[ExI] Race Biology

[Lee Corbin]

Damien writes

> At 10:04 PM 3/20/2008 -0700, Lee 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.
>>
>>Damien, they're discussing the *scientific*, oops, *biological* concept.
> 
> Oh, the innocence.

Come now. Stuart has claimed from the beginning that he's 
discussing the biological reality behind what he dismisses
as "race" (having suggested, originally, that the whole idea
from a biological point of view is just fallacious).

> *They* were discussing the biological concept, Lee? Look at Stuart's 
> sentence you just quoted:
> 
> "Race is almost entirely cultural... the purview of... social 
> scientists rather than of biologists."

Addressed.

> What Stuart and Rafal were disagreeing about was precisely the 
> salience of the biological in the ideological construct called 
> "race".

Not the way I read it, Damien. Each claimed to be discussing
the biological reality; hence their highly technical exchanges.
Thanks to Rafal, BTW, for the reference to "Lewontin's Fallacy",
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin's_Fallacy .
I had read about the refutation of that in general terms, but had no idea
that it had acquired a label already.

> Yes, of course it's an element; skin color and hair type is 
> biological--but the *use* to which those markers are put has for 
> hundreds or thousands of years been cultural.

Agreed. Only recently, especially in medicine, are the by-and-large
same classifications being being successfully used in medicine.

> Two hundred years ago, nobody was looking at major histocompatibility 
> complexes when Europeans kidnapped Africans and enslaved them,

nor were the African kings who routinely, following the customs
of primitive people all over the world (recall "slave" derives from
"Slav"), enslaved their defeated enemies, and who sold far more
of them to Arab traders than to western sea merchants. But being
non-European, the Arabs generally get a pass on this, even though
slavery IS STILL GOING ON in east Africa and among Muslims
who're still eager for more slaves.  So why did you happen to
single out the Europeans?

> or [continuing the litany of Western thought-crime] despised Asians
> as "lesser breeds without the law", 

and I suppose you never heard what the inhabitants of the Central
Kingdom under Heaven thought of Westerners, and, in fact anyone
not Chinese?  Looking down your nose at other tribes or other
peoples was hardly invented by just the detested Europeans. 

> While that kind of (mis)use is made of characters 
> irrelevant *except* for their value as politically-opportune 
> identifiers for exclusion, exploitation, hatred or mistrust, it's 
> absurd to act as if "race" is nothing but a biological concept of 
> descent--"not in the least determined by culture."

Oh, no, I didn't say that!  Didn't you read the rest of my post?
Here is the relevant part of the rest, for your convenience:

    > 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.

I readily concede that historically all societies have been more
concerned with race as denoted by superficial markings---it was
only recently that we learned that race differences go more than
skin deep.  I also admit that certain societies, especially in the
19th century in the American south, were keen to devise any
explanation that would help serve their ends of justifying slavery.

>  it's absurd to act as if "race" is nothing but a biological concept of 
> descent--"not in the least determined by culture."

Do you have any examples of someone on this list claiming that?
Or is that just a straw man?

Hmm, of course, your real audience may be society at large who
you are attempting to reform, not the real, live people here with
whom you are trying to exchange ideas and gain understanding?

Lee