Race just another Social construct ?

[Alceste]

Hello Painted Wolf (btw are you Cherokee? full? mixed?),

Traditionally there are considered three macro-races of man (Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid). Under each macro-race there are numerous sub-races/ethnic groups or whatever term you choose to use. As we've both pointed out there can be significant genetic differences between the ethnic groups.

The African-American ethnic group is really a hybrid ethnic group (genetically 80% transatlantic African-slaves; 20% Caucasion and very tiny Native-American).

There is no perfect way to categorize human ethnicities and it certainly is very complicated. However, that doesn't mean there are no genetic differences between let's say the Baka and African-Americans. So even though these categorizations are not perfect they are not meaningless either.

The raw traits that determine your basketball potential are things like height, muscle mass, bone size, reflexes, sprinting speed, vertical jump, physical co-ordination, etc.. The more 'raw' the trait the more genetically influenced it is. In measurement comparisons, the raw traits important to basketball performance favor African-Americans over other groups. Consequently we would expect that not all good basketball players will be African-American but that they will be over-represented.

It's astonishing that you fail to acknowledge that a culture that encourages practicing basketball - a lot - has anything to do with it. You know what else the same traits you list might determine the potential for? Cricket.

Or how about football (real football):

Or how about baseball:

 

[George-ananda]

It's astonishing that you fail to acknowledge that a culture that encourages practicing basketball - a lot - has anything to do with it. You know what else the same traits you list might determine the potential for? Cricket.

No, not true that I fail to acknowledge that. I said it's heredity and environment. You're saying it's just environment. That's why we try to analyze traits where genetic influence is considered strong.

Your pictures are not meaningful. If I showed a picture of a NBA basketball game where 10 of 10 players are African-American; would that have helped my argument?

 

[Alceste]

No, not true that I fail to acknowledge that. I said it's heredity and environment. You're saying it's just environment. That's why we try to analyze traits where genetic influence is considered strong.

Your pictures are not meaningful. If I showed a picture of a NBA basketball game where 10 of 10 players are African-American; would that have helped my argument?

No, because African American boys tend to have a basketball culture, just as white boys in the UK, Ireland and the US have a culture of cricket, football and baseball, respectively. I forgot to include the Canadian hockey team, but I'll let you guess how many non-white people are on it. You are arguing that black people are better at one particular sport just because of their genes. But why only that particular sport, and why only in America? If genes had anything to do with it, wouldn't Africa dominate basketball internationally, and wouldn't the same inherent traits be an advantage in ALL sports, and not just basketball?

 

[George-ananda]

No, because African American boys tend to have a basketball culture, just as white boys in the UK, Ireland and the US have a culture of cricket, football and baseball, respectively.

Well white boys in America have just as much sports culture as black boys. I was one once. My favourite sport is American football. I watched my team's game last Sunday. I remember our team had 11 of 11 defensive players African-American and the other team 9 of 11. You probably never heard of the position called cornerback in football. There are 32 teams in the National Football League and each team has four cornerbacks on its roster. I'm glued to my TV every Sunday and I do not recall seeing a non African-American cornerback in years on any team. There are about 32 times 4 which equals 128 cornerbacks. African-Americans are about 15% of the United States population. High school and college football is almost a religion throughout the southern bible-belt region of this country. Cornerback is a position particularly requiring quick bursts of speed and reaction time.

I forgot to include the Canadian hockey team, but I'll let you guess how many non-white people are on it.

Canada, to its credit, does not have the legacy of slavery.

You are arguing that black people are better at one particular sport just because of their genes.

I've mentioned basketball and football and don't even get me started on track, hurdling and sprinting.

But why only that particular sport, and why only in America?

What country has the largest number of slave descendants and is affluent enough to support athletics in a big way? America.

If genes had anything to do with it, wouldn't Africa dominate basketball internationally, and wouldn't the same inherent traits be an advantage in ALL sports, and not just basketball?

