The Study of Racialism

Good question. The April 9, 2005 Issue of Science News had an article by Christen Brownlee titled:"Can Researchers See Race in the Genome?" that asked that very question of several experts. My own contribution leads off the article <gloat, gloat>. Feel free to read the article at the supplied link, but the short answer is this:

Researchers are NOT able to find how much "white" or "black" genetic admixture a person has. There is no such thing. What they can measure is geographical ancestry, They can determine is how much European versus African (and Native American, East Asian, etc.) admixture a person has. They can break the African admixture into how much Berber, Arab, Bantu, Ethiopian, Khoisan, and so forth, admixture a person has. And they can break the European down into Ashkhenazi, Basque, Saami, Middle-Eastern, and so forth.

Within African admixtures, that most Americans consider Bantus and Khoisan to be "Black," but Berbers and Arabs not to be Black is what is socially constructed. Similarly, within European admixture, that many Americans (including Tyrone) consider Basques and Saami to be "White," but Ashkhenazi not to be White, is also a social construct.

Furthermore, even someone with up to 1/4 African admixture (like Geraldo, Carol Channing, Martin Sheen, or Linda Ronstadt, for example) can be socially White if they look mostly European and have identified as White since childhood. And someone with no African admixture at all (like about 5 percent of the U.S. Black community, in fact) can be accepted as "Black," again based upon appearance and upbringing.

In short, your geographical region of ancestry (African versus European) is easily measured genetically. But your membership in either of the two U.S. endogamous communities (Black versus White) is not genetically detectable.

You mean African admixture? That seems very high to me. Nine out of ten antebellum African Americans lived in the South, and nine out of ten of those were slaves. But about 70 percent of the White population lived in the North. It is hard to imagine a 60 percent number even in South Carolina (which was majority Black), and unimaginable in the North.


Since Americans of the time did not see southern and eastern Europeans as fully White, this "dilution of the White race" was of great concern at the time. (I understand that you are saying the opposite, that the immigration of so many Europeans reduced the overall African admixture in Northern Whites.) But either way, the concern is misplaced. The following chart shows European immigration throughout the nation's history as a percent of the receiving population.

As you can see, there is no great bulge at the end of the 19th century and even the peaks are only around one percent of the population per year.

I think Phil345 asks a good and pertinent question. I feel confident I know the answer. But I struggle with trying to explain it clearly.

As Phil345 says, the notion of "races" (said in the plural) is a social construct, because dividing our one human race (the one that exists) is necessarily an exercise in spurious, arbitrary naming. There is no way to define or count two or more "races" which are not an arbitrary number; that are not spurious name-labeling; that are not unnecessary to understanding our species's biology.

Race, however is doubtless necessary, fact, inasmuch as the word means "roots" in the sense of geneological ancestry, starting with parents, grandparents, great-grands, and so on back in time by physical procreation-births that really happened -- they had to! -- on back infinitely. I believe in restricting "race" applicable to humans to the noun singular (i.e., human race). I argue this is a useful armistice with the obviousness of our certainly biologically inherited human racial diversity. By limiting to one human race we can discuss, describe racial things with adjectives (e.g., "racial"-stuff) that do not necessarily dictate the existence of more "races" than one. Anyway, no one seems to think of this but me. (I.e., the aforesaid is just me.)

Now DNA science can probe evidence of remote ancestry, apparently more powerfully than our eyeballs can. Y-chromosome and mit-DNA look on the same line of sight that our eyes do recognizing what we socially call "races." So, we are talking about detected biological ancestry (a real thing) in generalities of continental scale -- as distinguishing between Europe or Africa (real geography). This often is called population genetics. Any world-population can be tested for its characteristic distinctions, either visible or DNA-marked.

I think we are getting into trouble with re-inventing "races" using DNA-science. Service providers now are taking cheek-swabs of folks' DNA in order to reveal to them, percent-wise, how much European, African, Amer-Indian, or Asian "blood" is in their DNA. These social definitions of genetic populations -- populations of interest -- replicate the same old mapping Johann Blumenbach proclaimed (1775) as his "scientific taxonomy," his unilaterally cleaved "different races" of Man.
George

Hello!

Here I am.

I don't believe there are pure races at all. Europeans have both Black and Mongolian admixture in them, besides Hindu (Gypsie), Arabian, Jew, Persian, North African, etc. And they had it before they arrived to the Americas.

The fact that the number of African slaves in South America's southern cone was VERY minor; almost nill, does not mean at all a genetic study should not show African traces in this area as well.

After all there were hundred of millions of Europeans and also Jews, Arabs and lots of other ethnicities that migrated to these lands in the past. Would you believe there was not a single "Black" gene carried by them to here?

Perhaps even Shakira (half Middle Easterner) carry some.

What I argue is the importance of the African culture carried by the slaves in this particular region. The culture of this side of the planet is Spanish. Italian and also Native American, not African. That's not the same in other countries of Latin America.

And Peru is 4% Black and in there you will find a rich Afro-Peruvian culture, for certain.

