redhen, on 08 December 2012 - 08:55 PM, said:
I suppose everything can be reduced to a philosophical question, but your original question was how to determine race, which is a scientific question.
Context is everything. If it's to determine a demographic poll, simple self-identification is sufficient. If it's to prove the ancestry of skeletal remains, a forensic anthropologist can do the job.
Quite so. I think maybe I distilled your OP into just one question, which is my habit. I apologize.
I have supplied a reliable source that states that the majority of physical anthropologists believe in race. Look, I am not a racist, I am pro science. I seek the truth without bias, wherever it leads. The idea that race is a social construct is part of
Cultural Marxism. The idea that gender is also a social construct is part of the same agenda. Cultural Marxism is also known as
political correctness.
I took a few physical anthropology semesters at college and from day one the prof hammered home this same Cultural Marxist propaganda, there's no such thing as race. They showed us a video one day in which they sampled dna from a high school class. They made much of the fact that one apparently white kid was more closely related to a specific black kid in the class, "see, we're all the same" . But what the unstated assumption was that there were specific genetic markers that enabled them to compare these differences. These genetic markers are called
Haplogroups.The wiki entry will explain the different markers and their ancestral geographic locations. These are the same tools that popular ancestry companies use for commercial purposes.
If you still deny race, would you also say that the myriad breeds of dogs don't really exist? They are merely a
social construct and there is only one race of dog, the dog race. Sounds preposterous doesn't it?
And no, I am not being hostile. I'm just frustrated at having to constantly defend science from Cultural Marxist academics and their stranglehold on education.
Thank you for noticing this subject can be explored from many different points of view. This is far, far different from what someone else is doing in another thread, whom I have chosen to ignore. I think education for technology has programmed people to do exactly what you first did, because that is the way science works. Liberal education was more about how people work, and I am glad could make that shift.
When we determine what race a person is, this is not as simple as a person deciding for him or her self, because it involves how others identify the person as well. Yesterday a friend took me to an east Indian place for lunch, and I learned some east Indians do not consider themselves to be White. I feel quite amazed by this. Perhaps this is a good thing, because they clearly are not Mexican or Black. They have a different ethnicity, although their skin color may be as the color of someone we call Black, who isn't that Black. Perhaps as we expand our understanding of persons of color, to mean of African decent, Mexican, east Indian, and some native Americans, it will decrease the craziness of racism.
The difference between our races in the US and Mexicans and the east Indian race, is the age of these civilizations. Science says we all come out of Africa, and somehow diverge into different races. But people also moved around and around and mixed, and this mixing continues. Some people with dark skin are 78% White. It can not be scientific to label them as Black and ignore the 78% White. So this is not just about science, but about being human and how we use science. Should we DNA test babies when they are born, and list their mix of races on their birth certificates, to be scientifically correct and not prejudice? Why would do this? It might perhaps make us aware of how silly our present racism is.
Also, exactly what does it mean to be of this race or that race? Why do we care? Racism is full of myths that are not true, and if we want to be scientific we need to clarify why race matters. May I suggest, it isn't race that matters but culture? Black people from Africa, Brazil, Hatti, the southern states of the US, Atlanta, Georgia and L.A., California are not all the same. Each is the product of economic and social status within different cultures. However, if you are Irish we know you get drunk and get into fights, because that is what the Irish do, and this is why we best discriminate against them. The difference between being Irish, or Chinese, or African is one to two generations in the US. This would be the science of human behavior and sociology, right?
My goodness no it doesn't sound preposterous to say all dogs come from one dog race because they do. The great variety of dogs we have today, are the result of selective breeding. This could make for a very interesting discussion, because it was discovered if breeders selected for one characteristic, say brown hair, they got a dog with changed specific personality traits as well. The book "The Brave New World' explains growing babies in tubes and preparing them for the job they will do as adults. Perhaps we will be able to breed humans with the precession of breeding dogs, but is this desirable? Do different races of humans have different character traits. Was Hitler right in his goal for a superior race? I have an old eugenics book that speculates in the future we can prevent the birth of humans with undesirable traits, and for sure science is taking us in this direction. Is this a good thing? It is sad, but often pure bred dogs have health problems, and it is the mutt that is the most healthy. Nature seems to want us to interbreed.
Your belief that you are defending science from Marxist is most interesting. Are you perhaps Fascist? Your political concern seems to go outside the purely scientific realm, but I don't think a fascist would be aware of this, because of the education that created a blindness and instilled a sense of superiority.
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