18-12-2002 11:09									#1
	Race and Genetics: New Study Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Because the "Is race biological?" question gets kicked around here so often, I thought people might be interested in this article from yesterday's papers:

quote: Race Not Reflected in Genes, Study Finds WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The idea of race is not reflected in a person's genes, Brazilian (news - web sites) researchers said on Monday, confirming what scientists have long said -- that race has no meaning genetically. The Brazilian researchers looked at one of the most racially mixed populations in the world for their study, which found there is no way to look at someone's genes and determine his or her race. Brazilians include people of European, African and Indian, or Amerindian, descent. "There is wide agreement among anthropologists and human geneticists that, from a biological standpoint, human races do not exist," Sergio Pena and colleagues at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerias in Brazil and the University of Porto in Portugal wrote in their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (news - web sites). "Yet races do exist as social constructs," they said. They found 10 gene variations that could reliably tell apart, genetically, 20 men from northern Portugal and 20 men from Sao Tome island on the west coast of Africa. But the genetic differences did not have anything to do with physical characteristics such as skin or hair color, the researchers found. They next tested two groups -- 173 Brazilians classified as white, black, or intermediate based on arm skin color, hair color, and nose and lip shape, and 200 men living in major metropolitan areas who classified themselves as white. They used the 10 genetic markers that differed between people from Portugal and Africa, but found little difference among anyone in their study. To their surprise, they found maternal DNA suggested that even the "white" people had, on average, 33 percent of genes that were of Amerindian ancestry and 28 percent African. This suggested European men often fathered children with black and Indian women. "It is interesting to note that the group of individuals classified as blacks had a very high proportion of non-African ancestry (48 percent)," they wrote. "In essence our data indicate that, in Brazil as a whole, color is a weak predictor of African ancestry," they concluded. "Our study makes clear the hazards of equating color or race with geographical ancestry and using interchangeably terms such as white, Caucasian and European on one hand, and black, Negro or African on the other, as is often done in scientific and medical literature."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...science_race_dc

I really want to see this study duplicated in the US.

	18-12-2002 11:17									#2
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I don't think Brazil's a really good place to do a study, honestly. Brazil is a country with a lot of mixed blood, and the Portugese aren't pure Europeans either, having imported Africans en mass to their own country and interbred.

It doesn't make sense that genetic variations between isloated groups would be reflected. They need to use better groups, such as Icelanders, Jews, Aboriginies, etc.

So far, however, the only way to determine the "race" of someone scientifically is either by looking at them (which isn't 100% BTW) or by studying their bones post mortum.

	18-12-2002 11:23									#3
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What I don't understand is how skin color could be anything other than a genetic trait. It isn't like blacks can make themselves white by drinking milk or something (wouldn't Michael Jackson love that?). It sounds like these scientists couldn't recognize the genes that determine skin color and just assumed that they don't exist.

	18-12-2002 11:26									#4
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1. Race is genetic. Simple genetic tests will show this. (Not DNA. Just observe that black children are born to blacks, etc.)

2. Mitochondrial DNA supports the argument that the races are different family groups.

3. This "study" sounds rather imprecise. What was the exact scientific thing they wanted to prove? Was it a tautology? Is their "proof" sufficient?

4. Rufus, just how good are you at reading a report and examining it if it concerns science? Your post doesn't impress me much. Seems rather simple-minded.

	18-12-2002 11:26									#5
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The genes that determine skin color, however, do not determine race, nor do they even point at race. They merely point at the latitude where their ancestors lived for many thousands of years. Skin color, across the globe (until the modern era) was determined not by race but by proximity to the equator, which is why there are dark skinned Caucasians and light skinned Africans (Bushmen, not Arabs). Furthermore, Caucasians are genetically closer to Africans, with their much darker (on average) skin than were are to Asians, who have very similar skin to us.

Last edited by chegitz guevara on 18-12-2002 at 12:09

	18-12-2002 11:31									#6
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GP, race is primarily a social contruct, which tends to follow groups of similar geographical ancestry. Matching groups to races, however, depends on the society, and white and black mean different things in different societies. In the 19th Century, the Chinese immigrants in California were legally Blacks, while Mexicans were legally Indians (which is a little closer to the truth).

DNA, so far, hasn't been a very good indicator of race, simply because the variations within a race are much wider than variations between races.

	18-12-2002 11:34									#7
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quote: Originally posted by GP 4. Rufus, just how good are you at reading a report and examining it if it concerns science? Your post doesn't impress me much. Seems rather simple-minded.

Whoa, valium time for GP. All I did was post a news article dealing with an oft-discussed Apolyton topic. I didn't opine on it except to say that it would be interesting to see the results if the study were duplicated in the US, another racially mixed nation. Forget science reports; how good are you at reading a forum post?

	18-12-2002 11:36									#8
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I think we need a working definition of what the word "race" means.

When I use the term "race", I'm talking about classifications of humans based on physical characteristics, like skin color. If you use this definition, then race is obviously genetic, as physical characteristics are determined by ones genetic makeup.

	18-12-2002 11:58									#9
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Rufus, I've read a lot more Poly posts than you have. The comments stand. Learn to look at "science reports" heck any news report more critically. Don't wander thorough life without a critical faculty.

Here is a good link on the evloutionary nature of races: http://www.utexas.edu/courses/gene/L39.htm


Che, umm...yeah.

