Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Race (human categorization). Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Race is population genetics term, and its human usage is NOT the main one. I'm changing article to reflect this.

This isn't quite right. Race is indeed a population genetics term (or a term in taxonomy), but that certainly does not imply that its use in humans is unimportant. If you search on "race" in Google, or just ask the average Joe, you'll find the "human usage" predominates. But let's not argue about this; there is more than enough room in Wikipedia to give huge amounts of detail to *both* senses, the biological and the anthropological. --LMS

I don't like this statement:

Some biologists, for example, basically deny the existence of races, or they deny the usefulness of the concept of race, maintaining that they are just one way of subdividing humanity in groups, and completely different divisions would be made if other characteristics were used. Because of this, in their opinion, no proposed subdivision is more valid than any other, and none has very much value anyway.

First, it doesn't say whether they deny existence of races in general or of human races, second I never heard about biologists claiming there are no human races in usual population generic meaning of 'race' (some opposed pure-racial meaning, but that's completely different story, having little to do with humans), and third, population genetics characteristics (major jumps in distribution of genes between populations) are very clear and aren't questioned nowadays. So my opinion is to remove this sentence.

Moved from article: There isn't a distinction between races and breeds? Types of dogs are bred, but do the resulting breeds constitute races of dogs?

Those were my questions. If you remove them, then it would be appropriate to move the following remark as well:

Among the most famous races are the various dog breeds.

--Larry Sanger

Can someone explain what this means?

A race, in biology, is one of many groups of organisms that together belong to single species, but genetically differ between each other.

Isn't it true that, excepting identical twins, every individual of a sexually-reproducing species differs genetically from every other?

That's a great question. I'm just going to delete the sentence, if someone hasn't already done so; it seems pretty obvious it's going to have to be completely rewritten, and we can't assume anyone is going to happen long anytime soon who will be able to rewrite it properly. --LMS

I think the entry as it's been rewritten is mainly a (probably controversial) presentation of one view of the genealogy of the concept of race. There is much more to be said (or just summarized) about the notion of race in anthropology. I also think that the notion of race in biology is given short shrift. I mean, it does exist in biology and medicine. Moreover, the equation of race with nation-state nationalities (French, German, etc.) is at present an ancillary notion of what race is, at best.

Have a look at [1] and [2]. --LMS

I'm pretty sure what I wrote is not just one view of the geneology of the concept of race, but the generally accepted one. See The History of the Race Idea by Eric Voegelin.

You're right that I'm overweighting its connection with nationalism a bit; I learned about the history of race in a class on the history of nationalism. However, the connection is very close. See Johann Gottfried von Herder and the concept of the Volk. I figure that it's better to contribute partial understanding than to delete it.

Race theory, according to the work above, began with Carl Gustav Carus.

I would differ strongly that "the equation of race with nationality is at present an ancillary notion of what race is, at best" (and what's with that "at best" comment? What would the worst-case scenario be? Less than ancillary?). However, I believe you're right that even historically racial theorists emphasized the widest distinctions (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid races).

The concept of race is inherently political, even (or more so) today--see the whole UN Race conference. The average American has an understanding of race which is ancillary to its full implications, which is one of the reasons it causes so many problems.

I tried to sketch out some of the nuances, but I felt it was important to start with the definition that gets at the root of the concept of race, not to start with a description of most people's vague understanding of it.

There's definitely a lot more work to be done. Thanks for not simply deleting my work but adding info back to the page and commenting in Talk. It's miles more helpful. Gah. This is a horrid mess. (I just noticed the field of "Critical race theory", whatever that is, while searching on Google.) I hate the social sciences.--TheCunctator

The tie between race and nationalism is there, but I think that you can't omit the biological (sometimes used by nationalists...) and anthropological facts. When i first took an Intro to Anthropology, I learned that physical anthropologists claimed there were three main racial groups, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid. I'm also pretty certain that there have been developments in the field in the last 20 or so years. Still, it's important to make sure to present this side, because it is a neutrtal approach to race. JHK

I added a whole bunch more of specific information, which I hope helps. I think a big problem with most Wikipedians is that they try to write nice general encyclopedia entries, but don't have a clear understanding of the specifics underlying the generalities. It's much better to put down all the specifics, then distill a general entry.

I really hate the word "neutral" as it's used here in Wikipedia. WTF does "it is a neutral approach to race" mean? (This is a Socratic question.) --TheCunctator

Much better now --it's starting to really look good! ...and my opinion of neutral is including more than one side of the story, scholarly debates, different contexts, etc...JHK

Two different articles have essentially the same description of "The Bell Curve" so why not give that book its own page? --Ed Poor

Added statement that IQ differences are found in genetically identically social minorities. Also changed the statement that the summary of mainstream views defended the Bell Curve. It didn't seem that the statement was a defense of the Bell Curve at all. -- Chenyu

Much of Gould's opinion as presented in this article is clearly against opinion of "mainstream intelligence scientists", as published in http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/wsj_main.html. This needs some notice. --Taw

I wrote the summary of Gould's 1981 book. The inclusion of the websight of/by "mainstream intelligence scientists" is useful, but I'd like to share four critical points:

First, I give little weight to the notion of "mainstream opinion" in general. Scientific arguments should be judged by their evidence and by the reasoning behind the interpretation of the evidence. It doesn't matter what "authority" or reputation the scientist has. Even the most brilliant scientists have made mistakes. (this indeed is one of the main points of Gould's book -- scientists wh were clearly "mainstream," even "authoritative" in the 19th century made claims that are clearly racist AND wrong by any scientific standard today. Since this happened in the past, there is no reason not to think it might not happen in the present.) Anyway, I think the last thing an good scientist would want is for their word to be taken at face value.

Second, I think in the issue of "intelligence science" it is especially difficult to identify a "mainstream." The issue is so politicized I personally cannot imagine scientists reaching any consensus (and thus constituting a mainstream) about race and IQ in the same way that scientists can reach a consensus about, say, gravity and acceleration, or the behavior of gases. Gould is certainly a credible, respected scientist. But, as I try to make clear in my following point, that is not why I find his point worth discussing at length.

Third, and more specifically, I think it is especially important in summaries of contentious issues to distinguish between one's conclusions and the reasons behind one's conclusions. In my summary of Gould, I tried not to simply assert Gould's "opinion" (the argument that race determines IQ is BS), rather, I tried to list a few of his reasons. These reasons may be compelling or non-compelling or even wrong, but one must explain why they would reject these points or what the counter-argument is. I gave the websight an only cursury glance, but it seemed to me to be more a set of asertions of facts -- facts that have been questioned -- rather than evidence for the facts or the logic between how certain conclusions have been drawn from facts.

Fourth, the websight is signed by one person that Gould has argued against (in a carefully reasoned way), namely, Jensen, and another person, Rushton, who has argued forcefully for the relationship between race and IQ. No one I know accepts their work, Rushton is an unabashed racist. But don't take my word for it -- read their work, and the various critiques. -- SR

Added more of Gould's points. I removed some of the equivocation in the statement that marginalized minorities do worse in standardized tests since I don't think that anyone really disputes this (the controversy is whether those tests are meaningful, why those differences exist, and what to do about it). Also, I added the term "in the United States" since that was important for the statement. If I remember correctly Africans do really well in IQ tests in the UK and east Asians do badly.

Also, removed the statement that not much of the research is published since there is a huge amount of literature about group differences in academic performance. Strongly objected on NPOV grounds to the statement that the lack of publication was due to ideological reasons. Most people in the field don't think to think so, and would argue that the studies aren't published because they aren't interesting or are methodologically suspect.

 -- Chenyu

Chenyu, you're wrong. The reason that these studies are not published is definately affected in large part due to ideological reasons. People who otherwise are dispassionate scientists often revert to emotional histrionics, and cry and "Racists" at people who have written reports in this field. No-one can pretend that this is an issue solely of science. Further, your deletions removed the context and explanation of the remaining material. What is left is of little worthless without this small amount of (currently deleted) explanatory material. (Other articles and entries on this topic in print books see no reason to avoid this kind of discussion, and they do so in even more depth than we do here.) You are not enlightening readers with your changes to this article - you simply are deleting facts that don't fit your personal ideology. This is inappropriate, and the deleted material will be restored. RK

Pseudo-scientific theories about race

This should eventually develop into an imporant part of this entry, with links to pseudoscience, and the appropriate articles debunking pseudo-scientific and racists theories about humanity.