Regards,

Omar Vega

Well they aren't looking for "Black" or "White" markers, but they look for markers that have existed in populations in Europe and Africa and that are not coomon in other groups. Any genetic mutation that might have occured in a population.

That number is really not clear. Mixed peruvians of Afro decent will sometimes call themselves negros or not. Our Afro-Peruvian culture is very rich, but that percentage is not one I usually see. Unless you are including the whole Afro-peruvian population the majority of which is mixed with native american and some with European ancestry. I don't think any careful census has been done.

blacks and mulattos 2 percent http://www.ddg.com/LIS/aurelia/perpop.htm
Afro-Peruvians unofficially constitute approximately 3 to 5 percent of the population http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/asse ... upId=13501
3% http://www.answers.com/topic/afro-latin-american

The second part
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050416/bob8.asp
Seems to favor racial classifications. My issue is if they have tested different "Black" populations from East Africa, West Africa, and even other parts of the world that identify as "Black" to see if there is still this supposed constancy.

Let's look at an "African marker" that is very visible: curly hair. Actually, curly hair is a better marker than the color of skin because it is not "absorved" by mixture so easily. Now, let's start to count the number of Europeans, Latinos, North Africans, Middle Easterners and Central Asians that are curly. The surprise would be major. Even myself I am curly as well.

Pick now a "Nordic marker" like coloured eyes, both green and blue. Then start to count in those same regions. One find people with colored eyes not only in Northern Europe but in Southern Europe too. But also in the Middle East, North Africa, Afganistan, Pakistan, India, and quite a lot in Latin America as well. I don't know if couloured eyed people exist in Ethiopia or Sudan but it would bet there exist in there as well.

Take now an "East Asian marker" as the slant eyes, and you'll find them in the slav populations of Russia, and also in Sweeden, Norway and Finland. But also in some very "African" places like Madagascar. They are also quite common in the Native American population.

Now look at Polynesians and you'll find those three "markers" in the same people !

So, what we are talking about when we speak of "markers". It is not necessary to look at hidden genes when the truth is there shown in public for everyone to see: we are all mixed some way or the other.

"The worst blind is the one who does not want to see"

Regards,

Omar Vega

From Science News, "Code of Many Colors, Can researchers see race in the genome?" by Christen Brownlee, which Frank led off (cudos Frank).
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050409/bob9.asp


I think the overlapping rings diagram supports my objection graphically.

All-important to "Anti-Racism" apologists is their wanting to minimize the SMALL "DIFFERENCES" distinguishing the supposedly non-existent "races." This impeaches them, of course, because logically the idea of differences argues the existence of "races." If differences exist, and the notion of "races" is all about "difference," then of course "races" exist. The size of a difference is relative; it is whatever someone chooses to make of it. (15% is plenty for those looking to discriminate.) This is the essence of racism.

The Anti-Racist blunder, that I see, is their stupidly proselytizing so-called "differences," evidently proven here by the existence of the solid rings in this diagram. Without the colored rings, who cares where non-overlapped regions begin or end? The common region inside all of the rings properly conceptualizes the whole subject-matter. Attenuation in the fringes goes intuitively with recognizing the genetic diversity which naturally emerges in individuals. (I.e., here laid-out as racial, geographic diversity on global scale.)

Trying to make my objection clearer; recall that the four rings sample from deep inside "homelands" of four of the classical world geographic "races" classified by the U.S. census. Had the four populations instead overlapped racial "boundaries" the 15% genetic diversity doubtless would have re-appeared -- it would re-appear in unique configurations of any four equidistant world populations. (World populations inside two circles should show more than 15% non-overlap. A million circles should differ almost none.) Consequently, the arbitrary four "difference" non-overlap regions proclaimed in this purportedly scientific article should more accurately reveal a thin annular haze-region. A quantum analogy would be truer -- a region similar to atomic electron orbital clouds -- instead of these alleged "different races" clasped by these four hard rings, grievance-politically pre-loaded as they are.

Our U.S. census "different races" are the same idea. They are drawn dividing-up a world map, instead of in round, colored rings. The names (i.e., government classifications of individuals) semantically circumscribe the created "races" (& their endogamous membership) exactly the same way. Again, these four rings correspond to the lines on a world map derived from J. Blumenbach's 18th-Century "taxonomy"; and also invoking the triangular geography of the slave-trade. The devil of this fallacy is in the idea of cleaving lines. It is not found in natural skin hues or other human racial physiognomy, either visible or hidden in chromosomes. More importantly, it is not in the strength or the variety of skin hues or any other physiognomy, visible or genetic. (Forget the F-statistic!) Rather, the whole problem of racism (i.e., discrimination which is prouduced by "races"-consciousness) is the false lines suggesting delusional (hypnotic) "differences."

Of course, I argue that "different races" do not exist. No extra races cleave our human race. These nominal government classifications of individuals are problematic, having no necessary or needed physical grounding in our biology. They should be dropped. Does this make sense?
George