1. There is much more to races than skin color alone. Facial features, body dimensions, etc. Complete agreement.

2. Just because some people called Chinese blacks, does not mean that the classification is purely cultural. We can look at it more scientifically. Do you think that different breeds of dogs are cultural only? That they have no relation to lineages?

	18-12-2002 12:02									#10
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Hasn't it also been shown blacks have an extra muscle in their legs? Plus they also tend to have bigger butts.

	18-12-2002 12:11									#11
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quote: Originally posted by Shi Huangdi Hasn't it also been shown blacks have an extra muscle in their legs? Plus they also tend to have bigger butts.

Don't know about the first. The second no longer seems to be true. Somehow or another, Generation Y seems to have developed butts. Everything good skips my generation.

	18-12-2002 12:14									#12
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it seems to me all this study shows is a lot of mixing

no suprise there.

	18-12-2002 12:50									#13
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I think the point of this is that while, yes, you can tell what skin color a person will have from genetics, it does not make a person genetically similiar in all other respects to others of the same color. Like, if you compared the DNA of two black people and then compared them both to the DNA of a white person, the two blacks would not likely have more genetic similiarities than either of them had with the white person.

	18-12-2002 12:54									#14
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This study does have one redeeming quality. Is that skin color can be decieving when determining race.

Maybe armed with this knowledge and the fact I do have Native American heritiage despite me having white skin I can move to California and open my own Indian casino .

	18-12-2002 14:39									#15
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten I think we need a working definition of what the word "race" means. When I use the term "race", I'm talking about classifications of humans based on physical characteristics, like skin color. If you use this definition, then race is obviously genetic, as physical characteristics are determined by ones genetic makeup.

Are people shorter than 6ft, with blonde hair and green eyes a different race to all those people who are taller than 6ft, with brown hair and blue eyes?

	18-12-2002 16:47									#16
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara I don't think Brazil's a really good place to do a study, honestly. Brazil is a country with a lot of mixed blood, and the Portugese aren't pure Europeans either, having imported Africans en mass to their own country and interbred. It doesn't make sense that genetic variations between isloated groups would be reflected. They need to use better groups, such as Icelanders, Jews, Aboriginies, etc.

Well, if you want to show that white people can have genes from a variety of races and still be considered white, then Brazil is probably an ideal place for the study.

The link posted by GP defines race as "a large population that has a gene pool that is substantially different from that of other large populations."

This study shows the problem with this definition. The whites in the study would be considered as part of the white race even though half of the gene markers did not come from Europe. In other words, the gene pool of whites might not be substantially different from Asians or Blacks, or whatever.

	18-12-2002 19:54									#17
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Just to throw a little fuel into the fire, a recent study showed that most Columbians have native american mitochondria, but european X chromosomes, indicating that at some point in time the Spanish eradicated the men and boys in the area and then bred with the women.

	18-12-2002 19:56									#18
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Yesterday's paper.

	18-12-2002 20:04									#19
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So we are all exactly the same underneath our skin! What an amazing coincidence! I guess we can all be nice to each other now.

	18-12-2002 23:06									#20
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quote: Are people shorter than 6ft, with blonde hair and green eyes a different race to all those people who are taller than 6ft, with brown hair and blue eyes?

The divisions between races are obviously abitrary and socially constructed. I'm not saying otherwise. They are, however, usually based on physical characteristics that are genetically determined.

	18-12-2002 23:41									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Dr Strangelove Just to throw a little fuel into the fire, a recent study showed that most Columbians have native american mitochondria, but european X chromosomes, indicating that at some point in time the Spanish eradicated the men and boys in the area and then bred with the women.

Why would this be a surprise at all: after all, the Spaniards brough few women at first from Spain: someone had to bear all those early Spanish kids, no?

	18-12-2002 23:55									#22
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btw, that should be Y chromosomes.

	19-12-2002 00:20									#23
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quote: Originally posted by Dr Strangelove Just to throw a little fuel into the fire, a recent study showed that most Columbians have native american mitochondria, but european X sic chromosomes, indicating that at some point in time the Spanish eradicated the men and boys in the area and then bred with the women.

I do not think that i need a genetic study to figure this out. A simple question of "what do conquistadors do?" would have sufficed.

	19-12-2002 08:48									#24
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There are no "pure" races, just areas were certain genes prodominate. For example, blacks aren't a single group, they are many groups that are more diverse genetically than non-africans. One group related to modern Ethiopians crossed from Ethiopia to Yemen and became the ancestors of all non-blacks. Whites and mongoloids arent true groups, they are mixed up with eachother. Some Germans (probably with Hun ancestory) are more closely related to the japanese and Mongols genetically. the mixing occured in late Roman times when central asian groups (Huns, etc.) brought asian genes into the european gene pool. Native Americans seem to form many groups; one group that includes most native americans is related to Siberians. Onother group seems to be related to the Caucasian Aniu of Japan. A few Native American groups even have genetic similarities to Indonesians and some GREEKS!

	19-12-2002 09:25									#25
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quote: Originally posted by Dissident This study does have one redeeming quality. Is that skin color can be decieving when determining race.

You have it exactly opposite. This study shows that race as a meaningful genetic characteristic is *only* skin color. The other genetic attributes don't correlate the way you would expect if races existed as autonomous gene-complexes.

BTW, a historian named David Roediger has demonstrated fairly conclusively that until the late 1800's the Irish were considered non-white as a race. Why in the late 1800's? Because that's when they accumulated sufficient electoral leverage to matter.

It's a social and political construct. Period.