Talk:Race (classification of human beings)
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Contents

A clean-up

As I already suggested, this article needs a massive clean-up from obsolete, often tendentiously distorted information (very probably coming from Mr. Alun/Mr. Slrubenstein's workshop) that makes the whole content unnecessarily messy. Some important remarks:

1. Microsatellite Fst value of 0.358 reported for leopards is incorrect; the authors report the so-called Rst values that are different from Fst. Microsatellite Fst values in big cats are usually around or below the human average (0.15)[1][2]

Firstly the article does not claim that 0.358 represents FST, it says what the paper says, that this is a measure of within to between group variation. I agree that these statistics can be misleading, it is fallacious to compare the level of within species differentiation between two species with very different ecologies. We probably should note, however, that human genetic variation is often claimed to be much less differentiated than many other species. If you want to remove discussion of measures of within to between group variation I would agree with you. Second the papers you link to are tremendously inappropriate. These papers discuss only a cat species within a single continent (South America), so it is analogous to comparing the level of differntiation within this group to that of the human population of a single continent. Humans are dispersed throughout the world, so a comparison should only be made to other species with a very large geographic range. To claim that Fst values of "big cats" is small, when the only papers ou produce are for as geographically resticted group is extremely dishonest. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, and how many mammalian species inhabiting the whole world do you know? Mouse? It doesn't matter, what a large area the species inhabits; the geographical fractionalization will lead to the process of speciation anyway - as it happened in many animals in the past. Unfortunately, the case of humans is exceptional, because animals can't use boats or store food for a long journey. But the distribution of big cats is/was still very large (leopard, tiger, lion). Furthermore, despite a very restricted geographical distribution, orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees show such a high interpopulation variation that it almost approaches the level of speciation. [3] But this is understandable, because in contrast with humans, who quickly spreaded from Africa 50-60 000 years ago, they diverged ca. 1 million years ago.
It's kind of the point though isn't it? It is impossible to compare species with very different ecologies and natural histories and apply a reigid set of criteria universally. We could compare certain species of big cats to humans, as you have tried to do, but if we do there are huge problems. Cats tend to be solitary, humans live in communities, even when we look at the most geographically distributed cats they do not roam as far as humans. Humans have probably only had a global distribution for a few tens of millenia, the big cat species may have differentiated over a much longer time. Humans probably have a great deal more gene flow between geographic regions than most other terrestrial species. The only real similarity between humans and big cats it that (a) they are both large terrestrial mammals and (b) some species of big cat are quite widely geographically distributed. So in reality all this comparing FST of humans with other species is rather pointless. Indeed the only paper I can think of off hand to have done this is Templeton's 1998 paper. Measures of FST have never been used as proof of subspecific classification as far as I know. There is no evidence that mere geographic distance can produce speciation. As you point out humans are capable of migrating over huge distances, merely being globally distributed is not enough for speciation events, especially if there is a large amount of gene flow between populations, as there most certainly is and has been in the human species. Speciation events would occur only by reproductive isolation, and not by geographic isolation. Given the general rule that hunter gatherer societies tend to reproduce exogamously it seems likely that gene flow has been constant and high in the human population. Two things have lead to the relative lack of genetic diversity in humans, our relatively recent origin and the large amounts of gene flow between peoples. Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
"Human genetic variation is often claimed to be much less differentiated than many other species" - Yes, it is "claimed", but the support for it doesn't exist. Except the case of great apes (without bonobos), I am not aware of any Fst value considerably higher than that of humans. Human Fst values are comparable or higher than in big cats, whose subspecies classification is well known and established. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually the support for it does exist, you just refuse to accept it. There are at least four peer reviewed papers in the article that suppport the claim. Wikipedia does not publish original research, if experts publish peer reviewed papers they are reliable sources and so we can cite them. The fact that you persoanlly believe that there is no support for this claim is of no consequence. Care to provide a peer reviewed journal citation that states categorically that there is no support for this claim? Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

2. Shortly after this case, AVERAGE Fst value for humans is compared to the MAXIMAL RANGE of Fst in chimpanzees. A silly trick, really. As we know, the maximal range of diversity in humans can be even higher. (Although I admit that the chimpanzee study was based on microsatellite data.)

Not true. The usual statistic given for human between group variation is 15%, the statistics given for chimps give the whole range of differentiation, there is clearly an overlap, with humans given as 0.15 and chimps given as 0.09-0.32. It is well known that the level of differentiation between chimp populations is higher than that between human populations, this has been cited again and again by numerous papers. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Those 15% don't tell the whole truth. The difference Africa - East Asia/America routinely exceeds 0.20 in SNP studies. The distance of 0.15 between Africa - East Asia in this study comparing primates
[4]
is very suspicious, but not so much because it is so "small", but because the distance between Africa - East Asia is virtually always 30-50% higher than in the case Africa - Europe. Curiously, here it is the same (0.14 vs. 0.15). Since the list of authors includes the very famous name Svante Pääbo, I don't take this comparison too seriously. Not speaking about that the largest human extreme (Pygmies vs. Australian Aborigines) that was only once explicitly documented by Cavalli-Sforza (0.43, 190 autosomal genes) is not listed in any later genetic study (although I know at least one that lists Aborigines in the studied populations [5], but later only lists the average, as usually). The level of differentation between chimpanzees that is so frequently cited probably concerns mainly older studies of sex chromozomes. As we now know, the real differentation of great apes isn't by far so high as these studies indicated. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Of course the 15% does't tell the whole truth, the 15% is an inaccurate and misleading measurement, but that's not the point, the point is that this figure is given routinely by scientists and anthropologists. In truth we see greater differentiation the further we go from Africa, people living nearer to Africa are more like Africans, those living further away from Africa are less like Africans. This is the whole point of the Long and Kittles paper. Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

