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Cleanup!

This article is HUGE. It probably needs to be reorganized and seperated into various subarticles. The referencing is also horrible and has to be fixed.

Fixing all of these would take a lot of effort and time - but I'm affraid it's necessary. This article is likely to be explanded even more, but the way it is organized, there's no systematic way of expanding it other than adding new sections. This was probably the original problem and has led to the expansion of the article to this level.

Anyone willing to help? Any ideas about how the article should be divided out? Aucaman 04:55, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The article is really really HUGE but it's extremely comprehensive and involves huge research effort. Why does article wiki have to be short? What about an exception for this masterpiece of wiki page? --Yau 18:56, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

The "race" notion is simply a mental scheme for classifying people. Whether it is useful depends upon the user. An enforcer of EEOC regulations will find this classification method more useful than will a molecular anthropologist. The problem with this article, or any article or a college course on the topic, is that those who find the "race" notion useful often justify it by confabulating appeals to authority: "science says," or "the bible says," or "the law says," or "history says." And so the article tries to teach what science (or the law or whatever authority) really says. It thus takes on the impossible job of teaching all human knowledge regarding all past and present human classification schemes to an uninformed reader. This, of course, is a hopeless task. Those who find the "race" notion useful want to persuade those who scoff at it, and those to whom it is useless want the others to abandon it. To avoid POV accusations, every conceivable argument for every conceivable variant of every mutually contradictory classification scheme that uses the term "race" gets text space. My advice? The article should be little more than a series of links:

• How "race" is used in biology.
• How "race" is used in genetics.
• How "race" is used in medicine.
• How "race" is used in cultural anthropology.
• How "race" is used in physical anthropology.
• How "race" is used in phylogeography.
• How "race" is used in the EEOC.
• How "race" is used in the census.
• How "race" is used in U.S. forensic anthropology.
• How "race" is used in U.S. history.
• How "race" is used around the world today.
• How "race" is used by criminal law enforcement.
• How "race" is used in politics.
• How "race" is used in education.
• How "race" is used in the military.
• Etc., etc. etc.

Semantically speaking, the term has so many different referents that debate over which is the "correct" refferent is bound to be both contentious and sterile. -- Frank W Sweet 16:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with all of this, but it's a little too late to rewrite the whole article. I'm going to capture some of the independent sections into subarticles. Someone would have to go in there and summarize some of these back into this article. Aucaman 00:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Update

I'm going to be moving Human genetic variation to the article Human genetic variation. Also moving Social interpretation of physical variation, Case studies in the social construction of race, and Practical use of "race" to Social interpretations of race. Someone would have to go in and summarize some of these back into these articles. Aucaman 00:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Bravo! I have added links to Human genetic variation and Social interpretations of race in Negroid, Caucasoid, and Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, so that readers interested in one or the other aspect of the "race" notion can go directly to the information. I also left links to the main Race article for those who want an overview. -- Frank W Sweet 10:30, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no objection to creating linked articles, but without the material the Race article violates NPOV. Therefore, I urge Aucaman (or Frank Sweet) to work on the summaries before moving the content. Let's not leave the article full of holes, especially when you are taking out content fundamental to understanding what race is and is not. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:30, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree to this. The only part that needs summarizing is Human genetic variation. It's not going to be easy. I'm going to bring back the whole thing until it can be summarized. Aucaman 18:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

As for me, I am just an applauding, admiring audience. I have no intention of contributing until after the dust settles, and even then only after discussing any proposed tweaks with everybody. This is a (deservedly) featured article into which went a lot of work. -- Frank W Sweet 18:46, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. We all understand there is a general limit to the size of Misplaced Pages articles based on the capacity of servers. That said, I beg you to bear in mind one thing as you do this valuable work: despite the links, many readers will read only this article, and assess their understanding of race against only what is in this article. Given that many people are dogmatic in their belief that races are natural, biological things, and there are also people who have no idea how scientists view genotypic and phenotypic variation among humans, and, finally, that beliefs about race and biological difference have often times been a matter of life or death for huge numbers of humans, and continues to be a contested policy issue in many countries, well, you can see why it is so important to maintain stringent NPOV, and to communicate substantive information. This doesn't mean we cannot cut and create linked articles, only that we really need to be careful about what remains in this one. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:43, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm all aware of that. Valid concerns. I tried restoring the section, but some BOT removed it! I've contacted the owner of the BOT and the section would be restored pretty soon. Aucaman 19:03, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Through the 19th century, race was a unifying concept across several scientific disciplines, including language, anthropology, biology. Standard scientific theory presupposed racist explanations for culture and language politics and economy. As a student of biology in the 60s and graduate student of anthropology and linguiustics in the 60s/70s, racism as a theoretical construct was still part of the curricula, avowedly not a significant part by then, but a part. I don't think that race as a scientific idea was rejected in the 40s. Boaz was rejected by the scientific community for attacking racist science in the earlier decade of the century. However biological racism was still part of anthropological study when I was a student so I think the dates at which racism was scientifically disavowed should be changed and modified. Certainly not 1940s.

Some educators in Medical science and medical anthropology were teaching biological racism as science well into the 80s.

10june2006

There was a core agreement across many sciences throughout the 19th and 20th century so listing the differences as seperate entries without defining some of the core agreements would be a disservice of describing the role of racism in science history

References

I have to add that the referencing of this article is pretty horrible. Although bibliography-style referencing is used widely in academia, using it here would probably be against WP:V. I personally recommend using footnotes, but other alternatives are fine as long as it's clear where each specific information is coming from. Aucaman 19:03, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I could go either way on this. Since Rikurzhen has really contributed an awful lot to this article, I would like to know what he thinks about this ... Slrubenstein | Talk 19:11, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

My anthro and soc profs wanted parenthetical in-line citations (like the article has now) and my history profs wanted footnotes, so I am pretty good at converting back and forth. If y'all decide to switch, I would be willing to volunteer to go through the article and change the existing citations. -- Frank W Sweet 19:25, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

m:Cite.php works pretty well, as long as I don't have to do the conversion. This should be done to the spin-off articles as well. --Rikurzhen 19:28, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I argued strenuously (and got my way) to have in-line citations whenever practicable. The trouble with footnotes is that the conscientious reader (me) feels compelled to look down at the bottom of the page and read each footnote as it comes along. It's a drag to discover that an in-line "ibid" would have taken care of the whole thing. When it on-line, the time delay can be considerable. Real footnotes should be reserved for when you have something to say that won't fit into the main article's flow, but that people are going to kill you for if you don't mention it. (E.g., "Many authors, semi-conversant with ancient Chinese philosophy(ftn.99), instruct their followers that yin-yang theory was developed by and remains firmly associated with Daoism when in actually the facts are quite otherwise (ftn. 100).) If you are trying to talk about how 4th century Buddhists tried to deal with the Chinese penchant for thinking in yin-yang terms, it may not be the place to go back into the history of a thousand or so years before. But summarizing the researches of Fung Yu-lan in a footnote may save readers lots of cognitive dissonance down the road. Don't give the Wiki reader yo-yo eyes. Give him in-line citations first, links second, and in the rare event that you have to say more than book nickname and page number, give the reader a footnote. Skipping over something like {Smith, 235) hardly even erupts into conscious awareness after a while, and your readers will thank you for your being so considerate. P0M 06:03, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

BIAS

Coon already solved the issue of race, the article gives the imperssion he is not valid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.126.136.204 (talk • contribs)

Small change to Tang research

"near-perfect indicator of an individual's genetic profile" has been changed to "near-perfect indicator of an individual's inclusion within a genetic cluster "

I think it is going too far (even if you don't dispute Tang) to say that his results give a "near-perfect indicator of an individual's genetic profile". Macgruder 06:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

deleted allegory

I deleted a hypothetical for three reaons. First, the term " a mistaken social construction" is silly. Social constructions are not mistakes, they are social constructions; their "truthfulness" is evaluated by completely different criteria than other claims. Second, the hypothesis is poorly chosen. Population distributions between Paris and Peking do not clearly illustrtate clines because they have been shaped by political and economic forces. Finally, the whole thing smacks of original research. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

changes, May 25

I just made three big changes. First, I put the survey information on shanging use by scientists of the word race up front. I do not mind if others agree it belongs at the end of the article, but since the introduction points out that scientists disagree over how to use the word, it belongs up front. Moreover, I removed from this section argumentative material - the articel that follows goes into tall the issues at length. Second, I removed sections on ethnicity versus ancestry as ways of identifying people for two reasons: first, it is argumentative (and this topic is controversial enough without our going out of our way to feed the fire). The article goes over many different scientific discoveries that has led scientists to a more nuanced view of race, and that have led scientists to a variety of approaches - all of this is sophisticated in the best tradition of science, and our article does a good job explaining it. to then try ...once again ... to reduce research on race to two views (social versus biological) and then to try to sum up reasons for one and then reasons for the other is in my opinion the wrong direction and sets the article back four years. Second, it was superficial - the arguments on ancestry oversimplified much of the valuable content above to the point of silliness, and the section on ethnicity just ignores what drives most social-science use of ethnicity; together the two article mixed a lot of apples and oranges. Third, I reintroduced the sections on how race is used in law enforcement, in medicine, etc. I do this for two reasons: first, it is good science, as it shows how "race" can be operationalized and used meaningfully in the pursuit of different but clear ends. Second, it is good social science, because it shows how the valididty of race depends on the context in which it is used. The result is not a black and white argument (race is real, race is not real, or even sillier, race is social or race is biological) but rather a more sophisticated account of how different people in different fields use race in different ways for different reasons. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:03, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

help with some reorganization - attn: Rikurzhen, Frank Sweet

Could Rikurzhen or Frank Sweet help here? I think some of this material should be re-integrated into the article, but in either section 4.1.3, or 4.2, or 4.3. Could you do what you think is best?

