[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote] jj-dude wrote:
As for the actual Science behind race it is very, very simple. There is one race for humans, unlike, say felids or equines where there are bona fide several. Humans almost died out about 75,000 years ago and as such we are probably one of the most homogeneous animal populations on Earth.
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This is a semantic game. So there’s not different “races” then? We’re all the same? No. There are huge biological differences between human populations that have been separated geographically and temporally. To deny this and pretend we’re all the same is nonsense. Even on the continent of Africa you’ve got pigmies who are three feet tall and East Africans who are twice the size. There are dozens and dozens of separate populations of people in Africa who have vastly different genetic make up and biological differences.
A common response to this from people who deny race is that humans share 99% of their DNA. This is of course a meaningless response as we also share 95% of our DNA with fish.
So no, we are not extremely “homogenous” by any means. And to say there is only one “race” is a semantic game. Call it whatever you like. Human populations that diverged on separate paths developed into very different groups.[/quote]
No it is not a semantic game. In Biology different race is defined as being slightly below the distinction of species. E.g. there are different races of cats, tiger, lion, etc. and the major determining factor in determining race is how well they can breed. Look at horses and donkeys. These generally have a hard time procreating and the offspring is pretty much always a mule – a sterile male. No racist ever heaved a sigh that while they didn’t like blacks or hispanics, thank God they can’t have babies with them.
The racist horror is miscegenation: that lower races can interbreed so profligately that the purer races will be overwhelmed. This is why there were laws again whites and blacks marrying because the fear was they would have scores of mulatto children who would then displace the pure bloods. Hitler did not think the Germans were the master race, he just thought they were the least corrupted and hence pure Aryans could be bred from them. This is why after hearing that 100,000 people died in the firebombing of Hamburg Himmler quipped that it would make cleanup after the war easier.
It is frankly immaterial if certain ethnic groups have differences. Statistics do not apply to individuals. Even if 5% of some group are mentally handicapped, there is no reason in the world that the rest of them might not be Einsteins. Knowing a ton of stats about some group still leaves with little to no information about any one you meet. Judging all in a group by the behaviors of a few is called bigotry. Backing it by statistics is an intellectual abomination but much cherished in public discourse.
Much Nazi experimentation in the concentration camps were efforts to find ways to determine the “jewishness” of people. They measured hair kinkiness, nose size, eye size, blood type and a ton of other things too and even a cloddish butcher like Mengele couldn’t figure out a simple test. It is telling that Himmler was a chicken farmer and most of his information about race came from that. That is roughly the level that racism works at still as an intellectual movement.
So the question for you then is this: If you don’t like some group, why can’t you just admit it rather than dressing it up in some pseudo-intellectual garb? One of my buddies, who was a Black Panther, told me that he like southern Rednecks the best since they’d tell you what they thought. He hated northern Liberals because they always had a theory about him (and blacks in general) and would lie to him if it suited their purposes.
– jj