[ExI] Race Biology (was Larks vs Night Owls)

[Damien Broderick]

At 06:28 PM 3/19/2008 -0400, Rafal wrote:

[Stuart:]
>Race is almost entirely cultural so it is more the
>purview of anthropologists, ethnographers, and other social scientists
>rather than of biologists.
>
>### Race is not in the least determined by culture. It is a property 
>related to common descent.

Oh, the innocence.

Sally Hemings' mother, Betty Hemings, was the daughter of the English 
Captain Hemings and a black slave woman brought from Africa 
(Wikipedia says), so her kids by Jefferson were three-quarters 
"white." That surely made them white, eh? Oh yeah?

Obama's mother was a "white" USian from Kansas and his father a 
"black" Kenyan, so he's--what? How does the US culture refer to his "race"?

Arbitrarily-chosen phenotypic markers are determined by biology, 
obviously; the "race" of Hemings and her children and Barack Obama is 
determined by--what?

Damien Broderick