May 06, 2003
More on the Definition of Race
Steve Sailer brings up a potential objection to my definition of race, namely that one could define a "lactose tolerant", vs. a "lactose intolerant" race. Here is my definition again:
Let P be a human population.
If:
- all members of P pass an objective test T.
- non-members of P don't pass T.
- the vast majority of matings between members of P produce offspring that pass T.
- the vast majority of matings including at least one non-member of P produce offspring that don't pass T.
then population P is said to be a human race.
Actually, when I was thinking up my definition, I too wandered if it would be possible to attack it via what I thought of as a "single-locus attack." Does my definition leave open that possibility?
Suppose that you have a locus with two competing alleles, A and B. Each human being is either AA, AB, or BB. Can an objective test separate humanity into two races based on that locus in a way that would fit my definition? The answer is actually no, and here is why.
Suppose that we define a 'race' as that which is AA. Clearly, all people that are AA will pass the objective test (criterion #1) while the remaining mankind (AB and BB) won't (criterion #2). Our 'race' will also pass criterion #3: AA mating with AA will produce only AA. But it fails criterion #4: AB's mating with AB's can produce AA's and our definition forbids it. The reader can verify that all other possible subdivisions fail for similar reasons.
Hence, it's not possible to define a race based on a single locus, provided that there are heterozygous elements in the human population. Now if it is found that most of mankind is neatly divided into AA's and BB's for one locus, without any AB's, then it will be possible to divide mankind based on it alone. But, I doubt that there are (m)any loci like that (correct me if I'm wrong).
Thus, we are forced to seek the existence of races based on more than one locus. I concede that it may be that many of the potential races identified via this method might not correspond to the geographical races. But, I still think that the best way to think of a race is a population that possesses and can reproduce a genetic pattern.
Perhaps there are more 'races' than we suspect. Perhaps geographical race is only a special case of what I'm talking about. I am encouraged by the recent progress in determining with high accuracy the geographical ancestry of people based on a large number of markers. At least five populations with distinct genetic profiles at the global level have now been identified, in the sense that all members of a particular group are identified as such.
I think that if we think of race in terms of a genetic pattern, then it really becomes a meaningful concept. Whether it will become a useful concept is an altogether different matter. That will depend on the significance of the genetic pattern itself, i.e., on what the genes we've identified actually do.
PS: I will probably read and write about this in the future. I'm not quite dead set on my definition yet.
Posted by Dienekes at May 6, 2003 04:42 PM | PermaLinkDienekes,
I apologize for the length of this in advance. I might blog on this topic, b/c I think that that "Power of Illusion" effort is well-funded misinformation that won't be challanged by too many people with a voice. (And I'm glad you, of all people, are one of those people with a voice.)
But right now I'm a little disappointed in your new definition mainly a) b/c it less parsimonious than it needs to be and b) b/c it seems to fail your own previously stated standards of definition (which I'll get to).
The irony of this is that if you would have written this a month ago the only criticism I would have had, perhaps, is that I found Steve's def more instructive and more elegant in its simplicity. But since that time my views have shifted a little, but only b/c I felt like I took something away from you in our last discussion over race.
In that discussion you convinced me of a couple of things. First of all that Steve's effort to use a bottom-up system was unnecessary, and only dilluted the meaning of the word 'race' by letting too many types of wrong things fall under it (such as the Amish (recent isolates) , Austrians (nationalities), and Mestizos (recent mixed races)). Secondly, that the question "when is it a race" is unproblematic, even though it is often voiced as though it is a spectacular critique of the concept. In effect I now see Steve's def as an answer to that critique, but since I don't acknowledge the critique as valid in the first place, any such concilliatory answer to it is, IMO, giving it unwarrented validation.
This is what I have taken away from you. Perhaps I misunderstood you, but nevertheless that is how I now see the issue.
Perhaps that is why I consider your alternative to Steve's definition...
A race is a population (of some species) whose members, and only they, possess and reproduce a genetic pattern.
