Talk:Race (human categorization)

The "Complications and various definitions of the concept" needs to be tossed out or extensively re-written.

Primarily this section does not do what its title suggests. It seems nothing more than an opinion piece from what would be termed in the United States a left wing political slant.

"There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.[17][18][19][20][21][22]" [Emphasis added]"

This statement is either false or misleading, depending on how it is read, on account of the last portion of the sentence. There is no "consensus" that human racial groups could not be biologically defined; I provide references below. Whether common groups which are called races in e.g., the U.S. can not be is a distinct matter.

I am going to rewrite this as:

"There is no consensus as to whether there are human biological races [],[],[],[],[],[],[],[]; many argue that racial categories as used, for example, in the U.S. are socially constructed and cannot be biologically defined.[17][18][19][20][21][22]".

If there are any objections to this let me know.174.97.231.103 (talk) 18:27, 28 March 2014 (UTC)John

Kaszycka, K. A., Štrkalj, G., & Strzałko, J. (2009). Current views of European anthropologists on race: Influence of educational and ideological background. American Anthropologist, 111(1), 43-56. Kaszycka, K. A., & Strzałko, J. (2003). Race: Tradition and convenience, or taxonomic reality? More on the race concept in Polish anthropology Lieberman, L., Stevenson, B. W., & Reynolds, L. T. (1989). Race and anthropology: A core concept without consensus. Anthropology & education quarterly, 20(2), 67-73. Morning, A. (2011). The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr. Štrkalj, G. (2007). The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthrop Strkalj, G., Ramsey, S., & Wilkinson, A. T. (2008). Anatomists’ attitudes towards the concept of race. South African Medical Journal, 94(2), 90. Wang, Q., trkalj, G., & Sun, L. (2003). On the concept of race in Chinese biological anthropology: alive and well. Current anthropology, 44(3), 403-403.

Hippofrank's edits

I will post my proposed edits here. If no one objects within 24 hours I will finalize the edits. I expect to fight an editing war on some of these issues, but I hope we can more or less agree on others.

Section: "Complications and various definitions of the concept".

Edit #1. 3/28/2014

Original: "There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.[17][18][19][20][21][22]"...

Note for edit 1: I changed this because the original was either misleading or false depending on how it was read. The original implied that there was a consensus against the existence of biological races. This is false. What is true is that many people agree that certain commonly used racial categories in the U.S. e.g., Asians do not characterize biologically scientifically defined races. Hippofrank (talk) 19:05, 28 March 2014 (UTC)Hippofrank

Edited Version: While there is no consensus as to whether there are human biological races , it is agreed that gene frequencies vary among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. For this reason there is no current consensus about whether traditional racial categories can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation.. There is a consensus that certain commonly used racial categories as used in certain countries, for example, Asians in the U.S., are socially constructed and cannot be biologically defined . Regarding these non-biologically definable racial categories, some scholars argue that they correlate with biologically conditioned traits (e.g. phenotype) to some degree and therefore can be genetically informative.

Edit #2. 3/28/2014 3:26 Eastern

Original: " When people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved.[29] In this sense, races are said to be social constructs.[30] These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of major social situations.[31] While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination."

Note for edit 2: This statement is fairly confused, so it needs to be changed. First, the term "social construct" is ambiguous; in common parlance it can mean "not a biological entity" while in philosophical parlance it can mean "not a natural kind". For example, in the philosophy of biology species are often said to be social constructs.

Edit #3. 3/28/2014 3:30 Eastern

Original: "[1] Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. [2] [32] Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior.[33] [3] As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes.[34] [4] Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including slavery and genocide.[35]

Note for edit 3: This whole paragraph needs to be rewritten. The first statement above is disputed. It has not been established that views of race, per se, have caused "considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial". This, rather, is a theoretical model. The second statement is somewhere between conjectural and inflammatory; members of defined outgroups (e.g., "their family), in general, are not preferenced; this is only tantamount to seeing them as "morally inferior"; this second statement also confuses moral inferiority with trait inferiority; the third statement is circular because " groups possessing relatively little power" and "excluded or oppressed" are typically operationalized the same way. The fourth statement is problematic because "racism" has no one definition; there is no consensus on what it is. One can only say "racism in some senses".

