Humanities desk
< April 29	<< Mar \| April \| May >>	May 1 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 30

human race

why is it that they are different race —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joyphilia (talk • contribs) 01:20, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean why there are human races, probably a combination of founder effect, limited adaptation to climatic conditions, and sexual selection... AnonMoos (talk) 02:24, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is one answer, but as our article Race (classification of humans) demonstrates, 'race' is largely a social construct: it only really exists because we want it to. Curiously, one of the things that unites the 'human race' is a propensity to divide ourselves up into arbitrary categories... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are two kinds of people: Those who go around dividing the world into two kinds of people; and those who don't. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:07, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't like the way Joyphilia phrased the question, imagine it was "Why are there consistent externally-visible phenotypic variations between human populations"? (That was the question that I was answering above...) -- AnonMoos (talk) 08:25, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See Human genetic variation. Like all living things, the human genome undergoes mutations. Because humans are spread over a huge area of the planet, and until recently, had (relatively) little genetic migration, the opportunity for genetic differences between populations arose. Similar effects are seen for other organisms, with terms like Color phase, Subspecies, Breed, or Race (biology). Some of this variation is undoubtedly driven by natural selection, while other aspects are probably random effects due to the founder effect and genetic drift. Buddy431 (talk) 04:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

USNSY Pearl Harbor Drydock #2.

Someone recently wrote, I arrived in Honolulu Airport 17 Sep 1971 to report to my duty station, USS HADDOCK SSN621, which was in USNSY; Pearl Harbor; Drydock #2. (in part of a question over on the Wikipedia helpdesk [1]).

I've read about USS Haddock (SSN-621), and...I am just curious about what USNSY is, in this context. My guess would be, 'US Navy Service Yard' - but I don't actually know. Any ideas? Chzz ► 03:52, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

United States Naval Ship Yard? —— Shakescene (talk) 07:44, 30 April 2011 (UTC) ¶ See the opening paragraph of Brooklyn Navy Yard for comparison. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:51, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ocean liners and Willie Morris

Did Willie Morris travel aboard the SS Flandre from the USA to the UK? Mr. Morris didn't travel aboard the SS Ile de France from the UK to the USA. (That vessel was scrapped in 1959.) Mr. Morris return to the USA was in 1960. I could be wrong about a few of those items. If I'm right, what ocean liner did he travel aboard for his return?24.90.204.234 (talk) 04:47, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Studies in race

What generally accepted studies have shown that there is/isnt a relationship between a person belonging to a particular region of the world and his intellectual capacity if other factors are not considered?-Shahab (talk) 12:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Race and intelligence. --Tango (talk) 12:46, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

sock

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Animal crultey

Woudl it be considered crule to mastrubate a male dogg to make him cum? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.25.229.67 (talk) 15:11, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not "cruel"... but it would certainly be considered inappropriate. In many societies it would even be considered criminal (a form of Bestiality). Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The OP is a sock of the banned user "Light current". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:44, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The question is readily answerable, so there's no need to dismiss it as a "troll", even if a childish perspective is suspected. Dog masturbation is considered neither cruel nor inappropriate, if done by a veterinarian or by a private individual with a profit motive.^{[2][3] and many others.} While one often hears bestiality described as immoral in forums, I'm actually finding it rather difficult to find Google hits for cases where the dog was masturbated rather than penetrated (consistent with either this practice, or the much higher overall male imprisonment rate, it would seem). Wnt (talk) 06:14, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Banned users are not allowed to edit. The alleged quality of their edits is irrelevant. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:57, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Westminster Abbey flag

What was the flag flying over Westminster Abbey before the royal wedding? - Talk to you later, Presidentman (talk) Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 17:31, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