Again you're getting too hung up on my using basketball as just an example. African-Americans have superior raw physical athletic traits due to the inhumane practice of slavery that favoured the most fit and muscular for manual labor.

As I said in a previous post, African-Americans are different than Africans (in fact they're only 80% African and 20% white). You might know the Rolling Stones song 'Brown Sugar' and the line 'English blood runs hot'. But I'm veering off-track.

Plus sub-Saharan Africa is a collection of unfortunate third-world countries without the resources of the United States to invest in athletic endeavors.

 

[Alceste]

Well white boys in America have just as much sports culture as black boys. I was one once. My favourite sport is American football. I watched my team's game last Sunday. I remember our team had 11 of 11 defensive players African-American and the other team 9 of 11. You probably never heard of the position called cornerback in football. There are 32 teams in the National Football League and each team has four cornerbacks on its roster. I'm glued to my TV every Sunday and I do not recall seeing a non African-American cornerback in years on any team. There are about 32 times 4 which equals 128 cornerbacks. African-Americans are about 15% of the United States population. High school and college football is almost a religion throughout the southern bible-belt region of this country. Cornerback is a position particularly requiring quick bursts of speed and reaction time.



Canada, to its credit, does not have the legacy of slavery.



I've mentioned basketball and football and don't even get me started on track, hurdling and sprinting.



What country has the largest number of slave descendants and is affluent enough to support athletics in a big way? America.



Again you're getting too hung up on my using basketball as just an example. African-Americans have superior raw physical athletic traits due to the inhumane practice of slavery that favoured the most fit and muscular for manual labor.

As I said in a previous post, African-Americans are different than Africans (in fact they're only 80% African and 20% white). You might know the Rolling Stones song 'Brown Sugar' and the line 'English blood runs hot'. But I'm veering off-track.

Plus sub-Saharan Africa is a collection of unfortunate third-world countries without the resources of the United States to invest in athletic endeavors.

Your ability to locate one other sport with a high percentage of African American players does not resolve the problem of the rarity of African Americans in the other sports I listed.
It is just one more example of a phenomenon that is adequately explained by the influence of culture and the effectiveness of practice.

 

[painted wolf]

Hello Painted Wolf (btw are you Cherokee? full? mixed?),

I'm mixed heritage.

Traditionally there are considered three macro-races of man (Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid). Under each macro-race there are numerous sub-races/ethnic groups or whatever term you choose to use. As we've both pointed out there can be significant genetic differences between the ethnic groups.

And those three "macro races" have been shown to be incorrect. There is no way to draw definitive lines between them or define them in any meaningful way.

As I said, according to genetic studies the closest you can get are haplogroups which are inherited from either parent.
Genetics has also shown that the total amount of variation between humans amounts to less than 0.01% of our DNA. To put that in perspective two chimpanzees living across a river from one another have more genetic variation between themselves than all of humanity has with each other.

The African-American ethnic group is really a hybrid ethnic group (genetically 80% transatlantic African-slaves; 20% Caucasion and very tiny Native-American).

It's also encompassing of many naturalized African and Caribbean migrant populations.

Your numbers also fail in include the Asian, Jewish and others that admixed with the African-American population.
Which again goes against your main point... the idea that African-Americans are somehow uniquely bred for athletics.

There is no perfect way to categorize human ethnicities and it certainly is very complicated. However, that doesn't mean there are no genetic differences between let's say the Baka and African-Americans. So even though these categorizations are not perfect they are not meaningless either.

I believe I said just that... That putting everyone with dark skin and recent African decent into a single "race" is invalid by any scientific measure.

The only "meaning" in such categorizations is social. And that social categorizing has a pervasive power in society.

The raw traits that determine your basketball potential are things like height, muscle mass, bone size, reflexes, sprinting speed, vertical jump, physical co-ordination, etc.. The more 'raw' the trait the more genetically influenced it is. In measurement comparisons, the raw traits important to basketball performance favor African-Americans over other groups. Consequently we would expect that not all good basketball players will be African-American but that they will be over-represented.

