Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Our origins originate from Southern African (NOT THE FIRST ANCESTORS EVER AS THAT WOULD BE NORTH AFRICA AROUND 300,000 YEARS AGO TO EAST AFRICA AROUND 200,000 YEARS AGO OR SO BUT RATHER OUR LAST MAIN COMMON ANCESTORS AROUND 100,000 YEARS AGO), with a population divergence around 120,000 to 110,000 years ago and this is after the two other main areas of North and East Africa either migrated south or largely went extinct around 100,000 years ago. This is the most recent glacial era that consisted of a larger pattern of glacial and interglacial periods beginning around 115,000 which may have influenced both the migrating south and possibly could connect to some of the influences relating to the extinctions as well. Moreover, as these Ancient Southern African peoples developed over time, they also expanded out from there to populate the globe, and the DNA of us all points to a southern African origin. Furthermore, it seems as they expanded back out, they either replaced the other populations in central and east Africa that may have been left or absorbed any remaining individuals. ref

Southern African Middle Stone Age sites:

(Ap) Apollo 11; (BAM) Bambata; (BBC) Blombos Cave; (BC) Border Cave; (BGB)Boegoeberg; (BPA) Boomplaas; (BRS) Bushman Rock Shelter; (BUN) Bundu Farm; (CF)Cufema Reach; (CK) Canteen Kopje; (COH) Cave of Hearths; (CSB) Cape St Blaize; (DK)Die Kelders Cave 1; (DRS) Diepkloof Rock Shelter; (EBC) Elands Bay Cave; (FL) Florisbad; (≠GI) ≠Gi; (HP) Howiesons Poort; (HRS) Hollow Rock Shelter; (KD) Klipdrift; (KKH) Klein Kliphuis; (KH) Khami; (KK) Kudu Koppie; (KP) Kathu Pan; (KRM) Klasies River Main Site; (L) Langebaan; (MBA) Mumbwa Caves; (MC) Mwulu’s Cave; (MEL)Melikane; (MON) Montagu Cave; (NBC) Nelson Bay Cave; (NG) Ngalue; (NT) Ntloana Tšoana; (OBP) Olieboomspoort; (PC) Peers Cave; (POC) Pockenbank; (PL) Plover’s Lake; (POM) Pomongwe; (PP) Pinnacle Point; (RCC) Rose Cottage Cave; (RED) Redcliff; (RHC) Rhino Cave; (SCV) Seacow Valley; (SFT) Soutfontein; (SEH) Sehonghong; (SIB)Sibudu Cave; (SPZ) Spitzkloof Rock Shelter; (SS) Sunnyside 1; (STB) Strathalan Cave B; (STK) Sterkfontein; (TR) Twin Rivers; (UMH) Umhlatuzana; (VR) Varsche Rivier 003; (WPS) White Paintings Shelter; (WK) Wonderkrater; (WW) Wonderwerk; (YFT)Ysterfontein 1; (ZOM) Zombepata Cave. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

• Evolution of human skin color, white-skin is really under 10,000 years old?
• White (light complexion skin) Bigotry and Sexism started 7,000 years ago?
• Nordic Paganism/Shamanism, Vikings, White Supremacists Imaginary Viking Past, Neo-paganism/Neo-Shamanism, and Far-right Religio-Nationalism Bigotry
• Anti-White racism isn’t a thing? What do you mean by that?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: a belief among some indigenous people, young children, or all religious people!

Over 100,000 years ago or so, Southern Africa, in the Land before and the beginning Time of Animism?

Animism: 78,000 Years Old Deliberate Burial of a Human Child in Kenya, Africa

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Explaining the Earliest Religious Expression, that of Animism (beginning 100,000 to 70,000 years ago?) to Totemism (beginning 30,000 to 3,000 years ago?) in Southern Africa: LINK

Race (human categorization)

“A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society. The term was first used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations. By the 17th century the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. Social conceptions and groupings of races have varied over time, often involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Today, scientists consider such biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits.” ref

“Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptions of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways. While some researchers continue to use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits or observable differences in behavior, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is inherently naive or simplistic. Still, others argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance because all living humans belong to the same subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. Since the second half of the 20th century, the association of race with the discredited theories of scientific racism has contributed to race becoming increasingly seen as a largely pseudoscientific system of classification. Although still used in general contexts, race has often been replaced by less ambiguous and loaded terms: populations, people(s), ethnic groups, or communities, depending on context.” ref

Taxonomy of Race? A Social construct? A biological reality? Or is it both?

*Challenger, “sorry, Damien, but “We” didn’t separate ourselves – different continents and evolution that took place upon them, did.”

My response, Well, all people are 99.9 genetically identical in our genetic makeup. https://www.genome.gov/19016904/faq-about-genetic-and-genomic-science/

My response, There is no taxonomy of races, race is an informal rank in the taxonomic hierarchy. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/

*Challenger, “Read a book called, ‘A Troublesome Inheritance’ by Nicholas Wade. It’s about evolution so I know you’ll find it interesting.”

My response, I will look into it.

