Dearborn, MI has the largest US population of “Arabs”. This is, in part, becasue racist Henry Ford, when planning the city as his racially pure utopia, limited residency in Dearborn to white people. While Arab is not, yet, an official census-defined race here in the US, I think its more than clear that in the current context “Arab” people are a stigmatized, racialized non-white group in the current culture.

White or Caucasian
Black African Am., or Negro
American Indian or Alaska Native
Asian
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
Some other race

Plus there is an interesting question, one that has me stumped to tell the truth:

People in the United States are from many countries, tribes, and cultural groups. What is Person 1’s ancestry or tribe? For example, Italian, African American, Dominican, Aleut, Jamaican, Chinese, Pakistani, Salvadoran, Rosebud Sioux, Nigerian, Samoan, Russian, etc.

It’s fill-in-the-blank, up to 57 characters. Plus a “Don’t know” check box.

Take the instructions in 1940 that very explicitly say that southern Europeans were to be classified as White. Today many people take it for granted that Italians are classified as White; however, this was enough of a point of contention in 1940 that instructions had to direct people that this group should be marked as White.

Even today there are parts of the UK where a dark southern European wouldn’t be considered as white (the definition for white is much broader in America). I remember some years ago, my brother had a dark Spanish boy (on an school exchange visit from Spain) staying with our family (in Liverpool). I overheard some white English boys referring to my brother and the Spanish boy as “2 black guys”… I think the Spanish boy would have been mortified if he had known about that. lol.

…as a trivial example, almost 100% of African-Americans have dark skin.

Oh? By at least one of the definitions of “African-American” listed, probably the one in effect at the time and place I was born, that is, the “one drop” rule (any AA ancestory means you’re AA), I’m African-American. My skin is white. Really. Ok, maybe light pink. But it sure isn’t dark, no matter how much sun it’s exposed to. Bright red, occasionally, dark, never. And I’ve got blue eyes. Of course, the “one drop rule” is a very silly definition meant to enforce eugenics, not to describe any biological reality, but still, the fact that I can, in principle, claim to be African-American shows how flexible the definition of “race” is.

It’s a tricky problem because there are people who are more closely related than other people and it is sometimes useful to acknowledge that fact. For example, certain classes of anti-high blood pressure drugs work better on people of primarily European ancestory, others on those of primarily African ancestory. So it’s helpful to know someone’s ancestory when deciding which drug to start them on. Of course, one has to tailor the recommendation to the individual, but “race” can be a handy guide of where to start. On the other hand, there’s no really good biological definition of race. The general meaning as I understand it is a group of more genetically similar individuals. But what is genetically similar? If one looks at polymorphisms (normal variations) of one particular protein called transthyrin, there are more variants in Africa than the rest of the world combined. So one might say that the world’s races include two or three African races and all others. Mitochonodrial groupings are somewhat different. There is only one major mitochondrial haplogroup (with three minor variations) in Africa, while there are at least five in the pre-Columbian Americas (including a rather bizarre one that might be of Viking origin…or not.)

My conclusion in the end is that it’s sometimes useful and interesting to look at race as long as one remembers that, at the bottom, it’s an invention.

There are millions of genetic variations that we could use to divide people into subgroups, but we only choose certain ones. The reason we choose skin color is because it visible and easy to tell.

Richard Dyer (I think I have his name right), in his book White, makes the point that whiteness, the choice of whiteness, has at least some of its roots in Christian notions of purity. Unfortunately, the book is in storage and I have no access to it.

Mikko, biologists don’t talk about races in this sort of way because there geniunely is no biological meaning to race. Even things like sickle cell or cystic fibrosis, are found in all populations but at different rates.

These diseases appear to be based more on geography than race. Sickle Cell trait is a genetic mutation in response to malaria which is carried by various species of mosquitos. As they and malaria have spread through Africa and into India, for example, sickle cell trait occurance in the populations has increased.

There are theories that CF trait(not the disease) originated as a mutation in response to diseases of the intestines like Cholera and Typhoid, to protect against massive electrolyte inbalance from the diarrea that is prevalent with both diseases. That has been used to explain the rate of CF and CF trait in the United States and parts of Europe. There’s interesting material on this online.

CF trait linked to typhoid

[Fixed! --Amp]

If race was truly biological, then we would not have seen so many changes in the Census. If race was biological, then we wouldn’t have groups lobbying to be added or to have other categories taken away.

Hasn’t our understanding of biology (including human biology) changed a bit in the last two and a quarter centuries? And why would the (purely hypothetical) scientific facts of race preclude interest-group politics any more than the (very non-hypothetical) scientific facts of climate change preclude interest-group politics?

Just to be clear, I have no interest in claiming that race is “biological,” rather than “socially constructed.” I just don’t think this particular argument is very good.

Define dark. Lena Horn?

Biologists don’t talk about races in this sort of way because there geniunely is no biological meaning to race. Even things like sickle cell or cystic fibrosis, are found in all populations but at different rates.

I cannot claim to be a biologist, but I sense a contradiction here. If we can show that certain traits (e.g dark skin or cystic fibrosis) occur at different densities in different extended families (e.g more often in African-Americans than in Chinese), then that suggests a taxonomy (i.e classification) is meaningful.