My main objection to the following is that it is a little polemical. Putting it in the section on cladistics is a way of reframing it as information rathe than as argument. I do have two objections to the contents as written. First, it should not be presented as opposed toor an alternative to "ethniciy," which mixes apples and orranges. I think there is no need even to mention ethnicity in this context.

Second, I think to be consistent with the article as it is, we should avoid the use of "ancestry" as much as possible and use "lineage" as appropriate. Thanks, Steve

An alternative to the use of racial or ethnic categories is to categorize individuals in terms of ancestry. Ancestry may be defined geographically (e.g., Asian, sub-Saharan African, or northern European), geopolitically (e.g., Vietnamese, Zambian, or Norwegian), or culturally (e.g., Brahmin, Lemba, or Apache). The definition of ancestry may recognize a single predominant source or multiple sources. Ancestry can be ascribed to an individual by an observer, as was the case with the U.S. census prior to 1960; it can be identified by an individual from a list of possibilities or with use of terms drawn from that person's experience; or it can be calculated from genetic data by use of loci with allele frequencies that differ geographically, as described above. At least among those individuals who participate in biomedical research, genetic estimates of biogeographical ancestry generally agree with self-assessed ancestry (Tang et al. 2005), but in an unknown percentage of cases, they do not (Brodwin 2002; Kaplan 2003).

Genetic data can be used to infer population structure and assign individuals to groups that often correspond with their self-identified geographical ancestry. The inference of population structure from multilocus genotyping depends on the selection of a large number of informative genetic markers. These studies usually find that groups of humans living on the same continent are more similar to one another than to groups living on different continents. Many such studies are criticized for assigning group identity a priori. However, even if group identity is stripped and group identity assigned a posteriori using only genetic data, population structure can still be inferred. For example, using 993 markers, Rosenberg et al. (2005) were able to assign 1,048 individuals from 52 populations around the globe to one of six genetic clusters, which correspond to major geographic regions.

However, in analyses that assign individuals to group it becomes less apparent that self-described racial groups are reliable indicators of ancestry. One cause of the reduced power of the assignment of individuals to groups is admixture. Some racial or ethnic groups, especially Hispanic groups, do not have homogenous ancestry. For example, self-described African Americans tend to have a mix of West African and European ancestry. Shriver et al. (2003) found that on average African Americans have ~80% African ancestry. Likewise, many white Americans have mixed European and African ancestry, where ~30% of whites have less than 90% European ancestry. In this context, it is becoming more commonplace to describe "race" as fractional ancestry. Without the use of genotyping, this has been approximated by the self-described ancestry of an individual's grand-parents.

Nevertheless, recent research indicates that self-described race is a near-perfect indicator of an individual's genetic profile, at least in the United States. Using 326 genetic markers, Tang et al. (2005) identified 4 genetic clusters among 3,636 individuals sampled from 15 locations in the United States, and were able to correctly assign individuals to groups that correspond with their self-described race (white, African American, East Asian, or Hispanic) for all but 5 individuals (an error rate of 0.14%). They conclude that ancient ancestry, which correlates tightly with self-described race and not current residence, is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.

Genetic techniques that distinguish ancestry between continents can also be used to describe ancestry within continents. However, the study of intra-continental ancestry may require a greater number of informative markers. Populations from neighboring geographic regions typically share more recent common ancestors. As a result, allele frequencies will be correlated between these groups. This phenomenon is often seen as a cline of allele frequencies. The existence of allelic clines has been offered as evidence that individuals cannot be allocated into genetic clusters (Kittles & Weiss 2003). However, others argue that low levels of differentiation between groups merely make the assignment to groups more difficult, not impossible (Bamshad et al. 2004).

To repeat, I do think this should be rewritten to (1) get rid of any discussion of "ethniciy," which these passages misrepresents and ends up mixing apples and oranges. I think there is no need even to mention ethnicity in this context. (2) to be consistent with the article as it is, we should avoid the use of "ancestry" as much as possible and use "lineage" as appropriate. I think by putting it in the section on cladistics, it will become less polemical and more informative. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 15:21, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree that this needs any re-writing, especially on the "ethnicity" and "ancestry" points. Most of the text seems to have come from the public domain NHGRI review paper, which if it has a bias it against the importance of race. Ancestry has a relatively precise definition, whereas "lineage" is a less commonly used term. "Ethnicity" is being used to supplement "race" as a catch-all term for any group related by blood, however delineated. --Rikurzhen 11:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

source needed

Can we have a ciation for this? "As a consequence, inter-racial marriages are more common, and more accepted, among highly-educated Afro-Brazilians than lower-educated ones." I ask because it seems to contradict Goldstein's latest article on the topic. Maybe I am wrong ... so, can we just have a citation? Slrubenstein | Talk 14:07, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

About the Survey

A 1985 survey (Lieberman et al. 1992) asked 1,200 scientists how many disagree with the following proposition: "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens." The responses were:

Did they really ask about Homo sapiens, or Homo sapiens sapiens? It's not surprising that the Neanderthal man would be placed in a different subspecies from us... :-) FilipeS 22:20, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The current majority view is that Neanderthals were a separate species Homo neanderthalensis, rather than a subspecies of H. sapiens. -- 201.78.233.162 21:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Racism

Where should these go in the article?

Bernard Lewis, in “Identifying the Historical Roots of Racism” points to the “purity of blood” doctrine of the 15th century by which it was believed “the purity of the faith and of Christian society could be achieved.” Lewis identifies it as a “historically recognizable source” of “modern ideological racism.” “ In this we may see the beginnings of anti-Semitism, properly so-called; that is to say, a new kind of hostility to Jews” which is based on “racial or ethnic differences.” Doright 08:26, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Robert Michael argues: “Not only did institutionalized racism begin in 15th-century Spain,” but “a Christian racism can be detected as early as the 4th century in Sts. Augustine and John Chrysostom.” “Moreover, is not the belief in inherent and inherited traits what characterizes 19th-century racism as well, the same emphasis on evil vs good blood occurs among the Spanish, and is implied in Luther, as well as 19th-century writers.” Doright 08:26, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be best fit under the article racism, or Anti-Semitism. For this article, you could try to put in section 2.1 around the part about the Inquisition. --Archon Wing 00:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

"Current" disagreement across disciplines (1985 !!!)

The title says "current", and the information is not current at all... You should talk about the more recent resaearch which show that there is no race when we study the genome. 1985 is a very old date when we speak about genetic.

i've updated this, despite disagreeing with the premise of your comment. --Rikurzhen 11:42, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

The most recent research shows that the classical racial division has very old roots and is thus valid. The fact that some "racial groups" (e.g. American Indians, West Africans+Bantus, some mongoloids) are in fact racial mixtures stabilized during the last Ice Age can't change much on it. Centrum99 12:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

intro

I did some clearn-up from the intro, deleting a few sentences. The sentences I deleted pretty much just provided more detail about the complexity of using the word race. I think this level of detail is distracting in an introduction and can should and I believe is dealt with in the body of the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:42, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Brazilian racial terms

I added quick definitions for the Brazilian racial terms moreno claro and mulato claro. I don't think that there's any point in adding long explanations of these terms to this article, but if anyone can improve on my quick glosses, please do so. -- 201.78.233.162 21:37, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

White (people)

The contributors to White (people) have dwindled down to just a few over the past month, and they are locked in an unproductive edit dispute. One issue is whether some fringe views may be getting disproportionate space. The article would benefit from additional input and a broader consensus. I've asked for protection due to a revert war, but it should be brief. -Will Beback 09:23, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. The White (people) article is fairly ridiculous in terms of its content to begin with, and is a HUGE article given how simple it is to summarize the entire article: "White people is a term used to describe Caucasians. Some people like the term and some do not." That's it. That's ALL you need for that entire article that is well over the normal length.

2 or 3 users have begun to flame one another and constantly undo and/or revert, create an incredibly insipid situation. The entire article should be removed and it can be summarized, if it isn't already addressed, in the Race article.--ThatBajoranGuy 05:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

continent of ancestry

I removed this from the page for further discussion:

The term continent of ancestry is gaining acceptance as a replacement for the word race.

I do not think continent of ancestry is yet popular enough to merit mention in the first paragraph. Moreover, the NYT article, while interesting, is not about continent of ancestry. It mentions it once but has no data on its "gaining acceptance." Slrubenstein | Talk 12:28, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I enjoyed the "race" article, and did not mind its bigness nor its variety of approaches, so be circumspect in undertaking any massive re-editing just for slimness. I consulted this article (as a genetically-uninformed biochemist) because I had heard two things regarding race. The first was the claim that the human genome project has provided data that basically do not allow for the support of the "race" concept. Although the genome project and sequencing in general are mentioned in a number of places, the race article seems a little less grounded in genomic data than I would have expected, giving it a bit of an antiquated feel. Are there reasons for this? Should it be mentioned that the genomic work is not yet definitive or never will be? I do not know the answer, I only raise the question. Second, I had heard (read in Guns Germs and Steel?) that African populations showed large diversity between groups, with these groups not particularly more related to each other than to groups outside Africa - suggesting that the term "african" might not be tenable? One part of the article here differentiates west and northern african, but is this general claim correct?