*Challenger, “Check out this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb2iFikOwYU&feature=youtu.be

My response, I looked into it and I am not interested in the book as it’s not supported by science. http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/a-troubling-tome

*Challenger, “It is supported by science. Read the preface and you’ll find out why so many people came out so strongly against it.” Here’s a good doc that will ease you into the genetics of race without going full race realist on race differences in cognitive ability. “Aarathi Prasad sets out to challenge the science of racial purity and examines provocative claims that there are in fact biological advantages to being mixed race.” https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=jhCuuw0vF64

My response, Did you check out the link I gave it rejects his claim and the same is true for the first link I gave. If He thinks different ok. Here is another link Science Says: There Is No Such Thing As Race! https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=4OPrLZ8pjOU

*Challenger, “It’s a form of religious thinking. If something doesn’t conform with our kumbaya world view, deny it. I grant her, that it might be helpful for human comradely to think in these terms, but just because these views give us comfort, it’s no reason for adopting them. – especially when all the evidence points the other way.”

My response, Here is another link Bill Nye: “There’s No Such Thing as Race” http://bigthink.com/words-of-wisdom/bill-nye-theres-no-such-thing-as-race

*Challenger, “He’s not wrong. They are all dogs, but they’re different breeds (races). No one is claiming that other races aren’t human, of course we’re all the same human species. They’re tackling a straw man.”

My response, Well, I will want for science as a group to go from disagreeing with him to agreeing with him before I do.

*Challenger, “Political correctness, won’t allow for that. Nicholas Wade had to wait till he retired from the New York Times before he dared to write the book.”

My response, A conspiracy theory, or scientific misunderstanding is not a fact, a fact of race needs a scientifically establish a taxonomy of race to which there is no such thing, unless you know of one.

*Challenger, “His earlier book… Before The Dawn, was also excellent.”

My response, Are you open to be wrong? I am as I want what is true.

*Challenger, “Here is a link http://theunsilencedscience.blogspot.ca/2014/08/correcting-critics-of-nicholas-wade-maoa.html?m=1

My response, Without a scientific taxonomy of race, it’s a social construct we feel is useful.

*Challenger, “It’s a hugely complex debate. It took me years to come to terms with the reality of race. I could dump a lot of links on you, but it isn’t likely to change your mind. I spent a long time trying to debunk the very best arguments for race realism and the hereditarian view… eventually I just ended up convincing myself I was wrong. Check out Jayman for a great place to start.” Here is a link https://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/ Prove him wrong or change your mind trying. I warn you though… these beliefs are foundational, when you accept these ideas, it changes your entire world. Once I saw that the evidence was overwhelming I had no choice but to adjust my views.”

My response, I don’t think it’s bigotry, to see, analyze, or define difference, between humans, I am just going to trust, the scientific community, which is saying something otherwise; that there is no real thing called race.

*Challenger, (Excerpts from: A Troublesome Inheritance – Genes, Race and Human History) In his book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, the economic historian David Landes examines every possible factor for explaining the rise of the West and the stagnation of China and concludes, in essence, that the answer lies in the nature of the people. Landes attributes the decisive factor to culture, but describes culture in such a way as to imply race. “If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference,” he writes. “Witness the enterprise of expatriate minorities—the Chinese in East and Southeast Asia, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews and Calvinists throughout much of Europe, and on and on. Yet culture, in the sense of the inner values and attitudes that guide a population, frightens scholars. It has a sulfuric odor of race and inheritance, an air of immutability.” Sulfuric odor or not, the culture of each race, whether genetically based or otherwise, is what Landes suggests has made the difference in economic development. Given the distinctiveness of European societies and the period for which they have been on their own path of development—at least 1,000 years—it is highly likely that the social behavior of Europeans has been adapting genetically to the challenges of surviving and prospering in a European society. The data gathered by Clark on declining rates of violence and increasing rates of literacy from 1200 to 1800, described in chapter 7, are evidence that this is indeed the case. Though equivalent data does not exist for the Chinese population, their society has been distinctive for even longer—at least 2,000 years—and the intense pressures on survival discussed in chapter 7 would have adapted the Chinese to their society just as Europeans became adapted to theirs. *** The presence of a genetic anchor would explain why expatriate English populations throughout the world have behaved like one another and like their source population over many centuries, and why the same is true of the Chinese abroad. A genetic basis for these groups’ social behavior also explains why it is so hard for other populations to copy their desirable features. The Malay, Thai or Indonesian populations who have prosperous Chinese populations in their midst might envy the Chinese success but are strangely unable to copy it. People are highly imitative, and if Chinese business success were purely cultural, everyone would find it easy to adopt the same methods. This is not the case because social behavior, of Chinese and others, is genetically shaped. *** Today’s races hold three quarters of their history in common, only one quarter apart. From an evolutionary perspective, the human races are all very similar variations of the same gene pool. The question that looms over all the social sciences, unanswered and largely unaddressed, is how to explain the paradox that people as individuals are so similar yet human societies differ so conspicuously in their cultural and economic attainments. Nicholas Wade A Troublesome Inheritance; Genes, Race and Human History https://atroublesomeinheritance.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/nicholas-wade-a-troublesome-inheritance_-genes-race-and-human-history-penguin-press-hc-the-20141.pdf Fear of Race Realism and the Denial of Human Differences https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2sUW8q7uWI&feature=youtu.be

My response, I have no fear of race realism, I don’t like the denialism of science or a willful or otherwise misunderstanding/disregard going on to believe this.

