How many 'ethnics' here vs WEIRDs?

[Jason]

What is a WEIRD?

[Cormac]

What is a WEIRD?

I was also wondering about this.

[Seabass]

Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic

[Jason]

OK, quick google turns up this blog that sums it up pretty well:

There is a lot of nonsense going around these days about the races of man, and how race is not a valid concept in humans. Sure it is. It can be seen as analogous to subspecies in animals and plants. A counterargument is that subspecies are limited to certain geographic areas, hence they do not interbreed. Indeed, but when their ranges do overlap, you do get hybrids.

Even full species can interbreed sometimes, and, as a fanatical birdwatcher, I have seen hybrid species of birds before. In general, nowadays, genetic distance is used as a parameter to delimit species, subspecies and even geographic segments of species. Where none of those will do, we can use the term “race”, as you see below with California kingsnakes.

The average differences between some of the major human races may even be greater than the distance between some full species – this notion is controversial though. At any rate, race is clearly a biological reality in more ways than mere skin color.

It’s clear that race in humans is a warranted concept. The fear of it is only a fear that acknowledgment of the existence of race = racism. The project is to lie and deny that race exists for the greater good of a game called, “If you deny that race exists, racism will vanish.”

That this project with noble intentions is doomed is probable. We are what we are, and that is cavemen and cavewomen with suits and matching outfits.

Anyway, strictly biologically speaking, race is a valid concept.

Let us take for example a snake. I am a snake-o-phile, or whatever they are called. I love snakes.

Here in California there is a critter called the California kingsnake.

What is interesting about the CA kingsnake is that it lacks subspecies. Now, most snakes and many mammals and birds have subspecies.

But the CA kingsnake has things called “races” that are even below the level of the subspecies. They can look dramatically different from a regular kingsnake, but there is apparently not enough genetic variation there to cut them into subspecies, so they are just called races.

The notion of whether or not human races divide sufficiently to be called subspecies is not yet sorted out, with White Nationalists coming down on the side that the races really are subspecies, and everyone else not even wanting to touch the subject.

At any rate, to call the races races, below the level of subspecies, in a California kingsnake kind of way, is hardly going to be the end of the world. It’s not even a radical concept. Biologically speaking, it’s utterly banal.

Amazing that careers are destroyed over this stuff. How dumb can you get?

The emphasis added just to tie in with what I was saying earlier.

In a purely academic sense, I agree. However, the majority of human use of the term race carries a lot more with it than neutral academic terminology. The term carries an enormous amount of baggage, most of it harmful. If humans could magically drop all that baggage, and use the term in the neutral sense of the blog, it would be harmless; until then, its use will always be fraught, and laden with toxic potential.

True. Also people who I would consider racist like to hide behind academic neutrality to push their agenda. The author of that blog, for example, I believe now to be a closet racist. I read one of his recent blogs about the Jewish lobby and 'liberal' internet forums in which he alleged, with some evidence (that cannot be verified), that on some of the big forums there is an active 'prosemite' presense in operation. I read it skeptically, but nothing set off my alarm buzzer until, in the penultimate paragraph, he decried the fact that these 'prosemites' are deliberately inciting members to anger so that they will write undeniably racist epiphets like 'kike' and racist sentiments in their posts. I questioned him why someone who does not harbour racist beliefs would go on a racist diatribe, angry or not. His response to me was basically "Thinking racist things isn't very racist. When you're angry you call people whatever they deserve to be called... yada.. yada.. thought police.. yada.."

[pErvinalia]

I'm a honky.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm Irish, but I suspect I have Scot in my blood, perhaps a lot of it. My GGrandparents were Prots.

[laklak]

Could be, 'zilla. A lot of the Irish prods were Scots that migrated to Ulster. My family, fer instance, were originally lowland Scot (Stewart of Appin clan) that split Scotland for Ulster after backing the wrong horse in the 2nd Jacobite uprising.

[pErvinalia]

I'm english/german/polish. I'm pretty sure theres some Jewish blood in there. Yay, I a self-hating Joo!!

[pErvinalia]

And my kids are now english/south african/scottish/german/polish

[Jason]

South African = English doesn't it? I've known a few and they're as English as tea and buttered scones.

[pErvinalia]

Well there's two main colonial ethnicities in south africa - the english, and the dutch (the boers - farmers). There's a bit of a french presence there too.