3. The value of "FST of 0.06-0.1 for human "races" is hardly based on any solid data. In fact, interracial comparisons routinely show values 0.10-0.15 or even higher, especially for SNPs. As far as I know, only Rosenberg et al. 2006 reported ludicrously low Fst values of 3.8% (0.04) for 377 microsatellites. The problem is that authors often don't show comparisons of single populations, but rather misleading averages based on both interracial and intraracial values. Thus, values between 0.10-0.15 would be much closer to the truth (with microsatellites on the lower end of the range). After all, see [6] or [7], where mostly values higher than 0.10 are reported. The real magnitude of Fst differences (by SNPs) is nicely illustrated in a recent superb clustering study of Jakobsson et al. [8]


  • So, the alleged "small" differences between humans can be viewed in a different light! The Fst value approaching 0.30 between Africans and Americans Indians certainly isn't the whole story; the difference between certain Africans and Australian Aborigines may be as high as 0.40.
You are quite right, there is no such thing as a "true" FST, it varies tremendously depending upon the type of locus measured, SNPs, STRs, indels and Alu insertions all display different evolutionary characteristics, therefore they produce different measures for divergence between groups. The point is that the so called 15% of variation found between sampled human populations is usually given for all global populations, but this measure includes some of the variation found between populations within continents, usually the amount of variation between populations within the same continent is given as between 6% and 10%, but again it does depend upon the type of locus under investigation. In truth FST is a poor measure of genetic differentiation, both Edwards ("Lewontin's Fallacy") and Long and Kittles (2003) have criticised FST as a statistical fallacy.[9] [10] Edwards correctly states that FST cannot be used to produce an "average" statistic for all human groups, but should only be measured on a population by population basis. Nevertheless many reliable sources do use a single average figure however statistically invalid. Long and Kittles go further and show that even measuring FST on a population by population basis is statistically invalid. They show that FST is based on two invalid assumptions. Firstly that it assumes that all populations are independent and equally diverged (ie that no population is a subset of any other population, or if you like that the populations being measured all derived from the same ancestral population and diverged equally). Secondly it assumes that all populations have the same expected gene identity. Long and Kittles show conclusively that neither of these assumptions is valid. They show that the level of diversity is greatest in Africa (containing 100% of human diversity) and lowest in the Pacific (containing 70% of diversity). So what they show is that human groups do not each hold about 85% of the human genetic variation, they show that Africa holds about 100% of the variation and that Oceania holds about 70% of the variation, with in between groups holding less variation as populations get farther from Africa. They further show that gene identity is about 0.213 in their African population, while it is 0.541 in their Pacific population, or to put it another way, individual Africans are much more different from each other genetically than individual Pacific Islanders are. They claim that it is therefore the case that FST masks a great deal of diversity. Of course it is also true that if FST masks diversity within the human species, then it also must masks diversity in non-human species. But the point is this, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, we can cite sources that criticise things like the computation of FST but we must also say what experts say, even if we disagree with them, and experts often do quote the "85%" statistic, I personally think it is a nonsense and abused statistic, but it is widely (over) used by credible academic sources. You may not like it when anthropologists say "race" is a social construct, but you don't have the right to prevent editors from including this point of view in the article, because it is constantly stated by reliable academic sources. Likewise you may not like it when geneticists and molecular anthropologists say that human genetic diversity is much lower than that of many other species, but they do say this routinely, indeed this is a something that all geneticists and anthropologists adhere to, you cannot suppress this because it does not fit your personal world view. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
So what a genetic statistics should we use? What do you suggest? And what studies can all those PC geneticists and molecular anthropologists list to support their claims? Perhaps Alan Templeton? [11]
Or Mr. Barbujani, who successfully continued in spreading Templeton's mystifications, further misinterpreting the work of leading anthropologists of the past? [12]82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
There is no single "genetic statistic" that can be used to infer the level of differentiation between human groups. Human population structure is very complex, the whole point of Long and Kittles and numerous other papers that attempt to show how human genes are geographically patterned is to show just how complex it is. Any attempt to give a single "simple" figure that shows how human genetic variation is geographically distributed is always going to be very far from the mark, indeed it is inevitable that it will be as flawed as the Lewontin statistic of 85% Whichever way one looks at it thhough it is clear that the bulk of variation is within group, even Long and Kittles found that their most divergent group still had ~70% of variation within group, and that Africans had ~100% of variation within group. We do not produce original research here, we say what experts say, whether we like it or not. I understand the problems with the concept of FST and I understand why the ~85% claims are not accurate, but these stateistics are frequently used, and therefore we need to cite them. You do not seem to appreciate that this is not a blog, nor is it a place for you to express your opinion, you can only say what experts have said. Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

4. First, compared with many other mammalian species, humans are genetically less diverse... - This is a mystification, of course. When compared with other mammals, humans are rather on the upper end of the range [13] As I see, virtually all claims about little genetic differentation in humans are based on the comparison with great apes. (If somebody has different data, please, don't hesitate to put them here!) Even the claim that great apes are more diverse than humans is problematic. In any case, humans are, on the average, slightly more diverse than bonobos, but chimpanzees seem to be approximately 1.5-times more diverse than humans and gorillas 1.8-times more diverse [14]. These numbers are especially striking considering the far higher TMRCA times for great apes. In any case, great apes must belong to the most diverse mammals in the world and saying that when humans are less diverse, they are at the same time little diverse, is clearly incorrect.