*Challenger, “Here is a link http://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/

My response, “Race” among humans is not the same as “breed”. Not enough phenotypic and genetic difference. Humans have very low genetic variability among the different populations. Humans harbor plenty of genetic variation and this is – to some extent – structured both spatially and by self-identified ethnic group. So, you can, for instance show there are genetic differences between sub-saharan African populations, and European ones. However, you could also show genetic differences between Norwegians and Germans – does that make them different races? Furthermore 1) the structuring is imperfect, 2) it does not correspond to people’s simple preconceptions (of e.g. black people, white people), 3) genetic variation among groups (however defined) is low relative to variation within groups; and, 4) to the extent that “races” exist in humans, matings have always occurred between groups (promoting genetic homogeneity). Contrast this with dog breeds for which we have selectively bred traits under artifical selection while actively preventing inter-breed matings (or rather cross-bred offspring are not considered breeds). Could we do this in humans? As a thought experiment (i.e. leaving aside the ethics) – yes, and I am sure that we could select for more intelligent and less intelligent human breeds (or ones with floppy ears etc ). However, this has not been done in humans while it has in dogs. Hence the concepts of dog breeds and human races are not really comparable.” http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?id=12298

*Challenger, “I understand all this. It’s actually covered quite intensively in the book I recommended to you.”

My response, I added it as you said: breeds (races).

*Challenger, “One popular argument used against the possibility of races in humans is that “humans are 99.9% the same”. This claim was first made by Craig Venter in 2000. However, in 2007, Venter did another analysis that showed that only around 99.5% of human chromosomal DNA is the same between two random individuals. Despite this, it is still a popular talking point among race deniers than “humans are 99.9% the same”. Keep in mind that humans and chimpanzees, on this scale, are 98.7% the same and 98.4% the same as gorillas. Michael Woodley 2009 – Is Homo Sapiens Polytypic compared the heterozygosity in humans to other species with wide ranges. Heterozygosity is simply the probably that, at any given gene location, two organisms of that species will have a different gene variant (allele) at that specific location. A gene is a series of SNPs, so even though the similarly is 99.5% SNP by SNP, at any given gene they can be different more often than not. Of course this doesn’t measure the magnitude or consequence of that difference, merely whether there is in fact a difference, and so it is a rough measure.” http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/329/

My response, Interesting choice for the website name: the alternative hypothesis as there is no taxonomy of race or races, race is an “informal rank” in the taxonomic hierarchy.

*Challenger, “Here is a link https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=i2zx7DQowWg Here is another link https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=ZIECp9Ljih0

My response, Provide me, with science journals or scientific magazines, that support these race realism claims/Taxonomy of Race. While I do think, it is not bigotry to notice different we also must be careful to not fall for scientific racism or more accurately pseudo-scientific racism.

*Challenger, “A 2005 study by Tang and colleagues used 326 genetic markers to determine genetic clusters. The 3,636 subjects, from the United States and Taiwan, self-identified as belonging to white, African American, East Asian or Hispanic ethnic groups. The study found “nearly perfect correspondence between genetic cluster and SIRE for major ethnic groups living in the United States, with a discrepancy rate of only 0.14 percent”. Paschou et al. (2010) found “essentially perfect” agreement between 51 self-identified populations and the population’s genetic structure, using 650,000 genetic markers. Selecting for informative genetic markers allowed a reduction to less than 650, while retaining near-total accuracy.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics#Self-identification

My response, Interesting. so, the issue is Most physical anthropologists consider race to be primarily a social category that does not correspond significantly with biological variation, but some anthropologists, particularly forensic anthropologists, consider race a useful biological category.

*Challenger, “Also… there is the now well established fact that all non African populations are actually a hybrid of modern human and Neanderthal.”

My response, Well, ones who never went outside African and did not intermingle with anyone who had should not have any Neanderthal DNA of which those outside Africa mostly have Neanderthal DNA like around 1 to 4 %. Here is a link What Scientists Mean When They Say ‘Race’ Is Not Genetic.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/race-is-not-biological_us_56b8db83e4b04f9b57da89ed

*Challenger, “In fact, a surprisingly number of snippets of Neanderthal DNA were associated with psychiatric and neurological effects, the study found.” http://m.phys.org/news/2016-02-neanderthal-dna-subtle-significant-impact.html

My response, I like this post but I don’t see how it helps prove or offers a scientifically establish a taxonomy of race.

*Challenger, “More surprisingly, though, Capra’s team also found that Neanderthal DNA affects the risk of psychiatric disorders, including mood disorders and depression (which are new and unexpected). And 29 specific Neanderthal variants seem to influence when and where genes are turned on in different parts of the brain.” http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/neanderthal-dna-affects-depression-risk-today/462345/

My response, I talk about Ancient DNA and our genetic relationship to several arcane humans now extinct. In my book and read up on it as well. Do you hold that race is biological or is it a social construct?

*Challenger, “It’s both.”

My response, It may be, for the sake of argument but then the rational question is how much is the amounts and how do you estimate this and is it methodologically acute that the scientific community largely agrees?

*Challenger, “It really depends on what you are doing. Sometimes the big intuitive continental ancestral genetic groups are all the detail the situation requires… in another context the genetic differences between the East Africans and west Africans might be mean that you need to spilt the genetic clusters into smaller groups to get the detail you need. The point is that the genetic data can be clustered on the basis of similarities… and those clusters tend to fit what we see to be true… no matter how few or how many clusters you sort it into. Here is a link https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/03/28/genes-indicted-as-tool-for-new-racism/

My response, I don’t think have the aspect of races means racism nor do I fear just having race difference means racism. I don’t fear that just acknowledging a grouping cluster of humans is labeled race. Though we should always be careful when classing humans to not be involved in scientific racism so it that part I would be with the sociologists.