Ed, what is your reason for deleting this from the article? You have to give reasons to justify your actions. You just can't delete an entire sub-topic. What's the rationale? RK

Ed: I hope you don't mind my edits of the beginning. I feel it's better form to say "X is Y" rather than "X is used for Y", or if usage is a defining feature, which is the case for concepts, then "X is a Y used as/for Z". For example: "A chair is a piece of furniture used for sitting" is better than "A chair is used for sitting". And just because the current taxonomy entry is bad doesn't mean one shouldn't link to it; it just means the entry should be improved. --TheCunctator

TheCunctator: I basically agree with your point about how to introduce articles. But I have problems with your change. let me explain:

When one clicks on the link, this is what we find for "taxonomy."

Methods and theories of scientific naming, classification and descriptions.

There are two big problems with this: first, the entry for "taxonomy" is misleading. There are scientific taxonomies, meaning they are used by scientists, and claim to reflect a dispassionate and objective stance although in fact they may not (and perhaps you can come up with other distinguishing crietia). But there are many other kinds of taxonomies, including folk taxonomies that may have functions quite different from scientific taxonomies.

Second, this is an espeicially important point with specific regard to race, because the most commonly cited racial taxonomies (e.g. negroid, caucasoid, mongoloid) are folk taxonomies (although when they were originally formulated people claimed they were scientific). Some -- many, in my opinion -- scientists believe all racial taxonomaies are folk taxonomies. Some scientists do continue to use racial taxonomies. I -- and many physical scientists -- would contend that many such scientists are racists and really using a folk taxonomy. I do think most physical scientists would agree that some scientists using racial taxonomies are not racists and are using their categories in scientific ways, but would observe that such scientists do not define race or use the term the way racist scientists of usesrs of the folk-taxa do. These scientists, although using the word race, are using it the same way other scientists use the word population. (Strictly speaking, the notion of population in biological sciences is not really a taxa, though).

Anyone who comes up with an idea that upsets the current orthodoxy is a bozo (or dead meat on a stick), until and unless he can prove that his idea is right. Galileo wasn't vindicated for centuries. The first doctor to advocate that physicians wash their hands between seeing obstetrics patients was black-balled and practically run out of town. Hmm, sounds like good material for a history of science article. -- Ed Poor

Either I am too tired, or Ed's comment is too oblique, but I just can't figure it out. I personally may consider those scientists who are racists to be bozos, but like it or not there is room within contemporary academia for these people -- many do have secure academic/research positions and are hardly dead meat. It is just that the vast majority of their colleagues do not respect or rely on a good deal of their work. On the other hand, outside of academia I think there are an awful lot of people (who are not biological scientists) who nevertheless believe that races are scientific taxa -- and scientists periodically try to explain to the general public and college students why this isn't the case. Anyway, all of the politics involved here are relatively mild compared to Galileo!

I was being oblique, which is definitely not a wikipedia virtue. But the debate over race has life and death implications, especially for the debatees! (Galileo got house arrest; compare lynching, genocide etc.) Ed Poor

Ed also seems to be missing the obvious point that for every scientist who was ridiculed as a bozo and later vindicated, there were 100 who were ridiculed as bozos because they really were bozos, and who never contributed anything useful to science. The reason we remember heroic stories like Galileo's is precisely because they are so rare and exceptional. 99% of the people whom scientists ridicule as crackpots really are just crackpots with truly stupid ideas that will never amount to anything. The moral of the story is that it doesn't matter: the nature of science is that the truth will win eventually anyway, no matter how many people try to get in its way. --Lee Daniel Crocker

In short, the first sentence of this article must be modified in order to acknoledge or allow for this. The easiet way would simply be to add the word "folk" before "taxonomic" but I am sure there are other ways to handle it. What do you think? SR

I think you should put that knowledge to use! That's a marvelous clarification. I'd fix up the taxonomy entry, and make a folk taxonomy entry, then change the "race is a taxonomic concept" to race is a folk taxonomic concept"--if you feel that is most accurate. If you know of a better way of characterizing what kind of concept "race" is, go ahead.

You know a lot more about this than I do. :) TheCunctator

I think I know less than you think! But I made some changes -- there is still room for a lot of improvement, SR

I know I think less than you know! Taxonomy looks good as real starting point now.

Thanks!

I just made a major revision to the first paragraph. I made two kinds of changes. First was editorial -- I cut some details not because I thought they were wrong or irrelevant but because they were too specific and are better developed in the body of the article. Second, I revised the claims about "race" and "science." I simply disagree with the claim that anthropologists use the term race as a scientific category. Perhaps some did in the 19th century, which is really before anthropology existed in any institutional sense. But from the early 20th century on anthropologists have systematically argued, in scholarly work and in statements issued by professional organizations, that race is not a scientific category. Given what the article already states about "anthropological theories of race," the statement that was in the first paragraph "According to some scientists Race is a folk taxonomic concept, while others take propose it quite seriously, such as anthropologists." just makes no sense at all -- which is why I deleted it.

It is TRUE that scientists have, and some scientists still do, claim that race is a scientific category. But I believe that most scientists do not agree. So I revised the opening to communicate this more effectively.

I believe that the body of the article is the appropriatre place to explore how the way people have understood and used race has changed over the past two hundred years, and also to explore current scientific debate over the term.

I certainly believe it is uncontroversial to observe that almost all social scientists and anthropologists consier "race" a social category, not a scientific one. I also think it is uncontroversial to observe that almost all biological scientists (including anthropologists) have rejected race as a scientific category and rely today on the notion of population. Even when some scientists call populations "races," what they mean has a lot in common with what other scientists mean by "population" and almost nothing to do with what non-scientists or 19th century scientists mean(t) by "race." -- SR

TheCunctator -- sumpathetic as I am to your point of view, I honestly don't think your most recent revision is an improvement over what I attempted.

You wrote: "However, it does not have a clear scientific meaning, and may be considered a [folk taxonomy]?."

Personally, I agree with this statement completely. Nevertheless, I know that there are people with PhD.s in biology, even full professors at accredited Universities, who do not agree. I think they are wrong, and I think most scientists would agree that they are wrong. But I think the article has to acknowledge and explore the debate, and the first paragraphs of the article have to introduce the whole article, not just one (even a major) argument within it. What was wrong with what I wrote --

Some consider it a scientific concept and have proposed scientific racial taxonomies. Most biological scientists have rejected the notion of race as scientific; some have argued that race is always a folk taxonomy.

? SR

I wrote some other stuff, but then I went and analyzed what you wrote word by word, asking myself the questions "what information is missing?" and came up with this, which still leaves a question unanswered:

Racial theory was initially considered a valid biological taxonomy. Most biological scientists, since the development of genetic theory, have rejected that notion. It is still an important concept in anthropology [why?].

I totally agree that the beginnings of articles should encompass the scope of the article; articles should follow the inverted pyramid style. --TheCunctator

Removed 2002-Jan-10 by Ed Poor:

The following is the old version of this article, which was replaced with the above. This needs to be more carefully included in the above.

A race, in biology, ... biologically accurate definition needed

Because members of different races, by definition, can interbreed, there very often exist individuals that don't clearly belong to any one race. This in no way means that, as some anti-racists claim, races don't exist. On the other hand, term 'racially pure' is difficult to assign a clear biological meaning.

Usually morphological characteristics (like skin colour, facial characteristics and amount and type of hair) is used to divide populations into races, but that's mostly because they're very easy to apply, not because morphology is more important than other characteristics.

One person hopes that the experts on human races--anthropologists, cultural historians--will weigh in on the subject, trying to maintain a neutral point of view, of course.

I deleted the following "This is not true- cultural anthropologists realize that there is no biological basis at all for the concept of race, and historically race has only been used as a weapon to oppress certain "racial" groups. Many anthropolgist only acknowledge race as a concept because it has been an important part of the history of culture- not because it is a worthy and accurate description of a person, their heritage or their culture."