Except that you are mistaken.
Slaves were never selectively bred like you suggest. There was no selective pressure to be more athletic than average and if you look at the total population.

Some helpful links on the subject of race and sports:
Race and sports - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Slave genes” myth must die - Salon.com

So yes... athletic ability is a combination of genetics and training... but the genetics isn't a result of "race".

wa:do

 

[Revoltingest]

There is no way to draw definitive lines between them or define them in any meaningful way.

That seems to be the crux of the matter.
Sure, there are races & there are differences.
But the differences which affect people are cultural.

I'll admit though, that black folk are darker than light folk.
Oh, & the taller ones are taller than the short ones.
(Keen insight, eh?)

 

[dust1n]

I think the human need for categorization fails in this area... making sort of an arbitrary line in a gray area. As someone mentioned in some sense... we are all the human race... and to add to that, if I may, we are all different genetically on an individual level. I'm not really sure there are useful distinctions regarding race, since any group is as varied as any other group.

As far as there being a lot of really good basketball players that have dark skin, any body who is doing what they are doing are probably going to be really good at what they are doing, and take on a fit life etc.

 

[Î Î¿Î»Ï Ï€Î­ÏÏ‡Ï‰Î½ Γʹ]

It depends on your definition of race.

The claim that a lot of human DNA is similar refers to the "classic" genetic markers such as blood types, serum proteins, and enzymes, which do show much more variability within races than between them, but that doesn't tell the entire story. This pattern of variability cannot reliably be extrapolated to all traits with higher adaptive value. In other words, the oft-quoted "99.9" percent figure is based on DNA sequences that do not differ much between people or even between most mammals.

 

[painted wolf]

Actually we have complete genomes for thousands of people to compare.

If you look at single nucleotide differences between humans you can push the number up to a whopping 0.4% difference between any two given humans. But this difference does not happen due to race.

When you look at copy number variation you still get 99.5% fidelity between all of humanity. That is a whopping 0.5% difference between humans. And again, copy number variation is not broken down by racial groupings and in fact we often find the highest variation within "races" rather than between them.

Again, the amount of variation is so minimal that humans have amazingly low genetic diversity. The closest we can get are haplogroups and those do not support the social construct of race.

wa:do

 

[George-ananda]

Actually we have complete genomes for thousands of people to compare.

If you look at single nucleotide differences between humans you can push the number up to a whopping 0.4% difference between any two given humans. But this difference does not happen due to race.

When you look at copy number variation you still get 99.5% fidelity between all of humanity. That is a whopping 0.5% difference between humans. And again, copy number variation is not broken down by racial groupings and in fact we often find the highest variation within "races" rather than between them.

Again, the amount of variation is so minimal that humans have amazingly low genetic diversity. The closest we can get are haplogroups and those do not support the social construct of race.

wa:do

These percentage numbers are meaningless in our real world. What does 99.5% really mean? So we all have two arms, legs, kindneys, liver, teeth, etc...with the same proteins, etc. What I've been talking about in this thread are observable and measureable differences in abilities and traits between human genetic groups.

If I replace my two beagles with two wolves, I can make the amazingly high sounding genetic percentage similarity argument all day long but my neighbor with the toddler is not going to give a crap about that number.

 

[painted wolf]

These percentage numbers are meaningless in our real world. What does 99.5% really mean? So we all have two arms, legs, kindneys, liver, teeth, etc...with the same proteins, etc. What I've been talking about in this thread are observable and measureable differences in abilities and traits between human genetic groups.

Where do you think these "observable and measureable differences in abilities and traits between human genetic groups" come from?

Genetics... thus a discussion on the variation in genetics between us is the most relevant topic possible.

If I replace my two beagles with two wolves, I can make the amazingly high sounding genetic percentage similarity argument all day long but my neighbor with the toddler is not going to give a crap about that number.

