Is race a bio category or a social construct?

[Leigha]

I've been pondering this, lately. Since many of the narratives we follow come from our own social constructs, do you believe that race (not racism, but individual races) can be defined as a biological category, or is it simply another social construct?

[RainbowUnicorn]

I've been pondering this, lately. Since many of the narratives we follow come from our own social constructs, do you believe that race (not racism, but individual races) can be defined as a biological category, or is it simply another social construct?

it is a socialy applied bio-catagorisation based on territorial demarkation.

Originally it meant the generic base genetic and cultural sub group of humans.

now that there is globalisation there is only culture.

[Leigha]

I've been pondering this, lately. Since many of the narratives we follow come from our own social constructs, do you believe that race (not racism, but individual races) can be defined as a biological category, or is it simply another social construct?

it is a socialy applied bio-catagorisation based on territorial demarkation.

Originally it meant the generic base genetic and cultural sub group of humans.

now that there is globalisation there is only culture.

Interesting, but we still have race issues. Or the issue of races segregating people. Racism is still alive and well. I wonder why we (civilizations) ever felt the need to delineate people by 'race?' Ethnicity, okay. That's logical, but to define people by race seems unnecessary.

[RainbowUnicorn]

I've been pondering this, lately. Since many of the narratives we follow come from our own social constructs, do you believe that race (not racism, but individual races) can be defined as a biological category, or is it simply another social construct?

it is a socialy applied bio-catagorisation based on territorial demarkation.

Originally it meant the generic base genetic and cultural sub group of humans.

now that there is globalisation there is only culture.

Interesting, but we still have race issues. Or the issue of races segregating people. Racism is still alive and well. I wonder why we (civilizations) ever felt the need to delineate people by 'race?' Ethnicity, okay. That's logical, but to define people by race seems unnecessary.

The Human animal has always sought to survive.
Thus maintaining a constant level of superiority and larger amount of resources has been the Darwinian evolutionary process. with exception of slavery and controlled slave breeding.

this level of materialism has been ingrained into culture to become a normal aspect of default morality & culture by most civilisations.

there is quite a leap between the 2 places of capitalist society & socialist society.

capitalism relys on the ability to render others poor. this in its self dictates social culture to maintain a process of class system via any means capable.
previousely secret clubs and associations use to be the way people survived by giving each other discounts and food and shelter.

modern secular socialist based(taxation and people paid by tax and laws & regulations and citizenship) civilised society is extremely new to humans.

remembering that generically fear is taught by many as a form of control of the unknown. thus fear of anything different is taught as a way to control your access to resources.

[C C]

... do you believe that race (not racism, but individual races) can be defined as a biological category, or is it simply another social construct?

The contemporary movement of conformity from philosophy to science to law is to eliminate even an obscure nook and utile slot for race having a biological basis. Accordingly it would be fruitless for me in even a foil-playing slash devil's advocate role to go against that pulverizing wall scraping across the conceptual / sorting landscape. Apart from maintaining awareness of any mitigated hold-outs.

Philosophy-wise, the thought orientation of "racial population naturalism" supposedly still defends a variation of the concept in a light, biological way.

Science-wise, the forensic discipline (crime context) potentially yields results that are contended by some parties to be valid; while others protest that the field's work / conclusions are not impressive under closer scrutiny, or are outright incorrect.

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In philosophy... SEP - Race, Michael James:

While philosophers and scientists have reached the consensus against racial naturalism, philosophers nevertheless disagree on the possible ontological status of a different conception of race. [Ron] Mallon divides such disagreements into three metaphysical camps (racial skepticism, racial constructivism, and racial population naturalism) and two normative camps (eliminativism and conservationism).

Racial skepticism holds that because racial naturalism is false, races of any type do not exist. Racial skeptics contend that the term race cannot refer to anything real in the world, since the one thing in the world to which the term could uniquely refer—discrete, essentialist, biological races—have been proven not to exist.

