RACE

RACE can refer to: * RACE (Europe), a program launched in 1988 by the Commission of the European Communities * RACE (biology), a molecular biology technique * RACE (container) is a slightly wider version of the standard ISO shipping container

Race

:''This article is about race as an intraspecies classification. For the many types of competitive sport, see Racing. For racing conditions associated with computer programming, see Race hazard. For the biological race, see race (biology).'' A race is a distinct population of humans distinguished in some way from other humans. The most widely observed races are those based on skin color, facial features, ancestry, and genetics. Conceptions of race, as well as specific racial groupings, are often controversial issue due to their impact on social identity hence identity politics. Since the 1940s, evolutionary scientists have rejected the view of race according to which a number of finite lists of Essentialism (e.g., Platonism) characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races. By the 1960s, data and models from population genetics called into question taxonomic understandings of race, and many have turned from conceptualizing and analyzing human variation in terms of race to doing so in terms of population genetics and cline instead. That being said, many scientists still believe that race is a valid and useful concept. Moreover, since the 1990s, data and models from genomics and cladistics have resulted in a revolution in our understanding of human evolution, which has led some to propose a new "Lineage (evolution)" definition of race. These scientists have made related arguments that races are valid when understood as fuzzy sets, Data clustering, or Kinship and descent. Currently, opinions differ substantially within and among academic disciplines. Many evolutionary and social scientists, drawing on such biological research, think common race definitions, or any race definitions pertaining to humans, are without taxonomy validity. They argue that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, and that the races observed vary according to the culture examined. They further maintain that race is best understood as a social construction. Some scientists have argued that this shift is motivated more by political than scientific reasons. ==Etymology== The word entered the English language in the early 16th century, from French ''race'' "race, breed, lineage" (which in turn was probably a loan from Italian ''razza''). Meanings of the term in the 16th century included "wines with a characteristic flavour", "people with common occupation", and "generation". The meaning "tribe" or "nation" emerged in the 17th century. The modern meaning, "one of the major divisions of mankind", dates to the late 18th century, but it never became exclusive (cf. continued use of "the human race"). The ultimate origin of the word is unknown; suggestions include Arabic language ''Rho (letter)'' meaning "head", but also "beginning" or "origin". ==Summary of different definitions of race== {| |+ Biological definitions of race (Long & Kittles, 2003). ! Concept || Reference || Definition |- | Essentialist || Hooton (1926) || "A great division of mankind, characterized as a group by the sharing of a certain combination of features, which have been derived from their common descent, and constitute a vague physical background, usually more or less obscured by individual variations, and realized best in a composite picture." |- | Taxonomic || Ernst Mayr (1969) || "An aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species, inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of a species, and differing taxonomically from other populations of the species." |- | Population || Theodosius Dobzhansky (1970) || "Races are genetically distinct Mendelian populations. They are neither individuals nor particular genotypes, they consist of individuals who differ genetically among themselves." |- | Lineage || Templeton (1998) || "A subspecies (race) is a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. This definition requires that a subspecies be genetically differentiated due to barriers to genetic exchange that have persisted for long periods of time; that is, the subspecies must have historical continuity in addition to current genetic differentiation." |} The United States government has provided definitions regarding race (see for example Race (U.S. Census)). Racial classification in the U.S. 2000 census was based solely on self-identification and did not pre-suppose disjointedness. == Scale of race research == Discussions of race are made more complicated because race research has taken place on at least two scales (global and national) and from the point of view of different research aims. Evolutionary scientists are typically interested in humanity as a whole; and taxonomic racial classifications are often either unhelpful to, or refuted by, studies that focus on the question of global human diversity. Policy-makers and applied professions (such as law-enforcement or medicine), however, are typically concerned only with genetic variation at the national or sub-national scale, and find taxonomic racial categories useful. These distinctions of research aims and scale can be seen by the example of three major research papers published since 2002: Rosenberg et al. (2002), Serre & P��bo (2004), and Tang et al. (2005). Both Rosenberg et al. and Serre & P��bo study global genetic variation, but they arrive at different conclusions. Serre & P��bo attribute their differing conclusions to experimental design. While Rosenberg et al. studied individuals from populations across the globe without respect to geography, Serre & P��bo sampled individuals with respect to geography. By sampling individuals from major populations on each continent, Rosenberg et al. find evidence for genetic "clusters" (i.e., races). In contrast, Serre & P��bo find that with respect to geography human genetic variation is continuous and "clinal". The research interest of Rosenberg et al. is medicine (i.e., epidemiology), whereas the research interest of Serre & P��bo is human evolution. Tang et al. studied genetic variation within the United States with an interest in whether race/ethnicity or geography is of greater importance to epidemiological research. In contrast to Serre & P��bo, Tang et al. find that race/ethnicity is of greater importance within the United States. Indeed, the contrasting conclusions between global and national levels of analysis were predicted by Serre & P��bo: :It is worth noting that the colonization history of the United States has resulted in a "sampling" of the human population made up largely of people from western Europe, western Africa, and Southeast Asia. Thus, studies in which individuals from Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia are used... might be an adequate description of the major components of the U.S. population. == The changing meanings of race == === Origins === [[Image:Map of skin hue equi.png|thumb|300px|Map of skin-color distribution for "native populations" collected by Renato Biasutti prior to 1930s.]] The division of humanity into distinct "races" can be traced as far back as the Ancient Egyptian sacred text the Book of Gates, which identifies four races of mankind known to the Egyptians. However, this treatment tends to merge "racial" differences, defined by skin color, with tribe and national identity. Ancient Greek and Roman authors also attempted to explain and categorize visible biological differences between peoples known to them. Such categories often also included fantastical human-like beings supposed to exist in far-away lands. Medieval models of race mixed Classical ideas with the notion that humanity as a whole was descended from Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah, producing distinct Semitic (Asian), Hamitic (African), and Japhetic (European) peoples. The first scientific attempts to categorize race date from the 17th century, along with the development of European imperialism and colonization around the world. The word ''race'' was introduced to English from the French in the late 16th century. The first post-Graeco-Roman published classification of humans into distinct races seems to be Fran�ois Bernier's ''Nouvelle division de la terre par les diff�rents esp�ces ou races qui l'habitent'' ("New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it"), published in 1684. In the 19th century a number of natural scientists wrote on race: Georges Cuvier, James Cowles Pritchard, Louis Agassiz, Charles_Pickering_NMI, and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. These scientists made three claims about race: first, that races are objective, naturally occurring divisions of humanity; second, that there is a strong relationship between biological races and other human phenomena (such as social behavior and culture, and by extension the relative material success of cultures); third, that race is therefore a valid scientific category that can be used to explain and predict individual and group behavior. Races were distinguished by human skin color, facial type, cranial profile and size, texture and color of hair. Moreover, races were almost universally considered to reflect group differences in moral character and intelligence. One of the key debates of the time was whether or not the human races (the number of which varied with each commentator) were separate species or not, and whether or not the crossing of human races was detrimental to their offspring. Their understanding of race was usually both essentialism and taxonomic. The advent of Charles Darwin models of evolution and Gregor Mendel genetics, however, called into question the scientific validity of both characteristics, and required a radical reconsideration of race. === 20th-Century debates over race === ====Race as subspecies==== With the advent of the modern synthesis in the early 20th century, biologists developed a new, more rigorous model of race as subspecies. For these biologists, a race is a recognizable group forming all or part of a species. A ''monotypic'' species has no races, or rather one race comprising the whole species. Monotypic species can occur in several ways: * All members of the species are very similar and cannot be sensibly divided into biologically significant subcategories. * The individuals vary considerably but the variation is essentially random and largely meaningless so far as genetic transmission of these variations is concerned (many plant species fit into this category, which is why horticulturists interested in preserving, say, a particular flower color avoid propagation from seed, and instead use vegetative methods like propagation from cuttings). * The variation between individuals is noticeable and follows a pattern, but there are no clear dividing lines between separate groups: they fade imperceptibly into one another. Such cline variation always indicates substantial gene flow between the apparently separate groups that make up the population(s). Populations that have a steady, substantial gene flow between them are likely to represent a monotypic species even when a fair degree of genetic variation is obvious. A ''polytypic'' species has two or more races (or, in current parlance, two or more ''sub-types''). These are separate groups that are clearly distinct from one another and do not generally interbreed (although there may be a relatively narrow hybridization zone), but which ''would'' interbreed freely if given the chance to do so. Note that groups which would ''not'' interbreed freely, even if brought together such that they had the opportunity to do so, are not races: they are separate species. Although this attempt at conceptual precision gained currency with many biologists, especially zoologists, evolutionary