The claim is made by reliable academics publishing in peer reviewed journals, it therefore meets Wikiepdia's criteria for inclusion. Whereas you link to the personal website of a non-expert who appears to be obsessed with promoting the concept of biological race. We use reliable sources here. Actually the nucleotide diversity of chimps compared to humans is given in the article and is comparable to the numbers you give above. Pan paniscus represents only a tiny population (~10000) that is geographically restricted,[15] whereas humans range over the entire globe. Furthermore the numbers of humans living is far in excess of the numbers of any chimp or gorilla species (~7000000000.[16]). Considering that many new mutations occur in every individual human born, the huge population size of humans relative to other apes should mean that we have a very large nucleotide diversity. After all, diversity increases with population size as well as population age. Considering our huge geographic dispersal (the only great ape to be globally distributed) and our massive population size (chimps and gorillas are species undergoing a bottleneck[17] [18] which will massively reduce diversity) the relative amount of diversity in humans appears to be exceedingly small. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Not at all "small", considering that it needed about 20-times less time to accumulate! "Reliable academics" may claim, what they want, and certainly, they can be listed in Wikipedia, but Wikipedia should also list data showing that they claims consist of pure fabrications. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually Wikipedia cannot "list data", Wikipedia only publishes the views expressed in reliable sources. If you want to interpret data that would constitute original research. The point is that you frequently come here and criticise experts who you personally disagree with, but you appear to have zero qualifications to do this, you appear to be a non-expert with no academic credibility. If you can find reliable sources that dispute the experts you are so scathing about, then please produce them. But they need to be explicit in their conclusions, they need to say that they have evidence that a specific claim is incorrect, you cannot produce a paper and say that it contradicts a specific claim if it is only your opinion that it does such a thing, the paper itself must say that it contradicts the claim. Claiming that reliable academics are fabricating results is a very serious thing to do, you should be careful because it is called libel. Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

5. The further notes in the paragraph were certainly carefully selected by Mr. Wobble - including the sentence from Long, Kittles (2003), a study that actually supports the race concept. Not too surprisingly, he even doesn't forget to quote Mr. Templeton, a man, who likes comparing apples with potatoes.

Long and Kittle's paper is called "Human genetic diversity and the nonexistence of biological race" and states "Four different race concepts are considered: typological, population, taxonomic, and lineage. Surprisingly, a great deal of genetic variation within groups is consistent with each of these concepts. However, none of the race concepts is compatible with the patterns of variation revealed by our analyses. and go on to say "The biological concepts of race identified in the preceding paragraph are distinct from common lay conceptualizations of race. One such lay concept postulates the existence of near-uniform groups of individuals that can be identified by a few externally visible traits such as skin color (Keita and Kittles 1997). The AAPA statement on race (American Association of Physical Anthropologists 1996) articulates a counter argument to this popular view. In fact,our findings are consistent with the key features of the AAPA view:that all human populations derive from a common ancestral group,that there is great genetic diversity within all human populations, and that the geographic pattern of variation is complex and presents no major discontinuity." To claim that either of these statements provides support for "race" concepts is absurd. The acknowledgment that there is geographically structured genetic variation within the human species is not ipso fact support for "race" concepts, it is just a statement of the bleeding obvious. The fact that Long and Kittles state clearly that the variation presents "no major discontinuity" is clearly contrary to "racial" concepts. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
What about another quotation from Long and Kittles? "Surprisingly, a great deal of variation within groups is compatible with biological race concepts and therefore partitions of genetic variation such as those achieved by simple statistics such as F^sub ST^ do not provide critical tests for the existence of races as defined by biologists. Four decades ago, Frank Livingstone declared the nonexistence of human races (Livingstone 1963). It is now time for geneticists and anthropologists to stop worrying about what does not exist and to discover what does exist." I know that Steve Sailer interviewed Kittles some time ago and hence I know that his real opinion of race isn't as "fuzzy" as all the politically correct babbles in his articles may indicate. [19] 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
It is a good quote, in fact in the quote they specifically state that "race does not exist". Look at the quote again, they state that Frank Livingstone declared the non-existence of race, then go on to claim that we should stop worrying about what does not exist (ie race) and look at what does exist (ie a gradual dilution human variation as one moves further from Africa). I don't know what Rick Kittles opinion of "biological race" is, and I suspect you don't either, I am sceptical that you can infer anything from this article, is it the one you are referring to? There is a difference in accepting that "race" is a socially real thing, in that one can accept that there is such a thing as racial discrimination, but we are talking about "biological race". Long and Kittles draw this distinction themselves in the quote I give above. "Biological race" is the classification of people into identifiable subspecific groups, this has never been easy either for humans or for other animal species, many zoologists reject classifications below the species level all together. In 2003 Rick Kittles and Kenneth Weiss wrote the paper "RACE, ANCESTRY, AND GENES: Implications for Defining Disease Risk", it's a long and thoughtful paper and is not easily summarised, neither can any direct quote give a good indication of it's content, but it does contain all of the usual arguments used by anthropologists, taxonomists and geneticists against subspecific and racial classifications. Indeed it specifically mentions both nucleotide diversity and FST.

