Human Races

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My stance in this debate is that the racial division of humans is the default position, the status quo, and that the campaigners against human races have to convince us otherwise. So, slightly differently from how you've characterized Peter's take on genetics, I'd say that the evidence *against* human races is *not* found in genetic data. On the other hand, knowing as we do that human groups are interfertile and knowing what the population genetics of other subdivided species look like, I wouldn't argue much with Peter's assessment.

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This is almost like a creationist argument. Rather than answer the question, you claim the burden is on me because it contradicts your opinion. Your working definition of subspecies which you equate with "race" is idiosyncratic and can hardly be equated with a common view of "race". But since neither you nor Peter seem willing to state what this commonly accepted definition of race among the billions of humans on the planet that rubes such as sfs and myself seem to have missed there does not seem to be much point in continuing.

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I would agree that sub-Saharan Africans comprise a major human race (and therefore, technically, a subspecies).

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Base on what? Why not species then? Or genus? Since the defnintions you have proposed and what you have written in your faq are so arbitrary one could give a single base change in cytochrome b between two individuals any taxanomic value one wishes.

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Like I said, it's always about definitions. The vast majority of people in the world who have had any amount of exposure to racial diversity probably have a very adequate sense of what race means.

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This is rather vague...what "race" is Colin Powell? Actually, my mother is spanish. My father American. On my mother's side there is moorish influence. My father is a mixture of Russian jew, German jew, and non-descript Welsh. What major "race" group am I...according to you I should instantly be able to identify my race in such a way that everyone else does...which sub-species am I?

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There's any number of concepts that we deal with all the time that aren't and can't be precisely defined - it makes no difference.

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I would say it makes quite a bit of difference since you are claiming it as a precise biological concept that everyone should accept blindly and without question yet at the same time admit it is so arbitrary that anyone can define the concept as they choose...how useful is that?

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All this agonizing over how race is defined just doesn't ring true, especially when it comes from those who haven't figured out how the term is used in non-human taxonomy.

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Ah yes, good debating tactic...claim that the opposition is ignorant and has yet to recognize your brilliance. Fine, you find the consensus agreement on what species are among evolutionary biologists...I am sure you will define it as whatever you think it is...however, in reality species as a concept is also highly controversial and debated...and it does matter for a variety of reasons including how conservation efforts are focused...this thread shows race is an order of magnitude worse...Feel free to ignore it or dismiss it with another vague statement.[This message has been edited by Mammuthus, 12-17-2003]

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It is also reported that investigations have concluded that
African-Americans have 20-100% West-African origins ... so there's
your answer about dealing with inter-breeding .. i.e. you
can still find the markers.

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This does not deal with interbreeding...if you have 20% West African, you have 80% something else...what "race" are you? Then you switch within the post from clear sub-saharan African to West African. Many of these "interbred" people have themselves had children who are even more mixed in ancestry i.e. from people of different geographical origin. If you have alleles that are a mix from multiple different populations, you will not be able to identify the "race" of the individual. Within geographical groups the mixing will form a normal distribution with those living in proximity more closely related...so which alleles do you pick as "sub-saharan"?I did not mean to completely lump you together with Too Tired as your reasons for not having defined "race" are different. I think you yourself are not entirely sure where to draw the line. Too Tired thinks that race is self evident, that billions of people agree with anything he says, that quoting Steve O'Brien is evidence, and that anyone who disagrees is stupid. I do not consider your arguments or reasoning to be equivalent...just that niether of you has given a clear definition of what "race" means.

This conversation is becoming highly uninteresting as you are both consistently condescending and evasive. Hopefully this will change..if not, no loss for me either.

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Based on what I understand to be a reasonable definition of the term race or subspecies. I wouldn't consider sub-Saharan Africans to be a different species because they don't meet the criteria of the biological species concept, which I take to be the most common species concept among biologists at the present. Why do you want to argue this with me? Why don't you argue it with someone who believes in different human species? Or are you really incapable of drawing distinctions between these taxonomic categories?

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Please then elaborate on what you understand to be a "reasonable" definition of the term race. I have asked you several times. Summarize your faq because even there it is not clear. I would not say the biological species concept is necessarily the most common and given it is itself hotly debated, I doubt you could form a consensus among scientists. So yes, I am incapable of drawing subspecies, species, race distinctions because I have seen EVERY one of those terms used interchangebly by you, by Peter, and in the scientific and lay literature.

