Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Ustwo
Edit:And I'll add that calling it clinical variation is sort of silly on other levels. Clinical variation is normally used to describe differences we don't see. Mitochondrial mutations, important as they are in this discussion, are 'clinical variations'. Skin color not so much as its both obvious and leads to real functional differences.
|
It's "clinal," not clinical. I don't know if that's what you meant throughout your post, but the meanings are totally different.
My point is that everyone is a mutt, at the genetic level. Get a test done and see how much variation there is in your ancestral DNA, that's all I'm saying. I have never seen anyone (in our lab) with 100% pure DNA from one region of the world. The only time in human history that this could have been possible was in Olduvai Gorge... from then on out, it was all mixing, with periods of isolation... followed by more mixing. No one is "pure" anything.
As for this:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by twistedmosaic
If race doesn't exist, why did my Native American wife get better scholarship than my European Mutt self? Why do I have to check 'Caucasian' when I apply for a job, or go to school?
|
I have said this elsewhere, but I should have reiterated it again in this thread: race exists SOCIALLY, and that is why I mentioned sociologists still using it (demographers as well) when collecting census data... because, as you mention, it still gets used as a proxy for class/socio-economic status, etc, in order to decide how to allocate resources to different groups of people (not that I support that, either--I always mark "OTHER" on those stupid-ass racial forms).
But race does not exist genetically, not in the way that people would like to believe (that there is some 100% "pure" sample of each race, somewhere in the world). Clinal variation exists, as local populations adapted to their local conditions, and then spread out geographically (thus mixing their DNA), but race in itself, as arbitrarily-determined categories that humans make up to sort each other, exists only in people's minds. That is what I am trying to say... that it does not exist as a hard scientific fact, but only as a social one based very loosely on perceived geographic isolation leading to genetic isolation. For example, in Brazil, there are TONS more "races" (socially) than exist in the US... simply because they have a much more diverse range of skin tons to label, and they don't just settle for the old white/black/asian labels. Race labeling is relative to where you are in the world... but your DNA does not change.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by twistedmosaic
Race is an easy short hand to use as a description of people that society and the world at large uses to identify people from those large groups.
|
Yes, it's an easy shorthand, but that does not make it accurate or helpful to the evolution of human society. We are ALL mixed, whether people like to admit that or not. Personally, I'm quite glad my father got off this inbred island (Iceland) and mixed his genes up with someone from Thailand... and I'm doing my damned best to mix it up even further, with a husband from Lebanon. What race are you going to call our kids, huh?
Hopefully human, and leave it at that. :P