in north-western Europe, including Great Britain.

The Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls are sufficiently different that they do not normally hybridize; thus the group of gulls forms a continuum except where the two lineages meet in Europe." 61.38.24.140 (talk) 22:19, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

https://right.orain.org/wiki/Arguments_regarding_the_existence_of_races#Continuous_change_of_traits.2FClines

All you do is parrot these fallacies and ignore the counter points. You are a mentally ill liar and have a grudge which is why you are here. 61.38.24.140 (talk) 22:23, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

It's not a race issue, but part of the species problem. Even read the Wikipedia link: "Ring species also present an interesting case of the species problem, for those who seek to divide the living world into discrete species." How exactly does this help you? You're the one who holds a discredited essentialist Medieval view that there are discrete/objective/"real" biological categories in nature.

“”I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience… the term variety [race], again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily - Charles Darwin, Origin of Species

Dust77 (talk) 23:15, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Kimmo is using your exact same fallacious argument in the last few minutes [he's probably viewing your edits]:

http://en.metapedia.org/m/index.php?title=Arguments_regarding_the_existence_of_races&diff=390843&oldid=390690 " If arguing that this "proves" the non-existence of different human races, then the same argument can be used to "prove" the non-existence of different mammal taxonomic groups (such as different mammal species)." The answer is: Precisely. What an idiot. You two are both as stupid as each other. Do you think the species concept doesn't have the same problems?

And btw, none of the scientists I have ever quoted have claimed species, or races, must be absolutely clear-cut: they always acknowledge exceptions (hence there is a "species problem" in the first place) and hence they use terms such as "abrupt", "sharply discontinuous" and so on; Templeton: "sharp boundaries" rather than absolute, e.g. he accepts parapatric subspecies, with a narrow zone of hybridization between them. The old "perfectly discontinuous" straw man claim by Sesardic, is actually a straw man he invented himself. I realized this when I then went and then read Zack (2002) which is why I removed most of Sesardic's lies from Metapedia after checking. Dust77 (talk) 00:21, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

A dissection of Reddit /r/coontown's idea of sources

[3] This is fun - David Gerard (talk) 19:37, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Good to know we aren't reliable. :P FᴜᴢᴢʏCᴀᴛPᴏᴛᴀᴛᴏ, Esϙᴜɪʀᴇ (talk/stalk) 23:48, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Additional: [4] sets out the problems with Cochran and Harpending's book, which HBDers are particularly fond of of late and is worth noting - David Gerard (talk) 07:55, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Forensic science rewrite

Most of what was written was good, but the forensic science section needed changing. It is not at all accurate that forensic scientists can identify someone's ancestry with high accuracy of 80-90%. Although racialists spam this figure as fact, forensic literature shows the opposite, especially when multiple independent methods/tests are applied to the same skeleton.

"The claim of 90% accuracy that has been reported for “race”- determination methods is unsubstantiated. Despite the relatively high-allocation accuracies (often more than 80%, but rarely more than 90%) and the strength of the statistical significance that are noted when various methods are first described, the comprehensive independent tests of “race”-determination methods consistently result in low-allocation accuracies." - Albanese, John, and Shelley R. Saunders. "Is It Possible to Escape Racial Typology in Forensic Identification?". (2006). In: Forensic Anthropology and Medicine. Humana Press: 281-316. Crimson Guard (talk) 18:10, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Add it in, seems good. FuzzyCatPotato!™ (talk/stalk) 18:27, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

According to Youtube, spawktalk destroyed this article. [HIS RESPONSE TO RATIONALWIKI AND ZAUNSTAR]

http://spawktalk.blogspot.com/2014/07/to-zaunstar-on-race-intelligence-and.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421782837&v=9dY5xEooXGc&x-yt-cl=84359240&feature=player_embedded

Any contenders to debunk this drivel? I'm a 2 year genetics student but I'm far too busy to do any thorough research into his citated links and whatnot. He also included a citation from Rushton postulating that there's a causal link between darker melanin and aggression. Aka, the more black you are the higher your aggression is. Much appreciated if someone is brave enough to counter-attack his video because as of now it stands on solid ground for scientific rigor.^{— Unsigned, by: Pentrazemine / talk / contribs}

Some angry bon

The whole page is an Obviously One-sided PC Screed. Minimalizing the overwhelming evidence for Race in Humans. To do this, of course, you have to minimize Forensic anthropologists, the people WITH the actual EVIDENCE OF race, and maximize others, as 'social scientists', who have empty Opinions. -

Perhaps the world's foremost expert on Evolution/Speciation (and author of the std text 'Speciation') http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Coyne says there ARE Human races. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/are-there-human-races/

"""One of the touchiest subjects in human evolutionary biology —or human biology in general — is the question of whether there are human races. Back in the bad old days, it was taken for granted that the answer was not only “yes,” but that there was a ranking of races (invariably done by white biologists), with Caucasians on top, Asians a bit lower, and blacks invariably on the bottom. The sad history of biologically based racism has been documented in many places, including Steve Gould’s book The Mismeasure of Man (yes, I know it’s flawed).

But from that sordid scientific past has come a backlash:

• • • • • the subject of human races, or even the idea that they exist, has become Taboo. And this Despite the Palpable morphological Differences between human groups — differences that MUST be based on Genetic Differences and WOULD, if seen in OTHER species, lead to their classification as either Races or Subspecies (the terms are pretty interchangeable in biology).*****

[.........]

What are races? In my own field of evolutionary biology, races of animals (also called “subspecies” or “ecotypes”) are morphologically distinguishable populations that live in allopatry (geographically separated). There is no firm criterion on how much morphological difference it takes to delimit a race. Races of mice, for example, are described solely on the basis of difference in coat color, which could involve only one or two genes.

Under that criterion, are there human Races? YES. [.....] How many human races are there? That’s pretty much unanswerable, because human variation is nested in groups, for their ancestry, which is based on evolutionary differences, is nested in groups. So, for example, one could delimit “Caucasians” as a race, but within that group there are genetically different and morphologically different subgroups, including Finns, southern Europeans, Bedouins, and the like. The number of human races delimited by biologists has ranged from 3 to over 30.

