Half white? No, your black

If race isn't biological, then genes don't exist. That's what I think of when I read what you typed.

 

If this is your logic than literally everyone is their own race.

 

Okay, let me put it this way.

Two black people have a black baby. If race doesn't exist, then two black people could have a Japanese baby.



That's what "race isn't biological" means. It's nonsense.

 

Again, two black people can have a baby and have it come out white not realizing 100 years ago they had a white relative and the 1 in 80 or whatever chance by then the white skin gene has of being dominant comes true.

*edit*
You're again completely missing the point on race, now you're lumping all black people together despite the fact black people have all different kinds of genes just like everyone else. You're again making race a factor of skin color, not even biology, you're ruining your own point.

 

That baby would not be white. I've seen black babies who got the white skin gene. They still had black features, and it just looked albino.


Race isn't skin colour, and I don't think you understand what my point is.

 

Since everyone is having difficulty understanding what race means, I looked it up for the ignorant.

Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Race:
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 category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical trait

Since I know most of the stupid mtv people don't know what taxonomic means; It is a branch of biology that classifies something... Taxonomy.

 

race is a human construct that we have created to group different looking people. we are all biologically human. our genes adapted to best suit our different environments. open us up and we are all the same.

"Again, two black people can have a baby and have it come out white not realizing 100 years ago they had a white relative and the 1 in 80 or whatever chance by then the white skin gene has of being dominant comes true."

Nope that does not happen. Dark skin pigmentation is a dominant phenotype, black people have black babies with other black people. The only way two black people can have a white baby is if the child is albeino- which is not a "white gene" but a mutation causing them to have no melanin which is what gives skin pigment, hence they have black features but white skin.

 

While scientists use the concept of race to make practical distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits, the scientific community feels that the idea of race is often used by the general public in a naive or simplistic way, erroneously designating wholly discrete types of individuals. Among humans, race has no cladistic significance—all people belong to the same hominid subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.


We don't just have MTV, we have Wikipedia

What we are discussing is whether the accord that race is given, is appropriate, seeing how it really is an arbitrary distinction, based mostly on skintone.
If more casual means of speaking don't do it for you.

 

Race is biological, unless we want to get into a semantic argument over race/ethnicity again.

The Sherpa people have a variation in their genome which makes them more likely to be able to breathe at altitudes above 8,000 meters. Their ethnicity has biologically adapted to their environment.

Europeans have genetic variations which allow them to consume dairy products which are intolerable in many other parts of the world.

The Khoisan people of sub saharan Africa have genes which many members of their ethnic group resistant to malaria.

These are 3 of several thousand examples that could be given. To make the claim that people living within a certain geographical haven't adapted to their environments in ways that distinguishes them genetically from other populations is unscientific, which if widely believed would hamper research into genome sequencing and ultimately prove disastrous to the most promising medical developments of the 21st century.

Fortunately, real scientists don't listen to sociologists for genetic research.

 

Again, ethnicity is more apropos, but a very scientifically useful distinction into looking into genetics. People often use race and ethnicity interchangeably, which is a pedagogical debate I'm not really that interested in.

One could argue that race is a social construct as ruski has, or you could argue that ethnicity is simply a more modern and broad definition of grouping people for cultural and genetic reasons, which are very important distinctions when it comes to genetic research.

Semantics.

 

wowwwwww, y'all still can't wrap your heads around what madcap and i are saying huh?


yes, the way you look is biological. it is passed among genes. but, there is no gene that says "this person is 'black'", "this person is 'white'".

i could be closer genetically to my black neighbor, than to my white neighbor. but, i look "white" so i categorize myself/you categorize me as "white". why arent y'all getting this?!

once again, i pose the question to those of you that insist race is an actual real thing, instead ofa social construct: what is "black"? what qualifies as "white"? "latino"? "asian"? answer the fucking question!

 

here's a good link:
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-07.htm

 

According to Jim Crowe Law, any percentage of blood between black and white parents renders the off spring black.

 

yeah, thanks for that valuable input

actually, it's perfect evidence of how the ambiguity of "race" has changed over time.

 

right, but genetic distinctions are due to clime, so a black person whose DNA traces back to Zambia, for example, is going to be genetically different from a person whose ancestry can be traced back to Algeria. There is no genetic link or some kind of dna marker that is shared between all white people or all black people. There are variations and similarities in genes based on geography, not race.

 

yeahhhhhh someone who get's it. i knew i liked you

 

But a person from Zambia and a person from Algeria are both black.

 

I understand what your saying but where you lose me is your statement that the way you look is passed along in genes but that there isn't a gene that says your black or white or whatever. If your made up of the genes passed on from your ancestors then what exactly determines your skin pigment if not something in your genes?

 

They're only black because they look black, and once again you're basing your entire basis of race solely on appearance. What is so hard to understand about this.

What do you do considering the fact most people who aren't from island nations have very varied genes, it's just a question of what is recessive and what is dominant. Genes aren't these things we only have one version of.

Back to the main point though, even the people here claiming race is biological are using nothing but skin color to determine race. Why is it only skin color is being used for race. If we're going by skin color, than all east Asians are also white, better get on the horn and tell them. A person from Angola and a person from Senegal might both be "black", but they're most likely going to be 2 very different shades of "black", so are they black, or are they two different races.

And really, if we're going by genetics than once again, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of different races. Unless you know, you're basing everything on skin color, and skin color genes are the only ones that matter.

Fun fact, if you're Italian, southern French, Spanish, Portguese, Greek, Albanian, Romanian, 80 years you weren't white, at least in the minds of protestant northern Europe. Way to dark haired and hairy to be worthy of white back than.

And what do you do if you get say a French or Italian person who just happens not only to naturally be very olive skinned but spends a lot of time in the sun so had quite dark skin. Than you get someone who is in theory 100% African but happens to have a very light brown shade of skin and is in fact lighter than the European. Who is black and who is white in that.

 

I'm glad you brought that up because I started thinking about it after I submitted my last post.

Algerians actually look more middle eastern, right? I've never been to Algeria but in the pictures I've seen they resemble dark middle easterners more than Africans. Then you have Egypt. Egyptians are technically African but they certainly resemble someone from Iraq more so than someone from Sudan, for example. Is Middle Easterner a race? How would you classify them? What about Indians? Technically they are Asian but they certainly don't resemble the Chinese or Japanese. Is Indian a race? Swedish people look absolutely nothing like Italians, so are they two seperate races?

Physical characteristics change gradually as you change climes. Race is a social construct because humans instinctually feel the need for classification, but there is no genetic link between all black people or all white people. In fact, its likely that a light skinned black person living in America probably has more in common genetically with me, a descendent of Scotland and Wales, than a dark skinned black person living in Zambia.