scientists have criticized it on a number of fronts. ====The rejection of race and the rise of "Population genetics" and "cline"==== At the beginning of the 20th century, anthropologists questioned, and eventually abandoned, the claim that biologically distinct races are isomorphic with distinct linguistic, cultural, and social groups. Then, the rise of population genetics led some mainstream evolutionary scientists in anthropology and biology to question the very validity of race as scientific concept describing an objectively real phenomenon. Those who came to reject the validity of the concept, race, did so for four reasons: empirical, definitional, the availability of alternative concepts, and ethical (Lieberman and Byrne 1993). The first to challenge the concept of race on empirical grounds were anthropology Franz Boas, who demonstrated phenotypic plasticity due to environmental factors (Boas 1912), and Ashley Montagu (1941, 1942), who relied on evidence from genetics. Zoology Edward O. Wilson and W. Brown then challenged the concept from the perspective of general animal systematics, and further rejected the claim that "races" were equivalent to "subspecies" (Wilson and Brown 1953). One of the crucial innovations in reconceptualizing genotypic and phenotypic variation was anthropologist C. Loring Brace's observation that such variations, insofar as it is affected by natural selection, migration, or genetic drift, are distributed along geographic gradations; these gradations are called "cline" (Brace 1964). This point called attention to a problem common to phenotypic-based descriptions of races (for example, those based on hair texture and skin color): they ignore a host of other similarities and difference (for example, blood type) that do not correlate highly with the markers for race. Thus, anthropologist Frank Livingstone's conclusion that, since clines cross racial boundaries, "there are no races, only clines" (Livingstone 1962: 279). In 1964, biologists Paul Ehrlich and Holm pointed out cases where two or more clines are distributed discordantly—for example, melanin is distributed in a decreasing pattern from the equator north and south; frequencies for the haplotype for beta-S hemoglobin, on the other hand, radiate out of specific geographical points in Africa (Ehrlich and Holm 1964). As anthropologists Leonard Lieberman and Fatimah Linda Jackson observe, "Discordant patterns of heterogeneity falsify any description of a population as if it were genotypically or even phenotypically homogeneous" (Lieverman and Jackson 1995). Finally, geneticist Richard Lewontin, observing that 85 percent of human variation occurs within populations, and not between populations, argued that neither "race" nor "subspecies" were appropriate or useful ways to describe populations (Lewontin 1973). This view is purportedly debunked as Lewontin's Fallacy. Some researchers report the variation between racial groups (measured by Sewall Wright population structure statistic F_ST) accounts for as little as 5% of human genetic variation². However, because of technical limitations of F_ST, many geneticists now believe that low F_ST values do not invalidate the suggestion that there might be different human races (Edwards, 2003). These empirical challenges to the concept of race forced evolutionary sciences to reconsider their definition of race. Mid-century, anthropologist William Boyd defined race as: :A population which differs significantly from other populations in regard to the frequency of one or more of the genes it possesses. It is an arbitrary matter which, and how many, gene loci we choose to consider as a significant "constellation" (Boyd 1950). Lieberman and Jackson (1994) have pointed out that "the weakness of this statement is that if one gene can distinguish races then the number of races is as numerous as the number of human couples reproducing." Moreover, anthropologist Stephen Molnar has suggested that the discordance of clines inevitably results in a multiplication of races that renders the concept itself useless (Molnar 1992). Alongside empirical and conceptual problems with "race" following the Second World War, evolutionary and social scientists were acutely aware of how beliefs about race had been used to justify discrimination, apartheid, slavery, and genocide. This questioning gained momentum in the 1960s during the U.S. civil rights movement and the emergence of numerous anti-colonial movements worldwide. In the face of these issues, some evolutionary scientists have simply abandoned the concept of race in favor of "Population genetics." What distinguishes population from previous groupings of humans by race is that it refers to a breeding population (essential to genetic calculations) and not to a biological taxon. Other evolutionary scientists have abandoned the concept of race in favor of cline (meaning, how the frequency of a trait changes along a geographic gradient). (The concepts of population and cline are not, however, mutually exclusive and both are used by many evolutionary scientists.) In the face of this rejection of race by evolutionary scientists, many social scientists have replaced the word race with the word "Ethnic group" to refer to self-identifying groups based on beliefs in shared religion, nationality, or race. Moreover, they understood these shared beliefs to mean that religion, nationality, and race itself are Social construction and have no objective basis in the supernatural or natural realm (Gordon 1964). (see the American Anthropological Association's Statement on Race [http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm]). ====Models of human evolution==== :''see also single-origin hypothesis, multiregional hypothesis.'' Any biological model for race must account for the development of racial differences during human evolution. For much of the 20th century, however, anthropologists relied on an incomplete fossil record for reconstructing human evolution. Their models seldom provided a firm basis for drawing inferences about the origin of races. Modern research in molecular biology, however, has provided evolutionary scientists with a whole new kind of data, which adds considerably to the knowledge of our past. There has been considerable debate among anthropologists as to the origins of ''Homo sapiens''. About a million years ago Homo erectus migrated out of Africa and into Europe and Asia. The debate hinges on whether ''Homo erectus'' evolved into ''Homo sapiens'' more or less simultaneously in Africa, Europe, and Asia, or whether ''Homo sapiens'' evolved only in Africa, and eventually supplanted ''Homo erectus'' in Europe and Asia. Each model suggests different possible scenarios for the evolution of distinct races. =====The multiregional model===== Advocates of the first scenario (see Frayer et al. 1993), the multiregional continuity evolution model, cite as evidence anatomical continuity in the fossil record in South Central Europe (Smith 1982), East Asia and Australia (Wolpoff 1993) (anatomical affinity is taken to suggest genetic affinity). They argue that very strong genetic similarities among all humans do not prove recent common ancestry, but rather reflect the interconnectedness of human populations around the world, resulting in relatively constant gene flow (Thorne and Wolpoff 1992). They further argue that this model is consistent with clinal patterns (Wolpoff 1993). The most important element of this model for theories of race is that it allows a million years for the evolution of ''Homo sapiens'' around the world; this is more than enough time for the evolution of different races. Leiberman and Jackson (1995), however, have noted that this model depends on several findings relevant to race: (1) that marked morphological contrasts exist between individuals found at the center and at the perimeter of Middle Pleistocene range of the genus ''Homo''; (2) that many features can be shown to emerge at the edge of that range before they develop at the center; and (3) that these features exhibit great tenacity through time. Regional variations in these features can thus be taken as evidence for long term differences among genus Homo individuals that prefigure different races among present-day Homo sapiens individuals. =====The displacement from Africa model and the rise of cladistics===== ''See also human migration, human evolution.'' Since the 1990s, it has become common to use multilocus genotypes to distinguish different human groups and to allocate individuals to groups (Bamshad et al. 2004). These data have led to an examination of the biological validity of races as Lineage (evolution) and the description of races in cladistics terms. The technique of multilocus genotyping has been used to determine patterns of human demographic history. Thus, the concept of "race" afforded by these techniques is synonymous with ancestry, broadly understood. Studies of human genetic variation imply that Africa was the ancestral source of all modern humans, and that ''Homo sapiens'' migrated out of Africa and displaced ''Homo erectus'' between 140,000 and 290,000 years ago (Cann et al. 1987). Australian aborigines are believed to be an early out-group that remained isolated. Most other groups, including Europeans, Asians, and Native Americans, were found to be a single related (monophyletic) group resulting from a later out-migration from Africa, which could reasonably be divided into West and East Eurasian groups. A phylogenetic tree like the one shown above is usually derived from DNA or protein DNA sequence from populations. Often mitochondrial DNA or Y-chromosomal Adam sequences are used to study ancient human demographics. These single-locus sources of DNA do not genetic recombination and are inherited from a single parent. Individuals from the various continental groups tend to be more similar to one another than to people from other continents. The tree is rooted in the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans, which is believed to have originated in Africa. Horizontal distance corresponds to two things: #Genetic distance. Given below the diagram, the genetic difference between humans and chimps is roughly 2%, or 20 times larger than the variation among modern humans. #Temporal remoteness of the most recent common ancestor. Rough estimates are given above the diagram, in millions of years. The mitochondrial most recent common ancestor of modern humans lived roughly 200,000 years ago, latest common ancestors of humans and chimps between four and seven million years ago. Chimpanzees and humans belong to different genus, indicated in red. Formation of species and subspecies is also indicated, and the formation of "races" is indicated in the green rectangle to the right (note that only a very rough representation of human phylogeny is given, and the points made in the preceding section, insofar as they apply to an "African race", are understood here). Note that vertical distances are not meaningful in this representation. [[Image:Human mtDNA migration.png|thumb|360px|right|Map of early human migrations according to Mitochondrial DNA population genetics (numbers are years before present).]] Since the 1980s, there have been indications that human genetic diversity is low as compared to other species that have been studied. For example, two random humans are expected to differ at approximately 1 in 1000 nucleotide pairs, whereas two random chimpanzees differ at 1 in 500 nucleotide pairs. This is interpreted to mean that the human species is relatively young, perhaps too young to evolve subspecies. However, with a genome of approximate 3 billion nucleotides, on average two humans differ at approximately 3 million nucleotides. Most of these single nucleotide polymorphisms are Neutral theory of molecular evolution, but some are functional and influence the phenotypic differences