How different are the races genetically? Not very different [......] But since the delimitation of races has historically depended Not on the degree of underlying genetic differences but Only on the existence of Some genetic difference that causes morphological difference, the genetic similarity of races Does Not mean that they Don’t exist...."""" ` - ^{— Unsigned, by: 100.45.13.235 / talk / contribs}

Corrections

Hey RationalWikipedians! You've got a lot of fixing to do on this page. If you value reason and truth. ^{— Unsigned, by: 91.148.89.103 / talk / contribs}

http://therightstuff.biz/2015/05/18/the-rational-view-on-race/

Oh boy, who would know, but the Wiki that I so respected for going after the truth, the reflection of reality no matter how harsh it is actually succumbed to it's own feelings over hard science, good science.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/are-there-human-races/

http://therightstuff.biz/2015/05/18/the-rational-view-on-race/ ^{— Unsigned, by: 177.156.165.106 / talk / contribs}

Any reason anyone should care about these bloggers' opinions (or are you just clickbaiting)? The language of these posts also suggests it may be time for another drink... ScepticWombat (talk) 08:34, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Your first blog post actually argued that black people are genetically predisposed to having large families and spreading STDs. That's what you get when you only look at contemporary data. Maybe if he looked at historical data, he'd notice that "large families and widespread STDs" were the norm for Europeans for many centuries. You know what changed? Infant mortality went down and wealth and medicine went up, and suddenly Europeans started having smaller families and carrying fewer diseases. He makes a similar claim about Asian families, that they are genetically predisposed to having small families, which is also ignorant of historical data and simply horribly skewed since it includes modern China and their combination of a large population and a one-child-per-family policy. His definition of Asians also excludes Indians, further skewing the data, but he doesn't seem to include Indians anywhere, so does that mean Indians have no race? Inquiring minds want to know! Anyway, blacks, whites, and Asians (which according to his data pools consist solely of Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans) aren't the only "races", but that's all the author ever seems to talk about, so it seems like he's just cherry-picking to support his predetermined conclusions. Not that I'd expect any better from a racist. Frederick^♠♣♥♦ 07:20, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Krom impersonated by Mikemikev at rightbizz

The rightbizz comments is Mikemikev impersonating "Krom" who wrote most of the RW racialism entry here. Obviously has too much spare time on his hands. He was also just blocked on this site for impersonating an anti-racist SJW. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Social_Justice_Warrior

http://therightstuff.biz/2015/05/18/the-rational-view-on-race/#disqus_thread Arcticos (talk) 14:07, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Basically Mikemikev's idea of trolling is to impersonate people, but it just reveals him to be deranged. Arcticos (talk) 14:10, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

A bad impersonation, the troll was obvious.--Arisboch (talk) 14:12, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

The only person he fools is himself, and the only harm that comes from his ineptitude is wasting his life. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 14:19, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it's part of an elaborate masturbation ritual. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 14:22, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Very easy to identify his socks, he has limited vocabulary and repeats "clown", "lies" (or "liar") and "slander" over and over. Those showed up in SJW's few posts and even above (where he was trolling with a sock IP) he uses these words in the same sentence: "Templeton is full of crap, a liar, and a PC clown." Arcticos (talk) 14:29, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

"This falls down in that the arbitrary group "people of recent African ancestry" has more genetic variation than does the entire rest of humanity,[2] and claiming they are a genetic grouping defies science."

https://right.orain.org/wiki/Arguments_regarding_the_existence_of_races#Nested_genetic_diversity 221.142.62.147 (talk) 06:18, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Wander back on off to your Metapedic power struggles now. Go on. WalkerWalkerWalker 02:50, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

A notable non-racialist: Charles Darwin

This section is incorrect, who is adding this stuff?. Darwin was a strong racialist. Yes, he recognized variation between continental populations was continuous - so did Blumenbach (to a lesser extent), yet no one claims Blumenbach was a non-racialist. While Darwin realized variation between large geographical groupings such as "Whites", "Blacks", "Mongols" etc was not abrupt and they grade into one another, he thought that there was a massive amount of interpopulation variation - and this is why he still classified humans into races, despite recognizing they are arbitrary groups (because in his view they still capture a lot of variation and are useful). I can provide quotes from his work that show this, i.e. he thought the variation between a "White" and "Negro" was profound, as much as a species. Of course in this regard, Darwin was wrong. Modern genetic and craniometric data has shown that variation between continental populations is only 10%. This is far less than what Darwin had in mind and is why racial classification is not useful.

Another point: Non-racialism did not exist until the 1960s (specifically two works: Livingstone, 1962 and Brace, 1964). Although Montagu and Boas had earlier criticized race - they still classified humans into races and argued races were useful for some reason or another. Montagu would later though adopt non-racialism in the 1960s, having been influenced by Livingstone and Brace. Krom (talk) 13:34, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Quotes from Darwin (1871) the "non-racialist" (lol?):

“”The variability or diversity of the mental faculties in men of the same race, not to mention the greater differences between the men of distinct races, is so notorious that not a word need here be said.

“”There is, however, no doubt that the various races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other... Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotions, but partly in their intellectual faculties

“”[Man] has diverged into distinct races, or as they may be more fitly called, sub-species. Some of these, such as the Negro and the European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered as good and true species.

This is strong racialism, Darwin thought there was a huge amount of variation between the races, especially in intelligence.Krom (talk) 13:45, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely agree and would support a rapid deletion of the section. It's a coincidence that I have been reading a lot of Darwin recently, mostly in relation to the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, and the "notable non-racialist" point is simply false. --TheroadtoWiganPier (talk) 13:55, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest a more thoughtful section on Charles Darwin and racialism (if not a whole article) - there's important stuff to be said here. e.g. was he more or less than his times or about the same? etc - David Gerard (talk) 14:41, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

"Of course in this regard, Darwin was wrong. Modern genetic and craniometric data has shown that variation between continental populations is only 10%."

The variation between humans and chimps is 18%. So sadly it appears that you are wrong, rather than Darwin, perhaps unsurprisingly. Rationalwiki! *facepalm* 175.124.157.74 (talk) 13:39, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Mikemikev be trolling again. Fst between Chimpanzees and Humans is 89% and 93% between humans and bonobos (Fischer et al. 2006). Keep that dunce hat or clown mask on. Krom (talk) 17:23, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Fst between 3 subspecies of Bonobos is 49%, 54% and 69%, which comes out about 60% (same paper). Fst between continental human populations ("races") is 9% to 15% (about 12%). Its not hard to see why race/subspecies does not apply to humans.Krom (talk) 18:42, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Long and Kittles arrive at a figure of 18%. Where was it established that an arbitrary number is necessary to satisfy taxonomic significance? Subspecies Fst is as low as 1%.[5] ^{— Unsigned, by: 211.40.111.51 / talk / contribs 06:08, 6 September 2015 (UTC)}