Proposed Edited Version (for edit 2,3): Regardless of the biological status of race, many scholars believe that the act of racial categorization can have socially significant effects on the lives of people through, for example, institutionalized practices of discrimination. [31] They believe that the act of employing racial classifications has led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. From this perspective, racial classifications reinforce tendencies to discriminate on the basis of ingroup and outgroup, tendencies which can lead to the oppressed and exclusion if the groups being discriminated against possesses relatively little power. These scholars have also argued that beliefs about the biological reality of race condition racism, understood as the belief in inherent racial superiority and inferiority.

Am I to take it that the proposed edits are supported by the footnotes as shown in the draft here on the talk page? Do you have the sources at hand? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:10, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, let's go one sentence at a time. The first sentence clarifies that there is no consensus concerning the existence of biological races.

While there is no consensus as to whether there are human biological races , it is agreed that gene frequencies vary among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings ."Hippofrank (talk) 22:31, 29 March 2014 (UTC)Hippofrank

[13-17]

Kaszycka, K. A., Štrkalj, G., & Strzałko, J. (2009). Current views of European anthropologists on race: Influence of educational and ideological background. American Anthropologist, 111(1), 43-56.

Lieberman, L., Stevenson, B. W., & Reynolds, L. T. (1989). Race and anthropology: A core concept without consensus. Anthropology & education quarterly, 20(2), 67-73.

Morning, A. (2011). The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr.

Wang, Q., trkalj, G., & Sun, L. (2003). On the concept of race in Chinese biological anthropology: alive and well. Current anthropology, 44(3), 403-403.

Štrkalj, G. (2007). The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthropology: A review. Anthropologist, 9(1), 73-78.

[18]

Hochman, A. (2013). Racial discrimination: How not to do it. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44(3), 278-286.

This is an example of synthesis. Instead of constructing one sentence about two different topics, from different sources, allow me to suggest you start with 2-4 high quality secondary sources, summarizing what those sources say. If you can't find some high quality secondary sources to uses as a basis, I'm sure those can be dug up. aprock (talk) 23:08, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Ok. I can just use four of the first five references, since they say the same. For example Kaszycka et al. (2009) state:

"Advances in human genome research brought about an increasing number of discoveries of mutated alleles responsible for various metabolic changes, whereas the frequency of these alleles has displayed interpopulational differences. If there were differences between the “white” and “black” U.S. residents—for example, alleles of genes called PCSK9 (Cohen et al. 2006) or ApoE4 associated with LDL metabolism and indirectly the risk of heart disease—they were easy to label as “racial” differences (Burchard et al. 2003).... In that the argument proposed that knowledge of the frequency of alleles in individual distinguishable populations was of practical importance in the treatment of some diseases, it was quite correct, although this still did not make a population a race (Hoffman 2005). Thus, interpopulational diversity of the contents of the human genome discovered during the research is not an argument for the existence of races but merely for polymorphism, the range and determinants of which are worth investigating also for medical purposes (Jones 2001; Rotman 2005; Schwartz 2001)."

The idea is that it's trivially true that the populations called races differ in gene frequency. But whether these populations constitute biological races is a more complex and contentious issue. So, I will just change that to:

"There is no consensus as to whether there are biological races in the human species . And there is widespread consensus that many commonly used racial categories are socially constructed in the sense of not being biologically delineated . Nonetheless, it is generally agreed that those groups which are called races vary in gene frequencies. Because of this, there is no current consensus as to whether these groups can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation."

These are excellent edits based on the best, mainstream sources. Go ahead.74.14.29.177 (talk) 06:10, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

If they all say the same thing, then I would suggest using the highest quality source, include page numbers, and an excerpt of the text you are paraphrasing. aprock (talk) 00:49, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

The above seems to be the simplest and most balanced way of stating things. The main points are:

(a) There is little agreement as to whether there are human biological races. (b) There is much agreement that some/many common racial categories are not biologically defined. (c) There is general agreement that groups called races differ in genes frequencies. (d) There is no agreement as to whether groups called races have have significance for understanding human genetic variation.