Anyone who claims that there is NO biological basis for race is either blind, or an idiot. Of course there are biological differences between the various races. Anyone with even 20-40 vision can spot the most obvious ones: skin color differences, hair color differences, facial cartilige distributions, eyelid design, etc. And these are just the external differences; other non-external differences must exist as well. "The Bell Curve" also shows that there is some scientific basis for other differences. (see the new links in that entry; the book may have its flaws, but its not racist pseudoscience.) Of course, we now know that race isn't anywhere near as important as we thought it used to be. The genetic and physiological differences between races are small compared to the average genetic diversity of homo sapiens in general. But some differences certainly do exist. Who cares? I don't think society is well served by people with low-self-esteem rewriting scientific facts because they see racism around every corner. Look, I recognize that I am not in the same race as some other people in my town; I thus recognize that race exists. Does this make me a racist? Sheesh. Some people need to really get over themselves... RK

No one disputes the existence of biological variation between individual humans. It is the existence of "races" that is in doubt. The question is whether it is useful (or even possible) to assign individuals to "racial" categories in any biologically meaningful way. To many biologists the answer appears to be no. - HWR

Have these politically correct, all-Caucasian biologists ever actually seen a genuine black person, a negro? Or an Asian? The genetic differences between races are small compared to the average genetic differences between any two humans, that is true. The concept of races has been over-used, misused, and misunderstood. But racial groups do exist, and they are repeatable through generations. RK

As I understand it, the claim is not there are no biological underpinnings to the concept of "race" but that those biological underpinnings are 'totally arbitrary. Why doesn't having red hair, or blue eyes define a separate race? I think the prevailing view is that race -- as it is commonly understood in describing human populations -- is a theoretically insignificant term, because we could easily characterize hundreds of different possible racial groupings, based on other arbitrary criteria. MRC

- - That's my understanding as well. There are some biological divisions that are loads more heritable and more biologically significant than skin color and facial structure - blood types being an obvious example. My understanding is that race is (a) not being used in its correct biological sense when applied to humans, and (b) not a useful or meaningful categorization for biological purposes. I belive most biologists would think it very silly to lump your average African-American and a Kalahari Bushman in the same category... now, the concept of biologically distinct populations is still active, particularly in the medical community where it's often used to identify risk groups. But that's a much more limited classification than the colloquial "race," and generally only useful in a specific context. -- April

I agree, obviously -- but I think it is important to specify that the criteria are arbitrary only from a biological point of view. They are not arbitrary from an historical or cultural point of view. On the contrary, they are meaningful and important (albeit in ways not commonly acknowledged).

By the way, RK misquotes the article. It is NOT that "the genetic differences between races are small compared to the average genetic differences between any two humans;" rather, the genetic differences between "races" are small compared to the average genetic differences between any two members of the same "race." SR

I have restored a paragraph. Do not delete it -- it is relevant, and provides an important link

Link to race and intelligence is already placed in Related Concepts. This paragraph (with "link number 2") clearly belongs to article race and intelligerce, not race. --User:Taw

I edited this paragraph -- cutting it down by about half -- and moved the link to the Race and Intelligence article. Personally, I believe that some of it should be left in this article for two reasons: first, it provides a further illustration of the anthropological consensus, second, it touches on a basic topic. In other words, I believe the "race" article must have more than a link to the 'race and intelligence" article; it must say something substantive, if brief, about the debate. Readers who want to know something about race should be informed in the same article that there is a contentious argument about race and intelligence -- that's all.

If anyone else, or Taw still, feels that what is left of this particular paragraph should be cut, I won't object -- I merely ask that instead of just cutting it you move it into the other article. SR

This article is woefully tendentious on the side of the anti-hereditarians. I made some modest changes and additions in an attempt to bring balance, but I fully expect them to be deleted. If they are, I suggest this entire article be re-written from scratch with balance as the prime objective. Wikipedia truly suffers when topics of great importance like this are dominated by partisans. -- JDG 03:25 Oct 14, 2002 (UTC)

I am not sure what an anti-hereditarian is in the context of this article. Those who reject the notion of race as a biologically useful term hardly reject the notion of hereditary. Moreover, it is overly-simplistic to claim that the movement is principally a reaction to WWII -- it is principally a result of progress in both the biological and social sciences. The changes by JDG were themselves tendentious, but I do admit that they had the value of making clear the continuing value and importance of real biological science. I have made some changes to the first paragraph to make it more historically accurate and clearer, Slrubenstein

As JDG suspected, I deleted much of what he added that was tendentious, argumentative, and based on misunderstanding -- critics of the word race do not in any way criticize the dtudy of population genetics, they merely point out that population is a more precise and useful term than race. There is simply no point for including argument within the article that people should study genetic variations, because

1) the article never claims that people "should not" study genetic variation, and

2) that's because encyclopedia should not be arguing what people whould or should not do anyway.

I also cut this tendentious remark:

By the late 1950s, however, Coon had been academically vilified by younger anthropologists whose worldviews had been radically affected by the recent world war, and his name today is raised on American and European campuses almost exclusively in derision.

I do not think that Coon's racial classifications were ever widely accepted among anthropologists; some of his work continues to be cited without any villification at all, and to my knowledge he was accused of being a racist because he claimed (unconvincingly) that homo sapiens emerged later in Africa than elsewhere; I do not think it has anything to do with WWII. Slrubenstein

Well, I'd like to be friendly about this if at all possible, but to me your changes are a clear downgrade. Nowhere do I state that "the movement" (in reality it's just a phase) is principally a reaction to WWII crimes. What's simplistic is to deny the effect WWII did have, though. And your semantic square dancing with the word "population" serves much more to obfuscate than clarify, in my opinion... I'm not nearly convinced it's actually possible to write like this-- that is, in tandem with someone far across the divide on a very heated topic. In fact, the whole chaotic Wiki thing is very open to question in my mind at this point. It's an invitation to endless frustration in so many ways... I have a few ideas on how we can make an attempt to really collaborate on this article & give it a decent balance. It invloves having you represent the majority voice, my taking the minority voice, and neither of us messing internally with the other's sentences. If you think that can be fruitful, I'll be back tomorrow to work on it. Otherwise my choices are an edit war or just walking away & think I'd go for the latter. -- JDG 20:59 Oct 15, 2002 (UTC)

Jeeeez, I just read your latest edits. I'm outta here. You obviously can't abide any hint of dissension, even when the dissenting remarks are clearly labeled as minority view. Nothing good can come of this, so I'll stop trying. If this is indicative of what typically goes on in Wikipedia then the whole project has no chance of being meaningful to anyone other than those who get a kick out of playing UberEditor -- JDG 21:07 Oct 15, 2002 (UTC)

(due to an editing conflict this response to the first comment by JDG was not provided; as to the second comments I see I am not the only person who has problems with dissent. At least I explain my reasons, though) Yes, the wikipedia project can be frustrating. I certainly would like to try to develop this article in a colegial way. If you want to re-integrate the views you previously added as a "minority" view, I would have no objection, but I would insist on a few things that I believe are eminently reasonable; if you object to these general principals please explain why:

1) critics of the "race" concept were influenced in part by historical/social conditions (including, but far from exclusively, WWII) AND were influenced by purely scientific considerations as well (such as the point that race for most people involves cosmetic differences, but genetics reveals tremendous variations within any given race, and similarities among members of different races)

2) population, at least to those who rely on the term, does not mean the same thing as race, at least in the US. For one thing, a population is a fluid and essentially statistical phenomena, whereas for most people race is clearly bounded and an ideal type. (for example, spatially distributed variation in skin color is an adaptation to differing levels of solar radiation. If a population of Black people were relocated to the Arctic Circle after 20,000 years it is likely that their descendents would have fair skin, even if they were reproductively isolated; conversely, if a population of White people were relocated to the tropics, after 20,000 years their descendents would likely be Black, even if they were reproductively isolated. From what you have written I do not think you would disagree with this in principle. My point is, neitehr would those reject the concept of race. But many people who think that the world is just divided into different discrete races would not be able to make sense of this)

3) people who reject the notion of race as a scientific concept do not categorially deny the importance of genetics and inherited characteristics

Is this fair?

For whatever reason you are committed to a word that I think is scientifically imprecise as well as politically risky, despite the fact that there is indeed a "less freighted" but widely used and useful (in my opinion) word available. I personally find this a little unfortunate, because it looks to me like there is a lot of stuff you might want to add to this article that I would think more appropriate to an article on "population" or "population genetics." I say unfortunate not simply to signal to you that we disagree on terminology, but to signal to you that I do believe there is a lot of factual information you have to share that really would be of value in this Encyclopedia. Would you be opposed to a section discussing the debate among scientists over using the word "race" versus "population," with a linked article to which you would (I hope) contribute heavily? I hope you do not think I am trying to banish you from this article (which isn't my place, in any event) -- I just think that many of your arguments "for" race are not really rebuttals of the anti-race argument, they are facts and theories that even people opposed to the word race find important -- and just describe using a slightly different language. Slrubenstein

I don't know if I can deal with this, Mr. or Ms. Rubenstein. I heartily disagree with everything you just said (particularly your attempt to use "population" for a job it simply can't handle), but it would take quite an effort to show why even on this Talk page & I just don't have the energy at the moment. I'll stop in tomorrow & maybe a fresh look will reveal a good way to proceed that will be acceptable to you also -- JDG 21:50 Oct 15, 2002 (UTC)