Your image is from John Fuerst (not a scientist) who lies and distorts data. For example all those he has written "unquestioned" with very low Fst values, are in fact questioned, or even removed from taxonomic literature. So I don't see the point in putting this table together. The top of his list is Agelaius phoeniceus, just looking this up on Wikipedia states: "There are a number of subspecies, some of doubtful status." Fuerst of course doesn't mention this because it doesn't fit in with his agenda. Krom (talk) 15:10, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Let's just create a list to settle the specific issue. Templeton (1998), for example, lists 13 species and out of them humans came, in terms of genetic differentiation, in 11th place. 11/13 is equivalent to the 15th percentile, which is commonly interpreted as "low average". Curiously, Fuerst (2015) also found that human differentiation came out to around the 15th percentile (in comparison to that amongst formally recognized races of other species). Maybe both were wrong! So just compile a larger list. Make sure to compare apples to apples though (same class of loci and same index).--Michael C (talk) 20:49, 6 September 2015 (UTC)Mike

"Where was it established that an arbitrary number is necessary to satisfy taxonomic significance?" -- Any two demes are not genetically identical, so what now? Are you saying the Amish, or an isolated jungle tribe of 60 people are races?. Races never were demes in the taxonomic literature. A race has always required a significant level of genetic differentiation. If you cannot show this you've lost the debate and are re-defining race. This is what Fuerst does, also Sesardic (2010), see Hochman (2013):

Always e.g., "[Subspecies are] plants which agree in essentials almost completely with each other, and are often so similar to each other that an inexperienced person has trouble in separating them, and about which one can conjecture, not without reason, that they have formally had a common mother, notwithstanding that they now always reproduce their like from seed." (Ehrhart, 1784)--Michael C (talk) 20:56, 6 September 2015 (UTC)Michael C

This is just petty semantics:

"Ehrhart deliberately distinguished between the rank of subspecies on the one hand and varieties on the other, and that all the trinomials he proceeded to list were subspecies." (Subspecies in the Works of Friedrich Ehrhart)

So what are his "varieties"? It looks like he just reversed varieties for subspecies (race). "Varieties" would be demes (as far back as 1777 this is what "variety" loosely meant e.g. trivial differences between Athenians and Boeotians in Greece is the example Kant gives). Note that even back then it was realized local populations ("varieties") were not races: "might even be called a race, if their characteristic feature does not seem too insignificant" (Kant, 1777). Anyway, three years before Ehrhart, Esper (1781) who first introduced the term "subspecies" made clear they require substantial differences. If you even understand the reversal word-play in Ehrhart - he apparently did too (otherwise he wouldn't have made a distinction between subspecies and varieties). Krom (talk) 22:38, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Sesardic is attempting to revive race on the same definition: “the basic meaning of “race” seems to imply that, due to a common ancestry, members of a given race A will display increased genetic similarity, which will make them in some way genetically different from individuals belonging to another race, B” (Sesardic 2010, 144). This definition is too weak to revive what Sesardic calls “common-sense” racial classification because any groups (including neighbouring towns, socio-economic groups, etc.) that have reduced gene-flow could be racialised. It is going to be hard to convince scientists, philosophers, laypeople – anyone really – that this definition of ‘race’ should be adopted.

Krom (talk) 17:02, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

For clarification Michael C is a blocked sockpuppet of Mikemikev. Mike has an extreme mental illness, is a compulsive liar and blames his socks onto innocent people. Bizarelly he's now claiming "Michael C" is not him, despite if you look above he continued the conversation from another sock IP the same day, only hours after on "Michael C".Krom (talk) 11:20, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

What is going on here is Mikemikev is just following my debate on Open Psych, the quote above he has just taken from John Fuerst who I was debating. He's now saying "Michael C" is even John Fuerst, when its obviously his (Mikemikev) sockpuppet. Like I said, mental illness, or he's just trolling and trying to muddle identities. Krom (talk) 11:54, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=226&pid=3600#pid3600

I'll check the link, but yes Nicolas Wade's book is not mentioned at all. It needs covering. Also there's another book out that online HBD's have gone mad over, its called A Nature of Race. Its claimed it is peer-reviewed to sound credible, however it was published in a pseudojournal and is pseudoscience (the author has a racist agenda and distorts data). The author -John Fuerst- is also a white nationalist with connections to alternativeright.com, he currently runs the blog Human Varieties (although he's since removed any political ties he had to alternitiveright and is trying to make a name of himself now as some sort of 'race realist' scientist online). Krom (talk) 10:33, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

I debated Fuerst on the openpsych forum. He re-defines race as a breeding population. For example, he told me he thinks a tribe in the jungle, or villagers are a race; he also claimed he didn't see the problem with there being 1,000,000+ human races on earth. So the problem here is really semantics - most these online HBDer's actually know racialism is discredited, and so they are re-defining race as a panmictic population or deme (bizarrely though they claim this is not a re-definition and Fuerst now argues "races" originally meant jungle tribes, or local populations like a group of villagers, OK, whatever...). They've lost this debate, so they have to now play word games. Krom (talk) 10:55, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

And the funny thing is that one minute Fuerst is defending a trivial re-definition of race as a local population like a jungle tribe, next minute he jumps to talking about racial differences in intelligence between "Negroids" and "Whites" and changes his definition of race to include large continental groupings of peoples (the latter is his racist/white nationalist agenda which he tries to disguise with the former).Krom (talk) 11:11, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Move to scientific racism?

I think this should be moved to scientific racism, as a more common term for this sort of thing - David Gerard (talk) 12:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Nah. Racialism is broader, lets us talk about "realists", HBD, etc. Cømяade FυzzчCαтPøтαтø (talk/stalk) 12:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

"realists" and "HBD" are also racism justified by science and are in a direct line of descent - David Gerard (talk) 12:34, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Hence why we should use the general term, rather than the first in a genealogy. The FCP Foundation (talk/stalk) 12:43, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

This should be incorporated

http://www.aaanet.org/gvt/ombdraft.htm αδελφός ΓυζζγςατΡοτατο (talk/stalk) 17:58, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Sources, references, and footnotes

OK, we have "sources" (links to online material), "references" (a dump of someone's thesis bibliography?), and "footnotes" (the ordinary list of supporting material). I think that's too much. I suggest: 1) the references section get dropped; 2) its contents gets weaved in to the article/footnoes as relevant; and 3)the source of the references section, if available online, be integrated as a single link in the sources section. I can do none of these myself, but I wish an informed person would do just that. MarmotHead (talk) 18:25, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

The footnotes, sources & references are going down. Yes, more work needs to be done though. Krom (talk) 23:18, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

A dissection of Reddit /r/coontown's idea of sources (sticky)

[6] This is fun - David Gerard (talk) 19:37, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Good to know we aren't reliable. :P FᴜᴢᴢʏCᴀᴛPᴏᴛᴀᴛᴏ, Esϙᴜɪʀᴇ (talk/stalk) 23:48, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Additional: [7] sets out the problems with Cochran and Harpending's book, which HBDers are particularly fond of of late and is worth noting - David Gerard (talk) 07:55, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Stickying this until it's been digested into the article (yes yes this probably means me) - David Gerard (talk) 09:47, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Vandalism

Constant vandalism here, page has been protected for 1 month (auto-confirmed users only) and off-topic comments put in archive. From what I can see there are only two concerns about this article: (1) someone should cover Wade, Chochran etc (as noted above) and (2) the sources and footnotes can be trimmed. Krom (talk) 01:05, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Is this a page created by leftist politicians?