A more elaborate discussion is really needed, one which distinguishes between the various debates about race. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hippofrank (talk • contribs) 01:37, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Please pick a couple secondary sources (your excerpt above lists at least seven). Please include page numbers for each source. If you feel up to it, please consider adding an excerpt from the sources you think are the highest quality sources that you are basing your content on. aprock (talk) 04:10, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the current mainstream secondary sources generally do a good job of digging into the data and relating the data to various issues that have been controversial over the years. I have several of the best sources at hand, as do other editors who have this article on their watchlists. Exact citations of particular sources are very helpful, as is signing comments posted to article talk pages. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:06, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

• It is false that there is any consensus that "racial groups" traditionally defined vary in gene frequencies, or inversely that gene frequency clusters correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. See e.g. this special issue of AJPA [1], and particularly this article Hunley, K. L., Healy, M. E., & Long, J. C. (2009). The global pattern of gene identity variation reveals a history of long‐range migrations, bottlenecks, and local mate exchange: implications for biological race. American journal of physical anthropology, 139(1), 35-46. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:09, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Image

::Please note that Maunus is inserting his personal opinion based on a single source and ignoring international surveys of experts on the question. PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 10:15, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Survey's are not reliable source for scientific topics. aprock (talk) 11:48, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

::::Surveys are the ideal source for gauging opinion on scientific questions. What else do you propose? Editor:Maunus's personal opinion? PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 12:11, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

It is logically invalid to suppose that because this or that pattern of opinion is discovered in a survey, therefore the facts of the world are like the plurality opinion discovered in the survey. Until we know a lot more about the survey sample, and how representative it is of the population being surveyed, we don't even know if the plurality opinion reported in the survey is actually the plurality opinion of the population of interest. And we don't know whether the population that the survey purported to sample was an informed population on the issues asked about in the survey, and so on. There are already plenty of very good high-quality, reliable secondary sources about the facts that underlie the statements in the article text here, and those are what we should rely on (by Wikipedia content policy) to continue improving the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:48, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

::::::You are wrong and surveys are a better gauge than one source. PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 16:19, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Reliable sources for updating this article

I see there are some new (to this article under the screen names we are seeing here, but perhaps not new to Wikipedia) editors who are joining the talk page discussion here. Wikipedia has a lot of interesting articles based on the ongoing research in human molecular genetics that helps trace the lineage of people living in various places on the earth. On the hypothesis that better sources build better articles as all of us here collaborate to build an encyclopedia, I thought I would suggest some sources for improving articles on human genetic history and related articles. I've been reading university textbooks on human genetics "for fun" since the 1980s, and for even longer I've been visiting my state flagship university's vast BioMedical Library to look up topics on human medicine and health care policy. he Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources in medicine provide a helpful framework for evaluating sources.

The guidelines on reliable sources for medicine remind editors that "it is vital that the biomedical information in all types of articles be based on reliable, third-party, published sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge."

Ideal sources for such content includes literature reviews or systematic reviews published in reputable medical journals, academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from a respected publisher, and medical guidelines or position statements from nationally or internationally recognised expert bodies.

The guidelines, consistent with the general Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources, remind us that all "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources" (emphasis in original). They helpfully define a primary source in medicine as one in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. By contrast, a secondary source summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources, usually to provide an overview of the current understanding of a medical topic. The general Wikipedia guidelines let us know that "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised: Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves."

On the topic of what recent human population genetics research says about classification of human populations, a widely cited primary research article is a 1972 article by Richard Lewontin, which I have seen cited in many of the review articles, monographs, and textbooks I have read over the years.

• Lewontin, Richard (1972). "The Apportionment of Human Diversity" (PDF). Evolutionary Biology. 6. Springer: 381–398. Archived from the original on 25 November 2010. Retrieved 23 November 2013. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

As Wikipedians, we can evaluate where the findings in Lewontin's article fit in the current understanding of the topic of human genetic variation by reading current reliable secondary sources in medicine.