File:Standard of Westminster Abbey.svg the abbey flag with the coat of arms of Westminster Abbey. MilborneOne (talk) 17:38, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The main emblem on the lower half of the flag is from the attributed arms of Edward the Confessor who built the first great minster church at Westminster in 1045. "The arms attributed to Edward the Confessor originated in the silver coins of his reign, which bore a cross between four doves: symbols of piety and gentleness"[4]. Another (less likely) explanation is a local legend from the Romford area of the east London and Essex borders. "King Edward the Confessor is the first notable person to have a connection with the area. He occupied the royal house in the village of Havering atte Bower. His life, like so many Saxon kings, is full of legends. It is said that this holy man was disturbed in his prayers by the singing of nightingales, and so he leant out of the window of his room and told the birds to be quiet. They were, and he continued his prayers in peace. This incident is commemorated by the inclusion of the heraldic birds on the arms of St Edward"[5]. Alansplodge (talk) 21:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The other three parts of the flag come from the Plantagenet family; the "white-in-red rose" in the two corners comes from the roses representing the two branches (York and Lancaster) that fought during the Wars of the Roses. The centre bit is part of the traditional Royal Arms of England, the Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or armed and langued Azure aka, three gold lions on a red background, with blue claws and tongues, is one of the oldest symbols associated with England, dating to Richard I, and the other two quarters, being gold fleur-de-lys on a blue background, is a symbol of France, and was long part of the coats of arms of English Kings, coming from the claims of the Plantagenet English kings to the Throne of France, and date from the age of the Hundred Years Wars time. You can find most of these elements, along with Edward the Confessor's cross and birds motif, at various arms of English Kings throughout the ages, see File:Coat of Arms of Richard II of England (1377-1399).svg. --Jayron32 05:45, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably, the Plantagenet emblems are from Henry III of England who had the Abbey rebuilt and is buried there. Alansplodge (talk) 12:21, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

...except that the "white-in-red rose" is not a Plantagenet emblem, it's the Tudor rose. Thus Henry VII, who had a chapel built for him at the Abbey (the Henry VII Chapel, surprisingly), is a more likely candidate. 87.115.153.210 (talk) 19:19, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ten year census

Is the imformation from the last census private? Do only a select few get to view the trends?76.178.113.225 (talk) 19:38, 30 April 2011 (UTC)222smile[reply]

Which country's census? There are 200-ish sovereign nations in the world, so we need to know whose decennial census you want to find information on... --Jayron32 19:48, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If it's the Uk 2011 census you mean - personal information is kept confidential for 100 years (so will be released in 2111. Also it notes that personal information is not shared with government departments. (http://2011.census.gov.uk/My-census/Frequently-asked-questions#27) ny156uk (talk) 20:15, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

However, all the aggregated information will be made public, with lots of breakdowns. --Tango (talk) 20:17, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The IP address is from the U.S., so I assume the OP means the 2010 United States Census. In that case, personal information is kept private for 72 years, so it won't be released until 2082. But the trends, without personal information, is probably available already at http://www.census.gov/. —Angr (talk) 20:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Existence in the universe

When people deny the existence of something because it is an imagination or mythological (like a unicorn), are we all referring to this planet but not the entire universe? For example, an exact copy of the Earth might exist somewhere in the other galaxy. If you deny, then I will ask how do you know?. (Please note that this does not apply to God because of its definition, and please do not start an argument about God here) Aquitania (talk) 21:44, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You have to remember that it is impossible to definitively prove anything, given any particularly arbitrary standard of "proof". For example: prove definitively that I exist, and that you are not currently hallucinating this conversation, or more to the point that your entire existance isn't an elaborate hallucination. By the same standard, its also impossible to disprove anything. However, at some point you need to assume that you can trust your own senses and intellect, because to believe that you cannot makes it impossible to operate in the world. Insofar as you can do that, there needs to be some standards of proof, whereby we say "Insofar as I see no evidence of it existing, I will assume it doesn't, pending such evidence". There is no evidence that unicorns exist, so we must take the standard that they do not. To believe otherwise, to assume that all things exist until proven that they do not, is a greater impossibility, because I could just invent some fanciful thing right now, and I would instantly have a claim that it exists, and could demand that you prove that it doesn't. One thing you should read is Occam's razor, which covers this philosophical ground quite well. --Jayron32 21:52, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, if we're assuming everything exists until it is proven not to, then a universe where unicorns don't exist exists. We've shifted back the burden of proof, and no-one's gone anywhere. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:58, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When someone says "X exists", it is usually assumed to mean that X exists in a way that is accessible or tangible, at least to that person and conceivably to others. restating the question in the form "X exists somewhere where no one can experience it" makes for a different and completely unanswerable question. In other words, saying "there is a man in that room" can be answered - Either there is a man in that room (true) or there isn't (false). saying "there is a man in that room whenever no one is observing" is unanswerable. "Unicorns exist on this planet" lends itself to reasoned investigation and discussion; "unicorns exist on some other planet, far, far away" can only be speculated on. --Ludwigs2 22:00, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I suppose it can be speculated upon, but there should also be no reason to expect any person to accept the possibility of unicorns existing merely on the non-disprovability of their existance. We can speculate on anything, but we are not required to accept as possibly true, any such speculation. There's no requirement that we accept extraterrestrial unobservable unicorns as more possibly true than any other random, imagined thing. And that's the crux of it; people have no right to demand that others consider the viability of an idea with zero evidence. We can play "let's pretend" all day long, but we should not consider such pretense to be reality. --Jayron32 23:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Myths about creatures like unicorns are generally either about Earth or another "plane of existence" or whatever it's called. I don't think foreign planets in this universe count if the creatures have never visited Earth or been visited by humans. If we tried to count extraterrestrial life then we could also get into arguments about when "horse-like" creatures with a "horn-like" pointy thing on the "forehead" is a "unicorn". Considering the billions of galaxies with billions of stars, there may well be things out there which would be called unicorns if they were suddenly discovered on Earth, but I wouldn't consider that any vindication of unicorn myths. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:41, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