The odds of having cystic fibrosis and, say, the odds of having a certain skin color, aren’t really different kinds of traits: as you pointed out with the example of cystic fibrosis, they occur at different densities in different populations (as a trivial example, almost 100% of African-Americans have dark skin.)

The notion of distinct biological races of people is not meaningful…

I agree with emphasis on the word “distinct”: building taxonomies isn’t an exact science, and borders between taxonomic units aren’t clear-cut and undebatable. That’s another reason why the notion of race complicates social systems.

there are clearly some characteristics that persist in certain populations because people with those characteristics statistically continue to select mates within the population. skin color is the most externally obvious example.

but there are ways to measure the variability of genes within any population.and the key fact is (from what i have gathered over the years, but i don’t have any hard sources, so some biologist please back me up here): the variability from person to person within any proposed “racial group” is greater than the variability from group to group. thus any attempt at a biological definition of race that refers to genetic similarity will break down, since the variation within that group will be too great, and will thus defy the purported genetic definition.

mathematically, this means that it’s fair to say that a particular (socially defined, or self-identified) group might have a higher probability of possessing a certain gene (for resistance to malaria due to sickle cell trait, or blue eyes, or whatever), but mere possession of a cluster of such genes doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a member of that group, and so you can’t define the group clearly based on biology.

this brief history of racial classifications is fascinating. i know a lot of east-asian people, and i can rarely tell by looking at them whether they are of chinese, japanese, or korean origin. on the other hand, without much effort, it’s pretty easy to identify some characteristics that (roughly, of course) distinguish african groups (somalis tend to be tall with prominent cheek-bones, for instance). so it’s very strange that the various east-asian groups get their own racial categories, while various black groups are just called “black”. part of this is due, of course, to the loss of knowledge of background due to slavery, but surely part of it is also due to social standing: once you’re black it apparently doesn’t matter what sub-category of black you are. once you’re east-asian, our government still cares.

you might argue that the government cares because people from various east-asian backgrounds speak different languages, and that’s fine. but that’s a linguistic distinction, and it’s just false to call it a racial distinction. rachel’s point is that eventually all those racial distinctions evade definition, and the best you can do is define groups based on language or country of origin (for recent immigrants).

anyway, thanks for the post.

The notion of distinct biological races of people is not meaningful…..at least when it is in anyway equated with social definitions of race.

If race was truly biological, then we would not have seen so many changes in the Census.

Is this an issue of genes, physical appearance, or biology? No, it is about the distribution of power and resources.

What do you mean by “truly” biological? Race is a term used in many contexts; e.g in biology and also in everyday politics, and when it comes to politics it certainly isn’t just about “objective biology” as you pointed out via examples. As the cynics say, politics is just a question of personal interests masquerading as a question of principles - and what would be a better mask than science?

To be exact, even in biology “race” is just a taxonomic construct; for example, in Finland there’s this molecular blob called “Mikko”; and in nature there are these rideable creatures called “horses” and purring creatures called “cats”; and in a block of land called “China” there is an extended family of things called “human” called “the Chinese”, and these extended families are called “races”. This is why I prefer “African-Americans” over “blacks” (because there are many races whose skin is black).

IMHO the threshold of what is considered a race should be left for biologists and all notions of race (and sex, for that matter) should be abolished from the books of law.

Thank you for posting this.

I assume - perhaps wrongly - that the decision to post this came at least partially out of the thread discussion on the HIV/AIDS topic.

I’ve felt uneasy about capitulating to the “race is biological, damn it” people on that thread to the extent that I did, but I felt a bit at sea trying to figure out how to respond. I feel like your summary here is one good explanation for how race is socially constucted.

(A corrolary, of course, is historical construction of “Italians” “Jews” and “Irish” as non-white, which of course means that the concept of whiteness itself is complicated and socially determined.)

I wonder if those who feel that race is biologically determined might retort that they aren’t talking about race as it’s constructed here, but the old-fashioned “five racial types” - caucazoid, mongoloid, negroid, etc.

I don’t know the history of these terms - apart from the fact that they’ve been thoroughly discredited, at least in the circles I travel - but it’s possible that their construction has remained more stable. However, I seem to recall that you can’t reliably determine which of these “five types” a person belongs to…

In any case, even if it’s true as TangoMan suggested in the prior thread, that one can determine many people’s “race” genetically — by seeing that they have certain combinations of genetic markers — I still don’t see that this argues for distinct racial categories with solid boundaries. Surely, one could divide the human race along non-traditional lines - separating out the Eurasians, but dividing Africa into three parts - and then find genetic markers that would allow one to - sometimes - determine which of these populations someone belongs to.

But just because we could create a Thispieceofwestafrican - and even if we could figure out genetic markers that could sometimes identify these individuals - racial group wouldn’t mean that it was somehow a “real” thing. Instead, we’d have created a different set of socially constructed boundaries. Where we placed those boundaries would still be socially constructed.

I guess this is just another way of thinking about what you’ve said in this post — the idea that race is socially constructed isn’t about saying “these people’s ancestors aren’t from the place the race title describes” but about saying “why and when we opt to create distinctions between people from one place and people from another stems from social history not biological distinction.”

Some of this is speculation and rumination, of course. I appreciate corrections from those better versed in race theory than I.