Fine -- I look forward to seeing what you have to add. But I must admit that I am having problems seeing how you can "heartily disagree" with the claim that "population, at least to those who rely on the term, does not mean the same thing as race, at least in the US." I understand that there are some scientists who donot accept this position, and who do prefer to use the word race and justify this usage on scientific grounds. And I agree with you that their position should be explained. But it should be explained in a way that does not misrepresent the other view, that favors the word "population." It seems that you prefer the word race over population. But Wikipedia is not the appropriate place for your or I to argue over which word is right -- it doesn't matter what you or I think. The task is to provide a clear account of what others think. Similarly, I am hard-pressed to see how you can "heartily disagree" with the claim that "people who reject the notion of race as a scientific concept do not categorially deny the importance of genetics and inherited characteristics." I understand that you may not reject the notion of race as a scientific concept, and that others do not. But the importance is not over genetics. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, clearly believes in genes and inheritance, but rejects the notion of race. I know there are plenty of scientists who take issue with many of his claims about evolution, but my point is not that his views of evolution are right or wrong, but simply that there are scientists who reject 'race" but who nevertheless rely on population genetics and evolutionary theory. How on earth is this a controversial claim? Slrubenstein

Ok SLR, I've made what I believe to be some good changes/additions. I have been careful to keep your statements intact and to give the minority view a small but fair place. Please think carefully before editing any of this new material. Please do not edit it because you feel it is "argumentative"-- of course it is argumentative: this is a very contentious issue and a portrayal of the arguments among the people in the field is the only honest way to go. I welcome any further feedback you may have. -- JDG 15:03 Oct 16, 2002 (UTC)

I think most of your changes are reasonable, except I take issue with this statement. I haven't cut it, but I think it is misleading:

They are not convinced by the substitution of the term "population" for the term "race", because it leads to a potentially harmful imprecision in communication (for example, when one wishes to say "caucasian" one is instead compelled to say something like "an individual of the western Eurasian population", and when that individual doesn't happen to currently reside in western Eurasia one must say "an individual whose ancestors were of the western Eurasian population").

I think this is definitely misconstruing what scientists mean by population, and if I were to give the benefit of the doubt to people who use "race," then I can't believe this is even close to the strongest argument they have. I do not think a scientist, in a scientific journal, would ever use the term "population" to identify "Western Eurasian" or people whose ancestors were "western Eurasian." This may indeed merely substitute "population" for "race," but the point is, population is not a substitute for race. The point being made by scientists is that "race" (if you mean people of Western Eurasia, or descended from Western Eurasia) is way too braod and imprecise; withing people living in Western Eurasia today or five hundred years ago -- there was much genetic variation. "Populations" refer to groups distinguished by different gene frequencies. These are generally much smaller than what people call races -- for example, much smaller than the races identified in the article (e.g. Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid).

If you do not rewrite the paragraph, I will cut it -- but I am trying to be very clear about why. You write, "when one wishes to say "caucasian" one is instead compelled to say something like "an individual of the western Eurasian population", and this simply misrepresents the people who use the word "population." The point is that these people do not wish to say "caucasian," rather, they need to talk about a more discrete group. They are not at all compelled to say something like "an individual of the western Eurasian population" because that is not a population. Can you give me a citation from a peer-reviewed journal where people use population this way?

By the way, I think you misunderstand what I mean about being argumentative. Obviously there are arguments among biologists and anthropologists and these arguments should be described and explained. I mean that the article itself is not the place to make arguments. Also, I think you misunderstand what my problem is with the "minority view." I think it is very fair to represent the minority view of "race." But this should not be done in a way that provides a "view" of population genetics that misrepresents what population geneticists actually claim, and do in their work. In the paragraph you inserted, which I quote above, you are not really explaining why people continue to use the word "race," which would be fine; all you are doing is criticizing the use of the word "population," but you are criticizng a phantasm, as those who work in population genetics simply do not use the word this way -- this is what I mean by misrepresentation. That is not an effective argument at all, it is merely tendentious. Slrubenstein

Let's Talk a little about this, then. Suppose you are a medical researcher and your team has been testing a new drug that holds great promise for people with cardiovascular disease. But for some inexplicable reason the drug has no effect whatsoever on "black" people. It is essential that you make this clear in your submissions to medical journals and to the FDA review board so that continued funding can be obtained to find a variant of the drug that *does* help this group. As an adherent of populationist anthropology, how do you describe the group that is not helped by the drug? -- JDG 18:38 Oct 16, 2002 (UTC)

Well, since the notion of "population" is statistical, there are often overlapping populations. The point about populations is that there are as many or more genetic ddifferences between a Black living in Chicago and a Black living in Rwanda, as there are between a Black living in Chicago and a White living in Chicago. But evolution occurs over a long time, and I am sure there are some alleles that are common to "Black" people whether born in Chicago or Rwanda. In such cases, people, including MDs and pharmacologists, can use "Black" as shorthand because there is a statistically high chance that the drug will not work for neither the Black in Chicago nor the Black in Rwanda. I (personally) have no problem with this, although if you were doing a more comprehensive study of genetic variations (i.e. not just asking about the value of one drug for one malady) I think "Black" would be just too vague broad. The crucial thing is, there may be a drug that doesn't work on Whites, and in the United States works on Blacks, but doesn't work on "Blacks" in Rwanda (just a hypothetical; you can switch around any of the key terms here to make the same point). It would be a grave mistake to think that just because a drug does or does not work on Blacks in the United States, that the drug will or will not work on Blacks elsewhere -- depending on where or for what problem, the probability might be very high -- or low. As long as US pharmaceuticals are marketed primarily within the US, we can use "races" as convenient substitutes for populations sometimes -- sometimes. But not all the time. There was a time when Jews were considered a separate race, but in the US today people call most Jews "Whites." But there are genetic differences, and the incidence of Tay-Sachs disease is higher among Jews than among non-Jews. But this doesn exactly validate the notion of a Jewish race, because Jews from Yemen have a very low incidence of Tay-Sachs disease. This is because they are distinct populations (although for cultural reasons they may identify as members of the same race). Likewise, there are "Whites" who are at rist for sick-cell anemia; the allele has been found in Arabia and in Southern Europe -- this is probably for two reasons: first, people around the mediteranean were at rist for malaria, and second, prior to the rise of the Atlantic slave trade there was much more interbreeding around the mediteranean than some people would like to think; i.e. you can talk about a population of carriers of the sickle-cell allele and it is not at all identical with "Blacks," although for statistical reasons most Americans with the allele are Blacks and you can say the allele corelates with race -- but my point is, this is a convenience that may help an MD. diagnosing someone in an emergency room, but is not useful for more general scientific research. Even among Blacks in the US there are different populations. Blacks in coastal S. Carolina (at least up to the 1950s, the time of one study), interbred iwth Whites very rarely and were genetically very similar to Blacks in West Africa and had the same frequency of the Sickle-Cell allele. But Blacks in other parts of the US had significantly lower frequencies of the allele -- in effect, a different population, although in 1958 (and probably today) they were all lumped together as "Black." Does this make sense? Am I responding to your concern? Slrubenstein

P.S. -- I feel obliged to give a more concrete answer to your hypothetical, with the caveat that I am neither an MD nore have I worked for the FDA; the question you raise is practical and although I can imagine what I would consider a scientifically reasonable response, it may not be practical. But here is what I would do: I would state in the FDA proposal that the drug had no observable effect on test-subjects who self-identify as "African American." I would be careful (perhaps in a footnote or appendix) to specify sample-size and the criteria for inclusion in the sample (random? stratified? self-selective?), and would list other variables that did not correlate strongly with a particular effect of the drug. It seems to me that based solely on the conditions you mention, it is impossible to tell whether the cause of the 0.00 correlation is genetic or cultural (it is possible that there is some learned behavioral pattern that all the African Americans in the sample share, or some common environmental condition, that could account for the drug interaction, e.g. something in their diet, a chemical in high levels in their drinking-water or food, etc) -- but it is important to mention the correlation not only as a caveat to the use of the drug, but as a spur to further research (IS the cause of the non-effect behavioral, environmental, or genetic? Moreover, and most germaine to the issue at hand, even if it is genetic, it may not be an allele for which other "Black" populations have high frequencies. It is certainly possible, but the report should be framed in such a way that it invites, rather than forcloses on, further research. Correlation is not the same thing as causality (do I misunderstand you, or does your example present a correlation?); strong correlations are valuable because of the questions they raise. (I know that in some cases correlation can indicate something approximating a "cause," but usually people only make such an argument based on regression or factor analysis; in other words, you would need a lot more data about behavior and environment, as well as a much larger sample from people living in different physical and social environments, before you could make the claim I think you are suggesting) Slrubenstein