Racial constructivism refers to the argument that, even if biological race is false, races have come into existence and continue to exist through “human culture and human decisions”. Race constructivists accept the skeptics’ dismissal of biological race but argue that the term still meaningfully refers to the widespread grouping of individuals into certain categories by society, indeed often by the very members of such racial ascriptions. Thin constructivism depicts race as a grouping of humans according to ancestry and genetically insignificant, “superficial properties that are prototypically linked with race,” such as skin tone, hair color and hair texture. In this way, thin constructivists rely on the widespread folk theory of race while rejecting its scientific foundation upon racial naturalism. Interactive kind constructivism goes further, in arguing that being ascribed to a certain racial category causes the individuals so labeled to have certain common experiences. Institutional constructivism emphasizes race as a social institution, whose character is specific to the society in which it is embedded and thus cannot be applied across cultures or historical epochs.

Racial population naturalism suggests that it is possible that genetically significant biological groupings could exist that would merit the term races. Importantly, these biological racial groupings would not be essentialist or discrete: there is no set of genetic or other biological traits that all and only all members of a racial group share that would then provide a natural biological boundary between racial groups. Thus, these thinkers confirm the strong scientific consensus that discrete, essentialist races do not exist. However, the criteria of discreteness and essentialism would also invalidate distinctions between non-human species, such as lions and tigers. Biological species are differentiated by reproductive isolation, which is relative, not absolute (since hybrids sometimes appear in nature); which may have non-genetic causes (e.g., geographic separation and incompatible reproduction periods or rituals); which may generate statistically significant if not uniform genetic differences; and which may express distinct phenotypes. In effect, if the failure to satisfy the condition of discreteness and essentialism requires jettisoning the concept of race, then it also requires jettisoning the concept of biological species. But because the biological species concept remains epistemologically useful, some biologists and philosophers use it to defend a racial ontology that is “biologically informed but non-essentialist,” one that is vague, non-discrete, and related to genetics, genealogy, geography, and phenotype.

In science, the forensic problem...

Steve Sailer: "I do want to point out that even though we are constantly assured that Science Has Proven Race Does Not Exist Genetically, it’s actually completely uncontroversial in forensic science that DNA can determine the race of pieces of corpses found floating in a New York bay." --In Forensic Science, Race Does Exist

Alan Goodman: "Like some of the other questions, especially the one on bone marrow, we have to look at the assumption that is embedded in the question, which is the idea that forensic investigators actually are good at telling an individual's race from their bones or from a fragment of their DNA. I can very clearly say that this assumption is incorrect." --Race: The Power of an Illusion

Race Reconciled Re-Debunks Race: Skin color, like many other racial measures, is continuously variable. Crania may be structured geographically, but classifications based on geographic clusters would be arbitrary. But what about measuring all the bones? Television shows feature forensic anthropologists easily identifying race from skeletal remains. Does that mean race is real?

Forensic anthropologist Norman Sauer answered this question in a classic article titled Forensic Anthropology and the Concept of Race: If races don’t exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them? (1992). Sauer explains “the successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed ‘racial’ category”. Forensic anthropologists have samples of bones from many geographic areas, and can classify bones according to what race society has assigned to people with ancestry in those geographic areas. However, examining the bones provides a probability estimate of likely race assignment: “In ascribing a race name to a set of skeletonized remains, the anthropologist is actually translating information about biological traits to a culturally constructed labeling system that was likely to have been applied to a missing person”.

Despite the provocative and sometimes misunderstood title, Sauer pleads for forensic anthropologists to better explain what it means to make racial classifications from skeletal remains. He begs forensic anthropologists not to “sail on” without making an effort to expose people “to the notion that perceived races are not reflections of biological reality”. We should “not fall into the trap of accepting races as valid biologically discrete categories because we use them so often”.

Ah, Sauer writing in 1992 seems so quaint. Since then, popular media has trumpeted the notion of forensic anthropologists perform identification miracles (see Kristina Kilgrove on The Forensics of Temperance Brennan). Sauer’s plea does not seem to have resulted in an institutionalized move by forensic anthropologists to expose people to the difference between perceived race and biology. I have not systematically surveyed forensic anthropology syllabi, but my informal conversations lead me to believe Sauer’s article is not an explicit part of many forensic anthropology courses.