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My favorite debating tactic is to keep the issue as simple as possible. My point in this debate can be summarized as follows: the differences between major human populations (those we commonly refer to as major 'races') are not substantively different from the differences between the subspecies of other mammal species. Therefore, to claim that human races don't exist requires that we define race to be more like 'species' than 'subspecies' (which in my opinion is hard to justify.)

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I don't see how you make the logical leap that if one does not accept "race" (however one defines it) one must instantly jump to a higher taxanomic division. In fact, almost everyone except for you and Peter has argued exactly the opposite. While there may be variation that correlates with geography, the level of admixture among human populations suggests exactly the opposite of growing differentiation among groups but of homogenization.

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Now, you can alternatively argue that we shouldn't refer to human populations as races because the concept of race (or subspecies) has too many shortcomings, but that's distinct from arguing that human groups aren't races because they wouldn't qualify as subspecies. I don't think I've come across anyone yet who agrees that if humans were any other species they would have subspecies, and yet argues for abandoning the term race due to its looseness.

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Now this is the most interesting part of your post. The looseness of race is an issue. It is more variably defined than species or even sub-specis. I have not seen even here a consistent formulation of the concept either on the pro or con side. If a drug developer wishes to test a new product in clinical trials, is claiming that sub-saharans form a distinct group a true biological guide to the efficacy of the drugs? Does a loose concept of race help in any way? If the geographical distance does not correlate with the genetics of a group due to historical migration , invasion and other sources of admixture, then what? Though it is at some level a semantics issue, using historical terms that have multiple connotations is does not simplify biological study for those of us who are actually in the field.

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If you're so ill-equipped to argue your case that you have to resort to this sort of thing, maybe you should give it up until you've had a chance to educate yourself.

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Yes, my poor education must be the issue...and while I break away from my duties as a practicing scientist to confirm your brilliance, maybe you should get out of your "armchair" and seek some knowledge yourself on the issue that you seem to hold so dear?Kaessmann H, Paabo S.
The genetical history of humans and the great apes.
J Intern Med. 2002 Jan;251(1):1-18Paabo S.
Genomics and society. The human genome and our view of ourselves.
Science. 2001 Feb 16;291(5507):1219-20Kaessmann H, Wiebe V, Weiss G, Paabo S. Great ape DNA sequences reveal a reduced diversity and an expansion in humans.
Nat Genet. 2001 Feb;27(2):155-6.Kaessmann H, Wiebe V, Paabo S.
Extensive nuclear DNA sequence diversity among chimpanzees.
Science. 1999 Nov 5;286(5442):1159-62.Kaessmann H, Heissig F, von Haeseler A, Paabo S. DNA sequence variation in a non-coding region of low recombination on the human X chromosome.
Nat Genet. 1999 May;22(1):78-81.Krings M, Salem AE, Bauer K, Geisert H, Malek AK, Chaix L, Simon C,
mtDNA analysis of Nile River Valley populations: A genetic corridor or a barrier to migration?
Am J Hum Genet. 1999 Apr;64(4):1166-76.

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Was the other one of those 'both' me?

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When have I been condescending, and what do you consider
evasive in my responses?

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Neither was directed at you. Both posts were responses to Too Tired and the debate which is unfortunately evolving into a petty flame war that is being largely ignored by the rest of the forum participants.[This message has been edited by Mammuthus, 12-18-2003]

Hello TT,You are correct, Svante is no peach himself. I however, am not him. In any case, you conspiciously do not reference any of his or Wilson's work though both groups have published some of the most influential studies (whether correct or incorrect) on human and non-human primate molecular biology. Perhaps coincidentally because they are not advocates of "race"?

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I wouldn't argue that H. Smith et al. who authored this paper are the final authorities on defining taxonomic terms, but as far as I can tell, their statement would be considered correct by a majority of biologists. So in the Sci Am piece we have yet another example of folks wanting to define 'race' as something akin to 'species' in order to claim that they don't exist.