Is this "rationalWiki"? At least Wikipedia guarantees a NPOV (neutral point of view)... this seems like a politician's diary rather than an encyclopaedia.^{— Unsigned, by: 37.186.209.18 / talk / contribs}

Well, with things like science and facts reality has a left wing bias. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 13:34, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Racialism is the pseudo-scientific view living humans can be pigeon-holed into relatively discrete, large (continental) groups of populations

And this is the first sentence, what a good start. Races by definition aren't discrete entities, but they're continuous, overlapped entities. Saying racial groups aren't discrete is like saying there are no square circles, or there are no colours given that they overlap themselves in a rainbow. If different races were separated and non-overlapping entities, they should be different species.

Most racialists maintain there is also a racial hierarchy.

They're racists, not racialists.^{— Unsigned, by: 37.186.209.18 / talk / contribs}

First of all you should sign all your contributions to talk pages like this ~~~~. Furthermore, you seem to be under a misapprehension, as most racialists are indeed racists as the overwhelming scientific consensus within biology is that "race" is not a meaningful category when applied to human beings. So people who believe races exist in humans are overwhelmingly racists. If race were a meaningful concept, there would be at least some kind of agreement as to who constitutes being a member of what race. Guess what, there isn't. Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 13:55, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

I can't sign because I haven't an account here. I have an account in Wikipedia, which is better than this "encyclopaedia", at least it guarantees NPOV and their pages are impartial.

the overwhelming scientific consensus within biology is that "race" is not a meaningful category when applied to human beings.

Guess what, there are a lot of studies that clearly declare "Genetic data verify traditional concepts about races.[...]It is inaccurate to state that race is biologically meaningless." (here one of them)

"scientific consensus" is conflicting. This is what Wikipedia properly says, effectively.

If race were a meaningful concept, there would be at least some kind of agreement as to who constitutes being a member of what race.

Well, I have news for you: we can guess someone's race analyzing his genome. Weird, isn't it?

So people who believe races exist in humans are overwhelmingly racists.

You don't deserve "rational" replies. I suggest you to learn "racism" term. ^{— Unsigned, by: 37.186.209.18 / talk / contribs}

If you are part of Wikipedia maybe you can actually read that this does not have a NPV. If you don't like it here no one is forcing you to stay. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 14:16, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but please, change your name in "ourPoliticalOpinionIsRightWiki". Don't offend real rationalism.^{— Unsigned, by: 37.186.209.18 / talk / contribs}

Yeah, because everything needs to be politically correct and named how you wish it to be. Since you are the epitome of rationalism out of over 6 billion people because, reasons. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 14:24, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

My weekly good-faith edit: Studies of human biology and anthropology have moved away from using "races" because it turns out a human being is, thanks to neuroplasticity, an incredibly malleable thing, with environment, both cultural (for want of a better word) and physical, playing a much greater role in how a person turns out and acts rather than accidents of birth.

The people who want to keep on believing in races tend to do so since they have an emotional stake in disliking one or more ethnic groups. They want there to be meaningful racial distinctions with inherent qualities to the races, because if there aren't, they've invested time and chunks into their lives believing in something that isn't real--and because, for many of them, it removes one of the few sources of an ego boost they have. --Maxus (talk) 15:52, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001951.html

The Biology of Race and the Concept of Equality. Ernst Mayr

There are words in our language that seem to lead inevitably to controversy. This is surely true for the words "equality" and "race." And yet among well informed people, there is little disagreement as to what these words should mean, in part because various advances in biological science have produced a better understanding of the human condition.

Let me begin with race. There is a widespread feeling that the word "race" indicates something undesirable and that it should be left out of all discussions. This leads to such statements as "there are no human races."

Those who subscribe to this opinion are obviously ignorant of modern biology. Races are not something specifically human; races occur in a large percentage of species of animals. You can read in every :textbook on evolution that geographic races of animals, when isolated from other races of their species, may in due time become new species. The terms 11 subspecies" and "geographic race" are used interchangeably in this taxonomic literature.

EgalitarianJay (talk) 00:48, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Ernst Mayr was a racist who only wished to disassociate himself from public racism because it would impede his quest for eugenics. And he didn't think eugenics should be voluntary. This is from his letter to Francis Crick in the 60s:

I have been favoring positive eugenics as far back as I can remember. As I get older, I find the objective as important as ever, but I appreciate also increasingly how difficult it is to achieve this goal, particularly in a democratic western society. Even if we could solve all the biological problems, and they are formidable, there still remains the problem of coping with the demand for "freedom of reproduction", a freedom which fortunately will have to be abolished anyhow if we are not to drown in human bodies. The time will come, and perhaps sooner than we think, when parents will have to take out a license to produce a child ... A biologist will understand the logic of this argument, but how many non-biologists would? Obviously then, we need massive education. Such education would be paralyzed if it gets mixed up with racist and anti-racist arguments. This is why the Academy has to dissociate itself from [racist physicist William] Shockley's arguments [about the racial inferiority of black people].

Not reject Shockley because he is objectively and morally wrong, but because being associated with his views would prevent realization of the right people deciding who may have kids. I believe the consensus of biologists is that race in humans is not a fact of their science. That is, those lacking Mayr's axe to grind do not accept this notion of distinct races.---Mona- (talk) 01:43, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

LOL, so everybody is a fucking racist, good to know. Do you fucking know what is POSITIVE eugenics, and what differentiates it from NEGATIVE eugenetic? I repeat the question: is this "rationalWiki" a political website or a scientific encyclopaedia? Because I notice there are a lot of ignorant here (in anthropological and genetic issues, obviously). --37.186.209.186 (talk) 08:27, 14 October 2015 (UTC) ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘"Do you fucking know what is POSITIVE eugenics," Yes, and it's distinction with negative eugenics is an illusion. When the state is allowed to decide who may have a child, and per what criteria, that is the dystopean nightmare the word eugenics properly raises in normal people's minds. Btw, it is surpassingly common for those who disagree with this or that view held by the majority here to shriek "I thought this was a RATIONAL Wiki!" We all drink a shot every time it occurs.---Mona- (talk) 14:28, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

RW is not an encyclopædia. Scream!! (talk) 09:54, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, funny that your goal is refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement and you analyze some scientific issues by a political point of view. Consistency at its finest, you indeed gain credibility among REAL rationalist people. --37.186.209.186 (talk) 10:25, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

There's nothing political about pointing out that conceptions of 'race' are not borne out by genetics. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 11:49, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh really?