I believe that your concerns are addressed (and anticipated by) those who argue that "race" should be replaced by discussing populations and clines - a view already well-expressed in the article, and not new. By the way, if you think you may contribute more to Misplaced Pages, please consider registring and also sign your name. If you are unregistered you should still sign your name with four tildes which will leave a time signature. thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 16:24, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

We should build a list of review papers in the external links section for academics. Maybe a further reading section. --Rikurzhen 20:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Done --Rikurzhen 20:57, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Slrubenstein | Talk 10:40, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

race differences in IQ link

I think that whole study is a load of non-sense and if there was that much difference between the intelligence or "cranial capacity" of races, then we would be classified as different species or sub-species. That link is really racist and is basically saying that certain races are stupid compared to others, even if they are speaking about "average differences". The article only outlines their claims/theories they make and arent backed by any referenced data whatsoever. I can tell you right now that those researchers are just plain wrong in much of what they say and their study is basically a load of crap (eg. I've never met a person in my life who could possibly have a brain thats 5 cubic inches smaller than mine, with the possible exception of people who have a certain mental diasbility or handicap). The link should be removed. 69.157.126.241 23:07, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

APA journals are citable by Misplaced Pages.--Nectar 02:44, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I see your point. The article itself however remains to be nothing more than unfounded and misleading propganda from the researchers radical and biased agenda. There are differences between us, but not on the level they're speaking of and the large differences in IQ testing are by no means wholly or mainly genetic. The IQ test itself is a biased and unreliable measure of ones intelligence (itself hard to define) or cognitive ability/potential. 69.157.126.241 00:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

• Well, the economic difference between Japan and Haiti is just not big, the economic stats of these two countries are just biased and unreliable, aren't they? Centrum99 13:04, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
• If the IQ test is biased and unreliable, tell please all those blacks living in American ghettos that they should go to universities instead of selling crack and killing each other in the street. They are just perfectly equal to whites and Asians, so the only reason, why they stay there lies probably in their lazines or in the fact that they are so goodhearted that they leave all the places at the universities to other people. The same case is with Haitians or black Africans: They don't want to advance, because they don't want to increase world's pollution, global warming and the gas mileage! How nice! YahooMan, 22.10.2006

Misplaced Pages is probably not the place to try to spark spontaneous enlightenment, and a discussion on the content of an article on a social construct called "race" is not the place to engage in the elucidation of epigenetic determination of individual characteristics, prenatal nutritional and endocrine factors, early childhood nutrition and social nurture, the general dynamic of fist, stick, knife, gun and its relationship to a dysfunctional society, etc., etc. That being said, let me register my vote for saying to "all those blacks living in American ghettos" what my grandmother said many times in many ways to me, "When you get to college..." P0M 01:20, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hateful and racist comments have no place in a Misplaced Pages article. Everyone knows that African Americans score low on intelligence tests. It is not necessary to mention that in the article. Lestrade 13:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Brazil part

In the text is mentioned a research, but it's not mentioned who done it, neither when or were it was published. I think, for an encyclopedia, it need to be removed, if no one REALLY find the research. Lemke --201.35.238.191 20:57, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

An excellent point. I added the citation for Harris, which covers this objection. However, I do not have access to more recent work - I wish someone else would draw on it to improve this section. Especially, Enrique Desmond Arias´s book, "Blackness Without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil, and Donna Goldstein´s book, "Laughter Out of Place: Race, Class, Violence, and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown." Also, Donna Goldstein´s 1999 article in American Anthropologist, "Interracial Sex and Sexual Democracy in Brazil." I do not currently have access to these, but even just incorporating information from this article would be a vast improvement. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Gaps and Missteps: First, Blackness Without Ethnicity was written by Livio Sansone, not Arias. I have written an extensive master's thesis on race in Brazil, and particularly as it has been compared to the U.S. racial model since the time of Freyre (1930s). If someone is in fact interested in this, I'd be happy to add sources, but I'm not sure that my long list of references is really appropriate in this case. For the record, the most relevant and recent works would come from Michael Hanchard, Sansone, Thomas Skidmore, Donna Goldstein, Ed Telles, and Miguel Vale de Almeida, among many others. Further, acting as if Freyre's narrative was an end to the debate over racial democracy (another talking point we should be adding to this section) is ridiculous. Everyone from Thales de Azevedo to E. Franklin Frazier to Carl Degler and on and on have commented on this debate, but perhaps only a shorter summary of the argument is necessary. That being the case, Marvin Harris' work is far from recent or the only viewpoint, and really shouldn't be the only person cited here (ok, along with Freyre), as it seems Slrubenstein recognizes. And forgetting to link socioeconomic class to the discussion is a huge gap here. Please comment back if you'd like to see these kinds of things added to the article as I don't want to burden it with further length if no one cares to see it. -M.H.

MH, could you work on updating this section, drawing on the sources you mention? Be careful not to introduce your own argument, and keep the Marvin Harris stuff - just make clear that it is dated and needs to be supplemented with the recent research/debates. I think as long as add to (including adding anything about the academic or political context in which earlier researchers worked) father than flat out replaced what is there, and scrupilously comply with WP:NOR and WP:NPOV I think no one will object to and on the contrary appreciate your work. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

embryology

would sympathtic editors consider a positive vote here? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:34, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Law Enforcement

I have concerns that many areas in this article don't represent a worldwide view, after looking at the section on law enforcement.100110100 04:40, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Since every country has its own laws, this particular section cannot synthesize a worldwide view. At best it can provide a sample of views from law enforcement in diverse countries. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:15, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

For a good resource on this, it might be worth adding Ian Haney Lopez's work on White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. -M.H.

Go ahead. You can even summarize it as a case-study. What is important is to do so in a way that leaves room for other points of view (as long as they too come from verifiable sources), and leaves room perhaps for case-studies from other countries. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:34, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

caucasoid, mongoloid, negroid articles

The Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid articles are in need of some major cleanup and rewriting. They're mostly filled with stuff from Carleton S. Coon and some 19th century racial theorists. If anyone on here has time to spare and more scientifically accepted information to contribute to those articles, it would be greatly appreciated. --Pravit 03:31, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

These races were defined by craniofacial measurements that were readily available in the 19th century. The anthropologists who measured skulls a century ago are still credible in their measurments.--Dark Tichondrias 00:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The sections of those articles I am opposed to are the ones that suggest that some of these races or their subgroups are more or less evolved than the other. As well as the ridiculous section about supposed Mongoloid mental traits, which I would imagine are not determined by craniofacial measurements. -Pravit 02:59, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Exactly what "ridicuous section about suppossed mongoloid mental traits" would that be? Also I don't see any suggestion anywhere that some groups are "less evolved" than others. Paul B 09:05, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Physical anthropologists rejected these categories quite some time ago. They are not scientific categories. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:24, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, physical anthropologists serving the official propaganda lost common sense and rejected these cathegories. There just exists nothing like 9-times higher violent crime rate of black Americans. That's only an illusion. As well as 8 black finalists of West African heritage in the 100 m at every world's athletic event since 1988 is only an illusion. And the flood of Kenyans at long distances, whose sprinters are so weak that they even don't enter first rounds. (Why?) And all the white men in weightlifting competitions. That's only a phantasy. All people are just equal in everything. P.S.: The king is naked! Yahooman, 22.10.2006

Or maybe the real reason why prominent anthropologists like Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and Jared Diamond deny the validity of race, is because given the fact that antiquated classifications by Blumenbach and Carleton Coon have been shot to holes (and the fact that there exists only one living subspecies of Homo sapiens, that human racial groups would be a taxonomic category below subspecies, and as such these races (divisions within the living subspecies H. sapiens sapiens) are not all that discrete due to constant gene flow) yet some racists and social darwinists (I refuse to capitalize the 'D' in social darwinism so as not to insult the legacy of one of the greatest scientists) including J. P. Rushton, Jensen, Steven Sailer, and *cough* Yahooman might distort their more objective and accurate studies of human biodiversity. Case in point, Yahooman's attempt at a modern racial classification is surprisingly progressive and seems accurate (though may have minor methodological flaws), AND his own classification system undermines his racist views. For instance, this hypothesis may lend support to moderate forms of afrocentricism... I think that studying human biodiversity would ultimately fight racism, but that some people are too damn stubborn and ignorant.

The official propaganda? What on earth does this mean? All of your sentences are non-sequitors and demonstrate nothing relevant to the issue. Good to see that whatever country you come from promotes a good education in basic science!!Slrubenstein | Talk 14:37, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

You want to deny that the current "official scientific view" is not a silly propaganda? While our knowledge of racial differences gradually advances, and due to modern genetics, we already know, how different racial types came into being, the servile American Anthropological Association states that "The biological concept of race . . . has no basis in science." I would say that with this statement, science returns back to the medieval era. But we all know, why "the biological concept of race . . . has no basis in science". It is because it has so big a basis that all attempts to create an equal multiracial society desperately fail. Hence we must eventually pretend (like the people in Andersen's fairy-tale) that there exist no races, only to prolonge the sure agonia of the social multi-culti utopias in the Western world. If you want to start studying subtle racial biology, you can look at pages that I just set up on WIKIPEDIA: http://en.wikipedia.org/Nilotic_type http://en.wikipedia.org/West_african_type If you don't want, I can offer a web site summing up results of the most progressive genetic research on race, officially permitted by the jezuites and the American government and thus the only correct: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm YahooMan, 23.10.2006

OH, i get it, the "official propaganda" is scientific research and findings you do not like. Too bad, science is not dictated by your own interests or desires. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:23, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Since your knowledge of these things is obviously very poor, I don't see any reason, why to continue in a discussion with you. You still must learn a lot. Perhaps sometimes in the future you wil recognize the difference between demagogy and science. YahooMan, 24.10.2006

I'm sure we could all learn a lot. You could learn that insulting editors acting in good faith is not appropriate. If you have recent sources in anthropological literature or in the work of geneticists that supports the ty

Acting in good faith is no excuse for incompetence. Many - if not all - incompetent people act in good faith. But as I said, you will have a chance to read all my conclusions on my prepared page about archeogenetics. I will post a link to it at the right time. However, since I must work about 1000 articles, it won't be so soon. YahooMan, 23.10.2006

You do not get it. We do not care about "your" conclusions. Misplaced Pages articles must adhere to our NPOV and NOR policies. And no articles are "yourse." Slrubenstein | Talk 16:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I didn't say that the page would be placed on Misplaced Pages. YahooMan, 23.10.2006

Now see I always thought that Nazi race science such as what you proclaim was official propaganda...After all, their science never helped them detect the instances of Jews who joined their ranks in order to survive before they had a chance to slap a Star of David on them and tattoo their arms. Funny that you claim western science is official propaganda. --Strothra 02:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

To Strothra: It is not a western science. It is a Neo-Marxist science. Centrum99 21:58, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Caucasians, Mongols, and Negroes are all exactly the same as each other. Anyone who says otherwise must be a hateful racist. Caucasians love to run; Mongols readily respond to rhythmic sounds; Negroes score very high on SAT tests. There are no differences that are scientifically measurable.71.125.134.12 21:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Another way of classifying race?