Some Wikipedia articles give weighty emphasis to a commentary essay published years after Lewontin published his primary research article on human diversity, when Lewontin's primary research results had been replicated in many other studies and his bottom line conclusion that "about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups" had been taken up by many textbooks on genetics and medicine. In 2003, A. W. F. Edwards wrote a commentary essay in the journal BioEssays

• Edwards, A.W.F. (2003). "Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy" (PDF). BioEssays. 25 (8): 798–801. doi:10.1002/bies.10315. PMID 12879450. Archived from the original on 25 November 2010. Retrieved 23 November 2013. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

in which Edwards proposes a statistical model for classifying individuals into groupings based on haplotype data. Edwards wrote, "There is nothing wrong with Lewontin’s statistical analysis of variation, only with the belief that it is relevant to classification," pointing to his own work with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the author of the book

• Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca; Menozzi, Paolo; Piazza, Alberto (1994). The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-08750-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

which I read soon after it was published in 1994. In general, Edwards cites a lot of publications from his collaboration with Cavalli-Sforza, and mentions that collaboration prominently in his subsequent review article

• Edwards, A.W.F. (September 2009). "Statistical Methods for Evolutionary Trees". Genetics. 183 (1). Genetics Society of America: 5–12. doi:10.1534/genetics.109.107847. Retrieved 23 November 2013.

in which he describes their method for tracing ancestry with genes. Edwards even shows a photograph of Cavalli-Sforza with him in 1963 in his 2009 article, emphasizing their scholarly friendship.

So I wanted to look up Cavalli-Sforza's current views as well while I traced citations of the Lewontin 1972 article and the Edwards 2003 article in subsequent secondary sources. Through searches with Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books, both from my home office computer and from a university library computer, I found a number of books and articles that cite both the Lewontin paper and the Edwards paper. Through a specialized set of wide-reaching keyword searches (for example, "Lewontin Edwards") on the university library's vast database subscriptions, I was able to obtain the full text of many of those articles and of whole books that discuss what current science says about grouping individuals of species Homo sapiens into race groups. I also found more up to date discussions by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza of the Human Genome Diversity Project.

Listed here are sources that have the following characteristics: (1) they cite both previous articles by Lewontin and the 2003 article by Edwards, discussing the underlying factual disagreement between those authors, (2) they are Wikipedia reliable sources for medicine (in particular, they are secondary sources such as review articles or textbooks rather than primary research articles), and (3) they are available to me in full text through book-buying, library lending, author sharing of full text on the Internet, or a university library database. They are arranged in approximate chronological order, so that you can see how the newer sources cite and evaluate the previous sources as genetics research continues. The sources listed here are not exhaustive, but they are varied and authoritative, and they cite most of the dozens of primary research articles on the topic, analyzing and summarizing the current scientific consensus.

• Koenig, Barbara A.; Lee, Sandra Soo-jin; Richardson, Sarah S., eds. (2008). Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age. New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-4324-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

This first book (Koenig, Lee, and Richardson 2008) is useful because it includes a chapter co-authored by Richard Lewontin in which he updates his views.

• Whitmarsh, Ian; Jones, David S., eds. (2010). What's the Use of Race?: Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51424-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

The Whitmarsh and Jones (2010) source has several very useful chapters on medical genetics.

• Ramachandran, Sohini; Tang, Hua; Gutenkunst, Ryan N.; Bustamante, Carlos D. (2010). "Chapter 20: Genetics and Genomics of Human Population Structure". In Speicher, Michael R.; Antonarakis, Stylianos E.; Motulsky, Arno G. (eds.). Vogel and Motulsky's Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches (PDF). Heidelberg: Springer Scientific. pp. 589–615. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-37654-5. ISBN 978-3-540-37653-8. Retrieved 29 October 2013. Most studies of human population genetics begin by citing a seminal 1972 paper by Richard Lewontin bearing the title of this subsection [29]. Given the central role this work has played in our field, we will begin by discussing it briefly and return to its conclusions throughout the chapter. In this paper, Lewontin summarized patterns of variation across 17 polymorphic human loci (including classical blood groups such as ABO and M/N as well as enzymes which exhibit electrophoretic variation) genotyped in individuals across classically defined 'races' (Caucasian, African, Mongoloid, South Asian Aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians, Australian Aborigines [29] ). A key conclusion of the paper is that 85.4% of the total genetic variation observed occurred within each group. That is, he reported that the vast majority of genetic differences are found within populations rather than between them. In this paper and his book The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change [30], Lewontin concluded that genetic variation, therefore, provided no basis for human racial classifications. ... His finding has been reproduced in study after study up through the present: two random individuals from any one group (which could be a continent or even a local population) are almost as different as any two random individuals from the entire world (see proportion of variation within populations in Table 20.1 and [20]). {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