"Along the human genome, π is generally between 0.001 and 0.002 (1 heterozygous site per 1000 to 2000 sites (15, 55, 99, 105, 164, 166, 192–195). While π is slightly higher for populations of African descent (81, 94, 122, 188, 192), nucleotide diversity even between diverse human populations is about four times lower than the level observed within chimpanzees (38, 73, 83)... The traditional, though subjective, criterion for biological subspecies is FST > 0.25 (168, 190). The percentage of genetic diversity between spot-samples from the extremes of the Old World range of human populations (sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and Europe) is about 5–15%, with the remaining 85–95% within populations as noted earlier (Table 1) (2, 5, 60, 75, 76). From available sequence data, FST would likely be three times higher among different chimpanzee populations compared to levels for different human populations on separate continents."

Furthermore Rick Kittles co-authored a paper in 2004 "Conceptualizing human variation" which covers a lot of ground regarding the extent of human genetic variation. This again discusses FST and even the famous 85% statistic "The within- to between-group variation is very high for genetic polymorphisms (approx 85%). This means that individuals from one 'race' may be overall more similar to individuals in one of the other 'races' than to other individuals in the same 'race'. This observation is perhaps insufficient, although it still is convincing because it illustrates the lack of a boundary." More usefully it discusses phylogenetic concepts of subspecies, the most sound way to classify below the species level because it relies on systematics. They conclude

Modern human genetic variation does not structure into phylogenetic subspecies (geographical 'races'), nor do the taxa from the most common racial classifications of classical anthropology qualify as 'races' (Box 1). The social or ethnoancestral groups of the US and Latin America are not 'races', and it has not been demonstrated that any human breeding population is sufficiently divergent to be taxonomically recognized by the standards of modern molecular systematics. These observations are not to be taken as statements against doing research on demographic groups or populations. They only support a brief for linguistic precision and careful descriptions of groups under study. Terms and labels have qualitative implications....'Racial' thinking can still be found in scientific literature. Evolutionary and other biohistorical studies should be model-based and should acknowledge the ongoing legacy of 'racial' thinking.

In their 1997 paper "The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence" Rick Kittles and S.O.Y Keita state

Racial thinking persists in spite of multiple lines of evidence that deconstruct racial schema and their underlying philosophy. These lines of evidence derive from analyses of serogenetic data, nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome polymorphisms, ans skeletal data. All show that the received racial categories should not be treated as bounded entities.
Theory also helps in the examination of the racial construct. None of the putative races as generally understoodare breeding populations. Hence these entities are collections of various biological phenomena. They are not evolutionary units.

You appear to be confused with the difference between genetic variation and classification, there can be a great deal of variation between populations from the same species without it necessarily defining these populations as different subspecies. Indeed the only reliable way to identify subspecies is to us a phylogeographic approach, and many zoologists are even starting to use the phylogenetic species concept, which would dispense with any classifications below the species level altogether (and therefore abolish all subspecies), though it would increase the number of recognised species. What Long and Kittles are really saying, which you appear not to understand, is that whether "biological race" exists or not is absolutely dependent on how we define race and nothing else. All scientific concepts are based on good definitions (and this applies to classification as much as anything else), to get a good definition the concept needs to represent a good model for what we see in the real world. Long and Kittles specifically state that the four models for "biological race" concepts that they tested do not form good models for what we observe in the real world, and so they reject these as anything like "biological race concepts". Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

6. The clustering studies are obsolete. See http://dienekes.blogspot.com/

We don't cite blogs here, this is an encyclopaedia, we cite reliable sources. Clustering analyses may have their problems, but they are reliable sources and have been used by some biologists to support "race" concepts, so they are relevant to the article. Such scientists include Neil Risch, Armand Leroi.[20] [21] Mostly these scientists are using "race" as a synonym for "human genetic variation" though. Some journalists have also made similar claims, such as Nicholas Wade in the NY Times. Alun (talk) 08:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't cite blogs. I cite two recent mega-studies working with more than 500 000 SNPs that can now identify single nations genetically. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
What a strange thing to do, you cited dienekes blog to support your claim, then you later claimed that you did not cite a blog? It's clear to anyone with eyes that you have linked to a blog. Alun (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Centrum99 (talk) 01:34, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

According to Sauer, "The assessment of these categories is based upon copious amounts of research on the relationship between biological characteristics of the living and their skeletons." Nevertheless, he agrees with other anthropologists that race is not a valid biological taxonomic category, and that races are socially constructed. He argued there is nevertheless a strong relationship between the phenotypic features forensic anthropologists base their identifications on, and popular racial categories. Thus, he argued, forensic anthropologists apply a racial label to human remains because their analysis of physical morphology enables them to predict that when the person was alive, that particular racial label would have been applied to them.

If this isn't clinical insanity, what else is? Don't be afraid, Alun, I am slowly progressing with my work and I will post all important facts here within several weeks. Centrum99 82.100.61.114 (talk) 16:07, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Why do you think Sauer's claim is "clinical insanity"? Why should I be afraid? What have I got to be afraid of exactly? I'm not entirely sure what your point is. The quote you give is taken from the article, so what point are you trying to make? This talk page is for discussing changes to the article, but you don't seem to be making any suggestions about the article. I'm not sure that you actually understand this subject at all. Sauer is pointing to the fact that it is often possible to distinguish between different groups in the USA based on skeletal remains. So what? There is nothing in what he says that is incompatible with anything I have stated. It is obvious that we can distinguish between people who derive from geographically distant parts of the world, we can easily distinguish between a west African (the region where the majority of African America ancestry derives), an European (the region where the majority of European American ancestry derives) and a native American. That's not the point of classification. The point of classification is to be able to partition organisms into well defined groups unambiguously. Sauer himself acknowledges this when he agrees that "race" is a social construct. The utility of being able to differentiate between populations derived from extreme geographical locations does not negate the fact that it is not possible to differentiate the global human population into a few discrete groups in any biologically meaningful way. In many modern societies there are populations derived from very distant parts of the world, we can distinguish these easily, but this is not possible when we look at human variation in less artificial environments. Of course as these populations become more mixed it will increasingly be difficult to distinguish any "racial" groups. Furthermore I would be extremely sceptical that Sauer could look at skeletal remains derived from a multiplicity of much closer geographic regions and correctly identify all of them. Could he perfectly distinguish between Greek, Palestinian, Egyptian and Somali skeletons for example? I doubt it. As Kittles and Weiss state