This article doesn't seem to mention the antiquated form of race classification of Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Capoid, Australoid. Is that because it already has an article and/or doesn't refer to modern human classification? 66.229.182.113 17:55, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this classification is antiquated. We can now create a modern model based on the results of genetic research. In fact, there is no "negroid race" in the Sub-Saharan Africa; there actually exist four genetically different racial lineages. And American Indians should be classified as a separate racial group; they have relatively little in common with mongoloids genetically. Centrum99 13:56, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Modern genetic research has showed, how we should understand racial classification. I don't understand, why you always cite arguments that look like a science on the level of a basic school. Racial differences based on skin color?? A man, who wrote about it, has zero knowledge of anthropology! We just already know how different racial groups evolved and mixed, so why don't you write about it? Are you too lazy to find these new pieces of knowledge? So why do you then write a big article about race? The racial classification must start from the situation 35 000 years ago, because until that time, all human populations evolved isolated and developed basic racial traits that we see in main races today. The situation then was as follows:

THE AFRICAN GROUPS ("PALEONEGRIDS"):

1/ Proto-Khoisan groups in South Africa characterized by Y-haplogroup A and mtDNA haplogroups L1d/L1k (there are new discoveries of archaic mtDNA haplogroups and their system has been constantly changing). They are the oldest human group that diverged from the rest of mankind perhaps 100.000 years ago

2/ Proto-Nilotes in the south-east Sahara bearing a subclade of A (A3b2) - thus they were distantly related to Khoisan and represent a population that diverged from Khoisan a long time ago, headed for north, and developed extreme physical adaptation to the hot climate of the Sahara

3/ Proto-Pygmies in the forests of West-Central Africa (Y-haplogroup B+mtDNA haplogroups L1+L2). The second oldest human lineage; the dates of approximate divergence vary, but it was about 60 000-80 000 years ago

THE NON-AFRICAN GROUPS - belonging to the same Y-chromosomal lineage that separated maybe more than 70 000 years ago and - with one exception - left Africa:

4/ Neonegrids in the Sahara (E3a+L3), a dark population with somewhat Europoid traits that will head for south in the next 10 000 years and will play a key role in the formation of the "Negroid race". They were the only people of the non-African lineage that stayed in Africa.

5/ Paleoeuropids in the Near East (Y-macrohaplogroup F) that then massively expanded to Central Asia, Europe, India, even south-east Asia (New Guinea) and will continue to America

6/ Australoid groups in South Asia and Australasia (C+M) - a very broad cathegory for archaic forms, descendants of the first human wave (the so-called "Coastal Clan") probably more than 60 000 years ago

7/ Paleomongolids in east-central Asia (Mongolia, northern China) (C+M) - distantly related to Australoids, actually a cold-adapted form of Australoids that may have also penetrated to America 32 000 years ago

8/ Paleoainids in the Far East and also elsewhere (Andaman Islands) (Y-haplogroup D)

And how did modern "Europoids, Mongoloids, Negroids and Australoids" came into being?

1/ Archaic Paleoeuropids/Cro Magnons came to Europe from Central Asia and drove out Neanderthals about 30 000 years ago. Subsequently they mixed with another paleoeuropid wave from the Near East (the bearers of the Gravettian culture). Their mixture became a racial core of today's Europeans

2/ Another Paleoeuropids bearing Y-haplogroups N and O headed for Siberia and took paleomongolid women; the mixture became a core of today's mongoloids like e.g. Ugrofins, Chinese, Vietnamese or the Yakut. The real MONGOLIDS with the most extreme traits of the mongoloid race stayed in South-Central Siberia and their current descendants are Mongols, Buryats or Evenks.

3/ Another Paleoeuropids bearing Y-haplogroup Q, closely related to Cro-Magnons, headed for Siberia and, too, took paleomongolid women; however, the admixture was not as high as in the case of the bearers of N+O. These people then headed for north-east and about 20 000 years ago crossed the Bering strait. Today you know them well as American Indians.

4/ Another Paleoeuropids bearing Y-haplogroup H invaded India, exterminated or eliminated the Australoid (better said: Veddoid) male population, mixed with australoid women and became a core of the paleolithic population of India, from which, by the way, also European Gypsies come from

5/ Another Paleoeuropids bearing Y-haplogroup M headed for South-East Asia and reached New Guinea. Here they mixed with local australoids/negritos and gave birth to current Papuans

6/ The Neonegrid Saharan hunters were forced to vaccate the Sahara ca. 25 000 years ago and settled in better areas around the dessicating desert. One part of them (Y-haplogroup E3a) settled in West Africa and mixed with Pygmies. From this mixture, the modern West African populations and also Bantu groups come from

7/ Another Neonegrid group (E3b1) survived the last ice age in the Horn of Africa. Then it expanded to North Africa and the Levant, where it imposed their Afro-Asiatic languange on aboriginal populations. From the later mixture of Semites coming from Arabia, the so-called Ethiopid racial type came into being. In fact, its "Europoid" look is not only due to the mixture with Semites; the original Neonegrid population may have already posessed some "Europoid" traits, probably like in today's Somalis.

8/ Several europid waves after the end of the ice age further diluted the Veddoid racial substrate in India and pushed its paleolithic inhabitants down to the bottom of the social hierarchy. As a result of unbridgeable racial differences, the newcomers set up an "Indian apartheid" - the caste system.

9/ Neonegrids in North-West Africa mixed with Near Eastern women and became a core of today's Berbers. Later they even absorbed a post-glacial invasion from Spain, Capsian people from East Africa, Roman influence and the Arabic expansion. Hence they are a composite, unhomogenous people, but Europid genes in them still strongly prevail (ca. 80%).

10/ Archaic Pygmies and Khoisan in Africa were gradually pushed to the forest and desert, respectively, by more advanced people, and today they are facing the reality of extinction.

11/ Ainids in the Far East were absorbed by expanding mongoloids

12/ Mongoloids from Taiwan were forced to leave their island because of the pressure of old Hans (Proto-Chinese). On the New Guinean coast, they mixed with Papuans and from here the Melanesian and Polynesian types originate.

I think that from the outline above it is clear that the old racial division is still valid. The cores of the traditional races were formed 35 000 years ago, after 30 000-70 000 years of separate development. We must understand that some racial groups - or their parts - are in fact more or less stabilized racial mixtures that came into being during the last ice age: the mongoloids (not MONGOLIDS) in Asia, American Indians, Papuans, West Africans, Polynesians. On the other hand, some traditional racial groupings need revision: For example, Nilotes, Pygmies and Khoisan should be actually taken as separate races (they fully deserve it). It is absolute nonsense that modern genetic research denies the existence of races; to the contrary, it elucidates their origin and corrects errors based only on anthropology. Those, who spread this bullshit (pardon) usually know nothing about anthropology; they only repeat sentences that they heard from ideologically motivated "specialists" serving the official multi-culti/PC propaganda. Bye, Yahoo Man, 22.10.2006

The modern racial classification should look like this:

• 1. Khoisan (Capoid) type
• 2. Nilotic type
• 3. Pygmy type
• 4. Neonegrid type (Somalis) - should be confirmed by archeology and anthropology
• 5. Europid type (Europe, the Near East)
• 6. Mongolid type (South-Central Siberia)
• 7. Australoid types

Stabilized mixtures:

• 1. West African type (Neonegrid x Pygmy type)
• 2. Ethiopid type (Neonegrid x Europid type)
• 3. Europoid types (Europid x Neonegrid: Berbers, Europid x Australoid: Indians)
• 4. Mongoloid types (mostly Europid x Mongolid: West Siberians/Ugrofins, North-East Siberians/Yakuts, Eskimos etc., South-East Asians/Chinese; mostly Europid x Mongolid x Australoid: Austroasiatic+many Austronesian speakers)
• 5. Amerind type (Europid x Mongolid)
• 6. Polynesian type (Mongoloid x Australoid type)

and possibly

• 7. Papuan type (Europid x Australoid)

Please, don't take any "cladistics" of human races seriously; they are based on the selection of certain genes and hence they group together some partially mixed racial types that have absolutely different genetic roots, e.g. Nilotes with West Africans. It is only due to recent admixture of Neonegrid genes that sub-Saharan Africans as a whole seem to form a separate cluster in genetic studies. In fact, there exists nothing like a "Negroid race". The "Negroid race" as we take it today actually includes four separate racial types. If Nilotes, Pygmies and Khoisan shared no Neonegrid admixture, they would form very distinct, separate racial clusters (however, to be more exact: they still would be connected via Pygmy genes). YAHOOMAN, 22.10.206

First, please sign your posts, and indent to distinguish from other posts. Second, statements like this "The modern racial classification should look like this" do not belong in an encyclopedia. At best, there is (not "should be" a particular racial classification proposed or accepted by certain people. As long as these people are not representing a fringe view, and their views can be linked to a verifiable source, their view can be included in the article as a particular point of view with a proper citation. But if this is just what an editor thinks "should be," well, our views are not supposed to go into articles at all. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:35, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

• The model that I presented above comes from the combination of anthropology and modern genetic studies. It needs no sophisticated deductive abilities, only the knowledge of anthropological differences and Y/mtDNA-haplogroups. To my surprise, I can't find anybody in the scientific world, who would try to combine it and produce a more modern racial classification. But this is very probably due to the fact that almost all authorities that could (and should) do this work spend all their time by babbling "race does not exist". I think that this classification should be discussed in a more detailed way somewhere and hence I plan to build a web site, where you can read my views and reasonings. YahooMan 23.10.2006

• If your model is accepted by accredited anthropologist, geneticists or other body of scholars please indicate your sources. Paul B 22:35, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

• I am afraid that we will find few anthropologists and geneticists, who would be willing to discus this topic. As I said above, the majority of them (espicially the most known personalities) must pretend that there exist no races and racial classifications make no sense, otherwise their promising career would quickly end or they would be even fired from their universities. As for me, I am an archeologist by education, but I am not familiar with e.g. the archeology of Africa (but I am looking for sources on this topic). I plan to build a web site, where I will explain this classification in a more detailed way. At this moment, you can look at some pages dealing with Y-haplogroups (see Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups that I recently supplemented by new data and good maps (but the pages don't go into much detail as for racial classification, because I don't want to present it unless I broadly explain my opinions and conclusions.) You can also look at "my" pages dealing with basic anthropolögical types in Africa: http://en.wikipedia.org/West_african_type, http://en.wikipedia.org/Nilotic_type YahooMan, 23.10.2006

Just curious YahooMan but when do you plan to build this website so that your research and sources may be examined?