You've said a lot and I don't have time to give a proper response. I think it's telling that in a practical situation you accede to the use of a racial term. Notwithstanding all your explanation, I think this in itself shows that populational terminology is too diffuse and academic to be of use in a real world setting. I concede all your points about correlation and causality, but it doesn't change the fact that traditional racial and ethnic terms have turned out to be a very valid and, in real world situations like the above, useful broad terminology. 200 years from now when the ever increasing mobility of populations has led to almost total diffusion of alleles that are now clustered in races and ethnic groups, there will be no choice but to use long, inconvenient phrases to describe categories-- if there are any categories by then. But in 2002 we are still too close to the time when all these groups lived for hundreds of generations in basic reproductive isolation, and I defy you to use populational terminology that is anywhere near as succinct, expressive and utilitarian as "black", "caucasian" and "sinoid". Everyone understand there are millions of individuals on the fringes of two or even three of these groups ("hispanics" are notable for having genetic contributions from all three roughly in proportion to the worldwide size of each-- 200 years from now we will all basically look hispanic.) But even though there are so many individuals with genes from multiple races, the old nomenclature is still very serviceable and, most importantly, it is backed up by the very latest genetic studies of "genetic distance". Personally, I would like to see entirely new terms invented for the major groups because "race" as a word, and "negroid" as a word, just have too much baggage. But I cannot accept the words and phrases I see used by the more strident populationists, because they are cumbersome, overwrought, usually geography-bound and despite there cumbersomeness usually impart little information. Please tell me how a populational anthropologist communicates which human subgroup underwent the LAC*P mutation circa 4000 BC that allowed its adults to digest milk sugar. Terminology is extremely important in science, and the noun is very important in human communication in general. What noun can you give me to commuinacte the major LAC*P group? --- JDG 02:31 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)

"...so-called racial characteristics are not really racial at all but are due to the historical experiences of the communities in question." (A Study of History, Arnold J. Toynbee, P. 572)

The skin color stuff should include information on the recent vitamin D vs. folate research: another good reason for having dark skin in climates with high levels of sunlight. -- Anon.

For clarification of this point, see the article on skin color in the October, 2002 issue of Scientific American. They offer reasons why the original inhabitants of each area of the world had a specific, common skin color. In Africa, where homo sapiens first appeared, it was dark to filter out the harmful UV radiation. They demonstrate a gradient of skin color ranging from very light near the poles to very dark near the equator. David 00:32 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)

Although 'race' refers to categories of morphology, not just of skin color, it is instructive to understand that skin color is not just a random characteristic, but results from an evolutionary response to the amount of sunlight at a particular place. David 00:32 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)

Concerning race, it should be obvious that humans demonstrate widespread morphological groupings based on characteristics besides skin color, such as broadness of nose, curliness and average diameter of hair, and others. To deny serious consideration of race just because it has been used as an excuse for subjugation, murder, and genocide is clearly a misplaced emotional response. We should investigate race because it is relevant to biology and because it is relevant to understanding history and current events. David 00:32 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)

I was interested in the comment above about why red hair or blue eyes don't define a separate race. In my view these characteristics are just as much racial components as are skin color, etc. However, races are distinguished not by a single such characteristic, but by specific, fixed combinations of characteristics. Such combinations, defining as they do the diversity of the human race, deserve to be studied. David 00:32 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)

No-one is denying the existence of variations in humanity, their heritability, or even correlations between variations in various parts of the world: they are denying that there are clear-cut "races" that are useful as a way of studying or categorising mankind. And they are right: try travelling from England to Eastern Europe to North Africa via Greece or Turkey. Now tell me where you saw the sharp division between one "race" and another. Bonus points are awarded for repeating this experiment along the Silk Road. - The Anome

I think the ultimate point made by humanists like myself, is that applying the scientific method to race is a huge oxymoron. Race is a non-scientific definition, period. There is so little difference between any two humans on earth, that it bears little or no scientific classification, certainly not to the extent that last century's scientist did, - which incidentally, was not so much out of malice, but rather due to the infancy of modern science, and the limited ways real species classification could be done, hence appearance played a larger role than it does now.

Of course, we still live in a world of race, where race is no more than a stereotype, though stereotypes have validity in limited contexts. In other cases, like on government paperwork, they do not bear validity, or perhaps the classifications they allow are senselessly designed. hispanic? spaniards can be as blond as a swede. they must mean mixed central american natives and spanish immigrants. white? black? nobody is these colors. these classifications have meaning only in being exclusive of the other, and the only real use for this exclusiveness is eugenics, which depending on your religion, may or may not be a bad thing.

ps. I think its only been recently that people like Jared Diamond have answered some of these outstanding questions, and now were actually able to map out the human species migration patterns around the world to some detail. this should be a necessary addition to WP -- Sv

I'm having trouble following the point of this long discussion. Maybe I should reread this whole talk page thoroughly, but I'd rather someone would just summarize the main issues for me. --Ed Poor

Many biological and social scientists, beginning in the early 1900s, came to question the taxonomic validity of race.

What does this mean, "validity"?

usefulness of the concept
ethics of classifying people into groups
or what?

Skin color and the shape of facial features are:

easily distinguished, even by non-scientists
shared among large populations
passed down to offspring

Can we agree on the above 3 points?

If so, what should the Wikipedia call these groups? The non-Wikipedia world calls them "races", ofter using color terms as shorthand:

black - Negro, African
brown - Indian (from Asia)
red - American Indian
yellow - Oriental
white - Caucasian

Are these terms offensive to anyone? Not politically correct, maybe? What's all the fuss?

I think some advocates (not necessarily Wikipedians) are trying to undermine the classic racist argument:

there are different races of people
each race has distinct characteristics
these characteristics imply that the races should have different roles (read this as "privileges or duties")
my race is better than yours
therefore, I get the goodies, and you don't!

If we remove the first premise, by denying that there is such a thing as "different races", the entire argument collapses like a house of cards.

--Ed Poor

If I understand it correctly, the fuss is about this: the differences among those people that have been classified as "black" are much larger than the differences between the groups of "black" and "white" people. And if that is the case, then the classification into black and white is basically useless from a biological or taxonomic point of view, because it doesn't tell you anything interesting. It is like classifying cars by the color of their carpets. AxelBoldt 18:56 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)

Axel, that is not the case. This is an issue that has tripped up many casual observers of these studies. Variation within the "black" African population is indeed the greatest of all the "races". In fact, right next to each other in west central Africa live the shortest people (avg.) in the world (the pygmies) and the tallest (avg.) in the world (formerly known as "the Watusi"). So some irresponsible people have taken a short list of traits (especially height) and have shown that certain black African populations differ more from each other than either does from the averages for those traits in other "races". As I'm sure you can see, this is specious. When studying relatedness or what many are coming to call genetic distance, the entire genetic cohort for each group must be used. These cohorts are then put through a strictly mathematical quantitave analysis. When this is done, gene cluster maps are produced showing the total degree of relatedness between any two groups. On these maps, it so happens, the traditional races (Negroid, Caucasoid, Sinoid) are shown to be distinct entities, with some affinities and many differences. But the total net affinities between any two "blacks" is far greater than any total net affinity either of those "blacks" will have with any individual of the other two races. It's just how it is. To tell you the truth, I didn't like it when I first studied the data. I'm more liberal than anything else. But I'm not gonna argue with molecules (dna) and numbers. -- JDG 19:49 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)

Axel, are you saying that the differences between individual members within any race are greater than the differences between the average member of any 2 races -- and so much so that the inter-racial difference is insignificant in comparison to the intra-racial difference? If so, and there are major writers out there saying the same thing, the article should quote them. I seem to recall that The Bell Curve made just the same point -- or was it the opposite point? --Ed Poor

That's essentially what I'm saying, except that I didn't use the word "race" for a good reason. If you use words like "inter-racial" you implicitly assume that races exist. I also don't think it's necessary to quote any major writers; it's uncontroversial common knowledge and I would be surprised if any biologists disagreed with the above statement. AxelBoldt 19:43 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)

If you say some idea in mathematics is "common knowledge" I agree it can just be put in an article without attribution, like the stuff on rings. But with a field as controversial as "race", I hope you don't mind if I stick in a few sources. Especially as the term race itself is a bone of contention. On the other hand, my mania for defining terms might be doomed to frustration here... --Ed Poor

You're correct, the argument above collapses at its first line.