*Challenger, “Sociologists are mostly Marxists… and it’s a problem.”

My response, I am a socialist anarchist mutualist in thinking, as I am quite leftist, myself. However, I follow science unless science is unethical.

*Challenger, “I was a Marxist for most of my adult life.”

My response, And now you are a Right Libertarian? So, if we are accurate to each DNA most people are mixed race, right, even if you can find common separation markers?

*Challenger, “Not really… maybe… I don’t think I’m very political. I like equal rights, freedom of speech, and a decent welfare state.”

My response, I can’t remember my actual DNA test results but let’s say I have 80% one race, what if I have 10 races? And when is there enough new variation for a new race? how do we know we have enough race classes or should we really make more? 

My response, “Mixed-race relationships are making us taller and smarter: Children born to genetically diverse parents are more intelligent than their ancestors” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3146070/Mixed-race-relationships-making-taller-smarter-Children-born-genetically-diverse-parents-intelligent-ancestors.html#ixzz4Qv3YymVZ

My response, “Many biologists have replaced the term ‘”race” with “continental ancestry.” This is because such a large fraction of the world has ancestry in more than one continent.” http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7699490

My response, “Race is a Social Concept, Not a Scientific One” Despite notions to the contrary, there is only one human race. Our single race is independent of geographic origin, ethnicity, culture, color of skin or shape of eyes — we all share a single phenotype, the same or similar observable anatomical features and behavior.  Science highlights these similarities in our embryonic development, physiology (our organ-based systems), biochemistry (our metabolites and reactions), and more recently, genomics (our genetic makeup). As a molecular biologist, this last one is indeed the most important to me — data show that the DNA of any two human beings is 99.9 percent identical, and we all share the same set of genes, scientifically validating the existence of a single biological human race and one origin for all human beings. In short, we are all brothers and sisters. http://www.livescience.com/47627-race-is-not-a-science-concept.html

My response, We design the class grouping, but where I see a need to be careful to not create a category we fill. We can make all kinds of different ways to make groupings and this is a concern leading to why we put more credence in double blind studies. So, if you mean it’s both as in we can make classes that fit our pre-approved created classes of race, (i.e. did we only find all the races we thought there where or did the science show more? If we can class or group, the data differently could just by doing so change the previous finding or will it always be the same? Is there a science established race(s) or only a common usage grouping criteria.

*Challenger, “You can get as many clusters as you want… but they will always be what you expect. People don’t move around or outbreed nearly as much as people like to think they do. You can have 5, 6, or 30 clusters, but they won’t suddenly start lumping little groups of Polynesians together with Northern Europeans… you end up with population substructures that are basically going to correlate with local stereotypes… intuitive subgroups. The Scottish highlanders will be genetically distinct from the lowlanders… that kind of thing.”

My response, So, if we can break it down to as you said high lands differing from low lands then is this a race? And if, now could we? As in is it not us that design the few generalized race label groupings, as in can we with science data make fewer or greater number of races? If we could do this does this not demonstrate race is a social construct that although we can support by data can just as easily create several different race categories, then we do now. Would that make the ones now not accurate universally?

*Challenger, “Race is just the word we use to describe the major district continental populations that evolved largely in isolation after leaving Africa up until fairly recently. These groups are fuzzy sets, but they are obviously not independent of the underlying genetic ancestry.”

My response, To me, without a scientific taxonomy of race, it’s a social construct, we feel is useful. And a fact of race, needs a scientifically establish a taxonomy of race to which there is no such thing, unless you know of one.

My response, “Races were designed in the 1970s to help track compliance with civil rights laws, and are meant to identify groups that are vulnerable to discrimination. There are other considerations, as well. The geographic nature of the categories—aside from Hispanic, which has always been the most nebulous because of its linguistic basis—are supposed to make it reasonably easy for Americans to identify their own backgrounds. Individual federal agencies may choose to split up the OMB categories for more detailed data. The Census Bureau, for example, breaks “Asian” into several subgroups, such as Asian Indian, Chinese, and Filipino. Our modern racial-classification system is far from the first in U.S. history. The federal government asked about race indirectly (are you a slave or a free man?) in the inaugural census from 1790—although more for the purposes of the “Three-Fifths Compromise” than to prevent discrimination. In addition, early American law limited citizenship to whites, so the census had to distinguish between whites and everyone else. (African-Americans became eligible for citizenship in 1868, Native Americans in 1924, and Asian-Americans in 1954.) As people of different backgrounds intermarried and interbred, the government’s attempts to delineate people by race became increasingly tortured. For example, the 1890 census categories were white, black, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian. (Census takers carried detailed instructions on how to explain the groupings.) Race categories continued to vary for most of the 20th century. The 1920 census listed the races as “White, Black, Mulatto, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Hindu, Korean, and Other.” The 1960 census used different terminology, listing “White, Negro, American Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Other.” When the OMB set up its first governmentwide racial-classification system in 1977, just four major races (American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, black, and white) and two ethnicities (Hispanic and non-Hispanic) were included. Anthropologists criticized the new plan for its arbitrary distinction between race and ethnicity, and advocated lumping Hispanic in with the rest. Some activists urged OMB to change Hispanic to Latino. Many argued over the proper placement of people of Hawaiian, Alaskan, and Asian Indian origin. And lots of racial and ethnic groups clamored to have their own separate category, including Arabs, German Americans, and Cape Verdeans. (In earlier times, minority groups had fought against separate racial classification on the census.) Despite these complaints, the categories have changed very little in 35 years. The only major adjustment came in 1997, when OMB permitted respondents to choose more than one race, changed “Black” to “Black or African American,” and moved Pacific Islanders from the Asian category to a new one that also included native Hawaiians.” http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/05/white_american_babies_are_now_in_the_minority_why_does_the_census_divide_people_by_race_anyway_.html