between humans. It is estimated that about 10 million SNPs exist in human populations, where the rarer SNP allele has a frequency of at least 1% (see International HapMap Project). In the field of population genetics, it is believed that the distribution of neutral polymorphisms among contemporary humans reflects human demographic history. It is believed that humans passed through a population bottleneck before a rapid expansion coinciding with migrations Single origin hypothesis leading to an African-Eurasian divergence around 100,000 years ago (ca. 5,000 generations), followed by a European-Asian divergence about 40,000 years ago (ca. 2,000 generations). The rapid expansion of a previously small population size has two important effects on the distribution of genetic variation. First, the so-called founder effect occurs when founder populations bring only a subset of the genetic variation from their ancestral population. Second, as founders become more geographically separated, the probability that two individuals from different founder populations will mate becomes smaller. The effect of this assortative mating is to reduce gene flow between geographical groups, and to increase the genetic distance between groups. The expansion of humans from Africa affected the distribution of genetic variation in two other ways. First, smaller (founder) populations experience greater genetic drift because of increased fluctuations in neutral polymorphisms. Second, new polymorphisms that arose in one group were less likely to be transmitted to other groups as gene flow was restricted. Such new data on human genetic variation has reignited the debate surrounding race. Most of the controversy surrounds the question of how to interpret these new data, and whether conclusions based on existing data are sound (see validity of human races). A large majority of researchers endorse the view that continental groups do not constitute different subspecies. However, other researchers still debate whether evolutionary lineages should rightly be called "races". These questions are particularly pressing for biomedicine, where self-described race is often used as an indicator of ancestry (see race in biomedicine below). =====Arguments for races as lineages===== [[Image:Rosenberg 6clusters human popluations.png|thumb|right|350px|Human population structure can be inferred from multilocus DNA sequence data (Rosenberg et al. 2002). Individuals from 52 populations were examined at 377 DNA markers. This data was used to partitioned individuals into K = 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 clusters. In this figure, the average fractional membership of individuals from each population is represented by vertical bars partitioned into K=6 colored segments. The K=2 analysis separated Africa and Eurasia from East Asia, Oceania, and America. K=3 separated Africa and Eurasia. K=4 separated America. K=5 separated Oceania (green). K=6 separates the Kalash population (yellow). This kind of analysis forms the basis for the lineage definition of race.]] Genetic data can be used to infer population structure and assign individuals to groups that often correspond with their self-identified geographical ancestry. The inference of population structure from multilocus genotyping depends on the selection of a large number of informative genetic markers. These studies usually find that groups of humans living on the same continent are more similar to one another than to groups living on different continents. Many such studies are criticized for assigning group identity ''a priori''. However, even if group identity is stripped and group identity assigned ''a posteriori'' using only genetic data, population structure can still be inferred. For example, using 377 markers, Rosenberg et al. (2002) were able to assign 1,056 individuals from 52 populations around the globe to one of six genetic clusters, of which five correspond to major geographic regions. However, in analyses that assign individuals to group it becomes less apparent that self-described racial groups are reliable indicators of ancestry. One cause of the reduced power of the assignment of individuals to groups is wiktionary:admixture. Some racial or ethnic groups, especially Hispanic groups, do not have homogenous ancestry. For example, self-described African Americans tend to have a mix of West African and European ancestry. Shriver et al. (2003) found that on average African Americans have ~80% African ancestry. Likewise, many white Americans have mixed European and African ancestry, where ~30% of whites have less than 90% European ancestry. In this context, it is becoming more common place to describe "race" as fractional ancestry. Without the use of genotyping, this has been approximated by the self-described ancestry of an individual's grand-parents. Nevertheless, recent research indicates that self-described race is a near-perfect indicator of an individual's genetic profile, at least in the United States. Using 326 genetic markers, Tang et al. (2005) identified 4 genetic clusters among 3,636 individuals sampled from 15 locations in the United States, and were able to correctly assign individuals to groups that correspond with their self-described race (white, African American, East Asian, or Hispanic) for all but 5 individuals (an error rate of 0.14%). They conclude that ancient ancestry, which correlates tightly with self-described race and not current residence, is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population. Genetic techniques that distinguish ancestry between continents can also be used to describe ancestry within continents. However, the study of intra-continental ancestry may require a greater number of informative markers. Populations from neighboring geographic regions typically share more recent common ancestors. As a result, allele frequencies will be correlated between these groups. This phenomenon is often seen as a cline of allele frequencies. The existence of allelic clines has been offered as evidence that individuals cannot be allocated into genetic clusters (Kittles & Weiss 2003). However, others argue that low levels of differentiation between groups merely make the assignment to groups more difficult, not impossible (Bamshad et al. 2004). =====Arguments against races as lineages===== For some people, the very claim that all human beings share one ancestor is sufficient to demonstrate that the only "race" is the human race. Rachel Caspari (2003) argued that clades are by definition monophyletic groups (a taxon that includes ''all'' descendents of a given ancestor); since races are not monophyletic, they cannot be clades. For anthropologists Lieberman and Jackson (1995), however, there are more profound methodological and conceptual problems with using cladistics to support concepts of race. They emphasize that "the molecular and biochemical proponents of this model explicitly use racial categories ''in their initial grouping of samples''" (emphasis added). For example, the :large and highly diverse macroethnic groups of East Indians, North Africans, and Europeans are presumptively grouped as Caucasians prior to the analysis of their DNA variation. This limits and skews interpretations, obscures other lineage relationships, deemphasizes the impact of more immediate clinal environmental factors on genomic diversity, and can cloud our understanding of the true patterns of affinity. They argue that however significant the empirical research, these studies use the term race in conceptually sloppy ways. They suggest that the authors of these studies find support for racial distinctions only because they began assuming the validity of race. :For empirical reasons we prefer to place emphasis on clinal variation, which recognizes the existence of adaptive human hereditary variation and simultaneously stresses that such variation is not found in packages that can be labeled ''races''. Indeed, recent research reports evidence for smooth, clinal genetic variation even in regions previously considered racially homogeneous, with the apparent gaps turning out to be artifacts of sampling techniques (Serre & P��bo 2004). These scientists do not dispute the importance of cladistic research, only its retention of the word race, when reference to populations and clinal gradations are more than adequate to describe the results. ====The current lack of consensus among evolutionary scientists==== The result of these developments is that the current literature on human variation is often confusing. Some studies use the word race in its previously essentialism taxonomic sense. Many use the term race, but are using it to gloss a populationist or cladistic approach. Others eschew the word race altogether, and use the word population. A 1985 survey (Lieberman et al. 1992) asked 1,200 scientists how many disagree with the following proposition: "There are biological races in the species ''Homo sapiens''." The responses were: *biologists 16% *developmental psychologists 36% *physical anthropologists 41% *cultural anthropologists 53% At PhD granting departments, the figure for physical anthropologists was slightly higher *agree 50% *disagree 42% (This survey did not specify any particular definition of race; it is impossible to say whether those who supported the statement thought of race in taxonomic or population terms.) Since 1932, college textbooks introducing physical anthropology have increasingly come to reject race as a valid concept: from 1932 to 1976, only seven out of thirty-two rejected race; from 1975 to 1984, thirteen out of thirty-three rejected race; from 1985 to 1993, thirteen out of nineteen rejected race. Nevertheless, the belief that human races exist remains almost universal amongst lay audiences and, like any widely held belief, is significant regardless of its scientific validity. Moreover, some social and natural scientists argue that new studies in molecular genetics support a nomenclature strongly reminiscent of traditional racial and ethnic terminology. ==Case studies in the social construction of race== ===Race in the United States=== In the United States since its early history, Native Americans, Africans and European-Americans were classified as belonging to different races. But the criteria for membership in these races were radically different. The government considered anyone with "one-drop rule" of "Black blood" (or indigenous African ancestry) to be Black. In contrast, Indians were defined by a certain percentage of "Indian blood" due in large part to American slavery ethics. To be White, one had to have "pure" White ancestry. These differing criteria for assignation of membership to particular races had relatively little to do with biology and far more to do with White supremacy—the social, geopolitical and economic agendas of dominant Whites vis-�-vis subordinate Blacks and Native Americans—and racism. At the time, Blacks were valuable commodities as slaves; and Native Americans, whose vast lands were the ultimate target of acquisition in a doctrine of Manifest Destiny, were subject to marginalization and multiple episodic localized campaigns of extermination. According to such anthropologists as Gerald Sider, the goal of such racial designations was to concentrate power, wealth, privilege and land in the hands of Caucasians in a society of White hegemony and White privilege (Sider 1996; see also Fields 1990). Using the "one drop" rule, it was easy for someone to be categorized as Black. The offspring of an African slave and a White master or mistress was considered Black. Significant in terms of the economics of slavery, such a person also would be a chattel slave, adding to the wealth of the slaveowner. By comparison, it was harder for someone to be classified as Indian. A person of Indian and African parentage automatically was classified as Black. By