I think that the fuss is that the "black, brown, red, yellow, white" classification above is vague and has no useful meaning, whilst creating a seductively simple set of categories for those who want to think of things in nice big simple dramatic ways. The closer you look at it, the more it evaporates: biologically, descriptively, and logically. And if it's not useful or reliable as a tool for thinking, conclusions based on it are in general not going to be reliable on a "garbage in, garbage out" basis. And many people find its use offensive. If it was useful as a tool for thought, it would be worth offending people to preserve its use. As it is, it isn't worth bothering. The Anome

Anome, please don't take offense, but I was exactly where you're at before I made a formal study of the question (including courses). I'm afraid you've been drawn in by a very vocal element in the scientific community that likes to portray itself as the only serious party to the debate, when in fact they are just one side to the debate and a side that has been steadily losing ground. Sub-specific genetic clustering is real, measurable and meaningful. We need a new term because race simply has too much baggage from earlier eras. Genetic research on the molecular level is showing beyond all serious doubt that a significant genetic distance between major world populations is there, and its implications are extremely important, especially for medical science. What we need to do is break down the bogus valuations of superiority and inferiority that used to be attached to these differences, not deny the existence of of group variation itself.

Before I stick my foot any further into my mouth (or go out further on this limb; I'm not sure of the correct metaphor) -- let me reiterate that I think all human beings have equal worth, dignity and value! All my remarks on this talk page are directed to improving the article, rather than expressing my own point of view (although I just did, in the previous sentence).

I'm trying to figure out why writers in previous centuries used the term race and what they meant by it; as well as what contemporary writers mean by it. Is it merely a classification scheme for appearance (skin & hair color, hair and facial features)? Or did writers, both past and recent, believe that cultural or personal characteristics correlated with appearance? And how does this relate to the whole controvery over inheritance of non-appearance traits like "intelligence", "athletic talent" and so on? --Ed Poor

Alternate intro (reverted by JDG):

Race (or breed) is a taxonomic principle in grouping living things based on common heredity, internal and external physical attributes, and behavior, where all members belong to the same species yet appear to warrant further classification (the term breed is used more with animals than with people).

I have no problem with your revert; I won't re-revert; I just don't understand it. Breeds of dogs and cats can be the result of natural process or human manipulation; men didn't create dachsunds and huskies out of some prototype like a golden retriever, did they? So what did you mean by breed is not the same as race. It's due to artificial selection rather than natural selection? And what is your objection to the use of the word breed in the article? --Ed Poor

Ed, as a matter of fact man did bring about the breeds you mention, except he didn't start with a golden retriever (which is itself just another breed). He started with a wolf. I don't mean to hit on you, Ed. I'd really like to avoid being an aggressive type here. But when something is clearly a matter of fact I feel some responsibility to the project. Breed is not the same as race, for the reason I stated. Breeds have been bred by man, whether it's dogs, cows, horses, what have you. In each case a single wild species was domesticated and, in a very short space of time (compared to race formation) new phenotypes were produced through intensive directed reproduction. Do a Google search on "artificial selection" and you'll see this is the accepted meaning of the term. Race formation, in contrast, is held to come about completely naturally-- it has nothing to do with interventions by man. Really, races are just a snapshot of the process of speciation. -- JDG 19:28 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)

Hey, beat up on me all you want: if ignorance of facts is a crime, then I plead guilty!!

It sounds like you're saying that man created a new species (dog) from an existing species (wolf); and that this is not the same as race formation; and that the different races of man are like different species.

Before you bring out the baseball bat and start giving me my lumps, remember that I don't know anything about this, and that I'm trying to sort it all out. --Ed Poor

And this:

As far as I am aware, men did exactly that to create those breeds of dogs, only the prototype of Canis familiaris was wolf-like, rather than golden-retriever-like. It took a lot of generations to do it, though. See

for more on this. 217.158.203.140

What are sub-species? AxelBoldt 19:43 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)

JDG wrote "We need a new term because race simply has too much baggage from earlier eras."

Well, then maybe this article should be split up into (A) how writers used the term race in the previous millenium, and (B) what scientists really KNOW about the genetic characteristics of human beings. --Ed Poor

I see that there has been a lot of discussion. I have only two points to make concerning the above: first, I do not think it would be useful to have two separate entires on biological versus cultural races, for two reasons: those who claim that "race" is a culture-bound concept understand that those who use the word "race" often define race as biological, the point is that our notions of biology are cultural; and those who do not use the word race still must (and do) grapple with biological variation among people -- you cannot untangle the various issues in different articles. Second, the article should give a fair account of the different views.

I do want to respond to some comments of JDG:

"I think it's telling that in a practical situation you accede to the use of a racial term. Notwithstanding all your explanation, I think this in itself shows that populational terminology is too diffuse and academic to be of use in a real world setting."

I do not think "real world" is at all useful here -- in my answer to your question about FDA review I pointed out that the self-identification of race as "African-American," and the use of the correlation between that self-identification and drug-response as a causal mechanism, can have very serious and grave "real world" consequences. My point was that in some very limited "practical" situations, and in some contexts, the use of racial terms by specialists can be a useful convenience. The extension of this use by non-specialists can be misleading and counterproductive. Moreover, my point was limited to MDs. Most MD.s are not PhDs. trained to do serious research, their needs -- laudible and vitally important -- are limited to very specific practical issues concerning diagnosis and treatment. Even here, I think a reliance on "race" can be very dangerous and can lead to misdiagnosis and malpractice. But my larger point was that serious scientific research cannot rely on language that may be convenient in an emergency room, it must be more precise and based on more rigorous sampling and analysis.

"But I cannot accept the words and phrases I see used by the more strident populationists, because they are cumbersome, overwrought, usually geography-bound and despite there cumbersomeness usually impart little information."

I cannot argue with your qualms about "the more strident populationists." I am not sure of whom you are speaking, and perhaps I would be as dissmissive of them as you are. But this article must then distinguish clearly between such strident uses and more conventional uses.

"Please tell me how a populational anthropologist communicates which human subgroup underwent the LAC*P mutation circa 4000 BC that allowed its adults to digest milk sugar. Terminology is extremely important in science, and the noun is very important in human communication in general. What noun can you give me to commuinacte the major LAC*P group? "

Well, it would be more cumbersome than "caucasian," but in my opinion not very cumbersome, more precise, and more accurate: "descendants of pastoralists." Many "caucasians" are indeed lactose-tolerant, most likely because many of them are descended from people who were pastoralists in the Middle East and who migrated to Europe a long time ago. But many Africans are highly lactose-tolerant as well, such as the Fulani and Tutsi. So it would be vague and misleading to identify "lactose-tolerance" with "caucasian."

By the way, I do agree completely with JDG's earlier point about distinguishcing between subspecies (whether race or population) and "breeds." That said, the development of such sub-species often owes not merely to Darwinian processes, but to Baldwinian evolution as well (e.g. the case of lactose tolerance and sickle-cell); perhaps this should be addressed... Slrubenstein

I deleted the characterization that Gould was a Marxist for two reasons:

First, the claim is tenuous. Yes, Gould refers to Marx in some of his writings. But this in and of itself does not make him a "Marxist;" he was primarily a Harvard paleontologist relatively uninvolved in workers', or socialist, politics. Jensen and others have tried to discredit Gould because of his use of Marx in some of his writings, but this is obviously nothinkg more than red-baiting. In other words, rather than demonstrate that there are factual or logical flaws in Gould's argument, critics label him as a "marxist" as if this were enough to prove him wrong (or explain why he was wrong). It is tendentious.

Second, whether Gould was a Marxist or not is utterly irrelevant to the paragraph in question. In this paragraph concerning Gould's critique of Jensen, the relevant issues are the epistemological status of "G" and the potential uses or misuses of multiple-regression analysis. This has nothing to do with Marxist history whatseover. Slrubenstein

Sorry, but Gould was most definitely an adherent of Marxist dialectic and this fact most certainly has a bearing on the issue at hand. Gould never hesitated in pointing out how the socioploitical beliefs of his opponents colored their science, and he should not be exempt from the same scrutiny. There are entire sections in Gould's books, particularly Wonderful Life, that make his Marxist beliefs obvious. Why are you embarrassed about it? Or if embarrassment is not the right term, what drives you to censor a reference to it? For more, see [3]-- JDG 15:54 Oct 18, 2002 (UTC)