"Genetic data verify traditional concepts about races.[...]It is inaccurate to state that race is biologically meaningless."[1]

If biological is defined as genetic then, as detailed above, a decade or more of population genetics research has documented genetic, and therefore biological, differentiation among the races. [...] Because of the large amount of variation observed within races versus between races, some commentators have denied genetic differentiation between the races; for example, "Genetic data show that any two individuals within a particular population are as different genetically as any two people selected from any two populations in the world.". This assertion is both counter-intuitive and factually incorrect. If it were true, it would be impossible to create discrete clusters of humans (that end up corresponding to the major races), for example as was done by Wilson et al., with even as few as 20 randomly chosen genetic markers. Two Caucasians are more similar to each other genetically than a Caucasian and an Asian.[...]Every race and even ethnic group within the races has its own collection of clinical priorities based on differing prevalence of diseases. [...] We need to value our diversity rather than fear it. Ignoring our differences, even if with the best of intentions, will ultimately lead to the disservice of those who are in the minority. [...] Finally, we believe that identifying genetic differences between races and ethnic groups, be they for random genetic markers, genes that lead to disease susceptibility or variation in drug response, is scientifically appropriate. What is not scientific is a value system attached to any such findings. Great abuse has occurred in the past with notions of 'genetic superiority' of one particular group over another. The notion of superiority is not scientific, only political, and can only be used for political purposes.[2]

If you like it or not, races have biologically and genetically basis, and that's proved by many genetists. Or are they racists?

As Wikipedia says,

There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined. Nonetheless, some scholars argue that racial categories obviously correlate with biological traits (e.g. phenotype) to some degree, and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings.--37.186.209.186 (talk) 13:07, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

7.186.209.186 you're setting up straw man arguments, which are covered on the main page. Yes of course obsolete "racial categories" correlate with biological traits - if this wasn't true there would be no population structure. The fact though traditional races correlate with biological traits does not mean races exist (a fact covered in detail on the article). Races require a lot of genetic differentiation, human continental populations do not pass, furthermore most human populations are not relatively isolated. There are no subspecies (races) in humans for this reason. Btw, that Mayr quote actually shows why races don't exist in humans. Mayr contradicts himself. Note he states races require substantial differences - this high level of differentiation is absent. Instead only 10% of variation is found between continental populations (traditional races).SteelWeapon (talk) 13:30, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't see why you are engaging honestly. Failures that wish to be extolled for the qualities of their race, instead of the qualities of their actions, so they can feel superior to others for nothing either can control aren't going to be magically logic'ed out of that. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 14:30, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Did you fucking know that, before the European's arrival, Australian aborigenes have been isolated for 40000 years? That Sahara desert was a real geographic and genetical boundary, and for this reasons north african are genetically closer to Europeans than to Subsaharians? That Amerindians arrived 15000 years ago in America via Bering Strait and since then they never mixed with other races? Human populations are not relatively isolated!? --37.186.209.186 (talk) 15:01, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Wrap your head around this one 37.186, while what you said above about the isolation of populations is mostly correct, IT DOESN'T MATTER that's still not enough time or isolation to make the different populations into separate races genetically. SolPyre (talk) 22:27, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

(EC) Let's start in central Africa. We can picture what a typical resident looks like. Let's travel north, towards the Mediterranean coast. As we go, physiological traits will change slowly towards typically North African appearance, getting taller, noses getting narrower etc. If we head West into Morocco, there are more smooth changes - lighter skin colour and so forth. Hop into Southern Spain, and you'd barely notice much of a difference. As you head towards France you get less swarthy, Celtiberian people and a more Norman look. Cross the channel and you get an admixture of the same with Nordic and Germanic traits. Eventually, you end up in Welsh valleys. Two very different-looking people at either end of the scale, but at no point in that journey is there anything approaching a sensible place to draw a division. It's a gradual phenotypic change, driven by a gradual genotypic change. 'Races' implies you can categorise people along lines that do not, in fact, exist. Either that, or you attempt to define 'pure' races and pretend that such a thing has any meaning at all, rather than it just being you picking arbitrary combination of traits and pretending that there's something special about it. The smooth change between Central Africa and Wales is the same type of difference as between Neath and Merthyr Tydfil - just one with a wider spread, both geographically and genotypically. And that, boys and girls, is why 'scientific racism' is a load of arse gravy. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 22:55, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

There is more genetic diversity within any given human population than between any two given human populations. Furthermore to the racist the populations who actually differ the farthest from each other would all be called "black" (or unkinder terms). As a matter of fact there is bigger genetic diversity in a rather small part of East Africa then in the rest of the world combined. ^{— Unsigned, by: 95.90.213.6 / talk / contribs 23:43, 14 October 2015‎}

It's funny that 10000 years are enough to generate hundreds dogs races, while 40000 years aren't enough to make separate human races genetically, don't you think? :) If you look at the plots that you can find in dozens of genetic studies, you can see that human races such as caucasoids, mongoloids, negroids and australoids are clearly separated each other.[1][2] As I said before, races by definition aren't discrete entities, but they're continuous, overlapped entities. Saying racial groups aren't discrete is like saying there are no square circles, or there are no colours given that they overlap themselves in a rainbow. If different races were separated and non-overlapping entities, they should be different species. If you look at an average english man's genome, you won't find any other racial admixture but caucasoid. The same with Yoruba (negroid), Han chinese (mongoloid), australian aborigen (australoid) and Quechua peruvian (amerindian). Why? Because they have been isolated for tens of thousands of years. Halfway population which stay between two races obviously show both racial admixtures: if there are races, there are also mixed races. Exampli gratia, that's the case of indians and ethiopians. Do you really go to bed listening to the fairy tale that 2 europeans show more genetic distance than that between an european and a sub-saharan african? If so, that's a clear insult at real rationalism. --37.186.209.186 (talk) 10:03, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

10,000 years of aggressive selective breeding is sufficient, yes. Humans have not been selectively bred. The reference points we use for 'race' are political constructions, based on history and not biology. You could pick an arbitrary set of reference points and find the same differences between them with a gradient between them. There is nothing special about the ones you're claiming. We could pick Celtiberian, Siberian, Hawaiian, Hispanic, Nubian, Semitic and Indonesian and get the same picture of gradual change.

"Saying racial groups aren't discrete is like saying there are no square circles," Take a look at this picture: [8]. Now tell me where blue ends and red begins. There is no answer that isn't arbitrary. Trying to draw a line and claim that one side is clearly blue and the other clearly red is about as rock stupid as what you're trying to claim about races. The boundaries between 'races' is not admixtures - they are trait frequencies in their own right. There was never a 'pure' division which got muddied. That mid-point was there for as long as the extremes were and is equally valid as a genetic identity as either of them. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 11:37, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

For starters, the only difference between selective breeding and natural selection is that the first one is used by humans to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits, while the second one is a random selection operated by nature. They're both isolations, voluntary or accidental.