I will try to post a link to my web site, when it is finished. YahooMan/Centrum99 13:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I too would very much like to see YahooMan's site and I hope it will also list and perhaps illustrate the physical characteristics that distinguish these different groups of people. Shoebill 12:31, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Problems

1

I saw the "cleanup" notice and had a look. So far I have seen mostly minor syntax and vocabulary issues, however one sentence leaves me clueless:

Darwin also pointed out the arbitrary use of any number of categories to divide up the human species, which is a major problem of racial theories.

Is this supposed to mean that Darwin remarked on the use of some number of categories by other people in a way that he considered arbitrary? Is the writer of this sentence saying that Darwin used an arbitrary list of categories in the course of his own writing? The sentence needs to be rewritten. P0M 00:53, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Shall I cut this part out?P0M 07:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

It would help if someone could provide a citation for where Darwin said this. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

See the bottom of this section. Darwin seemed to be partial to the idea of race, but, as the brilliant biologist he was, he could not deny that race distinctions were largely based on arbitrarily placed borders. FilipeS 13:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

2=

Another passage:

Leiberman and Jackson (1995), however, have noted that this model depends on several findings relevant to race: (1) that marked morphological contrasts exist between individuals found at the center and at the perimeter of Middle Pleistocene range of the genus Homo; (2) that many features can be shown to emerge at the edge of that range before they develop at the center; and (3) that these features exhibit great tenacity through time. Regional variations in these features can thus be taken as evidence for long term differences among genus Homo individuals that prefigure different races among present-day Homo sapiens individuals.

This passage seems to assume a center (origin) and radial spread of humans from the center in all directions followed by mutations at various points near the perimeter. It reminds me a little of a schematic circuit for a radio that has little obvious relationship to the way components are actually arranged and wired. Is the presentation of Leiberman and Jackson really that abstract? P0M 07:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not understand your query. Physical anthropologists often rely on the spatial distribution of human remains. There is nothing abstract about this, it is all very concrete. Based on dating techniques, the matrix, as well as features of the remains they can make claims about which remains are older and which are younger. These claims are perhaps a little abstract but they are all based on concrete data. Then, anthropologists try to make inferences about human evolution - this is more abstract. This is just how anthropologists work, I am not sure what more you are asking for. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:34, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

3

I realize that the following definition has been formed by quoting Levin, but, is this statement the clearest that can be formed on the basis of what he actually said? To me it seems rather rough and disjointed.

In "Cladistic taxonomy ... the basic taxon the genealogical unit, ancestors-plus-line-(or tree)-of-descent, what according to the present analysis races are."

At minimum I would rather it ended with "what, according to the present analysis, races are." Isn't the definition rather circular? "Race means the genealogical unit...which is what races are"?P0M 07:32, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

A recent change.

Somebody changed disagreed to agreed or vice-versa, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Race&curid=25614&diff=84584939&oldid=84573845

Which way is right? P0M 17:26, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The correct form is "disagree" (the way it stands now). The survey by Lieberman et al. was cited by a Finnish writer in an essay posted on his website on 28 October. A few days after that (on 30 October) someone criticized him via e-mail on the basis that the source text had actually said "agree", not "disagree". It turned out that just a few minutes before the e-mail was sent, a vandal had changed the word "disagree" in the Misplaced Pages article to "agree". The critic strongly rejected the charges of him being the vandal, but soon after the article had been reverted back to the original wording, someone changed "disagree" to "agree" again. The critic has later had to admit to being behind both of these acts of vandalism. - Weikko 23:22, 2 November 2006

Criticism

• The article is overly long and disconnected.
• In several parts, it sounds excessively apologetic towards racists, racialists, and neoracialists.
• It needs to be more focused. There needs to be a section where the common notion of race is presented and dissected, along with all the demolishing arguments against it systematically explained.
• The article needs to make a very careful distinction between ancestry, as measured by modern DNA-analysis techniques, and race. It needs to explain how they are different things, or it will risk giving the impression that genetics has vindicated racialism, when the opposite is true. As a matter of fact, it might be a good idea to have a separate article for fossil- and gene-based paleoanthropology. The tracing of the ancient migrations of human populations risks being mistaken for evidence of racial divergence.
• Race in Law Enforcement is a controversial topic which should probably have an article of its own.

FilipeS 13:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and made some changes, myself. I hope they've improved the article. FilipeS 14:44, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Filipe's changes

Will you please explain the change you made, and why you made them. Thanks. Guettarda 14:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I made several changes.

1. Most of them were just a reordering and reindexation of the various sections, to give the article a clearer structure and a more chronological order (IMHO, of course).
2. Most of the rest consisted of moving material which was less relevant or more technical from this article to more specific articles. (This is a long article, and from the Talk Page I see there had been talk of trimming it down.)
3. One or two sections I renamed.
4. I tried to add links to all the more specific articles which were split from this one.
5. I corrected one or two inaccuracies and doubtful phrasings.
6. I brought a Darwin quote from Race (historical definitions), as requested here.

Regards. FilipeS 15:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The Validity of the race concept

In his book The Race Myth, Joseph L. Graves Jr. effectively disproved the biological concept of race. He writes:

What Does it Take to Be a Race?

To qualify as a biological race (or subspecies or variety), an animal or plant has to meet one of two requirements:

1. it can have its own distinct lineage, meaning that it evolved in isolation that it never (or rarely) mated with individuals outside its borders, or 2. the genetic distence between population and another has to be significantly greater than the genetic variability that exists within the genetic variability that exists within the populations.

Both of these criteria are proven false in his book.

Dr. Graves is a renouned Geneticist and Biologist, who has had his articles printed in both the New York and Los Angeles Times, and is University Core Director and Professor of Biological Sciences at Farleigh Dickinson University.

As such, I think this article needs massive cleanup.

PC science is almost as bad as far-right-wing science. The truth is usually in the middle.

c:How pathetic! You should know that science describes many animals as separate species, yet these "species" freely interbreed and create fertile "new" species. And we can't speak about races in humans? What about Australian aborigines, who haven't mixed with other human groups for 50 000 years? Does dr Graves mention them? And what about Khoisans and Pygmies? Please don't list "New York Times" in connection with race. It is one of the most politically correct (and most demagogic) newspapers in the world. It tells much about the scientific level of dr Graves. Centrum99 21:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Fertile new species? Name one. P0M 02:10, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Find something about the families Callichthyidae (Corydoras) and Loricariidae. You will get a headache from it. Centrum99 23:27, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

He has a PhD. and is a professor of biology. He has a book published by Rutgerts University Press. He has been a Principal Investigator on grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation - both very competitive and prestigious. He is a member of the external advisory board for the National Human Genome Center. Now, tell us, Centrum99, what level of science education and achievement are you at? So far, all we know is that you are ignorant and like to insult people who know more than you. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a discussion, where one can't really bet on the victory of common sense. So far I haven't insulted people, who knew more than me. All the anti-racial mythologists, with which I disputed, constantly knew nothing about the topic and only parroted bluffs of PC professors, PhDs, investigators, external advisory board members etc. They can't do anything else, after all, because the results of genetic research that we now already have largely confirm the old racial division of traditional anthropology - albeit with some corrections of mutual genetic relationships that were mistakenly postulated on the basis of the limited possibilities of then anthropology. If a group of people or animals has been isolated for tens of thousands of years (or even longer) and has acquired specific physical and mental features enabling to cope with the surrounding enviroment that differ from mental and physical features of other populations of the same species - how we should call it? From time out of mind, people call it "race". Oh, I shouldn't forget the funny quotation "the genetic distence between a population and another has to be significantly greater than the genetic variability that exists within the populations" - damn, does that man realize, what he actually says? If the difference in every feature were so huge, it wouldn't be a difference between races, but rather between different species! Nevertheless, differences of this sort between extremely adapted human groups really exist, for example, standard deviations of body proportions in Nilotes and Eskymos don't touch at all. Of course, a Chihuahua can have an offspring with a Saint Bernard, but so can a Pygmy with a Monte Negrin. Centrum99 01:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Look, you can assert as much as you like, but you have to give evidence. Find "Non PC" writers and cite them. Find book and articles to support you view, but there's no point in just declaring it to be The Truth. The point about genetic variability concerns an intermediate stage in the process of speciation. Part of the problem here is the definition of "population", part is that genetic variation was never a defining feature of the race concept. Paul B 10:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

We all know that this all is just playing with words, whose main aim is to erase the word "race" - and subsequently "racism" - from the vocabulary because of the events of World War II. Hence it's really not easy to argue here, because the passionate anti-racialists can simply always say that according to their opinion, the population difference is not enough large (unless it equals the difference between a human and a chimpanzee) and every division is subjective and arbitrary. After all, we can infirm everything and every taxonomy as "subjective and arbitrary", and in the end, we can abandon the whole animal taxonomy, can't we? Centrum99 22:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it will turn out that based on the scientific definition of race, there are no human races. However, it is patently obvious that humans are physically diverse and that people from particular geographic areas with a shared genetic heritage tend to have a set of physical attributes in common. So I'm hoping at the moment that at least part of this debate could be bypassed by someone creating a new page called something like "Human Physical Diversity" in which this fascinating subject can be explored more easily. Shoebill 19:17, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

