What Are The Odds

[Matty]

What are the odds that the President of our country is aware of the long-ago proven scientific fact that biologically speaking different human races do not exist?

[Stu Pidasso]

How about [censored] neanderthalensis?

Stu

[Matty]

30,000 years ago.

I'm surprised everyone is saying they already knew. I guess my family is just stupid. My grandparents think Arabs are naturally more violent than other people which kinda sucks because I'm part Arab. For Christmas a couple years ago I scanned, copied and mailed them a chapter out of an evolutionary anthropology textbook but they dismissed it as liberal elitist bilge.

I thought I saw a prominent poster on these boards say something about African Americans being naturally less 'intelligent' than other races without being corrected but maybe it's a different site I'm thinking of.

[Stu Pidasso]

[ QUOTE ]
I guess my family is just stupid. My grandparents think Muslims are naturally more violent than other people which kinda sucks.......


[/ QUOTE ]

Are you sure this isn't what they meant?

Stu

[Matty]

Yes because no one in my family is muslim, but some of us are part Arab and comments are always made. They also think my Korean friends need to be watched out for because they're "tricky", Black people are lazy / dumb, etc. Funny thing is I grew up believing these things too until around age 18.

[Stu Pidasso]

[ QUOTE ]
Funny thing is I grew up believing these things too until around age 18.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nothing funny about it, its perfectly normal. You form your beliefs either through your own personal experiences or you are taught them by others. Up until you were 18 you didn't really have control of either.

Stu

[cardcounter0]

Observed intelligence and propensity to violence can be due to environmental and cultural reasons, and not due to genetics.

[PoBoy321]

OT: It's pretty ridiculous when [censored] sapien gets censored.

[ QUOTE ]
What are the odds that the President of our country is aware of the long-ago proven scientific fact that biologically speaking different human races do not exist?

[/ QUOTE ]

The odds that I know are 0. I failed anthropology. I barely know what you are talking about.

I guess this means there is no such thing as racism?

[Matty]

[ QUOTE ]
The odds that I know are 0. I failed anthropology. I barely know what you are talking about.

I guess this means there is no such thing as racism?

[/ QUOTE ]Absolutely not. Racism is an emotional phenomenon best explained in terms of collective psychology. "Race" does exist as a cultural concept. Racial conflicts result from social stereotypes and not known scientific facts. Racists of the past and present invoke the notion of biological difference to support unjust social practices.

The reason there's no such thing as race biologically speaking is because we as a species have been interbreeding for a very long time, and alleles (genetic codes) are inherited independently of each other. So having one trait like dark skin does not mean you're more likely to have another trait unless it is also adaptive to hot climates like dark skin is. Certainly intelligence, strength, behavior, and most other traits aren't more adaptive to one climate over another climate so you can't predict them based on a climate-specific trait. There are genetic differences between populations, but it's impossible to divide populations into "races" for many reasons. For example, if you go by skin color (a genotype inherited independently) then Africans and populations from Sweden are different races. However if you use other genotypes like that for sickle-cell red blood cells then people from Sweden are the same race as some populations of dark-skinned Africans, and other populations of dark-skinned africans are the same race as Italians and Greeks. The only reason skin color, hair type, etc. are used most commonly and traditionally is because they're easily noticed.

What scientists use since they can't use race is "clines" which is just gradual differences among populations based on a single (and only a single) trait. For example the closer to the equator populations were, the higher their surface to body mass ratio was to give off heat (i.e. they were taller and slimmer). Light skin developed among populations that moved North from Africa as a way to absorb more UV rays and produce more Vitamin D since there was less sunlight up north.

So assuming you're white, next time you see a black guy think of him as just a white guy with black skin who has always been treated differently than you.