........as basically containing the same unnecessary broadness that I now find in his. Maybe you see your definition as sufficiently different b/c you qualified it with "only they", but I don't see how this distinguishes ethnic groups, mixed races, and isolated populations in all their various degrees of distinctiveness from what you want to see as "races" in anything but degree. In effect, the "problem" with race still remains: how distinct does the genetic profile have to be before something qualifies as a race? Please provide an exact quantifiable definition. ...Of course, when you do it will then be noted as arbitrary, and promptly dismissed.
'Race', in my opinion isn't an attempt to describe every genetic relationship on the planet that does and could hypothetically exist. Indeed if no living thing ever died there would be a smooth earthly continuum of intermediate forms including 'humans' and stretching back to the first single-celled lifeform. Perhaps in such a universe classifications such as "dog" and "human" would be moot or would be categorized in much larger and infinitely more ambiguous "clusters". But we don't analyze things or systemize them by how they could be but by how they are.
In this case 'race', like Sailer indicates in his defintiion, really is relative. We could live in a universe right now where no human beings were more distinct than a Swede and an Italian or even one where human populations were as distinct as a lion and a tiger (still able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring, yet quite distinct), yet in that lion/tiger universe the same basic PBS show arguments would exist.
My solution is that we side-step all of this rhetoric and simply reaffirm that a 'race' is the same thing as a sub-species:
subspecies n : (biology) a taxonomic group that is a division of a species; usually arises as a consequence of geographical isolation within a species [syn: race]
A relative relationship that exists in nature, whether humans decide to label it/recognize it or not. One not free from the problems of ambiguity, but of self-justified utility nonetheless. You summed it up pretty well last time:
I guess I want to be more precise. Sailer's definition is too imprecise. It generalizes the concept of race too much. It lets it be used for the chance assortments of peoples in historical time, rather than the temporally deep and geographically clear splits between different branches of mankind.
A race is a temporally deep and geographically distinct branching within a species.
For some species the historical time and level of isolation between the populations is salient, other times not. But these "branchings" are salient enough times to justify the taxonomic classification for these observed relationships. For humans at least five relatively distinct geographical profiles have emerged. These are races.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at May 7, 2003 10:05 PM>> Perhaps that is why I consider your alternative to Steve's definition...
>> ........as basically containing the same unnecessary broadness that I now find in his.
Note that the definition that you pointed to is the "simple-language" one. The "official" definition is the one given in this blog entry and introduced here.
>> Please provide an exact quantifiable definition. ...Of course, when you do it will then be noted as arbitrary, and promptly dismissed.
The "official" definition is completely precise, with the only ambiguity being in the term "vast majority". But, that's just to account for the chance that the genetic pattern might be re-formed by mutation, or highly improbably combination of existing alleles. It is precise, but generic. One needs to instantiate it with a particular objective test (on e.g., anthropometric features, or genes, etc.).
PS: I will try to give examples of what I mean in the future.
Posted by: Dienekes at May 8, 2003 08:31 AMThe "official" definition is completely precise, with the only ambiguity being in the term "vast majority".
Not true. Let's look at the litmus test:
"-all members of P pass an objective test T.
-non-members of P don't pass T.
-the vast majority of matings between members of P produce offspring that pass T.
-the vast majority of matings including at least one non-member of P produce offspring that don't pass T.
-then population P is said to be a human race."
But by this definition, Mestizos, Basques, A. Jews and the Amish would be considered races.
"all members" is tautalogical b/c how did you define the membership in the first place? Ethnic groups, isolated, and historically mixed populations have accumulated their own mutations and allele frequencies too. Those who share the profile are P and by definition will pass T.
But, I still think that the best way to think of a race is a population that possesses and can reproduce a genetic pattern.
Good way for thinking about, but bad way for classifying. All non-random breeding produces patterns (The differences you find on your way from Norway to Italy for instance), which is why Steve is willing to recognize them as races of a sort. But the criteria of interest for 'race' should be in its special magnitude. Except for unique cases (such as the artificial selection of dog breeds), geographic branching seems to be the most common reason for within-species profiles. Therefore I'm going to assume that any non-geographic profiles that might emerge that approach the geographical ones in genetic distinctiveness, are exceptions to the principle (for what is usually/should be defined as a sub-species/race).
Posted by: Jason Malloy at May 8, 2003 04:35 PM