If a population didn't mix for 40000 years, it obtains specific genetic mutations which are missing in other populations, while lacks mutations which are instead present in other ones. Regarding the rest... why do you repeat what I said? The example of colours is mine. Given that colours overlap themselves, would you say there are no colours?

I don't think you would. You may say we have a different opinion about that colour, if it's aqua green or not, but for computers aqua green is a specific colours generated by 3 primary colours (id est red, green and blue): its hexadecimal code is #00FFFF, that is to say it's composed by no red, and full amount of green and blue.

In the case of humans we have the same situation. We have 6 primary races[1] (Khoisanoid, Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid and Amerindoid) and there are some ethnic groups (e.g. the previously cited Yoruba, Han, etc...) which are pure, in other words Yoruba are 100% negroids and have 0% of other racial admixtures. Then there are some halfway populations, such the previously mentioned indians and ethiopians, which show more than one racial admixtures, because they are mixed.

If you see a genetic plot of dogs races, you can see they overlap[2]. The same with human races. Races by definition aren't discrete entities, but they're continuous, overlapped entities.--37.186.209.186 (talk) 13:26, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I get it...this is Mikemikev again. This is nearly the same crap. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 13:29, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I never wrote here. Why don't you reply rationally to this "crap"? Is this issue not enough political for you? Come on, that's science. You can't keep away politics from science? :) --37.186.209.186 (talk) 13:39, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

"They're both isolations, voluntary or accidental." One of them involves much greater selection pressure, but absent of any chance of wiping out the population. That's a very, very big difference.

If you can't draw a line and say red this side, blue the other, then the point you're trying to make about races is bollocks. We know we're dealing with a smooth gradient, even in populations that are nominally isolated, because we've done the actual genetics studies to look into it. You're arguing against scientific findings. It doesn't matter how enamoured of your model you are, it's contradicted by reality.

There is no such thing as a primary race - that's the point you're failing to get. It's like a co-ordinate system, you can pick any damn reference point you want and it says nothing about the underlying system. The 'admixtures' you're trying to claim are not overlaps between 'pure' races, they're just another point on the multidimensional surface, as 'pure' as any other. (Modern transport has disrupted this smoothness, naturally, but there's no underlying, original 'race' map anyway). I'm bored of you now, and even if you're not mikemikev, you're cut from the same unscientific cloth. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 20:35, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

37.186.209.186 Is Mikemikev. He's currently trolling the Human Varieties talk page on other socks.EgalitarianJay (talk) 20:49, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand, all the people in this earth who say races have biologically and genetically basis are called "Mikemike v"? You need to meander around the scientifical environment then, you'd be surprise of how many there are. Scientific opinion is contrasting. By the way, my mother tongue is not even english.

There are hundreds of thousands of SNPs who identify every race. I can't say you if an ethiopian man is caucasoid or negroid because he's mixed but I can say you how much caucasoid and how much negroid he is, with an ordinary genetic test. Why? Tell me why subsaharan people are so genetically far from other non-african people, and why e.g. Yoruba people lack every other race's influence. Explain me how it is possible. You can twist things, calling them "populations" (which is a very broad term), "ethnicity" (which has no biological or genetical meaning, but it's about culture) or "human groups" (even you and me are a human group), but there's a biological and genetical basis in this. You deny this, and this is everything but rational. You have biases. --151.64.88.176 (talk) 22:04, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

There is no such thing as SNP which identifies race. The closest we get are the 2 SNPs that code for skin colour, which are at a nearly 100% differential between dark skinned and light skinned individuals - but even those SNPs only account for around 70% of the skin tone difference (IIRC). Pop quiz - if an allele has a frequency of 10% in one group and 70% in another, what can you say about a population with that allele at a frequency of 50%? It's not necessarily the case that it's a mix of the first two. It could come form the same ancestor population as the second, and have had a genetic bottleneck when the population was low, or merely be the result of genetic drift. Such variation, where not subject to selection pressure, is essentially stochastic in nature. It could even be the first group that's the founder population for that mutation, with coding variants in the same haplotype driving selection in the second and third populations. And even then, the chances that a random person from the first group has the same genotype from a random person from the second group would be 15%! Ultimately, the only discrete unit that makes any sense is the allele. Everything else is merely a bunch of correlations between alleles at various positions in the genome, which given the number of variants is effectively continuous. There is not criterion you can select you definitely place ethnicity. You can take a guess, and place a probability on an individual coming from one of a number of exemplar sets (I've done it myself for work) but again, there's nothing magical about those exemplar sets. Yorubans and Finns were selected not because there was any a priori reason to think that were were better examples of their 'race' than any other, but because it was believed that they were likely to represent the most extreme points of that continuous pattern and hence be most useful for numeric comparison.

(I hope someone's finding these lectures illuminating. It's pretty clear that you're far too dense to grasp it.)Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 00:07, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Black Man’s Path to Race Realism

http://www.amren.com/features/2013/11/a-black-mans-path-to-race-realism/ Never in 1,000 years did I imagine that I would end up the person that I am today: a black race realist—someone who believes IQ is normally distributed and that averages may differ among races the same way other genetic variables do. Over the years, I noticed that people are fired up about this or that aspect of evolution, but that the question of genetic differences in race and IQ were off limits. And after many years of painful experience, I gradually went from “Why not?” to “This is the way it is.”

Two things contributed to my conversion to race realism. The first was my training—I have an MS in chemistry—and the second was a lot of life experience.

To start at the beginning, I grew up in a two-parent family in Michigan, and went to church every Sunday. Both my parents worked at decent jobs with good benefits. One thing that my late father always taught me is that “life is about thinking for yourself and doing what is good, right, and best for you.” A necessary consequence of this was making up my own mind on what was relevant to me.

I graduated from high school in the top 10 percent of my class and was offered a full scholarship at a university in a neighboring state. I graduated, and after taking a break from school, went back to complete a master’s degree. JohnFuerstwithhispantsdown (talk) 22:28, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

We care why? Herr FüzzyCätPötätö (talk/stalk) 22:38, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Why in the name of the Skyfoogle should we give a flying plam about your conversion into a racist fuckwaddle?!--Arisboch ☞✍☜☞✉☜ 22:58, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Man Mikemikev, I thought you would have more of a life after 10 years trolling people. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 00:30, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

You know I don't care about made up cry me a river personal live stories... Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 22:55, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Re: this section of the article- "While cranial capacity is an accurate measure of brain-size, the fallacy was to assume a larger cranial capacity (and brain) correlates with higher intelligence. The size of the brain itself is not a measure of intelligence. If this idea were taken to its logical conclusion, the world would likely be ruled by elephants, or sperm whales"

Is whoever wrote it not embarrassed? Bigger brain correlates with higher intelligence relative to size and humans have the largest brain relative to size, so why would sperm whales or elephants be super smart? Come on, guys. That part of the article has been here ages yet no one has thought to remove it? Some "rational" thinkers you guys are, eh?94.1.188.247 (talk) 16:13, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

The reference doesn't say proportion, just the size, which means you just read it wrong and are charging about holding your mistake out like a champions flag. Man does not have the highest proportion of brain to body size... rodents do, specifically shrews, out of mammals. Either way brain size, total or proportion, is not the 100% proof you desire because reading doesn't quite seem to be your forte.