The Big Few races can seem real in samples of size N (Norway, Nigeria, Nippon, Navajo). That is, if one examines only the geographic extremes, differences appear large ... In that sense it is sometimes said that there are only four or five major patterns of variation. But if we look at geographically closer or intermediate populations, differences diminish roughly proportionately. Even our view of the Big Few might change were it not for our curious convenience of overlooking places such as India. Who are those pesky billion? One race? A mix of the other already-sampled races? A multiplicity of races, as has often been suggested?[22]

I've made this point to you several times before, but you really don't seem to understand this at all. I get the impression that you are so blinded by your fundamentalist belief in "race" that you really are not interested in real science, you only seem interested in things that you think support your personal crusade, even tot he extent that you have cited material here that clearly contradicts what you are claiming (see above about Rick Kittles). I suggest you take your crusade elsewhere, this is an encyclopaedia, it is not interested in publishing your opinions and personal observations. Alun (talk) 18:27, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I will address all issues that you put up here. Including your "roughly proportionaly" diminishing differences. I think you will be especially interested in the Fst values that I have collected. The days of your PC propaganda are finished anyway. Centrum99 (talk) 01:58, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
You need to find reliable sources that address these issues. If you can find reliable sources that contradict what the article says then of course we can include them. Please remember we do not publish original research and any synthesis is equally considered original research. You should observe that it is not my "roughly proportional" diminishing differences, if it were my personal claim then it would of course be original research and therefore irrelevant to the article. It is our old friend Rick Kittles along with Kenneth M. Weiss who have stated this. I'm not particularly interested in the FST values you have collected, you cannot include original research in the article, neither can you collate data from disparate sources to try to prove a point, this would be a synthesis. You can only cite reliable sources, and explicitly state what the conclusions of those sources are. you should understand this by now, I've explained it over and over to you. Alun (talk) 16:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
In the meantime, can you please find the book, where Sewall Wright listed Fst values of various mammalian species? It would be fair to use it below his quotation, to avoid "original research". Thank you. Centrum99 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.100.61.114 (talk) 12:20, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Separate references from footnotes

Section "Footnotes" has many references that should be split off in a separate section, "References". References and footnotes offer different kinds of information, and seeing one while looking for the other is confusing. Also, it is one way to segment the long section into two. -Pgan002 (talk) 06:31, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

You would have to explain more the difference between the two. The section titled "Footnotes" is basically what other articles title "References." I don't see the need for a split myself. The documentation of arguments in the article is fairly clear. Two sections would overly complicate things. In any event there is a Bibliography Section to round out the page. This is a lot more than you see on the typical Wikipedia article.Whazstak (talk) 07:12, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that footnote no. 3 and footnote no. 45 reference the same article. It seems like it would be a lot of work to delete 45 and renumber all the notes afterward; is there some sort of automated system for doing this? Nick Theodorakis (talk) 15:50, 4 April 2008 (UTC)Nick Theodorakis

Hispanicity as a race? Please don't invent Races :-(

The article has a very profound observation: "for practical purposes, when we speak of Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S., we’re really talking about Native Americans . . . [therefore] if being Hispanic carries any societal consequences that justify inclusion in the pantheon of great American racial minorities, they’re the result of having Native American blood. [But imagine the] the impact this would have on the illegal-immigration debate. It’s one thing to blame the fall of western civilization on illegal Mexican immigration, but quite thornier to blame it on illegal Amerindian immigration from Mexico."

Right, the U.S. appropriation of the term "hispanic" to group the native americans coming from south of their border, is extremely inappropriate in a universal context. While you might find millions of Mexicans in the U.S. speaking some form of Spanish language, there are plenty of races around the world who speak this language for historical reasons. This use of the term "hispanic" is as abhorrent as if in Spain we used the label "Anglos" to refer to the millions of Africans who speak that language south of our border. It is what it is.

Please help out with folks trying to edit Hispanicity and suggest it is a RACE. I know many people confuse the term "hispanic" with a race. They seem to become confused because for example, people from Mexico tend to be homogeneous (being predominantly AMERINDIAN). But the fact that folks from Mexico are homogeneous in their being Amerindian (Mongoloid Race, Indianid subtype) does not mean that there is a Hispanic Race!!

I don't mean to criticise anyone who wants to contribute, but please don't post phrases like "[This may have been a Racial Category but it is now regarded as ethno-linguistic] something that can also been seen as a strategy by some of the categorized in order to be included in the white dominant group (as the emergence of White Hispanics points to)"


The problem with that edit is that it suggests that:

1- Hispanic "may have been" a RACIAL GROUP.

2- He's also suggesting that White Hispanics are a construct. That there are no spanish-speaking white people. In other words, that Caucasoid individuals aren't found south of the border.