• Krimsky, Sheldon; Sloan, Kathleen, eds. (2011). Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-52769-9. Retrieved 31 August 2013. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

Like Whitmarsh and Jones (2010), the Krimsky and Sloan (2011) source has several useful chapters on medical genetics.

• Tattersall, Ian; DeSalle, Rob (1 September 2011). Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth. Texas A&M University Anthropology series number fifteen. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-1-60344-425-5. Retrieved 17 November 2013. Actually, the plant geneticist Jeffry Mitton had made the same observation in 1970, without finding that Lewontin's conclusion was fallacious. And Lewontin himself not long ago pointed out that the 85 percent within-group genetic variability figure has remained remarkably stable as studies and genetic markers have multiplied, whether you define populations on linguistic or physical grounds. What's more, with a hugely larger and more refined database to deal with, D. J. Witherspoon and colleagues concluded in 2007 that although, armed with enough genetic information, you could assign most individuals to 'their' population quite reliably, 'individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own.' {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

• Barbujani, Guido; Colonna, Vincenza (15 September 2011). "Chapter 6: Genetic Basis of Human Biodiversity: An Update". In Zachos, Frank E.; Habel, Jan Christian (eds.). Biodiversity Hotspots: Distribution and Protection of Conservation Priority Areas. Springer. pp. 97–119. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_6. ISBN 978-3-642-20992-5. Retrieved 23 November 2013. The massive efforts to study the human genome in detail have produced extraordinary amounts of genetic data. Although we still fail to understand the molecular bases of most complex traits, including many common diseases, we now have a clearer idea of the degree of genetic resemblance between humans and other primate species. We also know that humans are genetically very close to each other, indeed more than any other primates, that most of our genetic diversity is accounted for by individual differences within populations, and that only a small fraction of the species' genetic variance falls between populations and geographic groups thereof.

The book chapter by Barbujani and Colonna (2011) above is especially useful for various Wikipedia articles as a contrast between biodiversity in other animals and biodiversity in Homo sapiens.

• Barbujani, Guido; Ghirotto, S.; Tassi, F. (2013). "Nine things to remember about human genome diversity". Tissue Antigens. 82 (3): 155–164. doi:10.1111/tan.12165. ISSN 0001-2815. The small genomic differences between populations and the extensive allele sharing across continents explain why historical attempts to identify, once and for good, major biological groups in humans have always failed. ... We argue that racial labels may not only obscure important differences between patients but also that they have become positively useless now that cheap and reliable methods for genotyping are making it possible to pursue the development of truly personalized medicine.

By the way, the Barbujani, Ghirotto, and Tassi (2013) article has a very interesting discussion of SNP typing overlaps across the entire individual genome among some of the first human beings to have their entire individual genomes sequenced, with an especially interesting Venn diagram that would be a good graphic to add to this article.

• Marks, Jonathan (October 2013). "The Nature/Culture of Genetic Facts". Annual Review of Anthropology. 42. Annual Reviews: 247–267. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155558. ISBN 978-0-8243-1942-7. ISSN 0084-6570. Retrieved 23 November 2013. Lewontin's conclusions have stood up remarkably well, across diverse kinds of genetic markers, but this produces an odd paradox.

An author who is intimately familiar with Edwards's statistical approach, because he has been a collaborator in fieldwork and co-author on primary research articles with Edwards, is Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. Cavalli-Sforza is a medical doctor who was a student of Ronald Fisher in statistics, who has devoted most of his career to genetic research. In an invited review article for the 2007 Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, Cavalli-Sforza joins issue directly with the underlying factual disagreement among previous authors, but cites different previous publications.

• Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca (September 2007). "Human Evolution and Its Relevance for Genetic Epidemiology". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. 8. Annual Reviews: 1–15, . doi:10.1146/annurev.genom.8.080706.092403. ISBN 978-0-8243-3708-7. ISSN 1527-8204. PMID 17408354. Retrieved 23 November 2013. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)

GENETIC VARIATION BETWEEN AND WITHIN POPULATIONS, AND THE RACE PROBLEM

In the early 1980s, Lewontin (11) showed that when genetic variation for protein markers is estimated by comparing two or more random individuals from the same populations, or two or more individuals from the whole world, the former is 85% as large as the latter. This means that the variation between populations is the residual 15%, and hence relatively trivial. Later research carried out on a limited number of populations and mostly, though not only, on protein markers has confirmed this analysis. The Rosenberg et al. data actually bring down Lewontin’s estimate to 5%, or even less. Therefore, the variation between populations is even smaller than the original 15%, and we also know that the exact value depends on the choice of populations and markers. But the between-population variation, even if it is very small is certainly enough to reconstruct the genetic history of populations—that is their evolution—but is it enough for distinguishing races in some useful way? The comparison with other mammals shows that humans are almost at the lower extreme of the scale of between-population variation. Even so, subtle statistical methods let us assign individuals to the populations of origin, even distinguishing populations from the same continent, if we use enough genetic markers. But is this enough for distinguishing races? Darwin already had an answer. He gave two reasons for doubting the usefulness of races: (1) most characters show a clear geographic continuity, and (2) taxonomists generated a great variety of race classifications. Darwin lists the numbers of races estimated by his contemporaries, which varied from 2 to 63 races.

Rosenberg et al. (16 and later work) analyzed the relative statistical power of the most efficient subdivisions of the data with a number of clusters varying from 2 to 6, and showed that five clusters have a reasonable statistical power. Note that this result is certainly influenced by the populations chosen for the analysis. The five clusters are not very different from those of a few partitions that had already existed in the literature for some time, and the clusters are: (a) a sub-Saharan African cluster, (b) North Africa–Europe plus a part of western Asia that is approximately bounded eastward by the central Asian desert and mountains, (c) the eastern rest of Asia, (d ) Oceania, and (e) the Americas. But what good is this partition? The Ramachandran et al. (15) analysis of the same data provides a very close prediction of the genetic differences between the same populations by the simplest geographic tool: the geographic distance between the two populations, and two populations from the same continent are on average geographically closer than two from different ones. However, the Rosenberg et al. analysis (16) adds the important conclusion that the standard classification into classical continents must be modified to replace continental boundaries with the real geographic barriers: major oceans, or deserts like the Sahara, or other deserts and major mountains like those of central Asia. These barriers have certainly decreased, but they have not entirely suppressed genetic exchanges across them. Thus, the Rosenberg et al. analysis confirms a pattern of variation based on pseudocontinents that does not eliminate the basic geographic continuity of genetic variation. In fact, the extension by Ramachandran et al. of the original Rosenberg et al. analysis showed that populations that are geographically close have an overwhelming genetic similarity, well beyond that suggested by continental or pseudocontinental partitions.

A year later Cavalli-Sforza joined seventeen other genetics researchers as co-authors of a review article, published as an "open letter" to other scholars, on using racial categories in human genetics.

• Lee, Sandra; Mountain, Joanna; Koenig, Barbara; Altman, Russ; Brown, Melissa; Camarillo, Albert; Cavalli-Sforza, Luca; Cho, Mildred; Eberhardt, Jennifer; Feldman, Marcus; Ford, Richard; Greely, Henry; King, Roy; Markus, Hazel; Satz, Debra; Snipp, Matthew; Steele, Claude; Underhill, Peter (2008). "The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics" (PDF). Genome Biology. 9 (7): 404. doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-7-404. ISSN 1465-6906. Retrieved 3 December 2013. We recognize that racial and ethnic categories are created and maintained within sociopolitical contexts and have shifted in meaning over time Human genetic variation within continents is, for the most part, geographically continuous and clinal, particularly in regions of the world that have not received many immigrants in recent centuries [18]. Genetic data cannot reveal an individual's full geographic ancestry precisely, although emerging research has been used to identify geographic ancestry at the continental and subcontinental levels [3,19]. Genetic clusters, however, are far from being equivalent to sociopolitical racial or ethnic categories. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |displayauthors= ignored (|display-authors= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

