Reply #39: Others have done the defense for me [View All]

Might I suggest you pick up some literature on human evolution, anthropology, and genetics? "The Ancestor's Tale" from Richard Dawkins, a book I'm currently reading, touches on it, and I'm sure he has covered it more thoroughly in other works, as has Jared Diamond, and many other writers, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. I suspect that either i'm communicating it poorly, or you're not understanding me.

My proposition is pretty simple. While the social divisions of race are essentially meaningless, there are distinct genetic lineages of humans. Without that fact, the entire project the link in the OP takes you to would be completely impossible. The fact that we can trace human migrations and mingling through genetic tests is conclusive proof that there are identifiable, distinct, and traceable lineages. Otherwise this Genographic project would always get a result like "you are from Earth" which while surprising for some, is pretty much well-understood by most without a need for a test.

These lineages have their own varied genetic makeups, and tend to be more prone to certain physical and physiological traits than other groups. Some of these are completely trivial, such as nose shape, eye color, or even earwax consistency. Others are actually important - epidemiology recognizes that certain groups are more vulnerable to certain diseases, or more prone to genetic disorders than others. For instance, did you know that your T-cells probably work differently from mine? Your immune system gives priority to bacteria and viruses, mine will target parasites first. This is why my people had such a hard time with smallpox, and why Europeans couldn't really settle the tropics.

This is a genetic trait almost exclusive to people of Siberian or precolumbian American origin. However it is not "racial" - There are "white" people who's immune system will go after parasites first, and there are "indians" who are pretty good against disease. But it's a sound bet that anyone who has a parasites-first immune system, has ancestors that would qualify for "indian" even if that person themselves looks nothing like those ancestors and would be lumped into a totally different "race". The variance is because, as I said, people like to have sex, and "race" has never been a real barrier. So you end up with "whites" who have strong Western Hemisphere genes, you get "blacks" who have genes most common to Northern Europe, you get "Indians" with lots of African genes, etc.

I never once said that race - as in the social construct - had any genetic backing behind it, as you seem to think I did. In fact I'm saying quite the opposite - genetics proves that the social concept of race is invalid, because nobody is "pure", to use a term. There are no clear genetic divisions between, say, "whites" and "blacks" because, very simply, they've been diddling the hell out of each other at various meeting points for at least nine thousand years, and not all the miscegenation laws in the world have ever stopped it. The descendants from these couplings migrated one way or the other, bringing their parents' genes with them, and their descendants did the same, maybe even met a new "race" and repeated the process, ad infinitum.

However... It's plainly visible that there are genetic differences in various groups of people, differences that tend to be found in broadly definable groups, which can be used to trace an individual's ancestors. if you have the gene that causes sickle cell, you clearly have African ancestors - which often, but certainly not always - correlates with being "black". If you have "shovel teeth" then somewhere in your family there's someone from east Asia or precolumbian America - even if you do not fit that "race"

Get what I'm saying? I realize it's a complicated and frankly thorny subject. But we're not "all the same" and pretending we are leads to problems just the same as overemphasizing our differences does.