Forums → WEPR → Race: A different angle

I was having a discussion the other day with some work mates on race. One of them put down an interesting interperetation in response to this statement:

The only genetic race on the earth is homo sapiens

To which my friend replied(and this is the interesting part):

Completely untrue. Incorrect definition. There are tons of species and one of them is homo sapiens. A species is a group that can theoretically mate with each other to produce fertile offspring. The reason I say theoretically is because some breeds of Canis Lupus are so different in phenotype that they cannot mate yet belong in the same species.

He went on to say:

Homo sapiens is divided into several races, as a race is defined as a group inside a species that shows considerable differences in both anotomical and behavioural phenotype to other groups in the species. Black people do look different to white, people and Indian people etc. Political correctness has fostered the idea of 'there is only 1 race: the human race. It is the abuse of this concept that some races are better than others which is flawed.

He continued(I am separating his speech because they are different lines of argument):

Asian people have a higher chance of being lactose intolerant. That is not racist, it is true. Saying that they are inferior is invalid, but has been the reason that comparative research, that could teach us lots about our evolutionary history is astill nearly nonexistent. Wanting to compare the asian with the european genome has become stigmatized by past racial superiority idiocy which is a shame. There are differences and not being able to say so isn't going to solve the racial conflict that plague societies across the globe at this moment.

That more or less is what he said.

The first question of note is clssification and it's applicability to the concept of 'human races'.

To begin one should look into the current debates in classification biology. Firstly the concept of species is not an unchanging fact. Many different variations exist in current works. A very informative study on the matter can be found here tackling the 26 species concepts. Bsaically the very idea that species are set is debatable.

What does that mean with regards to this topic then? Genetic variation does seem to have a lot of support in current literature. So does genetic variation explain the variation between races? Before I attempt to answer this I believe that one should understand what the common concept of human race is. To be brief race is defined as ''These old racial categoreis were defined by externally visible traits primarily skin colour, facial features, shape and size of the body and head as well as the underlying skeleton'' AAPA Statement on Biological Aspects of Race.

So does that mean the genetics match the phenotypical traits? The answer is no and here's why:

âThe problem is hard in part because the implicit definition of what makes a person a member of a particular race differs from region to region across the globe. Someone classified as "blackâ in the U.S., for instance, might be considered âwhiteâ in Brazil and âcoloredâ (a category distinguished from both âblackâ and "white&quot in South Africa."

âMany studies have demonstrated that roughly 90 percent of human genetic variation occurs within a population living on a given continent, whereas about 10 percent of the variation distinguishes continental populations. In other words, individuals from different populations are, on average, just slightly more different from one another than are individuals from the same population. Human populations are very similar, but they often can be distinguished.â

[regarding a research project using pure genetic markers and no knowledge of location] âOur analysis yielded four different groups. When we added the labels back to see whether each individualâs group assignment correlated to common, predefined labels for race or ethnicity, we saw that two of the groups consisted only of individuals from sub-Saharan Africa, with one of those two made up almost entirely of Mbuti Pygmies. The other two groups consisted only of individuals from Europe and East Asia, respectively. We found that we needed 60 Alu polymorphisms to assign individuals to their continent of origin with 90 percent accuracy. To achieve nearly 100 percent accuracy, however, we needed to use about 100 Alus.â

Conclusion?

âGiven that people can be sorted broadly into groups using genetic data, do common notions of race correspond to underlying genetic differences among populations? In some cases they do, but often they do not. For instance, skin color or facial featuresâ"traits influenced by natural selectionâ"are routinely used to divide people into races. But groups with similar physical characteristics as a result of selection can be quite different genetically. Individuals from sub-Saharan Africa and Australian Aborigines might have similar skin pigmentation (because of adapting to strong sun), but genetically they are quite dissimilar.â

Does Race Exist?(PDF)

In summary of the above, genetics and physical characteristics do not overlap each other. However this does not rule out the concept of race, however when classifying an individual, one must do so either on phenotypical traits or genetics. One cannot have it both ways.

Again, however, does that demerit classification based on phenotypical traits? The genetic aspect can be argued on a medical basis, yet even this type of classification is limited and in most parts completely unnescessary.

I would be interested to see how people respond to this as race is such a hot issue whether you like it or not.