• skin color
• hair texture
• jaw size
• facial angle
• cranial capacity
• frontal lobe mass
• brain mass
• brain surface fissures
• body lice

These physical attributes do not necessarily have a strong correlation with genetic variations. As a result, the United Nations has opted to drop the term “race” and replace it with “ethnic groups” instead. According to a 1998 study published in the Scientific American, there are more than 5,000 ethnic groups in the world.” https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-races-world-bb7c1ea95ddd1c57

“Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created, often by socially dominant groups, to establish meaning in a social context. Different cultures define different racial groups, often focused on the largest groups of social relevance, and these definitions can change over time.” ref

• “In South Africa, the Population Registration Act, 1950 recognized only White, Black, and Coloured, with Indians added later.
• The government of Myanmar recognizes eight “major national ethnic races“.
• The Brazilian census classifies people into brancos (Whites), pardos (multiracial), pretos (Blacks), amarelos (Asians), and indigenous (see Race and ethnicity in Brazil), though many people use different terms to identify themselves.
• The United States Census Bureau proposed but then withdrew plans to add a new category to classify Middle Eastern and North African peoples in the U.S. Census 2020, over a dispute over whether this classification should be considered a white ethnicity or a separate race.
• Legal definitions of whiteness in the United States used before the civil rights movement were often challenged for specific groups.
• Historical race concepts have included a wide variety of schemes to divide local or worldwide populations into races and sub-races.” ref

“The establishment of racial boundaries often involves the subjugation of groups defined as racially inferior, as in the one-drop rule used in the 19th-century United States to exclude those with any amount of African ancestry from the dominant racial grouping, defined as “white“. Such racial identities reflect the cultural attitudes of imperial powers dominant during the age of European colonial expansion. This view rejects the notion that race is biologically defined. According to geneticist David Reich, “while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.” In response to Reich, a group of 67 scientists from a broad range of disciplines wrote that his concept of race was “flawed” as “the meaning and significance of the groups is produced through social interventions.” ref

“Although commonalities in physical traits such as facial features, skin color, and hair texture comprise part of the race concept, this linkage is a social distinction rather than an inherently biological one. Other dimensions of racial groupings include shared history, traditions, and language. For instance, African-American English is a language spoken by many African Americans, especially in areas of the United States where racial segregation exists. Furthermore, people often self-identify as members of a race for political reasons. When people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved. In this sense, races are said to be social constructs. These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of major social situations. While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination.” ref

“Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior. As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes. Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including slavery and genocide. In some countries, law enforcement uses race to profile suspects. This use of racial categories is frequently criticized for perpetuating an outmoded understanding of human biological variation, and promoting stereotypes. Because in some societies racial groupings correspond closely with patterns of social stratification, for social scientists studying social inequality, race can be a significant variable. As sociological factors, racial categories may in part reflect subjective attributions, self-identities, and social institutions.” ref

“Scholars continue to debate the degrees to which racial categories are biologically warranted and socially constructed. For example, in 2008, John Hartigan, Jr. argued for a view of race that focused primarily on culture, but which does not ignore the potential relevance of biology or genetics. Accordingly, the racial paradigms employed in different disciplines vary in their emphasis on biological reduction as contrasted with societal construction. In the social sciences, theoretical frameworks such as racial formation theory and critical race theory investigate implications of race as social construction by exploring how the images, ideas, and assumptions of race are expressed in everyday life. A large body of scholarship has traced the relationships between the historical, social production of race in legal and criminal language, and their effects on the policing and disproportionate incarceration of certain groups.” ref

The unwelcome revival of ‘race science’

by Gavin Evans

Historical Origins of Racial Classification

“Groups of humans have always identified themselves as distinct from neighboring groups, but such differences have not always been understood to be natural, immutable, and global. These features are the distinguishing features of how the concept of race is used today. In this way, the idea of race as we understand it today came about during the historical process of exploration and conquest which brought Europeans into contact with groups from different continents, and of the ideology of classification and typology found in the natural sciences. The term race was often used in a general biological taxonomic sense, starting from the 19th century, to denote genetically differentiated human populations defined by phenotype.” ref

“The modern concept of race emerged as a product of the colonial enterprises of European powers from the 16th to 18th centuries which identified race in terms of skin color and physical differences. This way of classification would have been confusing for people in the ancient world since they did not categorize each other in such a fashion. In particular, the epistemological moment where the modern concept of race was invented and rationalized lies somewhere between 1730 and 1790.” ref

“According to Smedley and Marks the European concept of “race”, along with many of the ideas now associated with the term, arose at the time of the scientific revolution, which introduced and privileged the study of natural kinds, and the age of European imperialism and colonization which established political relations between Europeans and peoples with distinct cultural and political traditions. As Europeans encountered people from different parts of the world, they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups. The rise of the Atlantic slave trade, which gradually displaced an earlier trade in slaves from throughout the world, created a further incentive to categorize human groups in order to justify the subordination of African slaves.” ref