Other current review articles related to human population structure include

• Barbujani, Guido; Pigliucci, Massimo (2013). "Human races" (PDF). Current Biology. 23 (5): R185 – R187. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.01.024. ISSN 0960-9822. Retrieved 2 December 2013. What does this imply for the existence of human races? Basically, that people with similar genetic features can be found in distant places, and that each local population contains a vast array of genotypes. Among the first genomes completely typed were those of James Watson and Craig Venter, two U.S. geneticists of European origin; they share more alleles with Seong-Jin Kim, a Korean scientist (1,824,482 and 1,736,340, respectively) than with each other (1,715,851). This does not mean that two random Europeans are expected to be genetically closer to Koreans than to each other, but certainly highlights the coarseness of racial categorizations.

I invite my fellow Wikipedians to dig into the most current medically reliable sources to see how the new molecular genetic understanding of the human population is influencing biological approaches to human classification. This article will be the better as more editors look up more of the better sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

There is also a much broader list of sources on many aspects of human race issues in a source list I keep in Wikipedia user space for all Wikipedians to use. Feel free to dig in and find some of the latest sources on this topic, about which there are continually new publications. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 17:47, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

It appears that I should mention to administrators who happen to be surfing by that this article is under discretionary sanctions from an ArbCom case (as noted in a talk page notice here) and has often been subject to edit-warring by meat puppets and sockpuppets. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:33, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Now that there has been time for editors to check the sources and read through those that are readily available, this will be a productive time of year for updating the article from top to bottom for coherency, due weight on various subtopics, and referencing according to Wikipedia content policy. I look forward to seeing the next edits to article text along those lines and expect to edit some article sections from my own keyboard in the next few months. Let's all discuss here how to make the article better. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:18, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Most of these sources should be available to anyone with access to a university library, so I invite editors to look on while checking the sources as new article edits proceed. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 00:04, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

This is an excessively biased set of sources, we should include other scholars such as Neven Sesardic, Jerry Coyne, Henry Harpending, Gregory Cochran, Nicholas Wade etc. their view is mainstream and makes no sense to omit it.74.14.73.17 (talk) 20:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

We don't push fringe sources. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 21:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

::::They aren't, you know that,[delete personal attack]. The view that race is a valid taxonomy is the majority view as shown by surveys of experts. PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 03:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

You are deliberately omitting reliable mainstream sources that don't agree with your viewpoint, that is POV pushing, and so far a certain viewpoint has been incessantly pushed on this page, you have no base for calling the aforementioned sources fringe.74.14.73.17 (talk) 20:41, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

The editor seems to have left, deleted a personal attack above. I see a block forthcoming. Dougweller (talk) 18:12, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Palaeoanthropology and Race

While the scientific consensus is human races do not exist today, it is very much the opposite for the past. The current article fails to touch upon this. At least, most palaeo-anthropologists consider there to have been human races as "morphologically distinct populations" that existed throughout the Pleistocene:

"To see true 'racial' variation in humans, one has to go to the fossil record. It is the Neandertals, the Ngandong people, the archaic East Asians, and possibly others that reflect the original regional Eurasian adaptations of humans." - Smith, F. H. [2010]. "Species, Populations, and Assimilation in Later Human Evolution". In: A Companion to Biological Anthropology. Larsen, C. S. (Ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

"Human geographic variation obviously exists, but it is not racial. Modern paleoanthropology and genetics are among the disciplines that have shown that there is no taxonomy in the human species below the species level. They also show that the present poorly reflects the past. Neandertal morphology and genetics, and genetic evidence of other distinct groups, suggest far more population structure in the past. It is likely that for much of the Pleistocene the human species had races. But, whether or not races appeared in the past, they did not persist. With only some exceptions, much of the Pleistocene human variation did not survive the enormous population expansions and replacements of the latest Pleistocene and Holocene. Geographic variation today is not well related to the past because of the large number of recent adaptive mutations and the differential survivorship of Upper Pleistocene and Holocene populations." - Wolpoff, M. H., & Caspari, R. [2012]. "Palaeoanthropology and Race". In: A Companion to Paleoanthropology. Begun, D. R. (Ed.). John Wiley & Sons.