I fully expect a rebuttal claiming all sorts of things about me personally no one could know about but a psychic, but one of these days I hope to be let down. Largely because your entire claim is based on a misinterpretation of what you read, childish insults, and unsourced claims that are flatly wrong which can be debunked in a 3 second Google search of real biology. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 16:48, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Apparently all this is moving the goalposts

https://www.reddit.com/r/debatefascism/comments/4399rw/trackreddit/czgiv74/ Mʀ. Wʜɪsᴋᴇʀs, Esϙᴜɪʀᴇ (talk/stalk) 05:05, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Worth adding?

Pro-HBD blog writes:

To quote Lee Kuan Yew, “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” Once that becomes apparent to the dominant group, they have no choice but to limit popular government and take measures to limit the the numbers of the other groups.

The bottom line here is that HBD is not necessarily hostile to democracy, but it is hostile to immigration, open borders and the whole universalist religion, of which democracy is a small part. The answer to Jayman’s query is that acceptance of HBD can preserve western liberalism, but only at the expense if egalitarianism, multiculturalism and anti-racism. It’s HBD or diversity, but not both.

Cømяade FυzzчCαтPøтαтø (talk/stalk) 03:10, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Rushton is a yellow supremacist

If Rushton agrees that Asians have an intelligence higher than white, I think he should be a disgusting yellow supremacist, not a white supremacist.--Scientist (talk) 06:03, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

He likes both. Perhaps a Twinkie supremacist? FU22YC47P07470 (talk/stalk) 04:48, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Why revert this?

Racist Richard Lynn is also a traitor to the White. He said in an interview given to the racist magazine The Occidental Quarterly: "I believe the best hope for the future of civilization lies with the Chinese and Japanese."[9] --Scientist (talk) 13:44, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

"Racist Richard Lynn is also a traitor to the White." is not obviously sarcastic, and inappropriate. Plus, you have a history of using racist language yourself. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 14:13, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

"Plus, you have a history of using racist language yourself." What do you mean?--Scientist (talk) 16:02, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

"Yellow supremacist" [10] Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 16:04, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

How can this be "racist"?--Scientist (talk) 13:32, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

"Scientist" is likely a sock of Mikemikev. He's only concerned with this one page (Mikemikev's obsession) and two similar accounts with "Scientist" were blocked as Mikemikev socks: CommunistScientist, AntifaScientist - the exact same sarcastic trolling approach. OldSword (talk) 21:36, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I know. It's just good to have the reasoning made clear rather than leaving the question unanswered in a way that might casual passers-by the wrong impression. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 15:19, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

How can this be "trolling"? Just want to disclose some race supremacist. Plus, never heard of Mikemikev. --Scientist (talk) 13:32, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Race will be a thing of the past in medicine

"Personalized pharmacogenomics aims to use individual genotypes to direct medical treatment. Unfortunately, the loci relevant for the pharmacokinetics and especially the pharmacodynamics of most drugs are still unknown. Moreover, we still do not understand the role that individual genotypes play in modulating the pathogenesis, the clinical course and the susceptibility to drugs of human diseases which, although appearing homogeneous on the surface, may vary from patient to patient. To try to deal with this situation, it has been proposed to use interpopulational variability as a reference for drug development and prescription, leading to the development of “race-targeted drugs”. Given the present limitations of genomic knowledge and of the tools needed to fully implement it today, some investigators have proposed to use racial criteria as a palliative measure until personalized pharmacogenomics is fully developed. This was the rationale for the FDA approval of BiDil for treatment of heart failure in African Americans. I will evaluate the efficacy and safety of racial pharmacogenomics here and conclude that it fails on both counts. Next I shall review the perspectives and the predicted rate of development of clinical genomic studies. The conclusion is that “next-generation” genomic sequencing is advancing at a tremendous rate and that true personalized pharmacogenomics, based on individual genotyping, should soon become a clinical reality."

-S.D.J. Pena "The fallacy of racial pharmacogenomics" Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research (2011) 44: 268-275PS2 (talk) 21:24, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Ignoring race is racist

It is a microaggression according to UCLA, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, UNH, University of Missoouri. http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/05/speech-codes-and-humanism Why is RationalWiki so microaggresive? 67.245.231.88 (talk) 17:40, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

1: Thanks for the concern trolling.

2: There's a difference between saying that "race has no biological meaning" and saying that "race, as a socially constructed idea, doesn't impact society". Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 18:50, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

1: It's not concern trolling, my last statement was obviously sarcastic. Why is everything trolling on the internet these days? God. 2: Race as a socially constructed idea does impact society, yes, but if this is what they're saying why are they so against races as a concept being abandoned when it's an arbitrary, often harmful, grouping? 67.245.231.88 (talk) 19:03, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Primarily because racism functions through the social concept of race. Very few racialists sit down and think, "I'm going to hate on clines 1-100, and praise clines 101-200." Instead, it's always "The Jews/Blacks/Whites/Arabs/etc. are causing all the problems!" oʇɐʇoԀʇɐϽʎzznℲ (talk/stalk) 21:45, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

I worded that a bit weirdly probably, sorry. I hope this makes sense: I'm saying why do they think denying race exists is microaggresive, when race is a junk concept biologically (and that's where the social ideas usually comes from, from race being a biologically based difference in human beings) and socially often does more harm than it does good? Wouldn't they be for race being abandoned? I'm asking this here because this article rejects it and RW is usually thought of as a progressive/left-wing/liberal/ site and this article seems to say that since it's biologically junk it shouldn't be used/taken seriously, but here we have leftists/progressives encouraging people to recognize the existence of race and calling people who don't racist/microaggresive. Really confusing to me honestly. 67.245.231.88 (talk) 02:12, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

It's dealing with the fact that different people have different life experiences, and so you shouldn't impose your experiences and your mindset onto one that starts from a different place. The idea is to respect someone's background and respect them as a person. That means simultaneously acknowledging their race and not acknowledging it -- understanding their different heritage, and treating them the same as everyone else. ThinFuzzyCatPotato of the Furry Stripagrams (talk/stalk) 02:44, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