3- And given #2, that if anyone born south of the border were to claim to being CAUCASOID it would just be a strategy to be accepted in the "white majority" (where they apparently do not belong)

Now this is my take. I believe that each of the FOUR MAJOR RACES: MONGOLOID, NEGROID, CAUCASOID and AUSTRALOID are equal and loved by God. BUT I love science and I get aggravated by unscientific claims (for example: THE INVENTION OF A 5TH RACE... the "hispanic" race)

No, white hispanics aren't an invention, or a strategy created by Amerindians or mixed individuals to fit into the US White category!!. White hispanics are simply CAUCASOID individuals who speak spanish or live in countries where spanish is spoken. You know how many Germans went to Argentina after WW2? Similarly, how many Jewish People took refuge in South America due to Hitler? And how many Eastern Europeans emigrated after the fall of the Soviet Union? Oh they did.

So, as I said, this is not about one race being better than another. This is about SCIENCE and not inventing races!

I actually agree with the Mexica Movement. They are a group of Amerindians (Mongoloid Race, Indianid Subtype) who are tired of being called "Hispanic", because they are Amerindian. They had their land stolen by Spaniards and calling them "Hispanics" only adds insult to injury.

Anyway, I am not advocating favoring any race over the other. Just don't invent races and keep an eye open for folks who may feel like suggesting there is a 5th race; or a linguistic group where the 4 races don't apply!

Take care, Olga --Prophetess mar (talk) 23:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

  • I believe that each of the FOUR MAJOR RACES: MONGOLOID, NEGROID, CAUCASOID and AUSTRALOID are equal and loved by God.
This is an encyclopaedia, it is not about what you "believe". Furthermore you start with the assumption that there are "four major races", but this is only a single point of view. Because "races" are social constructs the number and type of "races" vary significantly depending on the point of view of the observer. You "assume" that there are "four races" and then from this assumption try to classify all groups into one of these four "races". This article should not make such assumptions about what are or are not "real races", it should discuss the perceptions of what a "race" is from the point of view of society, citing reliable sources as it goes. Alun (talk) 07:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
This article needs a section on the ontology of race to resolve this disagreement/misunderstanding. Those who argue that the problem is the invention of 'new' races clearly have not understood the main POV represented in this article about race as an invention. A little section on non-constructivist views about race need to deal with the POV that races are natural kinds, and the systems of classification used by purveyors of such views. Thus, the comments about 'hispanic' and 'latino' races can be dealt with according to the relevant ontology as necessary. Otherwise, this will become an irreconcilable edit war. Eyedubya (talk) 09:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
The notion of 4 major races is a slippery concept with Hispanics in many ways although of course as a social and cultural construct, folks are entitled to self-report what they desire to report. Hispanic is often a cultural and linguistic term. The ancient Aztecs and the tribes before them like the Toltecs etc definitely do not fall under the label "Hispanic," although they may make up the majority of Mexico's descendants. Some may say they are "Mongoloid" but does this then mean that people from Mexico, including all those ancient tribes going back millenia can be neatly checked off into the same box as Chinese? I have no problem with an ontology of race but such heavy lifting I think would be better in another article where all the classification - linguistic, cultural, etc can be fully developed. Whazstak (talk) 07:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

mixed races

The article does not say much useful on the topic of mixed races. The article Caucasian race see image-[23] lays out these arguments in detail and the picture map shows a racial distributions example, so no one can say that the topic "should not be" on Wikipedia. The work of Cavalli-Sforza [sic] shows that in places like Africa, discrete races met and intermingled. His category of Extra-European Caucasoid, incorporates the Mediterranean Caucasoid races outside of Europe proper that make up the past and present population of North Africa.

At the same time, he shows negroids from further south may have moved up into zones of mingling, to produce various mixed races in Nubia, Ethiopia and East Africa, etc. Populations from these areas do not match negro features, proving admixture of races took place. This information should be worked into the article, or are the folks here avoiding it?

Cavalli-Sforza is a respected scholar. I notice he is not referenced much if at all in the article. Anyone care to comment on why this is being left out? There was an article called Extra-European Caucasoid on Wikipedia but it is no longer found. Caucasian race has taken its place put the information is not there, and perhaps should be added back in now. Could it be that some are bury the concept? Critiques of this category anyone?Keebler2 (talk) 05:25, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Extra-European Caucasoid is still there even though the article is now a redirect. In the Talk page I argued that Cavalli-Sforza introduced the label a priori for convenience in data analysis (e.g. because there is more data on Europeans than non-Europeans) and not because he was arguing that data shows the category to be a division with a sound biological basis. --JWB (talk) 01:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Archives

Where are the archives? And the to do list? And this page severely needs to be archived. Doesn't anyone maintain it? Richard001 (talk) 08:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Evidently when the article was moved from Race to Race (classification of human beings), the subpages were not moved with it. :/ Since the talkpage was over 350K, I went ahead and archived it into the next numbers in the sequence, and provided a link to the previous subpages: Talk:Race/Archive 24 and earlier. This might be sufficient, or someone might wish to go through all the subpages and move them to the new title. Or, just link to the old locations from here, either way will probably work. --Elonka 19:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Headline text

Article name

I'm guessing this has been discussed (where are the archives? see above), but can't we get a less lengthy name for the article, e.g. race (humans) or at most race (classification of humans) (see human being). If it was race (human) it might be taken as meaning human race, but race (humans) is hardly going to be taken as humans race is it? Think about the people that have to link to this article... Richard001 (talk) 08:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