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I don't argue with Smith's definition but they are defining species as opposed to race. The Sci Am article could be looked at as yet another group that has yet another common view of race that does not fit your definition or your concept of race. However, race is an extremely maleable term. Here are several definitions from the Merriam-Webster dictionary...depending on which one you picked (except for the first) it would cover an enormous number of possible meanings for race.Main Entry: 3race
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, generation, from Old Italian razza
Date: 1580
1 : a breeding stock of animals
2 a : a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock b : a class or kind of people unified by community of interests, habits, or characteristics
3 a : an actually or potentially interbreeding group within a species; also : a taxonomic category (as a subspecies) representing such a group b : BREED c : a division of mankind possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type
4 obsolete : inherited temperament or disposition
5 : distinctive flavor, taste, or strength

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My point in using it in the faq was not so much to argue that the major human races qualify as subspecies (although I believe they do, and I consider race and subspecies to be synonymous anyway), but rather to show that the population structure of species that do have subspecies is not much different from that found in humans.

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I understand the point of your faq. I also claimed from the beginning that it is well written and I can say it is overall interesting proposition. I also do not disagree that there is variation among and within human populations. However, I do not agree that one can simply apply a maleable concept such as race which could mean anything from what a xenophobe considers race to be to the umpteen different definitions scientists provide and expect it to serve any purpose but to make communication different biologists near impossible. Imagine if every single group working on p53 just gave it some name according to the different genes it effects in the various cell signalling pathways it is associated with? I think the appeal of a term such as phylogeographic subspecies is that it is at least conceptually more clear, has no long term history of use, no history of being used in other contexts, and is immediately applicable to non-humans. It can also be revised with ease since new catagories/races do not have to be devised as more genetic data is accumulated and associations based on morphology or other characteristics may or may not show genetic support.

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Race and subspecies are interchangeable; race and species, or subspecies and species, no. The fact that the terms get mixed up by scientists and lay people is confusion on their part. And then evolution gives us populations that don't always fit well into the taxonomic terms at hand; that doesn't necessarily mean that these conventional terms need to be discarded, or that they can be easily replaced by something that's going to be any better.

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Confusion on their part or not, they are the ones who have to use the terms and concepts. Scientists for the most part try to use terms that are precise, clear, and that can be communicated and understood by other scientists. Laypeople may or may not be influenced by how scientists use the terms. Just saying that it is the worlds fault for not understanding "race" as a concept is not a particularly compelling reason to keep it as a term. Merely assigning it some other taxanomic value like sub-species is not necessarily helpful but at least then one has a slightly clearer framework to operate under...you seem to be advocating that yourself in your faq so I don't see why you are so resistant to such a concept. And I would hardly consider race to be conventional in science...as in this thread, there are fairly extreme pro and anti-race categorizers in the literature.

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If a random sample of Nigerians and random sample of Europeans respond differently to a medical treatment of some sort, then who would be served by refusing to consider race as a factor in future treatments?

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I was actually thinking more in terms of pre planning for such an analysis. Since it is usually prohibitively expensive to do comprehensive testing of drugs during clinical phase trials, one has to pick the most relevant groups before doing the testing. I don't think that just saying european, Asian, or West African would get you the samples you need. There may be variation within populations which is far more relevant to your study and which race sweeps under an overly large and variable sized umbrella.there is also more genetic diversity in west Africa than you give creditEllis JM, Mack SJ, Leke RF, Quakyi I, Johnson AH, Hurley CK.
Diversity is demonstrated in class I HLA-A and HLA-B alleles in Cameroon, Africa: description of HLA-A*03012, *2612, *3006 and HLA-B*1403, *4016, *4703.
Tissue Antigens. 2000 Oct;56(4):291-302.Hill AV, Allsopp CE, Kwiatkowski D, Taylor TE, Yates SN, Anstey NM, Wirima JJ, Brewster DR, McMichael AJ, Molyneux ME, et al. Extensive genetic diversity in the HLA class II region of Africans, with a focally predominant allele, DRB1*1304.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1992 Mar 15;89(6):2277-81.Tishkoff SA, Verrelli BC.
Patterns of human genetic diversity: implications for human evolutionary history and disease.
Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet. 2003;4:293-340. Review.I will conclude here by saying I am sorry that our debate got as heated as it did. I don't think we will be able to convince each other that the other sides position is correct, but I am sorry that it briefly headed in the direction of a flame war and for my contribution to that aspect of the debate.cheers,
M