That's one of the central problems here. Graves "disproves" the existence of race by defining it in a particular way and then stating that "race" does not exist because in his view this particular definition does not correspond to human diversity. The problem is that even the True Believers in race back in the '30s never defined it this way. Look at Coon's comments in the Races of Europe for example . He is clear that he does not mean what Graves claims the term must mean. Paul B 10:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that it would be important to add that the word "race" was invented by humans, not by dogs, cats, birds or other animals in which the anti-racialists find "enough large" racial difference. Hence its primary use was to describe population difference in humans. Tell dogs and other animals that they should invent their own term for the description of their population variability. Centrum99 23:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

If I follow your train of thought correctly I guess I see the point that you are trying to make, but the history of the ideas of genus, species, and subspecies is well known. Even the ordinary definition of the term "species" is a bit undependable since the line is supposedly drawn between species when they cannot achieve cross-boundary reproductive success. It turns out that even some cross-genus reproductive successes are possible, and cross-species (e.g., wolf and dog) matings are sometimes pretty reliable, so that definition is rather flaky. The resident spider expert informs me that he is pretty much turned off by the idea of identifying subspecies of spiders. He finds it subjective I believe. One definition of "race" is that it is a synonym for subspecies. Homo sapiens has only one extant subspecies. There used to be Neanderthals, but they have died out leaving Homo sapiens sapiens the sole subspecies. So all of us belong to a single "race" by that definition. If you then say, as many of the contributors to the Race article are inclined to do, that "race" refers to "sub-subspecies," then things get even more subjective, fuzzy, etc. Maybe everybody has some idea of what "the" races are, but probably the only way we would come up with two equivalent definitions would be if the two people had collaborated on their definitions, i.e., pretty much everybody has his/her own definition. You have only to look at the variation in the number of supposed races to see that people have wildly different ideas of what the word is supposed to mean. P0M 02:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Revert?

I think this edit by 71.227.70.237 should be reverted. What do you think? --NeutralPoint 01:54, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Genetic?

Race having a genetic basis? How can someone's race be the result of characteristics that were inherited from their parents? Are Muslims who reside in London members of the English race, Caucasian race, Western European race, Middle Eastern race, or Islamic race? Lestrade 13:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be displaying the deductive powers of your namesake! (sorry) How can someone's race not be the result of characteristics inherited from their parents? The term race as used in this article is specifically biological, because that's the most meaningful usage. It's a truism in one sense that race is genetic. It's a truism in another that it's a "social construct". The real issue is whether some or any of the categories that have been constructed tell us anything useful about human difference. Paul B 13:48, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

This problem seems to be another example of the ambiguity of words. Laziness, inertia, lack of imagination, and general mental indolence have resulted in a situation in which humans are unable to create new words as designations of new concepts. They use existing words, words that are already signs for specific concepts, and they apply them to new concepts. This word race designates a multitude of different concepts and is therefore almost useless. The fact that it is related to a very sensitive, emotional issue does not contribute to the goal of cooly, rationally, and logically giving the word a precise definition.Lestrade 14:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

" This word race designates a multitude of different concepts and is therefore almost useless." This is a view held by many scientists, and I believe it is among the views represented in the article. Other scientists hold other views and their views are represented as well, as it should be. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Sign with four tildes. You don't need to then add your name again. Yes, the word race is inherently ambiguous, and you're right - the terminological inexactitude leads to a lot of the unnecessary confusion in the debate, but we can't just create new words. In the nineteenth century it was common to use expressions like "the French race", meaning "the French people". Since then, the term has been more commonly used to refer to a codification of human physical types linked to ancestry and world geography. It's usually the link between geographical and ancestral patterns that is mostly at issue, and between that problem and the logic of the various models of codification that have been used. Paul B 14:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The correct procedure would not be to carelessly abandon a word because it has become ambiguous. Instead, it should be retained, but made precise and useful by ridding it of its association with foreign concepts. Therefore, it should be the duty of encyclopedias such as Misplaced Pages to accurately and unambiguously show the one correct relationship and association between the word race and the concept that it designates. This, however, is made especially difficult with this word because of its emotional associations. But, that makes it even more important that it be done correctly.Lestrade 21:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

organization

About a month ago someone did a massive reorganization of the article. The changes I made today reflect a partial return to the earlier state. My main goal was to divided the article into three main sections: first, debates among biological scientists about race, second, how social scientists use it, third, its application practically. The section on "current debates" follows the first section since it is primarily concerned with debates among life-scientists. I deleted a section on Jensen's view of Cavalli-Sforza. First, Jensen is a psychologist, not a biologist so the section was mislabeled. Second, if we want extensive coverage of Cavalli-Sforza, our source should be Cavalli-Sforza and critics, not Jensen. Finally, this stuff should - if anywhere - go into the section on genetics. I think there is not enough consensus yet on how the genetics data is applied to racial classification. Cavalli-Sforza's work on genetics certain belongs in an article on human genetics. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:47, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

POV edits by user 69.157.107.88

This editor has been repeatedly inserting POV remarks into the article, to paint "race" as a more scientifically respectable concept than it is. This should be dealt with. FilipeS 14:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I just made a few changes whichinclude restoring older material that had been cut - material that took the view of race as valid as well as material that took the view that it is not valid. I hope what we now have is more POV and more important - this was my intention - holding the article to a high standard of verifiable scientific sources. One major change I made was to delete the section on Jenson. It was mislabeled as a "Biological view of race" when jenson is not a biologist and I do not think qualified to interpret biological research. The view that it promoted is covered in material I did keep or restore on cladistics and the view of race as lineage. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:49, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

The rv looks good to me. I don't see the value in adding the extensive commentary from Jenson on Cavalli-Sforza. The images are copyvios anyway - they are listed as being "fair use in Cavalli-Sforza" - they don't strike me as fair use in this article, nor are they impossible to duplicate. Guettarda 18:35, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

He has left some prety nasty personal attacks on my talk and user pages, in the past and recently. He constantly claims that science has "proved" race, and that all geneticists agree that "race" is a real concept. He has gone so far as to say that I am "way out of the mainstream" because I don't think this is true. I have a degree in genetics, so I think I understand what scientists are saying, but he just gets very insulting. It was very upsetting at the time because they were really offensive insults. Alun 20:36, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I can't change the mess he's made in the article, because of the Three-revert-rule, but this shouldn't be allowed to go on. Oh, well, he's charged the article with non-NPOV; perhaps that will be a chance to settle this once and for all.

By the way, one thing the article does not yet make clear, and should, is that although there is still a sizeable amount of scientists who support the "race" idea, the trend in the last century has been for their number to decrease. This is also relevant. Regards. FilipeS 23:37, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

The Egyptian picture

User:Tydaj added a picture to the article, which I have removed. The reason why I did this was the caption:

Four races according to the Book of Gates: a Syrian, a Nubian, a Libyan, and an Egyptian. An artistic rendering, based on a mural from the tomb of Seti I.

It's fine to draw attention to the fact that even in ancient cultures people were aware that humans came in many different shapes and colours, and that even ancient cultures were capable of stereotyping different nationalities. But it's wrong, and highly misleading, to call that "race", a concept which the ancient Egyptians would likely not have recognized. I have never seen any evidence that they conceptualized these differences as:

• biologically determined;
• inherited;
• dividing mankind into discrete and largely separate groups

I will not object to putting the picture back in the article, with a different caption. FilipeS 13:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I see no problem with the image. The caption used was simply copied directly from the image as used in the Book of Gates page. Furthermore, the image simply illustrated a statement in the article which has been there for for a long time without anyone finding it problematic. The term "the four races" is traditional in discussing this common Egyptian image (e.g. 'the famous typical groups known as "the four races" in the great rock-cut sepulchres of the kings of the Nineteenth and Twentieth dynasties' ). Race is not a term with a clear or precise meaning, as this section of the article tries to explain. Of course, it's difficult to speak meaningfully of what ancient Egyptians would have understood by concepts like "biologically determined", but I see no reason to doubt that they thought physical characteristics were "inherited". Obviously they seek to divide "mankind into discrete and largely separate groups". Akhenaten even states that such difference are divinely ordained:

The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt,

Thou settest every man in his place,
Thou suppliest their necessities:
Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.
Their tongues are separate in speech,
And their natures as well;

Their skins are distinguished

The image is a codification of humanity according to physical characteristic correlated to endogamy and world geography (i.e. the "world" known to Egyptians). In that respect it corresponds to the most common usage of "race". Paul B 15:11, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. The picture can just as well be interpreted as an Egyptian caricature of features which they regarded as typical of different ethnicities. An ethnicity is not the same as a race, and there is no proof that the Egyptians thought in terms of race. In fact, there is plenty of archeological evidence that the Egyptians themselves came in many different colours, from pale to very dark, which shows that the picture which represents "the Egyptian" is no more than an idealization. FilipeS 15:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

You are ignoring the fact that the concepts of "race" and "ethnicity" are not clearly separated, and that the evidence I have quoted unambiguously states that the skin pigmentation of the four groups have been sharply distinguished by God! Whether or not this represents the "reality" of the Egyptian population at the time or not is irrelevant. We are talking about the models of codification that existed at the time. Paul B 15:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That may be so in popular language (hence terms like "the English race" or "the French race"), but I believe anthropologists have a set, stricter definition of "race", which does not coincide with the notion of ethnicity. I will look for a source. FilipeS 14:34, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

