If race is a construct, what exactly has been constructed?

[addictionary]

The notion that there are different races is a scientific/biological fact. Racism is what is made up by the people. Just like any other thing within social life. And it is one of the products that makes humanity shoot itself in the leg.

 

[Gameface]

The notion that there are different races is a scientific/biological fact. Racism is what is made up by the people. Just like any other thing within social life. And it is one of the products that makes humanity shoot itself in the leg.

What are the races?

 

[LogGrad98]

What are the races?

5K?

 

[Gameface]

5K?

I've done a couple of them. I was hot and sweaty when I was finished.

 

[One Brow]

The notion that there are different races is a scientific/biological fact. Racism is what is made up by the people. Just like any other thing within social life. And it is one of the products that makes humanity shoot itself in the leg.

Biological facts should have biological markers. There are no specific biological markers that identify races, unless you identify populations of race A as being the same race even though they are separated by hundreds of miles, with the intervening population being of race B.

 

[Red]

This is a slight detour I guess, but I am struck by the continued discovery of earlier human species. The latest is a new species of human from the Phillipines. In the case of both the Neanderthals and Denisovans, our own species was able to interbreed with them. All Europeans, for instance, have some Neanderthal ancestry. Many inhabitants of Asia and Oceania have Denisovans ancestry. The gene for high elevation tolerance among Tibetans, for instance, stems from the Denisovans.

This recent New York Times piece briefly summarizes the discovery of the various fossils that are filling out our understanding of the human tree:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/science/hominins-human-evolution.html

Meet Homo luzonensis, who inhabited Earth at the same time as Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo floresiensis( the so-called Hobbits):

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...-surprising-new-species-to-human-family-tree/

And the Denisovans were more diverse then previously thought:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...re-more-diverse-previously-thought-180971952/

And it would seem important to keep this in mind:

"The word “species” here is used tentatively. The exact number of human species — and what counts as a species — is up for debate. Jeremy DeSilva, Ph.D., an anthropologist unaffiliated with this new study, tells Inverse he refers to them all as different populations of humans, rather as different species or subspecies because “it appears that both Neanderthals and Denisovans had split from the human lineage and from one another before being reabsorbed to various degrees back into the gene pool.”:

https://www.inverse.com/amp/article/54792-ancient-human-denisovan-lineage-split

I do wonder what issues involving racism would exist today if all these ancient humans still walked the Earth with us....

 

[addictionary]

Biological facts should have biological markers. There are no specific biological markers that identify races, unless you identify populations of race A as being the same race even though they are separated by hundreds of miles, with the intervening population being of race B.

I see it just as a taxonomical term and nothing more.

Of course when I say scientific it doesn’t mean that you have to accept it, science lives on checking the errors of a theory. There are more schools that will reject to use the term than the ones that will use it.

I think there obviously are certain biological classes amongst humanity that in many parts went hybrid and created other groups. They have some differences in mostly external physiological aspects. And there is nothing wrong with that! It is a richness of diversity to my understanding. None of these properties put one group superior to the other.

I think the violent history of racism led science people to stay away from the term but I myself frankly don’t give a **** since I know I don’t overlook people from
the getgo due to how they look, talk, what they believe in.

 

[One Brow]

I see it just as a taxonomical term and nothing more.

Except, there are no biologically valid means of constructing the taxonomies, and the social perceptions of race don't confirm to most attempts at construction.

Of course when I say scientific it doesn’t mean that you have to accept it, science lives on checking the errors of a theory. There are more schools that will reject to use the term than the ones that will use it.

I will accept that there is a biologically valid taxonomy when I see one constructed.

I think there obviously are certain biological classes amongst humanity that in many parts went hybrid and created other groups.

My understanding is that there were never distinct populations that hybridized. Rather, there has always been a single population with continual interbreeding, except for a couple of very brief separations between the Old World and New World continent systems.