From Russell's teapot: "... the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others ...". Mitch Ames (talk) 00:44, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the interesting comparison here is space aliens. Most scientists have no problem with the possibility of extraterrestrial life - if fact, the search for life in other places of the universe is a significant scientific endeavor. On the other hand, most scientists scoff at the idea that there have been extraterrestrial beings who have visited this planet - the later is a much stronger claim with much weaker evidence. this is the difference I was suggesting above. --Ludwigs2 05:16, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, before the 18th-century in European literature, black swans were used as the textbook example of a non-existent animal (more so than unicorns, since not everybody was convinced of the non-existence of unicorns until a relatively late date). Then of course black swans were found in Australia... AnonMoos (talk) 02:30, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Which just goes to show that - as I have always suspected - Australia is an imaginary place. I mean seriously: Kangaroos? Koalas? Duck-billed platypi? who are they trying to kid? --Ludwigs2 04:20, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is indeed imaginary - [6]. There are no real people or animals here. That means no black swans, of course. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 11:03, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Coo! Does that mean that the black swan who is nesting on the River Avon down the road from my house in Warwickshire comes all the way from Australia then? That's some migration!--TammyMoet (talk) 08:49, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

According to Black Swan, "Black Swans were first seen by Europeans in 1697, when Willem de Vlamingh's expedition explored the Swan River, Western Australia"... AnonMoos (talk) 12:19, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence of absence and the articles it points to is where I would start, although semantically I would argue that when a person declares "There is no such thing as a unicorn", the declaration is implicitly about Earth, and not a twin Earth across the galaxy, or a slightly-different Earth in an inaccessible dimension. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:44, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When did the American Civil War end?

For my sets of maps (like Territorial evolution of the United States), I've been wondering, what date should I consider to be the 'end' of the American Civil War? There appear to be five valid options:

April 9, 1865: The Army of Northern Virginia surrendered. This was the primary army of the Confederacy, and its surrender essentially ended major combat.
May 5, 1865: CSA President Jefferson Davis declares the Confederate government officially dissolved.
May 10, 1865: Jefferson Davis is captured.
June 23, 1865: General Stand Watie, the last remaining Confederate general, surrenders his army.
August 20, 1866: U.S. President Andrew Jackson declares the war formally at an end.