“Drawing on sources from classical antiquity and upon their own internal interactions – for example, the hostility between the English and Irish powerfully influenced early European thinking about the differences between people – Europeans began to sort themselves and others into groups based on physical appearance, and to attribute to individuals belonging to these groups behaviors and capacities which were claimed to be deeply ingrained. A set of folk beliefs took hold that linked inherited physical differences between groups to inherited intellectual, behavioral, and moral qualities. Similar ideas can be found in other cultures, for example in China, where a concept often translated as “race” was associated with supposed common descent from the Yellow Emperor, and used to stress the unity of ethnic groups in China. Brutal conflicts between ethnic groups have existed throughout history and across the world.” ref

“The first post-Graeco-Roman published classification of humans into distinct races seems to be François Bernier‘s Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui l’habitent (“New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it”), published in 1684. In the 18th century the differences among human groups became a focus of scientific investigation. But the scientific classification of phenotypic variation was frequently coupled with racist ideas about innate predispositions of different groups, always attributing the most desirable features to the White, European race and arranging the other races along a continuum of progressively undesirable attributes. The 1735 classification of Carl Linnaeus, inventor of zoological taxonomy, divided the human species Homo sapiens into continental varieties of europaeus, asiaticus, americanus, and afer, each associated with a different humour: sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic, respectively. Homo sapiens europaeus was described as active, acute, and adventurous, whereas Homo sapiens afer was said to be crafty, lazy, and careless.” ref

“The 1775 treatise “The Natural Varieties of Mankind”, by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach proposed five major divisions: the Caucasoid race, the Mongoloid race, the Ethiopian race (later termed Negroid), the American Indian race, and the Malayan race, but he did not propose any hierarchy among the races. Blumenbach also noted the graded transition in appearances from one group to adjacent groups and suggested that “one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them.” ref

“From the 17th through 19th centuries, the merging of folk beliefs about group differences with scientific explanations of those differences produced what Smedley has called an “ideology of race”. According to this ideology, races are primordial, natural, enduring, and distinct. It was further argued that some groups may be the result of mixture between formerly distinct populations, but that careful study could distinguish the ancestral races that had combined to produce admixed groups. Subsequent influential classifications by Georges Buffon, Petrus Camper, and Christoph Meiners all classified “Negros” as inferior to Europeans. In the United States the racial theories of Thomas Jefferson were influential. He saw Africans as inferior to Whites especially in regards to their intellect, and imbued with unnatural sexual appetites, but described Native Americans as equals to whites.” ref

“In the last two decades of the 18th century, the theory of polygenism, the belief that different races had evolved separately in each continent and shared no common ancestor, was advocated in England by historian Edward Long and anatomist Charles White, in Germany by ethnographers Christoph Meiners and Georg Forster, and in France by Julien-Joseph Virey. In the US, Samuel George Morton, Josiah Nott, and Louis Agassiz promoted this theory in the mid-19th century. Polygenism was popular and most widespread in the 19th century, culminating in the founding of the Anthropological Society of London (1863), which, during the period of the American Civil War, broke away from the Ethnological Society of London and its monogenic stance, their underlined difference lying, relevantly, in the so-called “Negro question”: a substantial racist view by the former, and a more liberal view on race by the latter.” ref

^{“Today, all humans are classified as belonging to the species Homo sapiens. However, this is not the first species of homininae: the first}

^{species of genus Homo, Homo habilis, evolved in East Africa at least 2 million years ago, and members of this species populated different}

^{parts of Africa in a relatively short time. Homo erectus evolved more than 1.8 million years ago, and by 1.5 million years ago had spread}

^{throughout Europe and Asia. Virtually all physical anthropologists agree that Archaic Homo sapiens (A group including the possible species H.}

^{heidelbergensis, H. rhodesiensis and H. neanderthalensis) evolved out of African Homo erectus (sensu lato) or Homo ergaster. Anthropologists}

^{support the idea that anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved in North or East Africa from an archaic human species such as H.}

^{heidelbergensis and then migrated out of Africa, mixing with and replacing H. heidelbergensis and H. neanderthalensis populations}

^{throughout Europe and Asia, and H. rhodesiensis populations in Sub-Saharan Africa (a combination of the Out of}

^{Africa and Multiregional models).” ref}

“In the early 20th century, many anthropologists taught that race was an entirely biological phenomenon and that this was core to a person’s behavior and identity, a position commonly called racial essentialism. This, coupled with a belief that linguistic, cultural, and social groups fundamentally existed along racial lines, formed the basis of what is now called scientific racism. After the Nazi eugenics program, along with the rise of anti-colonial movements, racial essentialism lost widespread popularity. New studies of culture and the fledgling field of population genetics undermined the scientific standing of racial essentialism, leading race anthropologists to revise their conclusions about the sources of phenotypic variation. A significant number of modern anthropologists and biologists in the West came to view race as an invalid genetic or biological designation.” ref

“The first to challenge the concept of race on empirical grounds were the anthropologists Franz Boas, who provided evidence of phenotypic plasticity due to environmental factors, and Ashley Montagu, who relied on evidence from genetics. E. O. Wilson then challenged the concept from the perspective of general animal systematics, and further rejected the claim that “races” were equivalent to “subspecies”. Human genetic variation is predominantly within races, continuous, and complex in structure, which is inconsistent with the concept of genetic human races.” ref 