contrast, the offspring of only a few generations of miscegenation between Indians and Whites likely would not have been considered Indian at all—at least not in a legal sense. Indians could have treaty rights to land, but because an individual with one Indian great-grandparent no longer was classified as Indian, they lost any legal claim to Indian land. The irony is that the same individuals who could be denied legal standing because they were "too White" to claim property rights, were still Indian enough to be considered as "breeds," stigmatized for their Native American ancestry. In an economy that benefited from slave labor, it was useful to have as many Blacks as possible. Conversely, in a nation bent on westward expansion, it was advantageous to diminish the numbers of those who could claim title to Indian lands by simply defining them out of existence. At a time when Whites wielded power over both Blacks and Indians and widely believed in their inherent superiority over people of color, it is no coincidence that the hardest racial group in which to prove membership was the White one. ===Race in Brazil=== Compared to 19th-century United States, 20th-century Brazil was characterized by a relative absence of sharply defined racial groups. This pattern reflects a different history and different social relations. Basically, race in Brazil was ''biologized'', but in a way that recognized the difference between ancestry (which determines genotype) and phenotypic differences. There, racial identity was not governed by a rigid descent rule. A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the racial type of one or both parents, nor were there only two categories to choose from. Over a dozen racial categories would be recognized in conformity with the combinations of hair color, hair texture, eye color, and skin color. These types grade into each other like the colors of the spectrum, and no one category stands significantly isolated from the rest. That is, race referred to appearance, not heredity. One of the most striking consequences of the Brazilian system of racial identification was that parents and children and even brothers and sisters were frequently accepted as representatives of opposite racial types. In a fishing village in the state of Bahia, an investigator showed 100 people pictures of three sisters and were asked to identify the races of each. In only six responses were the sisters identified by the same racial term. Fourteen responses used a different term for each sister. In another experiment nine portraits were shown to a hundred people. Forty different racial types were elicited. It was found, in addition, that a given Brazilian might be called by as many as thirteen different terms by other members of the community. These terms are spread out across practically the entire spectrum of theoretical racial types. A further consequence of the absence of a descent rule was that Brazilians apparently not only disagreed about the racial identity of specific individuals, but they also seemed to be in disagreement about the abstract meaning of the racial terms as defined by words and phrases. For example, 40% of a sample ranked moreno claro as a lighter type than mulato claro, while 60% reversed this order. A further note of confusion is that one person might employ different racial terms to describe the same person over a short time span. The choice of which racial description to use may vary according to both the personal relationships and moods of the individuals involved. The Brazilian census lists one's race according to the preference of the person being interviewed. As a consequence, hundreds of races appeared in the census results, ranging from blue (which is blacker than the usual black) to green (which is whiter than the usual white). Consequently, people change their racial identity over their lifetimes. To do so is not the same as "passing" in the U.S. It does not require the secrecy and the agonizing withdrawal from friends and family that are necessary in the United States and among Indians of highland Latin America. In Brazil, passing from one race to another can occur with changes in education and economic status. Moreover, a light-skinned person of low status is considered darker than a dark-skinned person of high status. So, although the identification of a person by race is far more fluid and flexible in Brazil than in the U.S., there still are racial stereotypes and prejudices. African features have been considered less desirable; Blacks have been considered socially inferior, and Whites superior. These white supremacist values seem to be an obvious legacy of European colonization and the slave-based plantation system. The complexity of racial classifications in Brazil is reflective of the extent of miscegenation in Brazilian society, which remains highly, but not strictly, stratified along color lines. == Politics and ethics of race == Racial classifications were used during the Enlightenment to justify slavery of those deemed to be of "inferior", non-White races, and thus supposedly best fitted for lives of toil under White supervision. These classifications made the distance between races seem nearly as broad as that between species, easing unsettling questions about the appropriateness of such treatment of humans. The practice was at the time generally accepted by both scientific and lay communities. In Blumenbach's time, followers of Johann Gottfried von Herder applied race to nationalism theory to develop militant ethnic nationalism. They posited the historical existence of national races such as German and French, branching from basal races supposed to have existed for millennia, such as the Aryan race race, and believed political boundaries should mirror these supposed racial ones. Later, one of Adolf Hitler's favorite sayings was, "Politics is applied biology". Hitler's ideas of racial purity led to unprecedented atrocities in Europe. Since then, ethnic cleansing has occurred in Cambodia, the Balkans and East Africa. In one sense, ''ethnic cleansing'' is another name for the tribal warfare and mass murder that has afflicted human society for ages, but these crimes seem to gain intensity when believed to be scientifically sanctioned. Racial inequality has been a concern of United States politicians and legislators since the country's founding. In the 19th century most White Americans (including abolitionists) explained racial inequality as an inevitable consequence of biological differences. Since the mid-20th century, political and civic leaders as well as scientists have debated to what extent racial inequality is cultural in origin. Some argue that current inequalities between Blacks and Whites are primarily cultural and historical, the result of past racism, slavery and segregation, and could be redressed through such programs as affirmative action and Head Start. Other work to reduce tax funding of remedial programs for minorities. They have based their advocacy on aptitude test data that, according to them, shows that racial ability differences are biological in origin and cannot be leveled even by intensive educational efforts. In electoral politics, many more ethnic minorities have won important offices in Western nations than in earlier times, although the highest offices tend to remain in the hands of Whites. In his famous ''Letter from Birmingham Jail'', the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed: :History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals. Dr. King's hope, expressed in his I Have a Dream speech, was that the civil rights struggle would one day produce a society where people were not "judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Because of the identification of the concept of race with political oppression, many natural and social scientists today are wary of using race to describe human variation. Some, however, argue that race is nevertheless of continuing utility and validity in scientific research. Science and politics frequently take opposite sides in debates that relate to human intelligence and biomedicine. === Race and intelligence === :''Main article: Race and intelligence'' Many researchers have reported significant differences in the average I.Q. test scores of various ethnic groups. The existence and causes of these differences are controversial. Some researchers, such as Arthur Jensen and Richard Herrnstein, have argued that such differences are at least partially genetic. Others, such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, believe these differences are purely the result of cultural factors. Most researchers in the field acknowledge a role for both, for example, the concept of genetic-environment covariance. === Race in biomedicine === :''Main article: Race in biomedicine'' There is an active debate among biomedical researchers about the meaning and importance of race in their research. The primary impetus for considering race in biomedical research is the possibility of improving the prevention and treatment of diseases by predicting hard-to-ascertain factors on the basis of more easily ascertained characteristics. Some fear that the use of racial labels in biomedical research runs the risk of unintentionally exacerbating health disparities, so they suggest alternatives to the use of racial taxonomies. === Race in law enforcement === Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation_identifies_fugitives_by_gender,_physical_features,_occupation,_nationality,_and_race._From_left_to_right,_the_FBI_identifies_the_above_as_belonging_to_the_following_races:_White,_Black,_White_(Hispanic),_Asian._Top_row_males,_bottom_row_females.">Image:RaceMugshots.jpg|thumb|300px|The Federal Bureau of Investigation identifies fugitives by gender, physical features, occupation, nationality, and race. From left to right, the FBI identifies the above as belonging to the following races: White, Black, White (Hispanic), Asian. Top row males, bottom row females. In an attempt to provide general descriptions that may facilitate the job of officers seeking to apprehend suspects, the United States FBI employs the term "race" to summarize the general appearance (skin color, hair texture, eye shape, and other such easily noticed characteristics) of individuals whom they are attempting to apprehend. From the perspective of law enforcement officers, it is generally more important to arrive at a description that will readily suggest the general appearance of an individual. Thus in addition to assigning a wanted individual to a racial category, such a description will include: height, weight, eye color, scars and other distinguishing characteristics, etc. In many countries the state is legally banned from handling race data, which often makes the police issue wanted notices to press including labels like "dark skin complexion", etc. There is some controversy over the relationship between race and crime and whether it justifies racial profiling; however, in the United States, the practice has been ruled unconstitutional and violative of civil rights. Many consider racial profiling an example of institutional racism in law enforcement. ==See also== *Anthropology *Clan *Ethnicity *Human race *List of species in fantasy fiction *Master race *Miscegenation *Model Minority *Political correctness *Population genetics *Race (fantasy) *Race (U.S. census) *Race baiting *Race card *Racial purity *Racial discrimination *Racial realism *Racial superiority *Racism *Taxonomy *Whiteness studies ;Races *Australoid *Blacks *Caucasian race *Caucasoid *Mongoloid *Negroid *Whites == References == * Bamshad, Michael; Wooding, Stephen; Salisbury, Benjamin A.; Stephens, J. Claiborne (2004). Deconstructing The Relationship Between Genetics And Race. ''Nature Reviews Genetics'' 5, 598–609. [http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nrg/journal/v5/n8/abs/nrg1401_fs.html] [http://www.xmission.com/~wooding/pdfs/bamshad_race04.zip reprint-zip] * Boas 1912 "Change in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants" in ''American Anthropologist'' 14: 530-562 * Brace 1964 "A Non-racial Approach Toward the Understanding of Human Diversity" in ''The Concept of Race'', ed. Ashley Montagu * Cann, Rebecca, M. Stoneking, A. Wilson 1987 "Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution" in ''Nature'' 325(January) 31-36. * Caspari, Rachel 2003 "From Types to Populations: a Century of Race, Physical Anthropology, and the American Anthropological Association," in ''American Anthropologist'' 105(1): 65-76 * Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza; et al (1995). ''The History and Geography of Human Genes''. Princeton University Press. * Dobzhansky, T. (1970). ''Genetics of the Evolutionary Process''. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. * Edwards, AW (2003). Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy ''Bioessays'' 25, 798–801. [http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/104546274/ABSTRACT] * Ehrlich and Holm 1964 "A Biological View of Race" in The Concept of Race, ed. Ashley Montagu * Fields, Barbara Jean (1990) "Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America" in New Left Review (181) 95-118. * Frayer, David, M. Wolpoff, A. Thorne, F. Smith, G. Pope "Theories of Modern Origins: The Paleontological Test" ''in American Anthropologist'' 95(1) 14-50 * Hooton, E.A. (1926). Methods of racial analysis. ''Science'' 63, 75–81. * Jorde, Lynn B.; Wooding, Stephen P. (2004). Genetic variation, classification and race. ''Nature Genetics'' 36, S28–S33. [http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html] * Kittles, R. A. & Weiss, K. M. (2003). Race, ancestry, and genes: implications for defining disease risk. ''Annu. Rev. Genom.'' 4, 33–67. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14527296] * Leiberman and Jackson 1995 "Race and Three Models of Human Origins" in ''American Anthropologist'' 97(2) 231-242 * Lewontin 1973 "The Apportionment of Human Diversity" in ''Evolutionary Biology'' 6:381-397 * Lieberman, Hampton, Littlefield, and Hallead 1992 "Race in Biology and Anthropology: A Study of College Texts and Professors" in ''Journal of Research in Science Teaching'' 29:301-321 * Livingstone 1962 "On the Non-Existence of Human Races" in ''Current Anthropology'' 3: 279-281 * Long, J.C. and Kittles, R.A. (2003). Human genetic diversity and the nonexistence of biological races. ''Hum Biol.'' 75, 449–71. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14655871] * Mayr, E. (1969). ''Principles of Systematic Zoology''. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. * Montague (1941). "The Concept of Race in Light of Genetics" in ''Journal of Heredity'' 23: 241-247 * Montague (1942). ''Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race'' * Olsen, Steven (2003). ''Mapping Human History : Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins'', Mariner Books. * Parra, Flavia C.; et al (2003). Color and genomic ancestry in Brazilians. ''PNAS'' 100 (1), 177–182. [http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=140919] * Rosenberg, N. A. et al. (2002). Genetic structure of human populations. ''Science'' 298, 2381–2385. [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/ijlink?linkType=ABST&journalCode=sci&resid=298/5602/2381] * Sarich, Vincent, and Frank Miele. ''Race: The Reality of Human Differences''. Westview Press, 2004. * Serre, D., and P��bo, S. 2004 "Evidence for gradients of human genetic diversity within and among continents" in ''Genome Research'' 14: 1679-1685 [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15342553] [http://email.eva.mpg.de/~paabo/pdf1/Serre_Evidence_GenomeResearch_2004.pdf PDF] * Shriver, M. D. et al. (2003). Skin pigmentation, biogeographical ancestry, and admixture mapping. ''Hum. Genet.'' 112, 387–399. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12579416] * Sider, Gerald 1993 ''Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, Ethnicity, and Indian Identity in the Southern United States'' * Smith, Fred 1982 "Upper Pleistocene Hominid Evolution in South-Central Europe: A Review of the Evidence and Analysis of Trends" ''Current Anthropology'' 23: 667-686 * Tang H, Quertermous T, Rodriguez B, Kardia SL, Zhu X, Brown A, Pankow JS, Province MA, Hunt SC, Boerwinkle E, Schork NJ, Risch NJ (2005). Genetic structure, self-identified race/ethnicity, and confounding in case-control association studies. ''Am J Hum Genet'' 76, 268-75. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15625622] * Templeton, A.R. (1998). Human races: A genetic and evolutionary perspective. ''Am. Anthropol.'' 100, 632–650. * Thienpont, Kristiaan and Cliquet, Robert (eds.) In-group/out-group gedrag in evolutiebiologisch perspectief, Leuven : Garant, 1999. ISBN 9053509704 * Thorne and Wolpoff 1992 "The Multiregional Evolution of Humans" in Scientific American (April) 76-83 * Wilson and Brown 1953 "The Subspecies Concept and Its Taxonomic Application" in ''Systematic Zoology'' 2: 97-110 * Wolpoff, Milford 1993 "Multiregional Evolution: The Fossil Alternative to Eden" in The Human Evolution Sourcebook Russell Ciochon and John Fleagle, eds. == External links == * [http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/minorities.shtml US Human Genome Project on "Issues of Race"] * [http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/ Is Race "Real"?] - forum organized by the Social Science Research Council, includes a March 2005 op-ed article by A.M. Leroi from the ''New York Times'' advocating biological conceptiosn of race and responses from scholars in a variety of fields. * Steven and Hilary Rose, The Guardian, [http://www.politics.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1455716,00.html "Why we should give up on race"], 9 April 2005 * Times Online, [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1331319,00.html "Gene tests prove that we are all the same under the skin"], 27 October 2004. * Catchpenny mysteries of ancient Egypt, [http://www.catchpenny.org/race.html "What race were the ancient Egyptians?"], Larry Orcutt. * Judy Skatssoon, [http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1153697.htm "New twist on out-of-Africa theory"], ''ABC Science Online'', Wednesday, 14 July 2004. * Michael J. Bamshad, Steve E. Olson [http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00055DC8-3BAA-1FA8-BBAA83414B7F0000 "Does Race Exist?"], ''Scientific American'', December 2003 * OMB Statistical Directive 15, [http://www.doi.gov/diversity/doc/racedata.htm "Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity"], ''Federal Register'', 30 October 1997. * Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Joanna Mountain, and Barbara A. Koenig, [http://academic.udayton.edu/health/08Research/research01.htm "The Reification of Race in Health Research"] * Michael Root, [http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001094/ "The Use of Race in Medicine as a Proxy for Genetic Differences"] * Richard Dawkins: [http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=6467 Race and creation] (extract from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life) - On race, its usage and a theory of how it evolved. ([http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/ Prospect Magazine] October 2004) (see also [http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2004/09/race_and_creati.php# longer extract here]) * [http://www.bloodbook.com/world-abo.html Racial & Ethnic Distribution of ABO Blood Types] - bloodbook.com Race Taxonomy Scientific classification Kinship and descent Social inequality

Race

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Please add new content at the end. If several threads develop, they can later be moved to appropriate sections. == Plato? == Rikurzhen, I question your adding "Platonic" to modify essentialism. Certainly Plato offered an essentialist theory -- but so did others. Aristotle's ontology is essentialist but based on a very different epistemology than Plato's. There are many different kinds of essentialisms and I do not see why we need to modify the term (I either do not understand or do not agree with the reasons you suggest above). If you had some document in which Linneaus actually appealed to Plato, you will have convinced me. But how do you know he wasn't essentialist in an Aristotelian or in some other way? User:Slrubenstein 20:52, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC) Yeah, that's the problem I had, and I think the solution is to offer both terms to describe the essentialist POV. What exactly the "essentialists" meant by race is not 100% clear to me, but Platonic essentialism seems to be a good example of what they might have thought; although I agree with you that it may be too narrow. I saw the need for some kind of qualification to distinguish between imminant realism (from the late 20th centry) versus transcendental realism (Platonic) about universals; because just saying essentialist is too broad a description. For example, I can imagine a contemporary (e.g., lineage) description of races as natural kinds, and those kinds have "essential" properties in the immimant realism sense. So what we need is something more precise than "essential" and less specific than "Platonic" and until we can figure out what that is, I figured we can offer both terms in order to shoot for a meaningful average. --User:Rikurzhen 23:07, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC) Well, I don't think that what you are calling the imminant realist sense is essentialist, but maybe I do not know what you mean. Essentialism definitely does not mean that words and the semantic categories humans use in communicating are stable. If I have a clear definition of a chair and you show me an apple and I say, "no, that is not a chair, to be called a chair an object must have the following features..." I am not necessarily being essentialist. The problem is that when Aristotle developed his approach to ontology (and of course this goes for Plato too) they did not have Darwin's theory of evolution and Mendelian genetics. The article on universals you cite invokes Heraclitus (you can't step in the same river twice). It is ture that people today still use this example to make a point about one way of viewing the world. Everyone knows that rivers flow; the question is, is "a river" the course that it takes, or the actual water flowing through it? This is what Heraclitus was really getting at. But species (in the Darwinian account) are not comparable to rivers. Creationists and Linneaus are good examples of essentialists, because their notion of "species" is that they are unchanging. Aand examples of the species that deviate from the norm are, well, deviant. Whereas in Darwinian thought you couldn't have evolution were it not for those deviations; Darwin's understanding of species is radically different in that species are mutable, and unusual examples of a species are not necessarily freaks. In the study of human evolution we define H. habilus and H. erectus as two distinct species and for the sake of communication we need to have clear-cut definitions. But we (scientists) all know that in reality there were creatures with some degree of variation, and over time the characteristics of a population of these creatures changes and at some point we say "Ah! H. erectus." This is non-essentialist. But you know, most people (non-scientists) I think still use an essentialist view -- that is why they could even conceive of some fossil they called "the missing link." That is why some people think evolution means we are descended from chimps which (they say) is absurd because no chimp has ever given birth to a human. Anyway, I admit that the essentialist article is not great but I