Number 5, while the 'official' proclamation, is not commonly used, just as few people say that World War II in the Pacific ended on April 28, 1952. #3 seems extraneous to #2 but I included it since a capture also has meaning. #4 meant the end of large military activities (at least one ship was still raiding until August, but I can't count that as it would also mean counting, for example, the Japanese holdouts after WW2). So that seems to leave me with options 1 and 2. 1 is by far the most well-known date, but - in this particular circumstance - I'm making a map of the history of Alabama. And the armies in Alabama didn't surrender until around May 9. Still, for simplicity's sake, and for the sake of the most well-known date - Lee's surrender - it seems prudent to just use April 9, 1865, as the proper date. Any thoughts? --Golbez (talk) 23:15, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on what purpose I was doing this. If I were trying to give a general date for the end of the war, April 9, 1865 is as good as any. However, if I were doing a map showing when each state rejoined the union, I would use the official dates of when each state officially rejoined the union, which would be different for each state. For example, an animation showing the order of each states readmission would be better than one in which the entire confederacy magically becomes union again on April 9, 1865; or indeed any other single date... --Jayron32 23:36, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I sense a slight against my map where the confederacy magically becomes union again on April 9. ;) Don't worry, I'm fixing that in version 2. And after looking over it, ... I don't know, they were technically "readmitted to congress", not the union; as far as the union is concerned, they never left, so they never needed to come back. Then again, being a state means having representation in congress. There's a lot of waffling going on here. :P This is a map of how the counties of Alabama have changed over time, so ... I suppose I could include two things, when it was readmitted to congress, and when the confederate government was dissolved (if one believes the states actually seceded, then that simply split them from a confederation into individual countries again). --Golbez (talk) 23:47, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All those dates are significant, but for the subject at hand, I would definitely base it upon the dates found at Reconstruction_era_of_the_United_States#Readmission_to_representation_in_Congress. Schyler (one language) 23:49, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking at an historical atlas right now, and there's a map with a date written over each confederate state listing the date it was readmitted to congress. So clearly, others have felt that those dates were significant. --Jayron32 23:52, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

April 9 is traditionally thought of as the end of the Civil War, at least more than any other date. However, anyone who's spent any time in the South can tell you the war never really did end. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 04:05, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Having lived in the old Confederacy for nineteen of my years, it's odd that I've never heard of such a holiday. --Golbez (talk) 05:38, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

#5:That's Andrew Johnson, not Andrew Jackson. 216.93.212.245 (talk) 21:22, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We should consider what date is used by reliable sources, and avoid original research. If the town of Stump Junction, Alabama refused to admit the Civil War was lost, and the local militia drilled each month in Confederate regalia until 1968, that does not mean the American Civil War lasted 167 years! The end of a war does not await the admission by the very last combatant that the "Great Cause" is lost, or WW2 would have lasted until 1974 when Hiroo Onoda and Teruo Nakamura stopped running around on Pacific islands pretending the war was still going on. Edison (talk) 01:44, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good thing I specifically discarded that situation! --Golbez (talk) 02:17, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You could have a longer war, such as the Russo-Japanese War, which only saw the end of warfare between Montenegro and Japan in 2006. Nyttend (talk) 04:18, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Or the Peloponnesian War, which was ended with a peace treaty in 1996, after a trifling 24 centuries ;-) [7]. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC) [reply]

Bashar al-Assad, even though an Arab, practically looks like a white man

It's interesting, he looks no less white than many Southern and Eastern Europeans and Jews (all of whom look a bit less white than Northwest Europeans e.g. Germanic/Celtic peoples, who are the most obviously white), and he has blue eyes. Don't give me the 'race is a social construct' BS because the nonsense leftist moron theory of 'social constructivism' wilts in the face of biological genetic reality. I suppose many Turks look like Southern and Eastern Europeans as well, and Syria is close to Turkey.

My question is do you think race is a social construct? I don't, and I think that genetic differences determine not only a person's physical appearance (morphology) but other characteristics as well, such as mental characteristics. This even happens amongst people of the same race. No one is scared to say that dog breeds have different temperaments and the same applies to the different breeds of human. I am talking about race alone and not ethnicity, nationality or culture. At the end of the day I don't see humans as being anything more than intelligent animals, who have developed religions in order to cope with the fact that they're scared of their own death. It's not polite to say so but I believe it's essentially true.

There are differences of magnitude in terms of racial differences. Black people for example are genetically different from the rest of humanity to a greater degree than any non-black people, who are all more closely related to each other than they are to black people.

