Is There A Sound Basis For Racial Profiling?

[rainbow]

Most of the objection I see to the notion of human subspeciation has to do with moral, ethical and social boundaries, not science.

No the objection is scientific.
If you can't define human races in terms of Unique and Universal properties, then you're talking Nonscience.

Please don't make me explain this again.

[charlou]

Ayep, I've no doubt biology and genetics are still accepted as fields of scientific interest, study and research

[charlou]

galaxian, the list you posted merely represents a portrayal of geographic distributions of people, and disregards the incidence and effects of migration completely.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Most of the objection I see to the notion of human subspeciation has to do with moral, ethical and social boundaries, not science.

No the objection is scientific.
If you can't define human races in terms of Unique and Universal properties, then you're talking Nonscience.

Please don't make me explain this again.

But if it's scientific then it has validity. And we can't have that, can we?

[Galaxian]

.......
Here's a more concise & easier to read genetic distance table:

That's a pretty awesome list .. thanks for posting.

What if we took a single progeny of each one of those listed groups, sent them on a randomly matched holiday where they hooked up with someone from one of the other listed groups and produced a child ... How would you categorise each child from those matches?

And if we were to take those children and do the same, what categories would you list their offspring as?

And are we still defining these generations as subspecies? Is there a point over such mixed generations where we discontinue doing so? If not, why not?

Thank you for your compliment, it far more than I usually get

If one of those subspecies was matched with one of another, the context would be important:
a) They could simply be put in the same holiday camp, in which case, depending on their genetic distance, they could probably ignore each other.
b) They could be forced to copulate, in which case they may or may not conceive depending on their genetic distance. See my earlier post about 3rd cousins being the most fecund.

As to the offspring. Depending on the genetic discrepancy, they would have different degrees of fitness. At one extreme; if one parent was Rh+ & the other Rh- and the mother was antagonistic to the fetus, the fetus would likely die or be sickly. By the 2nd baby, the fetus would almost certainly die. At the other extreme, if the genetic distance is moderate we could have hybrid vigor, that is, increased fitness, due to lessening of detrimental recessive genes.

The surviving children would have different degrees of fertility, again depending on the specific mix of subspecies. But in due course, as I said earlier, the compatible subspecies would become one subspecies. That is, if they are forced into unions over generations. The instant that forced intermixing stops, new subspecies will spontaneously begin to emerge (over many generations), due to natural attraction of some people for some & repulsion from some others, that is gradually reinforced as differences multiply. So, early hominins still cross-bred with early chimps, but as they diverged that interaction disappeared & was replaced by revulsion.

The emergence of subspecies & then species is due to unstable selection pressures in biological systems. It is like a big ball on top of a hill, it will begin to roll one way or other. As it descends, it can not re-climb the hill & decide to take a different path. That's why the eye (for example) is such a messy contrivance; the development had to be layered on top of what had gone before. It could not undo previous planning easily.

That is also why we have convergent evolution, such as the body form of sharks & dolphins. But we would not mistake one for the other. That is why different organisms develop along different trajectories & inhabit different niches in the ecology. If accidental & spontaneous divergence did not exist, then every creature would be identical since they would be impelled by identical environmental forces.

[Galaxian]

Warble Warble Warble.

There are many good questions raised by those opposed to the idea of human subspecies. Questions I cannot personally answer because there has been little to no unbiased research done. Taxonomy applied to humans would assert there are, but along what lines? Cultural? Economical? Morphological? I suspect the answer is a composite of many aspects - which is what I meant, Charlou, when I said you were looking at it in terms of 'black and white' (along traditional racial divides).

What I'm advocating is an unshackling of science. Let it lead us where it may.*

*To preempt the argument that 'science has determined there are no subspecies of homo sapiens sapiens [you see we are a subspecies of homo sapiens], PC science has issued that statement. Since that decree further study into the matter has been mired in racism as the real scientists are caught up in the racist vs. egalitarian debate. It's absurd.

And that's all I have to say about that for now.

Of course I have to agree with you. The whole field of taxonomy is fraught with laziness & biases. We can blame it on Linnaeus. Since then any systematist or taxonomist has had their own personal arm-waving exercises. Other ones might or might not disagree, but they rarely advertize that, because it's bad for business.

You, or anyone here can find score upon score of creatures or plants that have been classified & re-classified, largely on the basis of the flavor of the month & passing fads. Different wolves & coyotes have been given specific subspecies. 10,000 virtually identical fish in Lake Victoria were given specific subspecies names, etc. Why? Because, they largely ignored each other (like humans, eh?). And ignoring each other is a standard criterion for subspecies nomenclature. The wolves & coyotes & L.Victoria chiclids are all inter-fertile, but the fact that they rarely hybridized makes them different subspecies. Just pure bigotry, that's all. The wolves & coyotes & chiclids are fucking racists!

This enthusiasm for naming anything a different subspecies or species has extended to humans as well. Every time a hominid or hominin fossil was found, no matter how small, it was given a new species or subspecies title. "The jaw's a bit different, the finger is longer, the arse sticks out more...", etc, etc. Of course as you look around you, even in the SAME human subspecies, say, Nordic, there are significant variations.

That's why Galaxian has been saying for decades that the prejudiced way of naming subspecies should be done away with FOR ALL FAUNA & FLORA. That's why Pink Harrier has said here & elsewhere, that if we are so willing to name different dolphins different subspecies or even species, when they are cross-fertile, then the same applies to humans. IF we want to get rid of human subspecies (races) then we must discard ALL cross-fertile subspecies across the entire biosphere.