don't see the damage that is done in leaving it as is, and hoping that in time people will improve that article. User:Slrubenstein 23:26, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC) Sorry about the misspelling. That should have been "immanent realism". Here's a definition that disambiguates it from Platonic realism about universals. --User:Rikurzhen 23:44, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC) :According to immanent realism, there are universals in the spatiotemporal world quite independently of language and the mind. The existence of these universals, furthermore, is not dependent upon there being Platonic universals existing outside the spatiotemporal world. Well, I think the essentialism being rejected is both "Platonic" ''and'' "immanent realism." For example, creationists believe that there is a real thing called "horse;" God created it the way it is ("God brought forth living creatures ''according to their kinds '' ("kinds" being like species). Darwinianists understand the category (or "kind" or "species") "horse" to be fundamentally a statistical phenomenon; actual horses are the result of mutable frequencies of particular genes. This contradicts both of the types of essentialisms you mention. User:Slrubenstein 19:01, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC) :I really don't think that they were arguing against immanent realism since that philosophy seems to have emerged in the late 1960s. From my reading, the contemporary alternative to immanent realism is nominalism. There doesn't seem to be anything in the discussion of race that would favor immanent realism over nominalism -- the question of which is whether universals exist or only particualars exist -- but I could be missing something. The immanent realists seem to have a very fine-grained spatiotemporal concept of kinds (universals/types) as things that can come into and out of existance depending on what particulars exists in the world, rather than the eternal/transcendental view of Platonism/creationism/etc. --User:Rikurzhen 19:33, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC) I appreciate your desire to avoid anachronism, and, since I am not really familiar with the philosophers to whom you refer, I have to defer to you. But one point/question: is it just the name (immanent realism) and the philosophical study that are new, or is it really the idea itself that is new? Isn't it possible for scientists to have shared assumptions about reality and their objects of study long before philosophers gave a name to those assumptions? In any event, my main point is that pre-Darwinian scientists were probably essentialists in non-platonic ways. User:Slrubenstein 20:08, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC) I don't know enough about the history of philosophy to say for certain that Armstrong was the first to write of the basic idea behind immanent realism -- the notion that universals exist, but not outside of their particulars -- and I'm sure that some pre-Darwinians were non-Platonists -- but I think we can get away with offering Platonism as a prominent example of the pre-20th century thinking about races (as immutable kinds). And yes, I suspect most scientists have a largely shared, but un-examined philosophy, but I'm not enough of a student of philosophy to say for certain whether scientists are decided on immanent realism versus nominalism. I, as one scientist, think that realism about universals makes more sense to the way I talk and think about science; which is why as you said I would prefer to avoid anachronism. Hopefully, someone will come along who knows more about this and straighten it out if I'm wrong. --User:Rikurzhen 21:00, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC) == Contemporary views on race == I started a new sub-article: Contemporary views on race. It is in need of two things: a comprehensive list of major views, and a good list of questions/topics that will distinguish the views. --User:Rikurzhen 01:58, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC) == Edit controversy == Jalnet, stop putting in weasel words. We have discussed this topic for a month. You have yet to provide any sources to support your claims, You are wrong, and since you still refuse to provide sources, I infer simply ignorant. Why don't you work on an article about a topic you know something about? User:Slrubenstein 19:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) :You, not I, are guilty of using weasel words, as I have already explained ''ad nauseam'' above. And please defend your deletion of the word "some". User:Jalnet2 19:29, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) I deleted two "somes" First, I have no evidence of ''any'' scientists who hold an essentialist view of race. Second, I have no evidence of ''any'' anthropologists who believe that race, language, and culture are isomorphic. Not one. Now, if you want to add "some," you must provide examples of scientists who have an essentialist view of race, and anthropologists (in the 20th century) who believe that race, language, and culture are isomorphic. You have never provided evidence. Put up, or shut up. User:Slrubenstein 19:48, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) :''Au contraire, mon ami''. You are required to prove the statement that you inserted. By your logic, the latter two paragraphs of the introduction should simply be deleted. In fact, I ''will'' delete them if you do not prove them. User:Jalnet2 20:10, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) I do not have to prove it because (1) it is common knowledge and (2) how do you prove the absence of something? Here is my proof: read every issue of the ''American Journal of Physical Anthropology'' -- read them all, because I am claiming that they all agree with my point. There is your evidence. Now how about you? Prove your point. User:Slrubenstein 20:13, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) :If it is common knowledge, why can't you prove it? You do not have to prove the absence of something; you need to prove that the rejection in the statement "...evolutionary scientists have rejected..." exists. I can disprove this statement by providing a counterexample; in this case, notable examples of scientists who have not "rejected the view of race according to which a number of finite lists of essential (e.g., Platonic) characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races" include Kevin MacDonald and J. Philippe Rushton. User:Jalnet2 20:30, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) I just did prove it -- I told you to read every copy of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Also, you did not disprove it. First, MacDonald and Rushton are ''not'' evolutionary scientists. They were not trained in paleoanthropology or population genetics or evolutionary biology. They have never done original research in paleoanthropology or population genetics or evolutionary biology. They ae psychologists. Second, where do they state that races are "essential" or that they espouse an essentialist view of race? User:Slrubenstein 20:52, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) :They have published work on evolutionary science and are well known in the field. I never said they state that they hold the essentialist view of race. I said they never rejected it according to the essentialist view. Other examples I can point to include Gerhard Meisenberg and Vincent Sarich. User:Jalnet2 21:12, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) Anyone can write about evolution -- that does not make them an evolutionary scientist. They have not published in the journals of evolutionary scientists and they are not cited by evolutionary scientists (accept as examples of racists). Meisenberg is a biochemist, not an evolutionary scientists; Vincent Sarich counts -- but he does not hold to an essentialist view of race. The sentence that you keep vandalizing states that "Since the 1940s, some evolutionary scientists have rejected the view of race according to which a number of finite lists of essential (e.g., Platonic) characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races." Since Rushton and MacDonald are not evolutionary scientists, they do not provide evidence that some evolutionary scientists ''do'' subscribe to essentialist views. Moreover, you still have not shown how any of these people accept the essentialist view of race. User:Slrubenstein 21:16, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) :I don't have to show that they hold essentialist views. I only have to show that they never rejected them, in order to provide a counterexample to proves the statement false. Sarich is a co-creator of the Mitochondrial Eve theory and the molecular clock hypothesis; his pioneering work in human evolution certainly qualifies him as an evolutionary scientist. User:Jalnet2 21:34, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) The mitochondrial Eve model is based on a notion of race that is fundamentally opposed to essentialist categories. Your own statement is evidence that he rejects essentialist views of race. User:Slrubenstein 21:41, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) It doesn't matter how you can interpret the mitochondrial Eve theory. The bottom line is that Sarich does not reject the view of race according to which a number of finite lists of essential (e.g., Platonic) characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races. User:Jalnet2 21:46, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) Rushton, MacDonald and Sarich all appear to be pretty far out of the mainstream. Rushton is a joke. MacDonald defends Irving the holocaust denier, and Sarich defends ''The Bell Curve'', which apart from being racist is just bad science - and someone who defends bad science just isn't credible. So they are all tainted witnesses. Regardless, even if their opinions are valid, they do not represent the mainstream. Using the word ''some'' to describe mainstream thought is misleading. User:Guettarda 22:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) :So your defense is to engage in character assassination? Despite the fact that Sarich has made large and well-known contributions to the human evolutionary theory, he is still not mainstream? Even if the scientists are not mainstream (and they most certainly are; Geoffrey Cowley of Newsweek called the Bell Curve "overwhelmingly mainstream") that still doesn't prove that "evolutionary scientists have rejected the view of race according to which a number of finite lists of essential (e.g., Platonic) characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races." User:Jalnet2 23:41, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Sorry, I don't see how this is character assassination. I have said nothing about your character. I don't know you. I don't know what kind of a person you are. I would not presume to judge based on this exchange. As for Rushton, MacDonald, and Sarich, I can only go by the evidence that is available to me. Rushton ''is'' a joke - IQ tests are only meaningful ''within'' the culture in which they are written, they cannot be used ''between'' cultures. If you base an idea on a profoundly flawed metric, you have no credibility. If he had not been a psychologist, I might be more forgiving...one can forgive ignorance. He obviously knows better and still based an idea on a flawed metric. Not very credible. The ''Bell Curve'' is just bad science - it draws conclusions that are inappropriate from the data, it omits key data, it ignores key variables...if a scientist goes out of his way to defend a scientifically flawed work, it suggests that they are letting politics overwhelm science. Newsweek is not exactly a scientific journal - and comments made in October 1994 (just a month after the book was