It is also worth noting that the differences between men and women, not only physically but most critically psychologically, are more significant than the differences between people of different races.--X sprainpraxisL (talk) 23:39, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Race is a social construct. It does not require your thinking it to be truth. There are genetic difference between people, but there's litterally no connection between the races we assign people to and the genetics of those people. Chinese people have more genetic similarity to Swedish people than do people from two neighboring African tribes; and yet we call both members of the African tribes the same race, and the Swede and the Chinese person of different races. Bashar al-Assad is an Arab because he self-identifies as an Arab, was born into an Arabic culture, speaks a an Arabic language, etc. Any other definition, based largely on what you believe he should look like based on your own limited belief of what Arabs should look like is completely irrelevent. It doesn't mean that being an Arab is an invalid classification, or that he is or isn't one; its just that you need to understand where the definitions of cultural groups come from, and genetics isn't it... --Jayron32 23:45, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The idea that "race does not exist" sounds like it's an attempt by some to eliminate all ammunition from racists. It's usually accomplished by comparing all genes from all groups, in which case you find a minuscule portion of them which vary by race. However, if you only look at those genes which do vary primarily by race, like skin color, eye color, hair color, hair texture, the sickle-cell anemia gene, the Tay-Sachs gene, etc., then it certainly isn't true that, for those genes, "Chinese people have more genetic similarity to Swedish people than do people from two neighboring African tribes". And how could it ? Certainly people who live near each other are far likelier to interbreed and thus have common genes than those on the opposite sides of the planet, at least for those genes which have recently "arrived" via mutations. Then there's also the effect that some genetic mutations are selected for in certain climates and against in others, like sickle cell genes being helpful in areas with endemic malaria but harmful elsewhere.

So why has the idea that "races do not exist" perpetuated, despite racial distinctions being used in medicine, anthropology, etc. ? Mainstream scientists don't want to go on record as saying that races exist, for fear of being called racists.

Of course, many incorrect racial distinctions have been made in the past, such as saying that morality and intelligence is based largely on race. However, this in no way means that all racial distinctions are invalid, like the chances of suffering from certain medical conditions. StuRat (talk) 16:11, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

bizarre racist/sexist/beer off topic stuff

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Big Sister is all those groups which express female characteristics, and thus employ female procedures. Even if you are a white male, you are expressing female characteristics (i.e. unscientific and antiscientific thought). It is noted that non-white males express female characteristics but even some white males express female characteristics i.e. homosexuals, white males who take non-white women as partners, leftists, Marxists, feminists, etc. Darwin: "It is generally admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation." and Since males vary more than females, and some males possess female characteristics, the situation arises in which some males express female characteristics very strongly. This is the explanation why the best chefs are male, even though – because of their higher sensitivity to taste, smell etc. – females are generally better at cooking. Similarly, some females express male characteristics but this is probably less common, for the simple reason that females with male characteristics will tend to produce fewer children. —Preceding unsigned comment added by X sprainpraxisL (talk • contribs) 00:26, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Females cannot tolerate naked masculinity. If a male said, "I want all black men who have sex with white women to die with a rope around their neck, I want to have sex with every hot woman I see, and drink Carlsberg Special Brew whilst posting on vnnforum.com", a female would likely be repelled. The reason any white male would oppose this is because they are feminized (i.e. adapted to feminine standards). Argue with millions of years of evolution at your peril. —Preceding unsigned comment added by X sprainpraxisL (talk • contribs) 00:39, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a point, you are not making it very clear. It reads like bigoted nonsense. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:53, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

@X sprainpraxisL: Huh? --Jayron32 01:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the clue is in X sprainpraxisL's latest posting: "Carlsberg Special Brew"... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:35, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, I'm three Yeunglings into the night, and it still made no sense to me. Unless the "special" involves some chemicals not present in my beer, I'm still flumoxed. --Jayron32 01:44, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that Special Brew may contain chemicals unknown to science - mainly because it induces intoxication on sight, rendering analysis impossible. The favourite tipple of the English homeless, along with (ironically) Tennant's Lager. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:54, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aaaand I think that's enough of that. I don't see any real question there, just racist/sexist soap boxing. No thanks, buddy. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:33, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved the "hatnote" to reintroduce the open discussion. In general, if you let a little off-topic blather close off a thread, you make trolls more powerful than honest participants.