“According to the biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks, By the 1970s, it had become clear that (1) most human differences were cultural; (2) what was not cultural was principally polymorphic – that is to say, found in diverse groups of people at different frequencies; (3) what was not cultural or polymorphic was principally clinal – that is to say, gradually variable over geography; and (4) what was left – the component of human diversity that was not cultural, polymorphic, or clinal – was very small. A consensus consequently developed among anthropologists and geneticists that race as the previous generation had known it – as largely discrete, geographically distinct, gene pools – did not exist.” ref

“The term race in biology is used with caution because it can be ambiguous. Generally, when it is used it is effectively a synonym of subspecies. (For animals, the only taxonomic unit below the species level is usually the subspecies; there are narrower infraspecific ranks in botany, and race does not correspond directly with any of them.) Traditionally, subspecies are seen as geographically isolated and genetically differentiated populations. Studies of human genetic variation show that human populations are not geographically isolated, and their genetic differences are far smaller than those among comparable subspecies.” ref

“In 1978, Sewall Wright suggested that human populations that have long inhabited separated parts of the world should, in general, be considered different subspecies by the criterion that most individuals of such populations can be allocated correctly by inspection. Wright argued that, “It does not require a trained anthropologist to classify an array of Englishmen, West Africans, and Chinese with 100% accuracy by features, skin color, and type of hair despite so much variability within each of these groups that every individual can easily be distinguished from every other.” While in practice subspecies are often defined by easily observable physical appearance, there is not necessarily any evolutionary significance to these observed differences, so this form of classification has become less acceptable to evolutionary biologists. Likewise, this typological approach to race is generally regarded as discredited by biologists and anthropologists.” ref

“In 2000, philosopher Robin Andreasen proposed that cladistics might be used to categorize human races biologically, and that races can be both biologically real and socially constructed. Andreasen cited tree diagrams of relative genetic distances among populations published by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza as the basis for a phylogenetic tree of human races (p. 661). Biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks (2008) responded by arguing that Andreasen had misinterpreted the genetic literature: “These trees are phenetic (based on similarity), rather than cladistic (based on monophyletic descent, that is from a series of unique ancestors).” Evolutionary biologist Alan Templeton (2013) argued that multiple lines of evidence falsify the idea of a phylogenetic tree structure to human genetic diversity, and confirm the presence of gene flow among populations. Marks, Templeton, and Cavalli-Sforza all conclude that genetics does not provide evidence of human races.” ref

“Previously, anthropologists Lieberman and Jackson (1995) had also critiqued the use of cladistics to support concepts of race. They argued that “the molecular and biochemical proponents of this model explicitly use racial categories in their initial grouping of samples“. For example, the large and highly diverse macroethnic groups of East Indians, North Africans, and Europeans are presumptively grouped as Caucasians prior to the analysis of their DNA variation. They argued that this a priori grouping limits and skews interpretations, obscures other lineage relationships, deemphasizes the impact of more immediate clinal environmental factors on genomic diversity, and can cloud our understanding of the true patterns of affinity.” ref

“In 2015, Keith Hunley, Graciela Cabana, and Jeffrey Long analyzed the Human Genome Diversity Project sample of 1,037 individuals in 52 populations, finding that non-African populations are a taxonomic subgroup of African populations, that “some African populations are equally related to other African populations and to non-African populations,” and that “outside of Africa, regional groupings of populations are nested inside one another, and many of them are not monophyletic.” Earlier research had also suggested that there has always been considerable gene flow between human populations, meaning that human population groups are not monophyletic. Rachel Caspari has argued that, since no groups currently regarded as races are monophyletic, by definition none of these groups can be clades.” ref

“One crucial innovation in reconceptualizing genotypic and phenotypic variation was the anthropologist C. Loring Brace‘s observation that such variations, insofar as it is affected by natural selection, slow migration, or genetic drift, are distributed along geographic gradations or clines. For example, with respect to skin color in Europe and Africa, Brace writes: To this day, skin color grades by imperceptible means from Europe southward around the eastern end of the Mediterranean and up the Nile into Africa. From one end of this range to the other, there is no hint of a skin color boundary, and yet the spectrum runs from the lightest in the world at the northern edge to as dark as it is possible for humans to be at the equator.” ref

“In part, this is due to isolation by distance. This point called attention to a problem common to phenotype-based descriptions of races (for example, those based on hair texture and skin color): they ignore a host of other similarities and differences (for example, blood type) that do not correlate highly with the markers for race. Thus, anthropologist Frank Livingstone’s conclusion, that since clines cross racial boundaries, “there are no races, only clines.” ref

“In a response to Livingstone, Theodore Dobzhansky argued that when talking about race one must be attentive to how the term is being used: “I agree with Dr. Livingstone that if races have to be ‘discrete units’, then there are no races, and if ‘race’ is used as an ‘explanation’ of the human variability, rather than vice versa, then the explanation is invalid.” He further argued that one could use the term race if one distinguished between “race differences” and “the race concept”. The former refers to any distinction in gene frequencies between populations; the latter is “a matter of judgment”. He further observed that even when there is clinal variation, “Race differences are objectively ascertainable biological phenomena … but it does not follow that racially distinct populations must be given racial (or subspecific) labels.” In short, Livingstone and Dobzhansky agree that there are genetic differences among human beings; they also agree that the use of the race concept to classify people, and how the race concept is used, is a matter of social convention. They differ on whether the race concept remains a meaningful and useful social convention.” ref