published) aren't credible - the press fawns over every new "controvertial" book. If the correct word is "most" and you replace it with "some" you have created a biased picture of the facts. To provide a biased picture of the facts is inaccurate, and thus not appropriate for Wikipedia. User:Guettarda 00:17, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::I said you were engaging in character assassination against the scientists, not me. Anyway, it doesn't matter if your opinion is that Rushton is a joke, or if you have qualms about the Bell Curve. The fact is, there are some scientists who have not rejected the idea of race, whether on an essentialist basis or not, and this is what the dispute is about. The word "some" should be inserted before the statement "evolutionary scientists have rejected the view of race according to which a number of finite lists of essential (e.g., Platonic) characteristics" because as has been clearly shown, there are scientists for which this does not apply. :::By the way, my opinion is that "race does not exist" movements are a joke; does that give me the right to delete all references to it from the encyclopedia? My opinion is that some of the "scientists" who push those ideas aren't credible because they were Marxists and Marxism has been discredited; does that mean that references to their opinions should be deleted from the encyclopedia? User:Jalnet2 00:47, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::::I apologise - I have a bad habit of putting things too starkly,and it's probably even worse when it is in writing rather than spoken...not that I think the comments were undeserved. But anyway - I agree with your comment ''there are some scientists who have not rejected the idea of race, whether on an essentialist basis or not'' - my point is, if you insert the word ''some'' it appears that this group is in the minority. In fact, if you look at the literature, if you look at the opinions of scientists who ''work in that field'', it isn't a minority who reject - or at least question pretty heavily - the idea of "race". Obviously there are those who do accept the idea. The people you have cited are not very credible ''in this area'' because their past actions have reflected a bias that suggests a political agenda outweighing a scientific one, but I'm sure one could find a good number of others. But the point is, if ''most'' people have that view, it's inaccurate to characterise that as ''some''. Of course, it's also inaccurate to say ''every last one'' or ''all'' hold this position. Everything I have read suggests that it is a minority who still accept the idea of race. The examples you have cited strengthen that opinion. ::::As for your comment: ''my opinion is that "race does not exist" movements are a joke; does that give me the right to delete all references to it from the encyclopedia?'' - I have not made any attempt to delete references to Rushton. I have made no edits regarding Rushton, here or anywhere else. ::::As to your other comment: ''My opinion is that some of the "scientists" who push those ideas aren't credible because they were Marxists and Marxism has been discredited; does that mean that references to their opinions should be deleted from the encyclopedia?'' - if you can demonstrate that [named scientists] have based their research on flawed metrics, flawed methodology, then I think you are in a good position to question their research. Also, if you find a someone saying something like "the Soviet Union was a wonderful, freedom-loving regime" you can feel free to laugh at them and ridicule them. I would join you in doing so. And, if someone were to later cite them as an authority on what consitutes a "freedom-loving regime, it would be reasonable to question their veracity. On the other hand, if they held the consensus view on something unrelated to that, then it would ''not'' be reasonable to discredit the consensus view on the basis of their statements in a disticnt field. User:Guettarda 01:18, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC) I've just reverted Cheesedreams' latest edit. Wikipedia is being very slow for me today, so I wasn't able to check out all the previous versions to decide which I ought to revert to. I therefore reverted to Slrubenstein's last version, as I know he's a long-term, major contributer to this page. SlimVirgin 22:45, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC) ::Guettarda, it is clear now that Jalnet@ knows nothing of science and is pushing a political agenda. It doesn't matter whether a scientists' politics are left or right -- what matters is whether the science itself is good or bad. MacDonald and Rushton are simply bad scientists. And Jalnet2 cannot read. The opening sentence ''specifies'' evolutionary scientists -- it does not claim "all scientists," only evolutionary scientists. And it states that they reject the essentialist view of race. If Jalnet2 thinks that Sarich has not rejected this view of race, it can only be because Jalnet2 is so ignorant about science that he cannot understand what Sarich is doing. User:Slrubenstein | User talk:Slrubenstein 18:18, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==The Article Should Be Normalized== First of all, the primary article on "race" should be about the ''clearest'' current definition(s) of that word. For example, the US Census defines "race" by self-identification on a Census form. When you measure "whites per capita" it is a well-defined number the utility of which may be in doubt but which nevertheless has scientific validity ''simply because it is well defined''. Another clear current definition of "race" is Fst. Even Lewontin has used this definition, if for no other reason than to attempt to debunk its scientific ''utility'' (note I did not say ''validity''). These valid definitions should then link to separate articles focusing on their respective subjects. Secondly, the history of confused definitions of 'race' have relevance here precisely as the confused definitions of 'heat' have relevance: we may be interested in the ways people get confused about the concept of 'heat' -- as, for example, phlogiston -- but it is intellectually dishonest to try to saddle the best current definitions of 'heat' with the entire history of humanity's errors in the struggle for truth -- and that is true even if there are some folks who still hold to the phlogiston theory. A prime example of the violation of this is the arcane reference to Platonic "essentialism" at the start of the article as though it has current relevance. User:Jabowery :I regard your relationship with Stormfront [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVotes_for_deletion%2FJewish_ethnocentrism&diff=10057125&oldid=10056558] as problematic in terms of you attempting to influence this article's contents. I'll be accused of ''argumentum ad hominem'', but such arguments are sometimes valid. User:SlimVirgin 22:45, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC) ::My counter argument is as always that there is a built-in bias on "race" which trumps any supposed counter-bias arguments. You cannot deny that in an environment where the government enforces a particular viewpoint that people who may be active in promoting alternate viewpoints may have to be allowed to contribute to articles in which they are interested. Claims of neutrality are always more suspect than are the motives of those who profess non-neutrality but never more so than when the government is throwing people in prisons over the issue. User:Jabowery 23:30, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Not in this case. The fact that Jalnet2 keeps insisting that some people accept the essentialist notion of race is evidence enough that some still do. In any event, to say that evolutionary scientists have come to reject this view is an accurate statement and violates no standards of good writing. Secondly, the claim that the article should be about the "clearest" definition violates our NPOV policy, as what is "clearest" depends on one's point of view. NPOV requires that we provide accounts of all major, credible views -- even if the result is several definitions of race. The notion that self-identity has scientific validity because it is clearly denied is simply not so. For one thing, there is considerable data concerning contridictions in how people self-identify. Also, what does it mean to be "scientifically" valid? The example of self-definition given above is explicitly political, as it reflects the US census. It is no surprise that people in other societies define race differently, and that scientists (as opposed to politicians and policy-makers) have other definitions. In this context, the US census definition is by no means "the clearest." User:Slrubenstein | User talk:Slrubenstein 23:00, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::Jalnet2 is not a citable authority. Come up with a cite of someone who has provided an operational definition of "essentialist race" that is currently used by some received authority and I'll retract my statement about essentialism. Otherwise it belongs in the same place with regard to the race article as phlogiston occupies with respect to the article on heat. Secondly, as to what does it mean to for a definition to be scientifically valid is simply this: It is clear enough to be reproducible? Self-identification is open to doubts only to the extent that people answer one way at one time and another way at another time but this is hardly a serious practical problem in terms of reproducibility. Fst is open to doubts only to the extent that measurements of gene frequencies and resulting calculations are not reproducible.User:Jabowery 23:30, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::You ignore my point. I know of no one who has an operationalizable essentialist definition of race. This is one reason scientists have rejected it -- which is exactly the point made in the article (scientists have rejected it). I do not see why you are spending so much time criticzing ''one sentence'' of the article. My mention of Jalnet2 was only in response to your suggestion that it is arcane and lacking relevance. I did not mention Jalnet2 as a citable source -- I mentioned him as an example, to show you that people still exist who believe in an essentialist view of race. That is reason enough for the article to devote one entire whole sentence to informing readers that scientists have rejected this view. I do not see any grounds for your suggestion that the sentence does not belong in the article. As for "clear enough to be reproducible," you can go ahead and believe that if you want. I know of no scientist who would agree. User:Slrubenstein | User talk:Slrubenstein 23:57, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::I addressed your point when I said "it [essentialist race] belongs in the same place with regard to the race article as phlogiston occupies with respect to the article on heat." Furthermore I'm not criticizing just one sentence but the structure of the entire article in its obsession with paper tigers while there are ''serious'' conflicts going on about race. As for "scientists" you know -- if they think Reproducibility isn't the touchstone of science then they aren't scientists at all. User:Jabowery 00:17, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC) You misunderstand science. ''Experiments'' should be reproducible. The fact that others use the same definition is not enough to make something scientific. What are the paper tigers to which you refer? User:Slrubenstein | User talk:Slrubenstein 00:49, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC) :No, you misunderstand what I said. I said reproducible definitions were scientifically valid. As for paper tigers, you just raised one with me by saying that I said scientifically valid definitions