Lineages, races, cultural groups

Monfd
Wot: The causes of racism are reasonably well-understood
Monfd
Humans are innately factional from our evolutionary history. Antipathy and violence towards those people who are genetically different than us is one of our primary modalities (along with care and altruism).
Wot
how can a person give a complete race attributes, a race is made up of individual different people
Monfd
Skin color is a quick way to assess genetic distance
Monfd
Wot: There are no human races
Monfd
The historical notion of race was disproved by the 1970s
Wot
how has yhe notion of race been disproved?
Monfd
Wot: Advances in molecular genetics in the 1960s and 1970s
Wot
like what?
Monfd
The historical notice of race is 'large, genetically distant gene pools'
Monfd
Studies of the genomes of humans from different putative races showed this was false
Wot
race is still used as a concept
Monfd
Individuals from different putative racial groups have significant genetic similarity
Monfd
Wot: So are gods
Wot
people are still called racists
ficklish has left IRC (Ping timeout: 246 seconds)
Monfd
Even though science hasn't used theism as a serious explanatory framework since for at least 150 years
Monfd
Wot: It's possible to be a racist without there being any races
Wot
how monfd?
Monfd
Human existence features a comingling of two distinct realities: 1) human social truth, and 2) objective scientific truth
Monfd
There are no human races by (2), but most people believe there are races (1)
Monfd
In their social reality, where races are real, you can be racist
Monfd
You'd describe that racism in (1) using different language if you wanted to be vary precise
Wot
race is a concept - its not a physical entity
Monfd
Wot: Race is a hypothesis about genetic variation. It was disproved
Sabeena has joined (~sabeena@38.98.37.138)
Wot
so how would you describe an ethnic group?
chiyou- has left IRC ()
Monfd
Wot: What's an ethnic group?
Wot
an etnic group is a community or population made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent.
Monfd
Wot: You have an intuitive understanding that there are differences between humans in some patterned ways
Monfd
Those differences are mostly just cultural differences
Monfd
Wot: I'd describe it as a 'cultural group'
Wot
we have many ethnic groups in the uk and you have many of them in america
Monfd
Many cultural groups*
Wot
jewish people are an thnic group
Wot
ethnic
Monfd
Wot: Yes, the cultural differences between people can be quite significant
Wot
all we are doing is arguing about definitions
Monfd
Wot: The Jewish cultural group tends to feature a significant amount of intragroup breeding
Monfd
Which is true for most cultural groups
Monfd
Wot: Not exactly
Monfd
Wot: Race as a concept arose in antiquity. It arose as people encountered people who looked differently than them
Monfd
Different hair, different skin color, different language, different beliefs
Monfd
The different language and beliefs is all cultural
narcease has left IRC (Quit: narcease)
Monfd
Hair color, hair type, and skin color are now known to be clinal traits
Monfd
It was believed by people in antiquity they were typological traits
Monfd
Black Skin
Monfd
White Skin
Monfd
Yellow Skin
Monfd
This was refuted
Monfd
Instead, multiple genetic loci control hair color, hair type, and skin color, all of which vary clinally, e.g. on the basis of latitude
Monfd
You can impose rough sketches of human groups around that continuous variation, but it's not a robust categorization scheme
Monfd
The genetic loci that control skin color weren't known to 'white' Europeans or 'black' Africans or 'yellow' Asians
narcease has joined (~narcease@96.79.4.165)
Monfd
They weren't talking about nor did they care about genetic loci
Monfd
They wanted to explain the visual differences they were experiencing
Monfd
Those are explained through cultural differences and different amounts of shared factors
Monfd
For example, a 'black' person is producing 13 melanin per unit, and a 'white' person is producing 4 melanin per unit
Monfd
This has nothing to do with 'race' or 'ethnicity'
Pandorian has left IRC (Read error: Operation timed out)
Monfd
Yes, there are of course genetic lineages in the human species, as there are for all lifeforms that have ever existed
Monfd
The entire tree of life is one big lineage tree
Monfd
You can identify genetic lineages in Homo sapiens that corresponds to 'Europe' or 'Australia' as they're geographically distant
Monfd
These groups, in antiquity didn't interbreed at high rates, and so there are patterned genetic differences between these lineages
montaigne has changed mode: +l 117
Monfd
The problem is that they're not strictly clades, as there is interbreeding between the various groups, except in some rare circumstances
Monfd
So you're left with probabilistic genetic clusters in these lineages with crossbreeding between clusters, and the clusters are getting closer in modernity due to travel
buff3r has left IRC (Ping timeout: 255 seconds)
Monfd
This is not at all what people in 300BCE or 1850 thought about race
Monfd
Historical notions of race have been decisively disproved
Monfd
I'd recommend you not use terms from history, as it's confusing to most people
Monfd
So you can call them cultural groups, or genetic lineages when that's what you want to reference
Monfd
Some of the groupings are not really related to traditional groups, same as when biological taxonomy went from morphology-based to genetic cladistics
Monfd
So, there's arguably not really an 'African' clade
Monfd
Or genetic cluster, rather
Monfd
But there is arguably somewhat of an Australian genetic sluter
Monfd
Similar to how there are reptiles based off morphology, but not in contemporary cladistics