A different question is whether Sauer’s stance remains valid, given the increased sophistication of measurement and quantification in forensic anthropology. Here two articles in the Race Reconciled volume are especially insightful–the increasing sophistication of measurement and quantification only reinforces Sauer’s claim that forensic anthropology does not confirm traditional race classifications, even when race-identification probabilities are reported from skeletal remains.

- - -

Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue: "It's a concept we think is too crude to provide useful information, it's a concept that has social meaning that interferes in the scientific understanding of human genetic diversity and it's a concept that we are not the first to call upon moving away from," said Michael Yudell, a professor of public health at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Yudell said that modern genetics research is operating in a paradox, which is that race is understood to be a useful tool to elucidate human genetic diversity, but on the other hand, race is also understood to be a poorly defined marker of that diversity and an imprecise proxy for the relationship between ancestry and genetics.

Law professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig: : "Race is not biological. It is a social construct. There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. Were race “real” in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries. Yet, a person who could be categorized as black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil or colored in South Africa. Like race, racial identity can be fluid. How one perceives her racial identity can shift with experience and time, and not simply for those who are multiracial. These shifts in racial identity can end in categories that our society, which insists on the rigidity of race, has not even yet defined"
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[Secular Sanity]

Race (wikipedia.org)

These were good.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/V9YMCKp5myI

Episode 2

Episode 3

The online companion to the 3 part documentary

[Leigha]

Law professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig: : "Race is not biological. It is a social construct. There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. Were race “real” in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries. Yet, a person who could be categorized as black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil or colored in South Africa. Like race, racial identity can be fluid. How one perceives her racial identity can shift with experience and time, and not simply for those who are multiracial. These shifts in racial identity can end in categories that our society, which insists on the rigidity of race, has not even yet defined"

I'm about 90% in agreement with this ^

I hadn't considered the genetic component in quite this way, but it makes a lot of sense. I read an article last year whereby the author thought that gender defining was also a social construct. That I disagree with, because biologically, males and females are intrinsically different. To pretend like those differences don't exist and that we've manufactured gender terms in order to put boundaries between men and women, is risky, in my opinion.

But race? I don't see why we need to check mark a box on a job application for example or any other survey/application, conveying our race. It seems like it's deliberately divisive. While there are obviously visible differences between races, there isn't a need to define people by race. We can simply shift the paradigm to using ethnicity in place of race.

[RainbowUnicorn]

can everyone be of different races yet of the same culture ?
how can that be scientifically measured ?

[Leigha]

can everyone be of different races yet of the same culture ?
how can that be scientifically measured ?

Yes. The United States has a variety of races, but everyone of those races, takes cover under the umbrella of the American culture. Even if people of different races come from different cultures, there is still a mainstream, core culture in the US that trumps the others. That's an unintentional pun, sorry.

---

Race (wikipedia.org)

These were good.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/V9YMCKp5myI

Episode 2

Episode 3

The online companion to the 3 part documentary

Watching the first part now. There's ''no genetic markers that define race.'' Wow. 

Thanks for posting this. I'm going to watch the rest. They're a must watch for everyone, I think. When we get down to it, social constructs usually benefit just one set group of people (a majority), which is why they're hard to break.

[RainbowUnicorn]

can everyone be of different races yet of the same culture ?
how can that be scientifically measured ?

Yes. The United States has a variety of races, but everyone of those races, takes cover under the umbrella of the American culture. Even if people of different races come from different cultures, there is still a mainstream, core culture in the US that trumps the others. That's an unintentional pun, sorry.

---

Race (wikipedia.org)

These were good.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/V9YMCKp5myI

Episode 2

Episode 3

The online companion to the 3 part documentary

Watching the first part now. There's ''no genetic markers that define race.'' Wow. 

Thanks for posting this. I'm going to watch the rest. They're a must watch for everyone, I think. When we get down to it, social constructs usually benefit just one set group of people (a majority), which is why they're hard to break.

LoL
blonde jokes...
paradigms of archetype ...
quantatative control metaphors...

if the premise is to posit a hyrachy, then what is the original question ?

when the debate is no longer about trying to get money the debate will change.