The reason that there is even an article on "race" is that it is a powerful social construct. Saying that person A has the same definition as person B is almost certain to be wrong, and that is just within the context of one culture. (One of the problems with this article may be that either "race" is a concept not shared by all groups in the world, or that the "race" concepts of some groups may be so different from the ones described so far that the article is seriously out of balance.) If one is trying to compare a concept from a another time and another culture expressed in another language with something that is not clear in one's own culture, you are automatically in trouble. In our culture we pay enough attention to hair color to have special terms for people with various colors of hair, but we do not conceptualize these groups as "races." The quotation gives the information that we actually have, and conclusions about "race" cannot be drawn from that quotation. P0M 17:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it's very difficult to compare ethnic notions from different time periods and cultures. That's why I objected to the caption in the epicure, which uses the modern English word "race", which did not exist in ancient Egyptian. I doubt the original picture even had any caption at all. Labelling that as "race" is arbitrary and anachronistic, as you have rightly noted. FilipeS 17:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh for heaven's sake, none of the words used in this article existed in ancient Egyptian, including the term "ancient Egyptian". They didn't even call their country "Egypt". They wouldn't recognise the term "ethnicity" either. Obviously the article is written in modern English! Yes, the picture had a "caption". Like all the others of this type it was captioned with the Egyptian names of the four peoples. It also accompanies a lengthy ritual text. The purpose of the image is to demonstrate the ordered nature of the universe, with Egypt at its centre. Egyptians are "central" in their skin-pigmentation just as in their central geographical position and their central role in the divine plan of the universe. The visible differences between the separate peoples are articulated according to a model in which ethnic differences are merged with biological ones in an ideologically charged typology. "Race" is the only word that has a semantic field which includes both the notion of ethnicity and of a typology of biological differences (especially physiognomy and skin pigmentation). It's just better than any other option. Paul B 02:31, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

• The Egyptians had their own words for "Egypt", "Egyptian", "Syrian", "Nubian", and "Lybian". These are clearly ethnicities. They had no word for "race".
• There is no reason to believe that they thought being an Egyptian, a Syrian, a Nubian, or a Lybian, was a matter of biology. As today, people could migrate and change nationality/culture/ethnicity then. Race, by contrast, is something you're not supposed to be able to change.
• The colour of the Egyptian in the picture is merely an idealization, as I've said already. There were Egyptians of all colours.
• In sum, "race" is not the only possible word for the caption. In fact, it's the worst possible word: inaccurate and misleading. FilipeS 13:43, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

The best option is to report what they said. People may come to this article with the question in mind, "Is there really anything that corresponds to our idea of race?" I've argued for years now that having an article on "race" begs the question (i.e., assumes what you want to prove in the way you ask a question about the issue). Now we're asked to push the "begging" back to the era of the ancient Egyptians. P0M 00:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem here is that both P0M and FilipeS are fetishising the term "race", as though it has a true meaning that they determine. In reality what we have is a word with a semantic field, one which has evolved over time and which overlaps to varying degrees with ancient concepts. Since I strongly suspect that Filipe does not speak a word of ancient Egyptian I really don't see how he can assert that "They had no word for race". I don't speak the language either (apart from knowing a few words), but I am fairly familiar with the cultural/intellectual context of this image. We all know that the word race was used until very recently - in terms of human history - to mean any group with continuity of endogamy, who are therefore assumed to be genetically related to a significant degree and culturally related. The various interrelated meanings of the term are clearly covered by the OED. We should be honest about the complexity of the concept, not fetishise arbitrary and unsustainably rigid distinctions between "race" and "ethnicity". To do so is, I suggest, to repress the difficulties of such distinctions and the true history of these concepts. In reply to P0M, having an article on race does not beg the question, it discusses the question. That's the whole point. Ancient peoples had ideas that in some ways correspond to modern usages(s) of the term race, and in some ways do not. The article explores this very point, as does the brief discussion of the Egyptian image. I would suggest that there are three possible modern terms to describe this typology: "ethnicities", "peoples" and "races". I have already demonstrated that "races" is the established term. Its historical usage undoubtedly makes it the most accurate modern equivalent to ancient concepts, but is problematic because of assumptions concerning a particular sub-set of its meanings. In modern usage "peoples" and "ethnicities" are also problematic because they downplay the importance of innate differences, which clearly play a significant role in the Egyptian scheme. Paul B 13:17, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

If by "fetishize" you mean "use the word in its most common meaning, in practice", then that is exactly what I am doing. The word "race" is no older than the Renaissance (the OED should tell you this as well). Before that, you cannot speak of "race", whatever you mean by that term. Doing so is projecting modern values and notions onto societies that never had them. FilipeS 13:29, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Your argument is nonsensical. The age of any English word is not related to the age of the concept(s) or facts to which it refers, nor is it relevant to its usefulness as the nearest modern equivalent to an ancient concept. To say "They had no word for race" is completely different from saying "The word race is relately modern". That's like equating "They had no word for cotton" with "the word cotton is relatively modern". The word "peoples" (in the sense of "clan", "tribe" etc) is dated by the OED to late medieval English. The word "ethnic" is dated to the fifteenth century (though of course it appropriates and transforms the Greek "ethnos"). The origin of razza is unknown, which means we have no idea how old it is: not that it matters, since we should be talking about meaning. The OED dates the first use of "chick-pea" to the 16th century. That does not alter the fact that it's the correct modern translation of "Cicero". Of course concepts like race are more problematic, but the central point is that the age of words as such is irrelevant. I answered your list of 3 points a while back, but you keep changing the goalposts. As far as I can tell, your idea of the "most common meaning" is, in reality "the most common typology". You originally denied the value of term in this context because you said that the Egyptians were in fact of mixed races - as though the only real model of "race" is the modern popular typology of blacks, whites, etc. Paul B 22:36, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The naming of the "Race" article should not be assumed as the correct standard for naming things and articles. An article on "Unidentified flying objects" is acceptable since it does not assume the existence of extraterrestrial ships. Naming an article "Flying saucers," however, creates the impression that there are real things that match that name.

"Fetishising the term "race" would be to hold the term "race" in unreasoning devotion, but I have no feeling of devotion for the term at all.

FelipeS and I are accused of regarding the term "as though it has a true meaning that they determine<" which is pretty much the opposite of what I believe. I think I have said as clearly as I can that the trouble with "race" as a type of category is that there exist a huge number of definitions by which people are assigned to various racial categories. Another way to say that is to explain that "race" is a word that, instead of having "a true meaning," actually has a different meaning for more-or-less everybody who uses the word.

Paul Barlow brings in another kind of begging of the question, another logical error, by asserting without any evidence or analysis that there is indeed a single "semantic field" for the word "race" that "overlaps to varying degrees" some set of "ancient concepts." To do so is to multiply uncertainties. It maps an uncertain, fuzzy, and multitudinous group of present-day concepts all claiming the name "race" in "varying degrees" (of what, suitability?) to an indeterminate number of "ancient concepts." Doing so hypostatizes the murkily defined word "race" as referring to a real thing known by that name, and then it claims that the ancients were looking at this same supposedly empirical reality and giving it names in their own languages.

The responsible way to handle this potentially useful bit of information about ancient thought is to establish how the ancient Egyptians actually categorized human beings, and how they named those categories, and only after it has been made clear what they thought about things in their own terms of reference should we ask in what ways this conceptual scheme was different from and similar to various competing ideas of "race" in our own time. P0M 07:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Your first point is completely illogical. There is no reason why we should not have an article Fying Saucers (it's currently a redirect) if someone wanted to have a specific article on the reports of saucer-shaped objects. We have numerous articles on things that don't exist like Lemuria, Phlogiston and Dilithium crystals. Some believe God exists, and some believe he doesn't. The dispute has no relevance to whether or not we have an article on God (or on Krishna or Odin or Hermes). Are there there such things as Ch'i, or Psi? Maybe, maybe not, but there are certainly such things as Misplaced Pages articles on them. There is no begging the question or logical error of the type you claim; the point is precisely that this is the question. All terms have semantic fields. And many are "uncertain and fuzzy", that's the whole point. If you look at the history of concepts like "Nature" for example you see the same complexity and fuzziness. That is not an argument for not having an article on "Nature". The age of the actual word Nature in English is also irrelevant. There are problems of translation between languages - both ancient and modern. What does Aristotle mean by the term Physis, for example? How do ancient terms and concepts correspond to modern ones? These issues apply to many many terms and concepts for which we have articles - "democracy", "liberalism", "spirit", "tribe" - and many, many, many more. We should explore all of them and look at the difficulties of claiming sustained meanings, divergences and "family resemblances" in usage within discourse. In fact you last paragraph just repeats what I've been saying all along, except for the - in my view - "fetishistic" attitude that you have to the term race, in which you are investing far too much. And it is, I think, a kind of 'devotion' - a sort of mythic Evil God that you have created. The irony is that the period when "race" was discussed most extensively (c1880s-1940s) is also the period when the diverse use of the term was most accepted, and a much less "fetishistic" attitude to it prevailed. Paul B 10:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The field we call logic deals with propositions (sentences) and the connections that are formed among them with terms like "and," "or," etc. So if I've said something "illogical" you ought to be able to show me with the tools of logic where I have gone wrong.

The field you appear to want to talk about deals with sets, with categories and the definitions of those categories. It turns out to be very difficult to discuss the appropriateness or usefulness of categories without using categories. There are problems of self-reference, and there are problems of fuzziness. We speak as though there are discrete groups in the fields of our experiences that we can find appropriate words to map onto them.

In a very well educated world, any readership would be aware that any concept is a fabrication, a "useful fiction," and we would not have to flag the particularly flaky concepts. So I take Paul's point. We should not accept "physics" as having clear boundaries or clear referent(s) any more than we should accept "leprechaun" as refering to a definite and discoverable group of living organisms.

Let's look at the problem from the other end of the telescope -- let's look at what Paul calls "semantic fields." I'm not sure in what field that term is in popular use, but the idea behind the term is useful and appropriate.