I've always viewed you as a pretty rational person FCP so I'm not going to continue to argue. Simultaneously acknowledge it and don't acknowledge it? If you say so. 67.245.231.88 (talk) 03:41, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

There is a contradiction for those race deniers pushing affirmative action and "black lives matter". They will one minute deny race, then the next support its existence. Look around on this site and you will see this topic has come up before, and its been debated. Some RW editors are against this contradiction, but yes its true other RW editors are contradicting themselves.PS2 (talk) 03:32, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

This is pretty pathetic. No one denies black people have darker skin color than white people on average. Hipocrite (talk) 15:24, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Who is "black"? There is a skin pigmentation cline, and its impossible to non-arbitrarily divide it. People who identify as "black" are supporting obsolete race typology - that's why its hypocritical for people to support "black lives matter" then turn around and say races don't exist.PS2 (talk) 17:52, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Dude, Black Lives Matter isn't about a skin pigmentation cline or race typology. It's about confronting & combatting the racism that thousands of people experience in their lives. Telling black people that they don't exist is a pretty feeble response to this. Wèàšèìòìď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 18:22, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Black Lives Matter is called that because in their view lives viewed as black by society don't matter as much as other lives. It doesn't matter whether they truly identify as black or not, nor if they recognize race as a poor way to classify Humans. #thelivesofindividualswithsignificantafricanancestrytothepointwheresocietyviewsthemasblackmatter TheAmazingSkeptic (talk) 03:15, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

PS2, why did you make a new account instead of using your old username, Krom? Your userpage says you retired but you're back. RaiderFan (talk) 06:51, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Dropping this here

Note sure if it's in the article. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30318291 FᴜᴢᴢʏCᴀᴛPᴏᴛᴀᴛᴏ, Esϙᴜɪʀᴇ (talk/stalk) 22:39, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Faulty Logic

- "To argue that races or ethnic groups differ innately in intelligence, however defined, is exactly equal to an assertion that intelligence has proven less adaptive for some people than for others."

Isn't that faulty logic? Intelligence can be beneficial for adaptation, but if the random mutations that allowed for higher intelligence to develop don't exist within a population then that potential will never be exploited. The writer of the article seems to (wrongly) believe that positive mutations are unavoidable. Faulty Logic (talk) 23:34, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

This is fair. Yet given that IQ ranges for all races span everything from 50 to 150, it would seem that said differences (alleles, perhaps?) are present in all races. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 14:19, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Hybrid Breakdown

I think a good counter-point to racialist claims that other species can in fact reproduce with each other so human "interracial" reproduction not supporting them being of the same species, humans "interracially" producing does not result in sterile hybrids and "mixed" human offspring do not experience hybrid breakdown. There was also a Stormfront user claiming even sheep and goats can produce offspring, which is correct, but apparently most die as embryos or when young. Sorry if that doesn't make sense. TheAmazingSkeptic (talk) 08:44, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

There are many species that do interbreed tho. Species itself is a social construct. I.e. all species of the genus Canis can produce fertile interbred offspring. Also see: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/05/pizzly_bears.html . One would be committing a logical mistake if one assumes that Nature cares about such thing as "species": Species is a category created by human beings to better analyze groups of related living beings, a lot like genus, class, subspecies, race, breed and all other biological categories are. There are no clear cuts between any of those categories and to a large extent humans are just making things up. Faulty Logic (talk) 11:42, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

I will add, "...And sometimes made up not to actually "better analyze groups of related beings", but to purposefully misunderstand and spin a false narrative which might then allow for various hate driven, racialist race war-esque policies to take hold". (My point not being against the very useful science of taxonomy, but just as a comment on how racist pseudoscience can ape the style and structure of actual biology to, say, try to promote or demote people of certain skin colors). Reverend Black Percy (talk) 13:04, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

It can also used to create false groupings of common interests (i.e. "Humanism"), the idea that members of certain social construct, a "species", have inalienable "rights", while living beings that exist outside of that social construct deserve to be treated like slaves. To declare "Only humans deserve to have personhood rights" is as fallacious and meaningless as saying "Only people of germanic ancestry shall have rights". The only change is where a person decides to make the random cutoff. Note that the Ape personhood movement would make the "cutoff" at the socially constructed Hominidae family, and their declaration would not be any less valid or moral than "only humans have personhood" or "only germans have personhood". Arguments about personhood being limited to fully sentient beings or to people you can interbreed with ultimately fall flat when you realize that certain genetic conditions can make a person extremely disabled to perform sentient function, and that, given enough genetic drifting, sooner or later you would be unable to interbreed with certain other humans, rendering definitions of rights and personhood based on taxonomy, or the validity or not of certain taxonomy, an exercise of particular interests, and not something that can be determined without doubt using the scientific method. Faulty Logic (talk) 13:36, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

And here we have a desperate scramble to reinvent the wheel of natural rights in order to justify some kind of incredibly stupid racist bullshit, without any of the legwork of reproducing the syllogisms thereof to actually justify the contained racist bullshit. It's always interesting to see just how complex the mental hoops racists will jump through to say "You can't prove I'm wrong" when a gigantic preponderance of scientific evidence just kinda indicates you're inventing important differences whole cloth. ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 14:12, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure what point you are trying to make. Rights and Taxonomy are indeed entirely arbitrary, and I am not sure why you think that declaring particular rights-system or that given taxonomy are racist, evil or demonic would change that. If you wanna transform a scientific problem into a "Jesus vs Satan" moral battle, good for you, but that is completely out of the scope of rationalism [a belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response] and logical debate. Faulty Logic (talk) 22:00, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

@Faulty Logic Speaking of the unwarranted drawing of arbitrary lines (never mind things like the Sorites paradox actually not allowing for any such simplified lines to be drawn, ever) - a typical example of that has to be the (thanks to recent science) scientifically now-dubious suggestion that: each single brain contains just one single, functioning, individual person. More here. Scientifically documented cases here. Oh, and never mind the fact that there, in some (if not most) senses, appears to exist no meaningful difference between "living" and "dead" matter. Food for thought. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 14:19, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Certainly living beings are socially constructed to a large extent. What we call a plant resembles more a colony of semi-dependent living cells that can easily survive even after being cut off from the colony Faulty Logic (talk) 22:00, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

@Ikanreed Well said, old timer. 1+ Reverend Black Percy (talk) 14:19, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

They are yet to explain why humans in some areas would evolve to be smarter than others

That's actually SAME as asking How_come_there_are_still_monkeys? Alliumnsk (talk) 09:52, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

The article doesn't claim everyone is of the same intelligence. Please stop with the straw man arguments.Schizophrenic (talk) 16:42, 4 August 2016 (UTC)