American Indian and African ancestry

The article failed to mention the main reason that American Indian blood in Caucasian people was based on blood-quantum (one -quarter or more and you were considered Indian; less, and you were legally and socially white) and known African blood (no matter how small the amount)in a white person would render that individual legally black. It was proposed by Thomas Jefferson, whose agenda was obviously not to offend the numerous leading families of Virginia who proudly boasted of their descent from Pocahontas. Also, Indian blood was considered more assimilable than African. To this day American Indians jealously restrict membership to their respective tribes based on blood admixture. As to Hispanics being a race, that is clearly a riduculous social invention designed to deprive Spanish-descended people of their right to a Caucasian, European heritage. Are Portuguese-Americans called Lusitanic? I am from California and I had many Mexican friends. While they all proudly claimed their Indian heritage, none of them ever denied their white, Spanish ancestors. In fact, most of them knew which region of Spain their families came from. The older generation of Mexican-Americans were always classified as "white" on all documents.I must also add that children can easily identify people by their race, therefore it is absurd to claim that there is little diversity between the three major races as some people on yhis talk page are claiming.jeanne (talk) 07:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Too long... far too long

This page is too long. Can anyone actually be bothered to read all this waffle? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Binboy69 (talk • contribs) 18:17, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

it's unmanageable. If we cut it down to reasonable size, it will grow back to unreadable bloat in a couple of months. I suppose the history of this article is the best proof of how people are still obsessed with the notion of race. --dab (𒁳) 09:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I would say that this article is the best proof of how people are obsessed with the notion of "race denial". And that is why the article is too can be considered nothing but political correctness waffle. This article is PC run amok. 86.42.221.134 (talk) 14:49, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I think sections 2.2-2.5 could reasonably be moved to Race and genetics and Human genetic variation. We do need to keep some of te content here, but these sections are very detailed, we don't need that much detail in this article. What do you think? Alun (talk) 19:28, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I have a few ideas of compression - I think all the history (1) could be a separate article. I think 2.1 can be compressed simply by removing 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 completely (not deleting but putting in the Human Evolution article. 2.2 also needs serious compression. 2.4 is very important but disproportionately long, can it be cut without losing anything? These to me are the areas to work on first. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I've had a go at reducing the length of sections 2.4.1 and 2.4.2. I don't think I've removed anything major, if I've made any errors then it was done inadvertently. I've moved these sections to Human genetic variation in their entirety, and reduced their length here, so nothing is lost from Wikipedia anyway. Section 2.2 is in serious need of work as it is a hodgepodge of edits made in an uncoordinated way, it needs to be rationalised and made more fluent, this will probably reduce it's length. I feel confident to work on the genetics and subspecies sections because I'm a biologist, but less confident in other sections. Cheers, Alun (talk) 11:48, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
I took care of 2.1.1 and 2.1.2. Can you rework 2.2? I agree with you about it. I think this is the most unweildly and problematic section. We just cannot delete any notable view from a reliable source - but perhaps reorganizing it can allow for compression? Fixing this section will go far to improving the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Well, we have just cut 30 kb. It is still very long, but it is evident to me that articles on complex and controvesial topics will always be longer than average articles. Maybe now is a good time to pause and absorbe the current state of the article and think about how well it works/flows and how balanced it is. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:26, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

images

I am tired of the refusal to include images illustrating the notion discussed. Especially seeing that it is asymmetric, and thus betrays systemic bias. I count nine inline images illustrating Black people, one image illustrating Asian people, and zero (sic) images illustrating White people. This is unacceptable. I don't know what kind of bias this expresses, since I see no reason whatsoever to show images of people falling into the category discussed, but this has got to stop.

Especially in the "history" section, physical appearance is, of course, the one central aspect of race. The Tarim mosaic is a record of the perception of the "Central Asian" ("Caucasoid") and the "East Asian" ("Mongoloid") racial type. If you are a postmodernist, you can say that these are "only" social constructs, but guess what, this is the article to discuss said social construct, and the construct happened to be based on physical appearance. dab (𒁳) 11:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The reason images are a problem is the hypocritical selectivity of certain persons on what images are to be included. On the Black people page, a picture of Anwar Sadat was quickly removed as "non black" even though his skin is fairly dark and his mother was a Sudanese. Apparently you can't be an Egyptian and be 'blek' - heaven forbid. By contrast, the same folks have no problem including a light skinned Egyptian on the White People page. Apparently, such 'approved' models pass the race and color test with no problem when it comes to selective definitions. So until you and others are ready to apply the same standard across the board, rather than a hypocritical double-standard, I don't think you should complain.Larsposenaa (talk) 18:06, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't see the "nine" images illustrating "black" people in this article, I see two, I also see two Asian people, two of Hispanic people and two of "white" people, these eight images of people in the article are in the Law enforcement section. We know they are different races, because the FBI tells us that they are, at least according to the FBI's way of classifying "races". I don't see any other images of people at all. If your point is that there are not images of human diversity, then that's wrong because there they are, in the law enforcement section. Furthermore the claim that there is a "refusal to include images illustrating the notion discussed" is simply wrong, the notion discussed is race, there are plenty of images here that illustrate the concept of "race", and none of them are images of individual people, because the "race" concept is not about images of people, it's about populations.
As for the image of the mosaic. Well all I see is two men, who says they are from different "races"? What's the source? This image is from the ninth or tenth century, and yet you claim it's a "record of the perception of the "Central Asian" ("Caucasoid") and the "East Asian" ("Mongoloid") racial type", as far as I understand it the concept of "racial type" did not even exist in the tenth century, so what you're saying is anachronistic, you are projecting your modern conception of "race" onto the past as if it had any validity. As such this is just original research unless you can find a specific reliable source that states that this particular image is believed to depict "racial" diversity in the tenth century. The text of the article doesn't even mention this place in central Asia, it only mentions Europe and North Africa. Alun (talk) 12:09, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
You are right. The applicable folks in the 10th century clearly recognized different peoples and nations and tribes, but did not deal in 'approved' categories like Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid etc as we have known them since the 18th and 19th centuries via European race classifiers. As for the count of 'white' people, what is this- affirmative action photo day for white people? I see FOUR of them on the FBI group photo, hardly 'exclusion' as claimed above. In fact the FBI mugshot writeup itself says there are 4 white people, one male, one female, one white Hispanic male, and one white Hispanic female. So you have 4 white people showing right off the bat, not only under American calssifications but under old school 'Caucasoid' categories as well. Where then is this so called 'shortage' or 'systematic bias' as claimed above? Besides on the White People article, you have photos of Arabs, light skinned Indians and Egyptians, light skinned Hispanics, and Central Asians all approved under the rubric of 'White'. Again, where is this so-called shortage of white faces? Using these 'inclusive' indications of 'diversity' it seems 'white' photos are very well represented in various Wikipedia race articles, and are actually allowed much more visual 'diversity' that what is tolerated for 'bleks'. Larsposenaa (talk) 18:06, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