While living (or recent historic) populations are highly heterogeneous in morphology - 90% of cranial variation for example is found within populations, Pleistocene human variation had a reverse geographical structure where most skeletal variation was found between populations. In that sense there were once human races.

Palaeoanthropologists are not in agreement when races disappeared during the Pleistocene. Some argue there were races (or even subraces) as recent as the Upper Palaeolithic e.g. Ferembach (1986) splits (Palaeo)Europeans into: "Cromagnoids" and "Combecapelloids". FossilMad (talk) 13:21, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Good point. This could make sense to include. Although perhaps also inclusion of the fact that not all paleoanthropologoists agree with Wolpoffs theory of continuity between H. erectus regional diversity and H. sapiens regional diversity would be warranted.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:28, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Wolpoff's view is very much a minority view, but it is attested in all the standard textbooks, so it can go in with some mention from sources that cite it. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 18:16, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree. I will make some edits sometime. I think the Multiregional page can also be improved a lot. FossilMad (talk) 13:02, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

I have some of the standard textbooks immediately at hand as I reply here, so, yes, please, edit with the current view in mind, and I'll check the references. All of the related articles need some top-to-bottom revisions for coherency, due weight of subtopics, and updating of references according to Wikipedia content guidelines. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 13:56, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Nicholas Wade as citation on race

I think the works of Nicholas Wade are excellent sources for the science on race as presented from an entirely unbiased perspective. Here's what eminent scholar on race Charles Murray has to say about Wade here. What do fellow editors think about such additions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.72.183 (talk) 05:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Murray is not a scholar on race, nor is Wade. The opinions of both are in the extreme miniory among those qualified to comment on the topic. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 06:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Wade is very much a biased, non-expert, source.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:30, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

But then Maunus will happily edit in lawyers and philosophers when they agree with his POV. Also surveys show race denial is a minority viewpoint. 115.22.58.7 (talk) 12:53, 4 May 2014 (UTC) Mikemikev sockpuppet. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 20:52, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Jonathan Kaplan is a philosopher of biology who specializes in bioethics and has published numerous peer reviewed articles about race. Wade is a journalist who specializes in popularizing hereditarian research and dissing the social sciences. I dont know what Lawyer you are talking about. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 13:43, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure why Wade would be seen as some sort of 'race realist'. In his book he actually admits races by genetic clustering are arbitrary. He's only arguing races are convenient, not real. At lot of people however confuse these. FossilMad (talk) 03:44, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

He doesn't actually say that it's arbitrary or anything. He is a HBD writer because he upholds the truth of genetic clustering creating races, which is the realist view as opposed to the politically correct one — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.72.183 (talk) 06:29, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Then obviously you haven't read his book. Wade admits that delimiting genetic clusters as races is a "human decision" (arbitrary). He is certainly not arguing races are natural or objectively real. FossilMad (talk) 18:13, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Most genetic variation (85 - 90%) is found within populations rather than between them. However an argument can be made that during the Pleistocene, hundreds of thousands of years ago (like cranial morphology) most variation was inter-populational. This is why there is a legitimate argument races once existed, but that they no longer do. It has nothing to do with political correctness. FossilMad (talk) 18:23, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Rewrite draft

In my user space I am drafting an outline for a restructuring of the article. Feel free to comment at its talkpage. You will notice that it in contrast with the current version it doesnt treat the constructivism/biology debate as the main focus, but includes the extensive literature on inequality and on racial history. Really the biology debate accounts for a rather small part of the global literature on race.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:53, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know. That looks like a good start to a much improved article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:10, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 May 2014

Spelling mistake in text

Please correct heidelgergensis to heidelbergensis (replace g with b)

Rrjmaier (talk) 05:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for spotting that - Arjayay (talk) 09:01, 12 May 2014 (UTC)