[ExI] Race Biology

[Olga Bourlin]

From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin at rawbw.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 10:04 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Race Biology


> Damien writes

>> 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?
>
> No, in the U.S. they'd be called black, because that's their relative
> coloration compared to the rest of the people here.

My stepdaughter (who sports white skin and wavy blonde hair - as a baby she 
was absolutely tow-headed) is 3/4 white and 1/4 black.  Were you to meet 
her, there's no way you'd think she was anything but "white."

I'm confused about what you meant by "coloration."   Are you saying that a 
person is considered "black" as long as there is some evidence (i.e., 
physical difference from "whites") of this from his/her appearance?

The reason my stepdaughter is considered "black" is due to the racist 
"one-drop" rule - it has nothing to do with her appearance (or coloration).

Olga

>> 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"?
>
> If he went to Kenya, they'd probably call him white. After all,
> compared to the rest of them he would be.
>
>> Arbitrarily-chosen phenotypic markers are determined by biology,
>> obviously; the "race" of Hemings and her children and Barack Obama is
>> determined by--what?
>
> That depends on whether you are more interested in the scientific,
> more precise biological concept, or the societal one. As far as
> the biological concept goes, they really were 25% African and
> 75% white.
>
> Now socially, it is not too surprising that it may be a different story.
>
> For example, in Brazil there are a lot of well-to-do people that you
> or I would unhesitatingly refer to as "black", because of the way that
> we  perceive their much darker skin color compared to many other
> rich and influential people in Latin America, most of whom are white
> (both culturally and biologically).
>
> But those particular well-to-do Brazilians will not simply be faking
> indignation were you to describe them as black.  They'd be truly
> offended, because in the Brazilian mind, alleged coloration is subtly
> (to us, anyway)  correlated with social status, or wealth, or I don't
> know what.
>
> But any honest geneticist who doesn't have a political axe to grind one
> way or the other will tell you what proportion of their genes are African
> dervived, what proportion are indigenous Indian, and what proportion
> are European.
>
> Lee
>
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