Does race even exist? Or is it man made? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.34.50.155 (talk) 18:41, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Best to read the article; I have read separately race can be used to describe levels of sub-species in various life forms (like based on genetics). I have also read Homo sapiens are too closely related to be scientifically considered as different races. For those who love to simplify … if you are human, and reading this, you are African with millions of years ancestry to that continent. Nonprof. Frinkus (talk) 20:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
the problem with this article is that it is nearly impossible to read. It weighs 160k. We might as well not have it, because nobody is going to read it as it is. It is really, really urgent to reduce this article to WP:SS at about a quarter of its current length. --dab (𒁳) 09:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Is this article reliable?

How can you guys deny that the recent ancestry of any human can be inferred via bone analysis, DNA analysis, and soft tissue analysis? How can you accept that people can be grouped by their recent common ancestry and at the same time deny that race exists? This is not a neutral article. It is PC waffle and something needs to be done about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.221.134 (talk) 14:53, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Dude, its that simple - DNA analysis does not provide enough information to separate "africans" from "europeans" or whatever else, or more to the point, it shows that they are not different but the same. The closest you get to "races" is "population that has lived separated for a long time from another population" which leaves you with smth like an aborigine-asian race, an asian-american race and an afro-european race. But even that is misconstrued as...heck, read the article its all in there. This article references contemporary scientific analysis and it does it well. If you have different sources go ahead and cite them.--Echosmoke (talk) 22:27, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
What you said above is simply incorrect.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-16-dna_x.htm

Testing CAN be done to determine a person's racial background. Anything that says otherwise is PC, not the truth.Ryoung122 10:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You are taking this out of context (and this is discussed in the article, under law enforcement). In the United States race usually functions as a good enough surrogate for "population" that one can identify skeletal remains or DNA evidence with races. But this does not always work, and many scientists have argued that it would be dangerous to take this rough correlation too far, e.g. in medical research, where there are diseases that we often identify with one race even though they also occur among members of other races. But this is using DNA evidence and the concept of "race" very narrowly, for policing purposes. Scientists have other objectives when they conduct research, and need to verify claims that hold for all humans and not just people living in the US. And it is there where this correlation completely breaks down. Again, this is discussed in the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:07, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't know about the "politics" but the article goes into detail about research on DNA as well as the analysis of body morphology - often using peer-reviewed life-sciences journal articles as sources, the most reliable sources on the life sciences, I would say. It also draws on peer-reviewed journal articles from the social sciences that explores what people mean by "race" that shows how notions of race often do not involve recent ancestry but beliefs about distant ancestry - again, from the most reliabl sources in the social sciences. You can talk about politics all you want but it sounds like a smokescreen for the fact that 86 just rejects modern science. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:22, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
I reject modern science! Do you know any science my friend? Sense the distinctly American political bias in the article! This article should also be divided into 'race' proper and 'race' as in racism. Please learn some science! 86.42.218.29 (talk) 22:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I also noticed that those who wrote the article have been highly selective. How telling, could this article have been written by Americans by any chance? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.218.29 (talk) 22:46, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
This is a silly statement; this is English Wikipedia and most English speakers who are active here are Americans. But as I am sure you know American scholars are current with the best scholarship in Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Australia. I look at this article and I see a very long list of references. So what significant research has been left out? How selective are you? Have you read all the works cited in this article? Slrubenstein | Talk 23:06, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I think you might benefit from a lesson in biology, evolutionary theory, basic logic and taxonomy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.218.29 (talk) 23:29, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

You might also like to note the political intrusion of the US onto the science cited, but not the science you avoided, of course. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.218.29 (talk) 23:32, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Again, please provide specifics. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:20, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Bias

I removed and fixed the biased introductory paragraphs; they were irrelevant and cited flawed sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RachoCEGA (talk • contribs) 00:31, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

we include all significant views, especially ones we do not like, as long as they come fom verifiable sources. That you do not like them is irrelevant. If you violate our core content polcies, you are in effect engaging in vandalism. Please comply with ou policies. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:48, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
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