were sufficient to in themselves for science. Of course I didn't say that, and of course the article is chalk-full of paper tigers because you are a dominant presence in the writing of the article. User:Jabowery 02:03, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Geography predicts human genetic diversity == Someone may want to add this to the article [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-03/cp-gph030305.php]. Here's the ref: Current Biology, Vol 15, R159-R160, 8 March 2005 [http://www.current-biology.com/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS0960982205002095] --User:Rikurzhen 17:58, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC) ==doubling== can somebody with an overview of recent changes un-double the article? (at first, I thought, omfg has it grown! :) User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 18:14, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC) :done; that's happened a few times recently. --User:Rikurzhen 19:35, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC) == Puzzling changes == I'm puzzled by this diff [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race&diff=next&oldid=10996322] - the entry in which the changes are being made is not present in the previous version of the page [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race&oldid=10996322]. How can you make changes to something that wasn't there to begin with? In addition, you should check out those links. IMO they are inappropriate, but I'd like a second opinion. User:Guettarda 19:39, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Disputed passage == I removed the following words a while back, and have now received feedback to the effect that my removal of the passage is not appreciated. :Social scientists have argued that this shift is motivated by political and religious perceptions, and not by science. They cite as an example the self-assertion by Jews that they are a distinct race from 'Arabs'. This claim is based upon a religious belief of lineal descent from someone who lived nearly 4,000 years ago named Abraham and his son, Issac. The counterweight supposition is that all Arabs are descended from Abraham's other son, Ishmael. Scientifically, it is nonsensical, but it is the foundation of the Jewish religion, nation and 'race'. Welcome to a new dimension of discussion of the very old human perception of race. This passage was added by changing the ending of the original paragraph: :Many anthropology, drawing on such biological research, think common race definitions, or any race definitions pertaining to humans are without taxonomy validity. They argue that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, and that the races observed vary according to the culture examined. They further maintain that race is best understood as a social construction. Some scientists have argued that this shift is motivated more by political than scientific reasons. So the idea that was revised by the other contributor was that primarily political reasons were behind the shift to a "social constructionist" view of [race]. The political reasons, according to the version that I reverted, depend on a religious view held by both Jews and Arabs. It seems pretty obvious to me that the Jews and the Arabs are being blamed for a shift from the assertion that [races] are "real" to the assertion that [races] are socially constructed. That idea conflicts with the writer's own assertion that biological inheritance is the rationale for Jews and Arabs to assert that they are different races. If the Jews and the Arabs take events recorded in religious texts to determine their view of race (in ignorance, in defiance, or whatever of scientific research), to do so is an instance of social construction of race. In fact, it could be a rather blatant example if the two groups asserted a great disparity between the inherited characteristics of members of each of the two groups. But the [fact] that the two groups make these two socially constructed [races] does not make them people who push for a social-constructionist view of [race]. Quite the contrary. Besides being logically inconsistent, as I have outlined above, the passage I removed is, IMHO, an instance of the "Jewish conspiracy" hysteria that imagines that on the basis of some power not available to other people the Jews can influence all sorts of things -- including scientists who would otherwise realize that there really are [racial] differences. -- But it is by this account the Jews and the Arabs who want to maintain the reality of [races], no? What the Jews and the Arabs happen to think about [race] might be appropriate to mention somewhere in the article, I'd have to see a coherent and NPOV discussion to have an opinion on that score. But I think it is entirely inappropriate to put in the general introduction to this article a provocative statement such as: "Scientifically, it is nonsensical, but it is the foundation of the Jewish religion, nation and 'race'. Welcome to a new dimension of discussion of the very old human perception of race." It tends to frame the entire article as though it is a propaganda piece by Jewish and Arab ideologists. User:Patrick0Moran 20:04, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC) (P.S. I'll hash this out here, not on my talk page, since it concerns everybody. User:Patrick0Moran 20:04, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)) :I agree with your points. I changed "anthropologists" to "evolutionary and social scientists" which is more inclusive and accurate. As the paragraph now stands, I think it is precise and accurate. User:Slrubenstein | User talk:Slrubenstein 20:24, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC) :The addition is uncited and appears inaccurate as well; this is a Jew-hater's view being attributed to Jews, not a Jewish view of themselves. User:Jayjg^{User_talk:Jayjg} 21:17, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Faith, Humility == Just stopping by, as I seem to do every few months. I dunno... the article has improved in many ways since its elevation to FA status, but I hesitate to say it's net improved. Most of the really clear, incisive sentences have disappeared, bowing to super-careful, almost whispered phrases. For instance, the old mention of the apparent ethnic/racial basis of many genetic disorders (Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, etc.,.) is gone. The inclusion of solid relevant facts like that made this article a real thought provoker. Now it's like one must tiptoe through...I wish people would put some real weight on the text appearing at the top of every FA Talk page: "(This) is a Featured Article. We believe it is one of the best examples of the Wikipedia community's work. Changes should not be made lightly, as you will be altering text and/or a thematic progression that by consensus is already of very high quality. Even so, improvement is always possible, particularly by addition of new, interesting text or graphics."... You should have confined yourselves mostly to adding new material. Have some faith in community consensus and be humble enough to let existing FA text stand. If I really get motivated I'll be back to restore a whole truckload of sentences, and even paragraphs, from the FA version. Where redundancies are created, the newer stuff will go. User:JDG 01:18, 24 May 2005 (UTC) Do you know what date the article was awarded FA status? I'd like to see that version. --User:Rikurzhen 01:32, May 24, 2005 (UTC) :With all due respect, JDG is overstating things quite a bit when he mentions community consensus. This has almost always been a highly contentious article and if anything, it is this current version that has achieved community consensus as it has not changed, in any major way, for quite some time. User:Slrubenstein | User talk:Slrubenstein 02:50, 24 May 2005 (UTC) ::I don't doubt that you're right. But I often wonder if these especially long articles don't disuade most people from reading them at all. Any clue about that date? --User:Rikurzhen 03:01, May 24, 2005 (UTC) :I found the FA version. The current version is prima facia superior. What is missing? --User:Rikurzhen 03:37, May 24, 2005 (UTC) ::As I said above, I agree there are many improvements (and some glaring weaknesses that have been righted). Even so, there were many individual sentences/paragraphs in the FA version that brought the crux of the debate home to the reader in a far more powerful way than anything in the current version. If I can sit down to a major edit you will see the full enumeration. In the meantime, what do you think about the race/ethnicity linkage of certain genetic disorders? It got its due in the FA version as an important issue (which it most certainly is). It seems it's just too stark for the current version. A pity. User:JDG 08:54, 24 May 2005 (UTC) :I agree that many people in health related fields (i.e. physicians but many more) closely identify race (NOT ethnicity, which is cultural, although I know many people use the two words interchangably i.e. without precision) and disease. I have no problem with the article acknowledging this. However, it must be made clear that this is a convenience for practicioners, not researchers, and to the extent that there is a very high correlation this is usually true in a particular locale. For example, people in southern Italy also have the sickel cell gene -- malaria was a threat not only in Africa but in the mediterranean. For historical reasons involving migration patterns among other things, in the US we identified SSA with Blacks. An evolutionary scientist or population geneticist would not do this. S/he would know that in certain parts of the world "Black" is isomorphic with a population, but in other parts it is not (it overlaps with other populations or is actually a conglomerate of diverse populations). User:Slrubenstein | User talk:Slrubenstein 15:32, 24 May 2005 (UTC) The medical discussion now mostly resides in Race in biomedicine. --User:Rikurzhen 15:40, May 24, 2005 (UTC) :This is why I'm against this movement to limit length of major articles. The whole encyclopedia is turning into a big link chase. Sub-articles should mostly be confined to expanded definitions of terms. Instead, we tear most of the the centrally interesting topics out of major articles and pile them into sub-articles far fewer readers will visit, leaving the major articles like this one: well-written, well-considered, balanced, concise, forgettable... What's more, Race in biomedicine is wholly inadequate. No mention is made there of the most clear-cut examples of apparent ethnic/racial basis of genetic disorders/conditions (Tay Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, Lactose Intolerance, etc.,.) User:JDG 18:52, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::Umm... not to nit pick, but CF is mentioned in Race in biomedicine. I focused on quantiative traits more than Mendelian traits because they are more common. Also, I had to mostly write the article on my own and fend off people who wanted to delete stuff. So please add things here or there where it's missing. But as far as talking about biomedicine in this article, it should be less emphasized than multilocus DNA evidence, which more directly addresses the question of race. --User:Rikurzhen 01:21, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC) == New paper on human origins == This really needs to be added to the article: --User:Rikurzhen 01:34, May 24, 2005 (UTC) * Vinayak Eswaran, Henry Harpending and Alan R. Rogers, Genomics refutes an exclusively African origin of humans, Journal of Human Evolution, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 6 May 2005. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WJS-4G3SC6X-1/2/aae7c2810f0d87628e228363c0e1bd66]

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