[pErvinalia]

also Portuguese. Hence Peri Peri (e.g. Nandos).

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Could be, 'zilla. A lot of the Irish prods were Scots that migrated to Ulster. My family, fer instance, were originally lowland Scot (Stewart of Appin clan) that split Scotland for Ulster after backing the wrong horse in the 2nd Jacobite uprising.

All I know for sure is that all four couples left Ireland quickly and quietly and all four changed their last names when they got to Ellis Island.

[JimC]

I'm Ginnish, but I also have some Scotch in my blood...

[FBM]

http://wupa.wustl.edu/record_archive/19 ... races.html

Biological differences among races do not exist, WU research shows
By Tony Fitzpatrick

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Race doesn't matter.

In fact, it doesn't even exist in humans.

While that may sound like the idealistic decree of a minister or rabbi, it's actually the conclusion of an evolutionary and population biologist at Washington University.

Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts and Sciences, has analyzed DNA from global human populations that reveal the patterns of human evolution over the past one million years. He shows that while there is plenty of genetic variation in humans, most of the variation is individual variation. While between-population variation exists, it is either too small, which is a quantitative variation, or it is not the right type of qualitative variation -- it does not mark historical sublineages of humanity.

Using the latest molecular biology techniques, Templeton has analyzed millions of genetic sequences found in three distinct types of human DNA and concludes that, in the scientific sense, there is no such thing as race.

"Race is a real cultural, political and economic concept in society, but it is not a biological concept, and that unfortunately is what many people wrongfully consider to be the essence of race in humans -- genetic differences," Templeton said. "Evolutionary history is the key to understanding race, and new molecular biology techniques offer so much on recent evolutionary history. I wanted to bring some objectivity to the topic. This very objective analysis shows the outcome is not even a close call: There's nothing even like a really distinct subdivision of humanity."

Templeton used the same strategy to try to identify race in human populations that evolutionary and population biologists use for non-human species, from salamanders to chimpanzees. He treated human populations as if they were non-human populations.

"I'm not saying these results don't recognize genetic differences among human populations," he cautioned. "There are differences, but they don't define historical lineages that have persisted for a long time."

Templeton's paper, "Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective," is published in the fall 1998 issue of the American Anthropologist, an issue almost exclusively devoted to race. The new editor-in-chief of the American Anthropologist is Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts and Sciences.

"The folk concept of race in America is so ingrained as being biologically based and scientific that it is difficult to make people see otherwise," said Sussman, a biological anthropologist. "We live on the one-drop racial division --if you have one drop of black or Native American blood, you are considered black or Native American, but that doesn't cover one's physical characteristics.

"Templeton's paper," Sussman continued, "shows that if we were forced to divide people into groups using biological traits, we'd be in real trouble. Simple divisions are next to impossible to make scientifically, yet we have developed simplistic ways of dividing people socially."


Single lineage
Templeton analyzed genetic data from mitochondrial DNA, a form inherited only from the maternal side; Y chromosome DNA, paternally inherited DNA; and nuclear DNA, inherited from both sexes. His results showed that 85 percent of genetic variation in the human DNA was due to individual variation. A mere 15 percent could be traced to what could be interpreted as "racial" differences.
"The 15 percent is well below the threshold that is used to recognize race in other species," Templeton said. "In many other large mammalian species, we see rates of differentiation two or three times that of humans before the lineages are even recognized as races. Humans are one of the most genetically homogenous species we know of. There's lots of genetic variation in humanity, but it's basically at the individual level. The between-population variation is very, very minor."

Among Templeton's conclusions: There is more genetic similarity between Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans and between Europeans and Melanesians, inhabitants of islands northeast of Australia, than there is between Africans and Melanesians. Yet, sub-Saharan Africans and Melanesians share dark skin, hair texture and cranial-facial features, traits commonly used to classify people into races. According to Templeton, this example shows that "racial traits" are grossly incompatible with overall genetic differences between human populations.

"The pattern of overall genetic differences instead tells us that genetic lineages rapidly spread out to all of humanity, indicating that human populations have always had a degree of genetic contact with one another, and thus historically don't show any distinct evolutionary lineages within humanity," Templeton said. "Rather, all of humanity is a single long-term evolutionary lineage."