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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28008 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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indeed, we now know that more genetic variation exists within any one racial group than between racial groups (Lewontin 1972, 397).

Have seen this cited many times, just now got around to giving it a read.

Given it’s 1972 of course the authors aren’t working with fully sequenced genomes, they’re using 17 blood group markers. They’re also using racial groupings that put South Asians in the same category as the Irish.

I expect that genes correlated with traits that people associate with race such as skin color, epicanthic eye folds, height, etc. will vary between groups as they do according to visual observation.

Nah, "more variation within than between" is still true when using full genomes and removing bad faith parts of classification. What they don't tell is that it's also true for recently diverged species and that one trait is influenced by many genes (and vice versa). Suppose there's 20 genes affecting trait X, and population A has 40% chance to have X-increasing allele in each gene, and population B has 60% chance to have X-increasing allele. Looking at genes in isolation, there is no pattern, but overall pattern that B was selected to have higher X, and looking at two individual phenotypes, it's a chasm between them.

They’re also using racial groupings that put South Asians in the same category as the Irish.

if splitting to 3 major races, it's as it should be. What is bad faith is when they introduce small mixed race populations as members of race which isn't greatest in the mix, and give these small populations same weight as large ones.

if splitting to 3 major races

Excuse my ignorance, but what are the 3 major races? My guess would be Eurasian, African, and American, but if this is the methodology, then wouldn't the results be inherently worthless? I don't see how it can make sense to put Thais and Swedes in the same racial category and have anything approaching precision.

Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid.

In this, the "American" are probably Mongoloid.

Were the Irish categorized as Mongoloid? That would be quite funny.

I don't profess to know the particular distinctions, but no, the Irish would certainly be Caucasoid.

The real split would be in India. Phenotypically I believe they would qualify as Caucasoid. Hence, swedes and dalits are the same race.

Thanks for the context.

I took anthropology classes in college. They loved using "more variation within racial groups than between them". They didn't cite sources for that claim. I'm rather hoping there is some sturdier basis than that 1972 paper. I would still suspect it is false, but they should at least cook up some rigorous-seeming papers to support it.

There's a sense in which this statement is trivially true- the khoikhoi and hadza and pygmies are all black.

This sense has the disadvantage of not addressing the question, but it is literally correct.

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