Not really... the beagle and the wolf are far more different genetically (2.0%) than any two humans are from each other (0.5%).

As for your neighbors...They should give a crap... that genetic difference between a wolf and a beagle is key to why a beagle is a good neighbor and a wolf is not. If they paid attention to genetics then maybe people would realized why keeping wolves and recent wolf-mix dogs as pets is dangerous and stupid.

It's certainly better than some wishy-washy talk about vague traits the beagle has and the wolf doesn't.

wa:do

 

[Absolute Zero]

So what your saying pantied wolf is that there is little to no variation or rather diffrence from one human to the next ?That race could only be marginaly defind as being slightly varied in a specfic haploga group and that humans just came up with this as a means to feel more high and mighty than another group to boast there ego/complex ? If so why dose such **** still perstist to day ?

 

[painted wolf]

So what your saying pantied wolf is that there is little to no variation or rather diffrence from one human to the next ?

Not enough to justify or even categorize distinctive races.

There is significant genetic overlap between each of the socially constructed "races" to render them biologically meaningless.

That race could only be marginaly defind as being slightly varied in a specfic haploga group and that humans just came up with this as a means to feel more high and mighty than another group to boast there ego/complex ? If so why dose such **** still perstist to day ?

I don't think that... our concepts of race/other are very complex aspects of our psychology and cognitive framework. There is no simple answer to why we place such emphasis on this concept and I'm not going to try to make light of the problems we have because of it.

However, like I said.... it is a powerful social reality despite not being a biologically valid one.

wa:do

 

[Alceste]

Hee hee! "Pantied Wolf". I like it.

 

[George-ananda]

Where do you think these "observable and measureable differences in abilities and traits between human genetic groups" come from?

As we both agree from different genetics

Genetics...

See I told you we agreed.

thus a discussion on the variation in genetics between us is the most relevant topic possible.

Agreed again.

What I'm disputing is your assertion that 99.5% similarity makes the differences meaningless. A number tells us nothing without a frame of reference. I just looked on the internet and found the following:

It’s not possible to tell exactly how much wolf DNA any one dog has, because scientists
have yet to discover the location of the wolf genes on these chromosomes. In his opinion, there’s a likelihood of a 99 percent similarity between the two species. As an example of how this works, Willems explains mankind and chimpanzees have a 98 percent similarity.


If wolves and dogs are 99% the same and human and chimpanzees are 98%, now that we have some frame of reference, 99.5% no longer sounds trivial at all!

 

[Alceste]

As we both agree from different genetics




See I told you we agreed.



Agreed again.

What I'm disputing is your assertion that 99.5% similarity makes the differences meaningless. A number tells us nothing without a frame of reference. I just looked on the internet and found the following:

It’s not possible to tell exactly how much wolf DNA any one dog has, because scientists
have yet to discover the location of the wolf genes on these chromosomes. In his opinion, there’s a likelihood of a 99 percent similarity between the two species. As an example of how this works, Willems explains mankind and chimpanzees have a 98 percent similarity.


If wolves and dogs are 99% the same and human and chimpanzees are 98%, now that we have some frame of reference, 99.5% no longer sounds trivial at all!

But there is still more variation within any racial construct than there is between them.

 

[George-ananda]

But there is still more variation within any racial construct than there is between them.

Agreed. Bell curves overlap but center points are different. Hence over-representaion at both ends.

 

[Alceste]

Agreed. Bell curves overlap but center points are different. Hence over-representaion at both ends.

How do you propose to prove this hypothesis?

 

[George-ananda]

How do you propose to prove this hypothesis?

Bell curves and their implications are already a known and accepted part of mathematics, science and statistics. It's bigger than me.

I can only lead the horses to water.........

But as far as I'm concerned disbelievers will not have as accurate an understanding of the human species as me on this issue. You can't prove anything to people who are not emotionally willing to understand.

I know this sounds pompous but I can't think of a more direct way to put it.