I am not at all embarassed; perhaps Marxian categories are useful in understanding why Jensen and others are so mistaken, although I do not see it. In any event, as I explained above -- I will try to go over it more slowly, since you seem not to understand -- in the work cited, Gould questions a few elements of Jensen's work (concerning heritability, G, and the use of multiple regression analysis). Heritability is an important concept in biology and population genetics. Factor analysis is a statistical technique used to reduce a number of correlations to a few variables. G is a psychological construct in part derived through the factor analysis of the results of IQ tests. None of these concepts were derived from Marx. Gould is critical of the notion of "G" but not for reasons that come from Marx, Marxian analysis of history, or marxist politics. He is critical of G largely because of his own work on or with factor analysis. He is also critical of Jensen's association of race and intelligence, but again, not because of Marx but because of his understanding of heritability. The paragraph in question in question only discusses problems with Jensen's theories. It would be interesting to try to figure out why Jensen made the mistakes he made, and as I said, perhaps Marxian analysis can be useful, although I doubt it. In any case, in The Mismeasure of Man Gould does not try to explain why Jensen made the mistakes he made, Gould only discusses the mistakes themselves. And he does not use Marx or Marxist analysis. It just is not connected. Slrubenstein

well I'll let your deletion stand but it doesn't say much for your objectivity. No human activity, even science, is done in a social vacuum. I agree with many of Gould's criticisms of Anglo and Anglo-American scientists and researchers, from Galton to Murray-- their world views and socio-historical presuppositions definitely influenced their interpretations of evidence. And so did Gould's world view. This particular world view (Marxism) is radically hostile to any theory that finds explanations for tension and violence between human groups outside of material inequity. The work of Jensen and other responsible social scientists leads to the conclusion that a certain amount of inter group hostility is all but encoded-- a proposition extremely anathema to Marxists. Disagreements on heritability, the reality of g and other issues must be seen in this larger framework to be understood. Besides, the salient theme of The Mismeasure of Man is the biasing influence of social ideologies on science. No discussion of the book should ignore its major theme or the ideology of the author himself... BTW, Jensen made no mistake in his publications on heritability. The mistakes were Gould's and resulted from an inadequate understanding of Jensen's claims. --- JDG

Socialist Worker Online calls Gould a "Marxist biologist". [4] If this is not relevant to his tussle with Jensen, at least we should mention his Marxism in the Stephen Jay Gould article. --Ed Poor

Definitely, Ed. Another article that needs a total overhaul is Ethnicity. -- JDG

I do agree with Ed and JDG here -- my point was that in this particular article, the dispute between Gould and Jensen (like other disputes) should be accounted for in terms of the dispute itself. It is true that in his MoM book Gould is interested in the biasing of social ideologies on biology (although this is not a particularly Marxist claim, it is a more general sociological claim); nevertheless, he does make specific scientific criticisms of Jensen -- and Jensen has specific scientific rebuttals.

There would be some value to a discussion of Gould's engagement with Marx in detail and in general in the Gould article. Also, there would be a value to a discussion of the relationship between social ideologies (whether Marxist, in the case of Gould, or Capitalist/bourgeois, as in the case of sociobiology) in an article on the "history of science" or the "sociology of science." It isn't an issue of censorship but of developing a well-written article. It makes sense that the race article summarize Gould and Jensen's positions; a more general analysis of the social processes or contexts in which those positions developed simply belong in a different article. Slrubenstein

It would also be good to separate what various advocates say about race in general and about various so-called races in particular -- from what genuine, honest-to-God scientific researchers have found out for sure about the characteristics of various identifiable populations.

On a bioligical note, if there's a tribe of black people in Africa which has a disproportionately high number of Olympic marathon winners (like 100 or 1,000 times as many) -- well, is it genetic predisposition or childhood upbringing or what? I seem to recall a study mentioned in World&I magazine about this.

On a more sociological note, what if someone finds a strong statistical correlation between (A) educational methodology, (B) skin color or language of pupils and (C) performance on "achievement tests" like Calculus AP? I just watched Stand and Deliver last night. It seemed to show that good A leads to strong C. But it also showed that Hispanics who were the object of low expectations and thus were given undemanding A had poor C.

Now I can't write an encyclopedia article an a single movie, even if it's "based on a true story" -- but if schoolchildren tend to be given better educations in reverse proportion to their skin's melanin content -- and if better education tends to produce better performance -- if, I say, these things were both proven, then I would draw 2 independent conclusions:

schoolchildren have suffered discrimination based on skin color
we can improve every child's performance via better educational methods

I daresay these conclusions (or either taken separately) show that expecting less of darker-skinned children and giving them less demanding education retards their progress and has the effect of keeping them down, but if we want every child to do well all we have to do is give all children a good education: if you pass, you get promoted; if not, you go to summer school 6 days a week! --Ed Poor

Ed, I really do appreciate the tone and intention of your comments here, although I disagree that separating on "race" and "races" would make sense -- they are different, but there is a close relationship; obviously people who reject race as a biological category, and people who use race as a biological category, will characterize specific races differently; also, how exactly races have been characterized -- both culturally and biologicaly -- have changed over the past one hundred years largely owing to debates among different sides of the argument.

As to Gould and the article that you link above -- I read it, and I think your characterization is misleadingly over-simplistic. The article does quote Gould as saying that he learned Marxism at his daddy's knee -- and then it goes on to quote Gould as saying that he has rejected his father's politics! At the very least this suggests a complicated relationship between Gould and Marxism. The article does go on to describe Gould's generally leftist politics, like protesting segregation. Not all leftists are marxists, and you know what, one can even be an evolutionary psychologist or sociobiologist and protest segregation, or defend the rights of workers! There would be value, as I state above, for a good article on the relationship between scientists and politics, but I believe that a good article would have to be very attentive to these complexities and not just identify one kind of science with one kind of politics. Slrubenstein

Gould's father was a Marxist and a Stalinist. Gould dropped the Stalinism. -- JDG

We'll all want to be keeping in mind that Karl Marx was one of the great thinkers of all times. His analysis of the economic basis of society was such a profound change that we all now believe it and act on it. We are all Marxists in that regard. Gould was a Marxist in a more formal way, in that he used Marxist tools of analysis in performing his research. This is no more of a bias than any general approach and choice of tools constitutes a bias. There are many such Marxists, and it is certainly plausible to me, as a literary person, that Marxism can be used to explain the bases on which societies operate. Some such Marxists are also Communists, members of a putatitively revolutionary party. I don't know if Gould was a member of the Communist party, but if he were under the discipline of the party, he would have had to support Lysenko and Gould, the loyal Darwinist, decidedly does not. So, probably Marxist, but probably no Communist.Ortolan88

His analysis of the economic basis of society was such a profound change that we all now believe it and act on it. We are all Marxists in that regard. Excuse me, Ortolan, but I for one do not believe in Marx's analysis of the economic basis of society. Can you point me to a good web link that (a) shows that society has an economic basis or (b) describes Marx's analysis of society's economic basis? If so, and it's not in the Wikipedia, I'd like to add it. --Ed Poor

I rearranged the introductiory paragraphs to make them read better -- I did not cut anything.

I did rewrite the brief characterization of Gould. It is quite true that he is well-known for mass-marketed books, but these are usually collections of his Natural History essays, certainly "popularixed" accounts but hardly a mass-marketed magazine. As to his writing far from his own field, I am unsure what this means or why it is relevant -- his later work on intelligence is certainly different from his earlier work on snails, but his book is concsidered to be a scholarly argument and not a popularization of someone else's argument. Yes, it is true that he write an awful lot about baseball, I guess he is straying far from his field there. But how is that relevant here? Slrubenstein

JDG, I appreciate your new contribution on the politics of race. But as I see it, there is a significant difference between two of the examples you give: in the example of head-start programs as redress for historical wrongs, "race" is understood as a cultural construct (people had fallen behind because of social discrimination, and could catch up through education), whereas in the second case (test scores) there has been an ongoing debate over whether the causes are environmental/social (race as a cultural construct) or in some way biological. If I understand you correctly, I think this distinction should be made in the paragraph in question although I leave it up to you to give it the first shot; if I am wrong please clarify how. Slrubenstein

I can't say off the top of my head whether most of the politicians and legislators who created affirmative action and Head Start viewed race as a purely social construction. I would tend to doubt it, though they would probably have been friendly to anyone who layed out the academic arguments supporting that view. If you happen to know in a non-off-the-top-of-your-head way that these people operated under the social construct theory, it's fine with me if you want to modify the passage to that effect. But I don't think the basic idea that they were acting on the basis of race should be changed-- it would just be that they fancied themselves working with social categories rather than sociobiological categories. -- JDG 16:07 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)

JDG, I do not take issue with your recent changes, but when you add new content please do not mark it as a minor edit. I did cut the link to etnologists (presumably ethnologists) because in the US and the UK the word anthropology (since WWII) has subsumed ethnology. I do have two comments about recent additions, though:

1) how is the claim, " if total genetic cohorts are used in an effort to find true overall relatedness, it is seen that any two "negroids" will share a much higher net genetic affinity with one another than either will to any individual of the other two major races" not circular? You start with a "total genetic cohort" in order to prove that there in fact is a "total genetic cohort;" you assume that which you set out to prove. How can you use the concept of total genetic cohort in order to find out if there is overall relatedness, when overall relatedness is implied by the notion of total genetic cohort?