Now we have L. Victoria becoming muddy. The chiclids can't see each others' colors so well, so they copulate willy nilly & the specific subspecies are being reduced... not disappearing; the more different ones continue to remain aloof. THAT is what's happening to humans. The closer subspecies can merge. But the more distant ones will remain aloof, unless forced together by a Police State. I suspect that, assuming the New World Order or sex tourism doesn't impose it on us, that about 10 very distinct human subspecies will either die out or gradually drift even further away from the main body of humans, till we become cross-sterile.

[Galaxian]

So Rainbow and NB are you saying that there are no varieties of humans in the sense that Darwin used that term?

No. My children and my neighbour's children are genetically different, and look different.
If is not sufficient to classify them as different subspecies.

This is really a very simple concept to grasp.
Why do you battle to understand it?

Could it be genetic?

WHY isn't it "sufficient"? What, exactly is the genetic metric for subspeciation?

I mean really, different beak lengths on birds was good enough for Darwin.

[Seth]

Rainbow said "No. My children and my neighbour's children are genetically different, and look different.
If is not sufficient to classify them as different subspecies."

Which begs the question as to why you categorize them as children? Surely your children (unless they're teenagers) are 99%+ the same. Or is age, like race, a social construct? If you think so, then I might just concur that race is a social construct. If not, I won't.

As for racial profiling, I would be in favour of it if it saved your childrens' (and your neighbours' children) lives. And yours as well.

My children have a Unique feature (they are the only people in the world that are my progeny), and they also have a Universal property (they are all my progeny).
I didn't bring in any 99% argument. YOU argue it if you think it has merit.

Now show me a 'race' that has Unique and Universal properties, and list what these features are.

Black people have dark skin, white people don't.

[Rum]

Rainbow said "No. My children and my neighbour's children are genetically different, and look different.
If is not sufficient to classify them as different subspecies."

Which begs the question as to why you categorize them as children? Surely your children (unless they're teenagers) are 99%+ the same. Or is age, like race, a social construct? If you think so, then I might just concur that race is a social construct. If not, I won't.

As for racial profiling, I would be in favour of it if it saved your childrens' (and your neighbours' children) lives. And yours as well.

My children have a Unique feature (they are the only people in the world that are my progeny), and they also have a Universal property (they are all my progeny).
I didn't bring in any 99% argument. YOU argue it if you think it has merit.

Now show me a 'race' that has Unique and Universal properties, and list what these features are.

Black people have dark skin, white people don't.

Conversely white people have fair skin and black people don't.

[Seth]

galaxian, the list you posted merely represents a portrayal of geographic distributions of people, and disregards the incidence and effects of migration completely.

Not really. The list shows identifiable populations classed by morphology and location. It does not address outliers or hybrids. Nor need it do so. Darwin may have discovered a long-beaked bird in a short-beaked habitat without it distressing his conclusions.

[Seth]

Rainbow said "No. My children and my neighbour's children are genetically different, and look different.
If is not sufficient to classify them as different subspecies."

Which begs the question as to why you categorize them as children? Surely your children (unless they're teenagers) are 99%+ the same. Or is age, like race, a social construct? If you think so, then I might just concur that race is a social construct. If not, I won't.

As for racial profiling, I would be in favour of it if it saved your childrens' (and your neighbours' children) lives. And yours as well.

My children have a Unique feature (they are the only people in the world that are my progeny), and they also have a Universal property (they are all my progeny).
I didn't bring in any 99% argument. YOU argue it if you think it has merit.

Now show me a 'race' that has Unique and Universal properties, and list what these features are.

Black people have dark skin, white people don't.

Conversely white people have fair skin and black people don't.

Correct. And neither subspecies genotype in that specific regard has any identifiable genetically-based behavioral differences that I'm aware of. Could there be other aspects of the respective genotypes or phenotypes that do affect behavior on a subspecies-wide basis?

I don't know. But it's certainly possible, since precisely that has been observed elsewhere in nature.

[Tyrannical]

Too specialized for me to easily look up, but those charts do not take into account either gene expression or the effects of having multiple copies of genes which make the differences even bigger.

[rainbow]

galaxian, the list you posted merely represents a portrayal of geographic distributions of people, and disregards the incidence and effects of migration completely.

Not really. The list shows identifiable populations classed by morphology and location.

As with my children and my neighbour's children.
You have still failed to explain whether this is suffiecient grounds to classify them as different subspecies.

[rainbow]

Rainbow said "No. My children and my neighbour's children are genetically different, and look different.
If is not sufficient to classify them as different subspecies."

Which begs the question as to why you categorize them as children? Surely your children (unless they're teenagers) are 99%+ the same. Or is age, like race, a social construct? If you think so, then I might just concur that race is a social construct. If not, I won't.

As for racial profiling, I would be in favour of it if it saved your childrens' (and your neighbours' children) lives. And yours as well.

My children have a Unique feature (they are the only people in the world that are my progeny), and they also have a Universal property (they are all my progeny).
I didn't bring in any 99% argument. YOU argue it if you think it has merit.

Now show me a 'race' that has Unique and Universal properties, and list what these features are.

Black people have dark skin, white people don't.

'black' isn't a race. Not even racists claim that dark skinned people from Central America, Africa, Southern India, and Australia are the same 'race'.
Epic Fail.
Not Unique, and not even Universal.

Conversely white people have fair skin and black people don't.

Correct. And neither subspecies genotype in that specific regard has any identifiable genetically-based behavioral differences that I'm aware of. Could there be other aspects of the respective genotypes or phenotypes that do affect behavior on a subspecies-wide basis?

I don't know. But it's certainly possible, since precisely that has been observed elsewhere in nature.

[rainbow]

'black' isn't a race. Not even racists claim that dark skinned people from Central America, Africa, Southern India, and Australia are the same 'race'.
Epic Fail.
Not Unique, and not even Universal.