Now to begin with, Bashar al-Assad is the son of Hafez al-Assad, who lived in the upper northwest corner of Syria and was an Alawi. Now Alawi has tribes, but it is a religious minority rather than a race according to the article, so I don't know, but it may be that he is one of the many Syrians who are not Arabs. More broadly (since I'm sure there's a gradient between races) look at a map and you'll notice a few things about Syria: it's not in Africa, it's not on the Arabian peninsula, and it is on the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean was the main highway for thousands of years and the people north and south and east of it were quite free to move around and mingle. For example, Alexander, from Macedonia, built Alexandria, and the Western Roman Empire was as much an African empire as a European one. Likewise Turkey and Greece were a single civilization on the shores of the Adriatic. So there's no reason for someone from Syria to look like he came from, say, Mecca, rather than somewhere in southeastern Europe.

Now for the moment I'll leave the sexual stuff out - there's been a whole lot of speculation about sexual differences for a very long time, and in our current society, with as many women in technical professions as men, it sounds like it didn't add up to a hill of beans. But the situation with race should be dealt with openly. It is clear that yes, there are local genetic differences in genes representing physical appearance. You can tell what race someone is from a genetic test. But it's not easy - not every gene, nor most genes, are affected. People can learn to look for racial features and recognize where someone came from, but everyone, from any race, has a face, and all the parts work the same as anyone else's. (Well, except maybe the earwax) When you look at the details, you see trends - blood group B absent from Native Americans, common in Northern India - but these trends don't really go anywhere - it's just random assortment from place to place. There just hasn't been enough time for any really serious evolution - you're not finding many brand new genes in different parts of the world, just random shuffles. When you do find something new it is so small, so trivial, a base pair or two here or there, no one seriously believes it matters.