Aristotle looked out at the full domain of his experience and decided that certain phenomena should be grouped together. He was a very good biologist, and field of phenomena that he assembled under that rubric included anything he could investigate as being alive. The fuzziness was there in the beginning, and it is still there today as we puzzle over whether to call a virus a living thing. It's not important which side of the line you put a virus on because your main objective is likely to be understanding the virus and how it impacts us, but it is important to realize that humans are drawing the line.

Aristotle grouped certain phenomena into the field he called physics, and today we find the field of physics turning out to be useful in explaining biology. Some people may think of biology as the field that examines a certain group of the consequences of physics.

Let's accept that there are kinds of phenomena that many groups in the world would group together, investigate together, etc., and that many more groups of people in the world could easily be taught to consider these phenomena together because it is useful to do so. We can probably teach people from cultures that explain disease as a consequence of witchcraft to recognize microbes under a microscope, to recognize the consequences of rubbing the microbe-rich water into wounds on the skin of rats, and gradually get them to accept a biological explanation for disease. If we take seriously the idea that we can aggregate phenomena in useful ways, if we accept the idea that humans regularly see useful ways to group phenomena and investigate them, then what we end up with as the central plotline of our activity is the creation and subsequent operation upon groups of phenomena.

Paul wants to say that there via a group of phenomena in our corporate experience that people have always grouped together. It's clear that the phenomena have always been there, give or take a few peripheral components such as blue people. It's not clear that the phenomena have always been grouped according to the same rules. There is nothing that forces us to that conclusion, and in fact the simple example of Venn diagrams gives us a familiar handle on this issue. Venn diagrams use a closed curve to indicate things that are grouped together according to one definition. When two closed curves overlap, what do we know about the components that are included in the overlap?

What is most significant when we are looking at overlapped groups is not the fact that they are overlapped, but the definitions that produce the overlap.

How about witches? People have always identified them. Other people look at the members of this group and place them in certain psychiatric categories. If we are going to have an article on witchcraft, will it be helpful to conflate witchcraft with psychosis?

Similarly, the conservative interpretation of the picture is that the Egyptians were grouping human beings according to some rule, and to state the rule (the definition). The picture shows they dealt with phenomena, not how they dealt with what we deal with in terms of .

Somewhere in the discussion of we probably need to cite Willard Van Orman Quine's works on logic and sets such as Methods of Logic. I wish I could write as clearly and cogently as he does. P0M 16:54, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Lukas's edits

Over the past several months many parts of this article were deleted, and there was some reorganization of the article. I then restored what had been deleted, as well as much of the earlier organization. I explained why. The material that had been cute was important and salient, and the organization was superior in that there was less redundency and repetition of similar arguments. I also deleted one section and I explained why. the section I deleted was called "biological view" but it was really not the biological view, it was the psychologist Arthur Jensen's interpretation of certain biological data. Jenson is not an evolutionary scientist or population geneticist and his interpretation of the work of evolutionary scientists is contentious. It is misleading to provide a whole section to his views, and disguise it by calling it "biological view." The restored version (the earlier version I restored) does not delete views. It provides the view of people studying race and intelligence (Jensen) in its own clearly identified section. It also provides much more information on the view of race as lineage (which is the term scientists more often use, not Lucas's prefered term, "ancestry"). Please do not accuse of me deleting without explanation. I have not removed any relevant content, and I have explained my changes. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I must admit the dizzying complexity of the differences combined with later editing(s) makes comparion very wearysome! What are the central points and passages at issue? Jenson and lineage? Paul B 13:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a big part of it. But also organization. Lucas's organization is: 1 History

1.1 Popular concepts of "race"

1.2 Scientific concepts of "race"

1.2.1 17th and 18th century

1.2.2 19th century

1.2.3 20th century

1.2.4 Summary of different definitions of race

2 Human genetic variation

2.1 Physical variation in humans

2.2 Ancestry

2.3 Biological interpretations of race

3 Current views across disciplines

vs.

1 History

1.1 Popular concepts of "race"

1.2 Scientific concepts of "race"

1.2.1 17th and 18th century

1.2.2 19th century

2 20th- and 21st-Century debates over race

2.1 Scale of race research

2.2 Race as subspecies

2.3 The rejection of race and the rise of "population" and "cline"

2.4 Race and Models of human evolution

2.4.1 The multiregional model

2.4.2 The displacement from Africa model and the rise of cladistics

2.4.3 Arguments for races as lineages

2.4.4 Arguments against races as lineages

2.5 Summary of different definitions of race

3 Current views across disciplines

first let me note that the second - i.e. original - organization was worked on by many knowledgable people and was stable for at least a couple of years. I do not think the structure of articles is ever sacrosanct, but given these facts one should propose new organization cautiously.

Here is why I think the second organization is superior: First, the themes in Lucas's section two represent parts of approaches that were debated in the 20th century. To have two separate sections, one on 20th century debates and another on genetics, either means a lot of repetition, or utterly inadequate discussion (because, if you do not discuss genetics in 20th century debates, you cannot understand those debates; and if you do not explain the genetics in the context of those debates you will end up violating NPOV since it is those debates that explain what the different povs are and how they are related. Second, it makes sense to distinguish 20th and 21st century debates from earlier debates because it was only in the 20th century the modern natural and social scientific study of race emerged - early debates provide historical context, but 20th century debates are still contemporary. Third, the organization of Lucas's section 2 simply makes no sense to me. Why not call section 2 "Biological interpretations of race" and make "genetics" "physical variation" and "ancestry" subsections? Or why not make section 2 "Ancestry" and then have subsections on how ancestry manifests itself genetically (genotypically) and physically (phenotypicically)? The organization of section 2 bears no relationship to how scientists talk about race, the subsections are not clearly defined, it just doesn't make sense. Forth, the original organization did make more sense. first, it began with a note on scale (which Lucas deleted) which is useful for making sense of why scientists may employ different approaches to race - it need not be that one approach is right and another wrong, but one may be more appropriate at one scale and another, at a different scale. This is true of much science and he should not have cut it. This section 2 then breaks down to clearly distinguishable approaches to race: subspecies, populations instead of races, and the evolutionary approach. Note than genetics and physical variation are covered in all three - no important material was deleted 9only Jensen, who, as I said, is covered in a later section on race and intelligence which is what Jensen's research is actually on). The evolutionary approach covers what Lucas might mean by "ancestry" but far from deleting information it provide much more important information on cladistics and the arguments for and against the lineage view of race. 2.5, the summary, actually summarizes all this. In lucas's version, he keeps the summary but none of what the summary is actually summarizing, which could only confuse people. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It is generally disruptive to introduce a major change in an article without at least giving people who have been working on the article a heads up. It may be "bold" to do so, but there are ways of being bold without being disruptive. So I support returning the article to its prior stable state. If changes are desirable, let them be justified first. The alternative, which I have seen a few times, is a very disruptive edit war which does a great disservice to the general reader. P0M 17:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

As I said in your talk page, I'm not against reorganisation. I'm against deletion of cited material.

Ex 1: Clines and races (clusters roughly) are contrasted throughout the article (1 ex: "The existence of allelic clines has been offered as evidence that individuals cannot be allocated into genetic clusters (Kittles & Weiss 2003)") In your massive 1 edit organization, you have deleted:

"Also, clines and clusters, seemingly discordant perspectives on human genetic diversity may be reconciled. A recent comprehensive study has stated:

At the same time, we find that human genetic diversity consists not only of clines, but also of clusters, which STRUCTURE observes to be repeatable and robust. "

This was cited and important. Another ex: "A. W. F. Edwards claimed in 2003 that Lewontin's conclusion is unwarranted because the argument ignores the fact that most of the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors. Armand Marie Leroi, an evolutionary developmental biologist at Imperial College in London, is one of the scientists that agrees with Edwards. "

Clearly, given the amount of counter arguments, this was necessary, adding more than just technical talk about low Fst.

I can find more. However, since you are the one reorganizing the article, it is your responsibility to make sure no text is deleted. Not mine to go over huge single edit change...Lukas19 00:11, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

First, you are a hypocrite because your version deleted even more information which you never incorporated into your version. Second, you are at least a little disingenuous: the version I restored indeed included Edwards' view, which you claim was deleted. What was deleted was simply your wording, not the content itself. However, I have added some of your wording. The current version was worked on by many people over a long period of time, and both Guettarda and POM have expressed their support for the established version. If you want to add important content, fine, but that does not justify a wholesale reorganization that makes absolutely no sense, along with your deleting whole sections. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

You were claiming reorganization, now you are claiming addition of new material? As I said, it's hard to keep track. Dont make such huge changes in one edit. Or if you do, the least you can do would be not to delete anything that is cited, since it is you who's doing the huge-1-edit-change.

And I'm not disingineous. I accepted that some of Edwards' views were there but said: "Clearly, given the amount of counter arguments, this was necessary, adding more than just technical talk about low Fst". Learn to read properly. I see that your inattention to detail not only is focused on the article but on reading editor comments as well as spelling their nicks...Lukas19 18:13, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Race is a myth. It has been proven again and again that race is a soicial construct, yet there is still a debate. There are only six or seven genes out of millions that determine skin, hair anxd eye color, hair texture, nose shape, etc. Race is a social thing. Muigwithania 01:39, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations! You have been so completely brainwashed that you can't be brainwashed more. I wonder why people like you will do, when all those "social constructs" from the Third World flooding into Western countries will start to cut your throats. Centrum99 13:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Very objective, Centrum — and revealing. FilipeS 15:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that because of some naive and foolish people, we don't need to experience personally that a mutual coexistence of many "social constructs" is impossible due to their different physical and mental capabilities. Since some "social constructs" don't posess necessary capabilities to create a civilization and they even are not capable to live in it, ignoring racial differences will inevitably lead to very serious problems threatening the very fundamental bases of our civilization. Centrum99 21:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

1. Lewis, Bernard, "The Historical Roots of Racism, American Scholar 67 (1998) no. 1:17-25.
2. Michael, Robert. . 21 Apr 1997.

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