2) I am not sure that genetic drift is a cause of evolution; I think it is a result of sampling error. Please check your sources. Slrubenstein

SLR-- sorry about the minor edit problem. I'll avoid it from now on (although my work on this article is most likely done)... I don't think the "entire genetic cohort" argument is circular at all. Those who maintain that in-group variation for individual traits can be greater than between-group variation for those same traits draw an incorrect conclusion that this somehow invalidates the overall reality of general between-group differences. These people use one trait or a very limited set of traits to demonstrate high in-group variation. This is very different from using large trait constellations to determine relatedness, and the latter method is the only valid means to arrive at an accurate total genetic mapping. "Total genetic cohort" means what it says. Cavalli-Sforza and others take as many alleles and haplotypes as they can (absolutely total cohorts will have to wait until the methods of the Human Genome Project can be applied to all subgroups), and use them to detmine statistical between-group genetic difference. "Total genetic cohort" does not, as you say, imply the notion of itself. If the differences in subgroup total genetic cohorts were infinitesimal or non-existent, then the degree of genetic clustering would be too small to justify anything resembling the concept of "race". It so happens that the differences are quite myriad and significant, hence the etiological problems with describing race as a purely social construct. But you'll be happy to note that Cavalli-Sforza (who is by far the leading contemporary scientist in this field) does not agree with the use of the word "race". But he does insist on the biological reality and importance of between-group variation and that some form of taxonomic recognition must be used for this variation... As for genetic drift-- it has been established to play an important role in evolution, not in a direct sense but in the sense of determining the sets of genes that mutation and natural selection will operate upon in any given reproductively isolated population. The evolutionary directions taken bythese populations cannot be understood without genetic drift and the "founder effect" (see [5]). -- JDG

you may want to incorporate some of the more explicit phrasing above (about large-trait constellations) into the text. As for genetic drft, I am still questioning your use of the term. I have no argument with founder effect, but although one may see that as an extreme example of genetic drift there is still a crucial difference. The point of the word drift is not that frequencies drift in one direction, it is that they drift back and forth over time due to a sampling phenomena such as the size of the population. In small populations it may have a significant effect (as with the founder effect) but in relatively large populations it won't. Genetic drift is often refered to as "random genetic drift" to be clearer -- it doesn't mean that the kind of evolutionary change is random; it means that the drift is random and changes in one direction cancel out the effects of changes in another direction. The key thing is population size and I will just add "in relatively small populations" to the article.

By the way, re: "But you'll be happy to note that Cavalli-Sforza (who is by far the leading contemporary scientist in this field) does not agree with the use of the word "race". But he does insist on the biological reality and importance of between-group variation and that some form of taxonomic recognition must be used for this variation..." -- I do not think there has ever been any debate here; no anthropologist or biologist to my knowledge questions the reality and importance of group variation and the need for some sort of taxonomic recognition -- the whole point of the term "population" is to give recognition to this point. Slrubenstein

I think you're missing something here. There is indeed a debate. "Population" is non-descriptive. Taxonomy implies nomenclature. Nomenclature implies recognizably distinct entities that can be named. "Population" is not a name, it is a generic placeholder. Taxonomy consists first of names, then of descriptions. You can't have a decription without a name in Taxonomy. The social constructionists do not want between-group differences to have a name because they believe such a name will grant too much emphasis to those differences. Cavalli-Sforza does want names, because true taxonomy requires names, and he believes the concrete group genetic differences merit naming and thus inclusion in taxonomies. Yes- a lot of all this is semantic. But some of it is beyond semantics... Plus, I'm still waiting to hear the proper names that populationists give to their populations. This is an encyclopedia. It deals with the names of things and why those things are so named. What words do populationists use to distinguish these distinct groups you say they recognize? -- JDG

I think you are missing a different point. The question is whether the name refers to a thing or is but a statistical effect. Biological taxa are useful holdovers from another age when people thought in terms of differences rather than relationships; Carolus Linnaeus' system of classification sorts organisms according to degrees of similarity, but it made no claims about the relationship between similar species. This approach also suggests a type of idealism, in other words, that each species exists as an ideal form. In fact, there are always differences (although sometimes minute) between individual organisms. Linnaeus considered such variation problematic. He strove to identify individual organisms that were exemplary of the species, and considered other non-exemplary organisms to be deviant and imperfect.

Although this taxonomic system is useful for identifying many things, it is theoretically very problematic when it comes to understanding relationships and variation for a Darwinian. In arguing that it is populations that evolve, not individuals, Darwin effected a radical shift in perspective from Linnaeus: rather than defining species in ideal terms (and searching for an ideal representative and rejecting deviations), Darwin considered variation among individuals to be natural. He further argued that such variation, far from being problematic, is actually a good thing. Variation among members of a species is important because different and changing environments favor different traits (i.e. there is no ideal trait; whether a trait is beneficial or not depends on the environment). Thus "species" are not homogeneous, fixed, permanent things; members of a species are all different, and over time species change. This suggests that species do not have any clear boundaries but are rather momentary statistical effects of constantly changing gene-frequencies. We still use the binomial system of identifying species, but from an evolutionary view we know that these names do not identify real things but rather statistical effects.

The 19th century argument that races are biological rest on Linnean assumptions. In the Twentieth centuries all biologists have rejected these assumptions. Race may continue to be a useful term for identifying people under very specified conditions, as is often the case with police and MDs (although as I wrote above, for MDs, when it comes to things like Sickle-Cell anemia it can create very dangerous and life-threatening problems; people raise similar issues concerning police profiling). In any event, "population" is a more precise and useful term for understanding such groups as statistical effects, and for talking about relationships and variation. As for what to call a population, I already answered this question above when you asked about lactose intolerance. Slrubenstein

I'm confused about the 'race' debate. It is obvious to all but the most isolated people that people can be roughly grouped by sets of physical characteristics such as eye color, skin color, etc. Why do some contributors here appear to reject 'race' as a useful and scientific category? There is an accepted biological classification system, whose most commonly used category is species. I thought the point of this category was to differentiate living things of the same genus. If that is true, is it not logical that race would differentiate living things of the same species? If the biological classification system is based on careful observation, wouldn't that same observation show that the species homo sapiens is itself differentiated? I don't know if scientists can observe human differences; I believe that I can. Can anyone clarify for me why 'race' is not valid, or why races such as Negroid or Indian are not correctly descriptive? (I apologize for using the terms Negroid and Indian, which I just made up for people I have observed to have certain common physical characteristics. These terms may not be correct.) (Note: My confusion has nothing to do with the historical use of 'race' as a means to categorize groups of people as being inferior or superior--this use I abhor and consider completely unscientific.) I hope someone will respond and help me get unconfused! David 18:53 Nov 1, 2002 (UTC)

Well, this is a matter of debate, and the artile tries to present both sides. I think the article as it is answers your questions, but I would like to help you (especially if it may lead to making the article clearer). Please, can you point to specific sentences or paragraphs that try to answer your questions, and explain why or in what way they are unclear? Slrubenstein

The article is very clear. My confusion is really over the use of quotation marks:

   the so-called "Negroid" race

There seems to be a large effort to avoid giving "race" the same classification status as "species". If this were not true, then race would not be surrounded by quotation marks, either figuratively or literally.

An article in a recent issue of Scientific American stated that skin color (one trait of a "race" cluster) of indigenous peoples varies according to latitude, having evolved to protect the skin from damage from ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Thus, classifying humans only by genus and species (homo sapiens) is not sufficient to describe the observed intrinsic differences in skin color.

If we consider all the many other observable traits, such as hair characteristics, eye color, thickness of lips, epicanthric folds, etc., it is clear that a multidimensional vector classification scheme is warranted.

A simplification of the clusters of trait characteristics of such a scheme would be very close to the 'intuitive' descriptions of races. One can look at a photograph of a person and frequently say, with some confidence, that this person is Asian, Pygmy, South Asian (Indian), Native American, Negroid, Caucasiod, etc. However, this needs further qualification.

Unlike "species", "race" only describes clusters of traits. That means that most individuals display concurrently characteristics of several races and only some individuals are actually located near the center of clusters. Commonly in the West, for example, the terms "black", "Negro", and "people of color" are misused to refer to individuals having any discernable mixture of the "white" and Negroid clusters. They should be used for individuals displaying trait sets located within some threshold distance from the center of clusters.

I hope this explanation makes my opinions clearer. If I have a bad understanding of the word "race", or am mistaken in believing it to be just as valid as "species" in the biological classification system, I would very much appreciate it if folks would let me know here. David 23:54 Dec 18, 2002 (UTC)

continues in talk:race