Last but not least, the spell. From Gregory the Great: "Non Angli, sed Angeli". It has a special power to drive out the demons of racism, probably now more than ever. Wnt (talk) 06:42, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Race is a 'political concept, not a scientific one. The concept of race predates science by several millennia, and is basically an attribution concept: people from other tribes are conceived to be qualitatively different simply by virtue of being from other tribes, and thus they can be killed, enslaved, oppressed or etc. in ways that people from our tribe should not be. In fact, this is still essentially the way that race is used in the modern western world: racial problems always reduce to a fear that "that group" (whomever 'that' might be) is more likely to rob us, bomb us, do violence against us, or etc. (whomever 'us' might be) and so 'we' need to take stronger measures against 'them' (preemptive violence, indefinite imprisonment or excessive punishment, unequal application of law or outright oppression...) so that we can control or destroy the threat they represent. Genetics has been applied to the already extant concept of race in a speculative fashion - with no real scientific evidence to support it - because it seems like it ought to fit our preconceived notions on the matter. silliness. --Ludwigs2 17:56, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Ludwigs2, that's a very insightful way to look at it: That there are genetic differences between races doesn't necessarily mean that races themselves are not a social contruct. There are other genetic differences by which we could group people, but do not, and that arbitrary racial groups have a coincidental genetic component does not make them less arbitrary. I like that line of reasoning. --Jayron32 18:01, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Let's put it this way: There are differences between ethnic groups in that certain ethnic groups are more likely to have certain characteristics than others. However, the division of ethnic groups into three or four or five "races" is more or less artificial. Putting Bangladeshis in the same "race" as Hungarians and in a different category from the Burmese is clearly a social construct. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 19:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd even say that's sketchy. Ethnic groups are just races more finely divided. Its the exact same issue. What makes someone French is not their genetics per se, although certain genes may predominate in France through nothing more than the accident that, on the balance, historically French people tended to have sex with other French people. It is their relationship to the French culture and the French state. There's nothing about the genes that makes people French (or Hungarian, or Bangladeshi), those definitions are based solely on socio-cultural mechanisms, not on genetic mechanisms. You can't seriously claim that, for example, Prince William isn't English, even though much of his ancestry, prior to a certain date, lived in other countries. At what magical date does residency in a culture change you genetically to become part of that ethnicity? --Jayron32 19:54, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The best way to put this is that while there are clearly genetic differences between more-or-less isolated groups of humans (e.g., there are genetic variations across the population of humans which produce differing amounts of melanin in human skin), there is almost no evidence that such genetic differences correlate with conventional notions of race, there is almost no evidence that such genetic differences correlate with any differences in cognition or behavior, and there is literally no evidence that conventional notions of race correlate with differences in cognition or behavior, mediated by genetics. Genetics is (scientifically speaking) a powerful red herring. Lot of smoke poured out on this topic; very little fire. --Ludwigs2 20:33, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The "race is a social construct" is something of a red herring itself - the meaning of the sentence is that race is defined socially, not that it doesn't have any genetic basis at all; but that basis is made up of really trivial stuff. An example of the social definition with real-world consequences is the race of Hispanics, which was actually only invented a few decades ago. In the weird world of American race, Hispanic is dominant to black, which is dominant to white. So, as far as I understand it, whenever a Hispanic man in the U.S. has children with a black or white woman, or vice versa, the children are all "Hispanic". In light of this it is unsurprising that Hispanics are "America's fastest-growing minority"! But the way that this plays in the press, in the general population of the country, is with an image that "the entire country is being taken over by Hispanics", who are in turn assumed to be illegal immigrants from Mexico. This has whipped up some of the less friendly parts of the white community into a frothing mad fury - but I think they're being whipped up by a bogus statistic that comes from an unreasonable definition! Wnt (talk) 04:30, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, none of that is exactly true. First of all, the U.S. census, insofar as it represents the closest thing we have to "official" definitions of these sorts of things, doesn't treat Hispanics as a race. It treats Hispanics as different category of existance, the only other part of that category, according to the U.S. census, is "not Hispanic". I wish I was making that up, really I do. Race is a seperate category, thus one can be both black and hispanic (as someone from the Dominican Republic is likely to be) or white and hispanic (as someone from, say Cuba is likely to be). They also place absolutely no requirements or instructions on how you are to answer the questions; it is purely self-identification. Thus, they don't require you to call yourself "Hispanic" if your last name is Garcia or Hernandez; if you don't feel particularly "Hispanic", you are free to answer "not Hispanic." Likewise, if your name was something like "Fox" or "O'Higgins", and you feel that you are "Hispanic", you are free to enter "Hispanic" for yourself. And before we jump to any conclusions, ask yourself how Vicente Fox and Bernardo O'Higgins might answer that question. this is the full form used in 2010. Its only 10 questions, and questions 8 and 9 are the relevent ones. The definition, according to the U.S. census, of what you are is "What do I think I am?" Ultimately, its the only one that matters. --Jayron32 05:31, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That also allowed Obama to put down that he was just black on his census, even though he is half white and was indeed raised by his Irish American mother's side of the family. Same with Phil Lynott and Bob Marley; both of them were half black and half white, but everyone thought of them simply as being black (in Lynott's case, black-African instead of black Irish). So yes, it can be rather arbitrary. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:38, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All of that can be true, without being bad. It's actually quite a good thing that it works this way. Race and ethnicity (and in America, whatever Hispanic means) is about how a person relates to their culture, and to other cultures. Race (and the rest) is about how you are treated, how you relate to others, how you feel about your place, etc, as it relates to the particular definitions of race (and the rest) in your current situation. No one, who isn't you, can tell you how you fit into society. Only you can figure that out for yourself. So, that President Obama fits into society as a black man has nothing to do with how you, or I, or anyone else should decide how he should fit in. We can't say "Society doesn't treat you like a black man because your Mother is of Irish and English decent". How do we get the right to decide how Obama relates to his society and culture? We don't. Only he knows how he fits in, which is why only he can answer that question for himself. --Jayron32 22:59, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And that's enhanced now that we don't force people like Homer Plessy to declare themselves black. I happen not to particularly care what he calls himself, I care more about things like his policies, and I think most Americans would agree with that. As much as we talk about racial discrimination and what-not, we (at least in North America) really have come a long way from where we once were. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:30, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Blade of the Northern Lights -- according to the old "one-drop rule" (which still has cultural influence in the U.S., though no longer legally binding), Obama would be considered obligatorily black. The option to declare yourself multiracial was only added to the census in 2000. I'm sure Obama doesn't have the slightest wish to deny or insult his mother and mother's family, but he long ago came to terms with the fact that most people would consider him to be black according to conventional U.S. cultural categories, and he married a woman who is indisputably black according to conventional U.S. definitions etc., so it's not too realistic to expect him to redefine his identity at this late date... AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]