So, we're finding out what we have always known, namely, that "race" is primariy a social overlay upon a set of irrelvant physical characteristics. Wow. Tomorrow's headline: Sky Is Primarily Blue, And Grass Green.

Not to say that race doesn't exist. It exists as long as people think on it and act on it. They are, however, thinking and acting on their own ideas, nothing real, nothing outside their own minds.

Why, then, race's stability? Politics, and power. People bring up race when they mean to accomplish something by it--to expand freedom or abolish it; to make, or unmake, or ruin an underclass; to project our hopes, or fears, or lies about ourselves onto someone else.

Hence my steady bemusement with Saletan's wrestling with science and race. Even someone marginally scientifically literate, and certainly someone as informed as Saletan, knows that race is not a scientific concept. The fact that it's subject to arbitrary assignment--better still, self-assignment--should be a hint. At best, race is used as a messy proxy for some real underlying physiological trait. At worst, race is a neat, clean proxy for the bias of the researcher.

Scientists decline to discuss race not because it's not PC, but because it's not science but something else--possibly sloppy, possbly evil, certainly not worth a scientist's time and trouble.

I too thought it interesting that the author employed the topic to defuse the concept of race. That made the article about race more than the science of genetic mapping in applied pharmacology.

So, yes. Let us be done with racial overtones. We can now be more specific which has benefits in medical care.

Ok, I_hedoniste, does it make you feel better if we call it 'genetic distinction based on geographic location'? There are real physical differences that occur because of location. The % of African's with Sickle Cell Anemia for example are much higher than whites, now this is because of location and not race perse, another example is certain blood pressure medications are much more successful in whites than blacks. Not to say that the socially constructed, more intelligent, or more human, or more animal like arguments are real, but there is a basis in the idea that location determines the odds of genetic factors occurring, which is essentially what race stands for, a person who is a descendant of people who lived on a certain continent. race exists biologically, we have just been trained to ignore the difference, for example the oft used .1% difference between the races, well what are those .1% differences? what does that difference do? one chromosome can completely change how a person looks, thinks, acts, and how healthy they are, there is a very smal % difference between humans and our closest realitves, small differences can mean a lot, it might mean nothing, but until we know what that .1% difference is, we can't really say one way or another.

Ok, I_hedoniste, does it make you feel better if we call it 'genetic distinction based on geographic location'?

The simple, and accurate, 'genetic distinction' would be best.

There are real physical differences that occur because of location.

Here's where you start to go off the rails. It's not the location that causes the physical differences, but the genetic transmission of traits. Your 'location' is, like I've mentioned above, "a messy proxy for some real underlying physiological trait." Worse, even, since it's a proxy for a proxy (race) for a underlying physiological trait.

If you're going to discuss a physiology of race, discuss it. You only confuse the issue by introducing 'location' as a code word.

there is a basis in the idea that location determines the odds of genetic factors occurring, which is essentially what race stands for

You cannot believe this. When so when people discuss black men, they're discussing genetic factors that arise by virtue of location?

Ask around. Make sure you ask a few black men. You're in for some surprises.

Race stands for the associations people have about that race, nothing more. The scientifc discussion is a smokescreen designed to preserve categories that never existed outside of the mind.

race exists biologically, we have just been trained to ignore the difference

Oh? Describe the black horomone (before and after the one-drop rule). The latino chromosome. The caucasian gland.

Some mestizos have ancestry from Africa, Asia, Europe, Central and South America. What race are they, if any, and how does it affect their physiology?

Race exists only socially and politically. What we're ignoring is the biology; or more to the point, the lack of it.

"there is a basis in the idea that location determines the odds of genetic factors occurring, which is essentially what race stands for

You cannot believe this. "

Isn't he referring to the basic evolutionary idea that people separated by location were exposed to different environmental pressures and developed distinct genetic traits? See 'Survivial of the Sickest' by Dr Sharon Moalem.

Jon Entine has written about this also in the context of sport and medicine.

"A large-scale study of the variability in the human genome by Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company in Connecticut, has convincingly shown the fallaciousness of arguments tied to the 99.9 percent figure. The research shows that while humans have only 32,000 genes, there are between 400,000 and 500,000 gene versions. More specifically, they found that different versions of a gene are more common in a group of people from one geographical region, compared with people from another."

<link>

Isn't he referring to the basic evolutionary idea that people separated by location were exposed to different environmental pressures and developed distinct genetic traits?

He would be if he didn't add this phrase: "which is essentially what race stands for". Because it's not what race stands for. It never was and never will be what race stands for.

The point bears repeating: The discussion of race (which doesn't exist scientifically) must be removed from the discussion of genetic traits arising from environment pressure (which does). The two are not analogous, or even similar.

When a someone says "What an articulate (or clean) black man", does he mean "What an articulate set of of genetict traits arising from environmental pressure"? Never. The reading is absurd.

I've never held that traits don't arise from environmental pressure, merely that is has nothing to do with race. Since race exists only in people's minds, how could it?