On Wed, 08 Sep 2004 17:14:38 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max@alcyone.com>
wrote:

>Eric Stevens wrote:
>
>> It doesn't matter whether we are 99.9% the same and only 0.1%
>> different, or 99.8% the same with a wopping 0.2% difference.
>> 
>> The point is that the human eye and brain can separate the human
>> population into groups which we recognise as different races. The
>> question is not whether or not there are different groups but how we
>> can define the boundaries.
>
>My impression is that this is a politically correct motive running over
>a real scientific result, converting it to their own agenda and then
>presenting something to the public that doesn't even pass the laugh
>test.
>
>The underlying scientific fact of all this is that the genetic
>differences between two individuals of different races are, on average,
>no greater than the genetic differences between two random individuals. 
>This is an important result, and it tells us that race genetically is
>not very meaningful in determining how different people truly are; that
>is, race is genetically not very important.

I don't accept that argument. Its a bit like like saying that because
we cannot build a sense organ that will meaningfully discriminate
between scents we should disregard the messages from our nose.
>
>This result is important, because it means But it doesn't mean that
>there aren't physical differences manifested between people of different
>races (examples being so obvious I won't insult anyone's intelligence by
>giving them).  Going from "people of different races are no more
>genetically dissimilar than two random people" to "race is purely a
>social construct" is something of a leap.  That the differences aren't
>genetically significant in the big picture doesn't mean that there
>aren't differences!

And it doesn't mean that the the differences cannot be correlated with
what our eyes and brains tell us. Its just that we haven't done it
yet. One reason why we haven't done it yet is that genes might not
tell the whole story. The role of proteins is becoming seen to be
increasingly important and now prions are entering the scene. I think
we have a long way to go.
>
>I actually had a discussion with someone on this subject who insisted
>that in the South Bay Area (one of the most racially diverse part of the
>United States), it was impossible -- _impossible_ -- to identify the
>country or region of origin of people simply by looking at their
>appearance.  Race has no genetic basis, she said, so therefore race is
>totally unusable for identifying origins.  Right data, wrong
>simplification, wrong conclusion.  It's this kind of blatant denial of
>reality that makes people really, really despise political correctness.
>
>It's like saying that tallness or shortness isn't a good genetic
>indicator for how different those people are, therefore there is no such
>thing as tallness or shortness.

Yep.



Eric Stevens