“In 1964, the biologists Paul Ehrlich and Holm pointed out cases where two or more clines are distributed discordantly – for example, melanin is distributed in a decreasing pattern from the equator north and south; frequencies for the haplotype for beta-S hemoglobin, on the other hand, radiate out of specific geographical points in Africa. As the anthropologists Leonard Lieberman and Fatimah Linda Jackson observed, “Discordant patterns of heterogeneity falsify any description of a population as if it were genotypically or even phenotypically homogeneous”.” ref

“Patterns such as those seen in human physical and genetic variation as described above, have led to the consequence that the number and geographic location of any described races is highly dependent on the importance attributed to, and quantity of, the traits considered. Scientists discovered a skin-lighting mutation that partially accounts for the appearance of Light skin in humans (people who migrated out of Africa northward into what is now Europe) which they estimate occurred 20,000 to 50,000 years ago. The East Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations. On the other hand, the greater the number of traits (or alleles) considered, the more subdivisions of humanity are detected, since traits and gene frequencies do not always correspond to the same geographical location.” ref

“Or as Ossorio & Duster (2005) put it: Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans’ physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 1930s and 1950s, and eventually, anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races. Twentieth and 21st-century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people.” ref

“Another way to look at differences between populations is to measure genetic differences rather than physical differences between groups. The mid-20th-century anthropologist William C. Boyd defined race as: “A population which differs significantly from other populations in regard to the frequency of one or more of the genes it possesses. It is an arbitrary matter which, and how many, gene loci we choose to consider as a significant ‘constellation'”. Leonard Lieberman and Rodney Kirk have pointed out that “the paramount weakness of this statement is that if one gene can distinguish races then the number of races is as numerous as the number of human couples reproducing.” ref

‘Moreover, the anthropologist Stephen Molnar has suggested that the discordance of clines inevitably results in a multiplication of races that renders the concept itself useless. The Human Genome Project states “People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.” Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan argue that human races do exist, and that they correspond to the genetic classification of ecotypes, but that real human races do not correspond very much, if at all, to folk racial categories. In contrast, Walsh & Yun reviewed the literature in 2011 and reported that “Genetic studies using very few chromosomal loci find that genetic polymorphisms divide human populations into clusters with almost 100 percent accuracy and that they correspond to the traditional anthropological categories.” ref

“Some biologists argue that racial categories correlate with biological traits (e.g. phenotype), and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. The distribution of genetic variants within and among human populations are impossible to describe succinctly because of the difficulty of defining a population, the clinal nature of variation, and heterogeneity across the genome (Long and Kittles 2003). In general, however, an average of 85% of statistical genetic variation exists within local populations, ~7% is between local populations within the same continent, and ~8% of variation occurs between large groups living on different continents.” ref 

“The recent African origin theory for humans would predict that in Africa there exists a great deal more diversity than elsewhere and that diversity should decrease the further from Africa a population is sampled. Hence, the 85% average figure is misleading: Long and Kittles find that rather than 85% of human genetic diversity existing in all human populations, about 100% of human diversity exists in a single African population, whereas only about 60% of human genetic diversity exists in the least diverse population they analyzed (the Surui, a population derived from New Guinea). Statistical analysis that takes this difference into account confirms previous findings that, “Western-based racial classifications have no taxonomic significance.” ref

“A 2002 study of random biallelic genetic loci found little to no evidence that humans were divided into distinct biological groups. In his 2003 paper, “Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin’s Fallacy“, A. W. F. Edwards argued that rather than using a locus-by-locus analysis of variation to derive taxonomy, it is possible to construct a human classification system based on characteristic genetic patterns, or clusters inferred from multilocus genetic data. Geographically based human studies since have shown that such genetic clusters can be derived from analyzing of a large number of loci which can assort individuals sampled into groups analogous to traditional continental racial groups.” ref 

“Joanna Mountain and Neil Risch cautioned that while genetic clusters may one day be shown to correspond to phenotypic variations between groups, such assumptions were premature as the relationship between genes and complex traits remains poorly understood. However, Risch denied such limitations render the analysis useless: “Perhaps just using someone’s actual birth year is not a very good way of measuring age. Does that mean we should throw it out? … Any category you come up with is going to be imperfect, but that doesn’t preclude you from using it or the fact that it has utility.” ref

“Early human genetic cluster analysis studies were conducted with samples taken from ancestral population groups living at extreme geographic distances from each other. It was thought that such large geographic distances would maximize the genetic variation between the groups sampled in the analysis, and thus maximize the probability of finding cluster patterns unique to each group. In light of the historically recent acceleration of human migration (and correspondingly, human gene flow) on a global scale, further studies were conducted to judge the degree to which genetic cluster analysis can pattern ancestrally identified groups as well as geographically separated groups. One such study looked at a large multiethnic population in the United States, and “detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity – as opposed to current residence – is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.” (Tang et al. (2005))” ref

“Witherspoon et al. (2007) have argued that even when individuals can be reliably assigned to specific population groups, it may still be possible for two randomly chosen individuals from different populations/clusters to be more similar to each other than to a randomly chosen member of their own cluster. They found that many thousands of genetic markers had to be used in order for the answer to the question “How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?” to be “never”. This assumed three population groups separated by large geographic ranges (European, African, and East Asian). The entire world population is much more complex and studying an increasing number of groups would require an increasing number of markers for the same answer. The authors conclude that “caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes.” Witherspoon, et al. concluded that, “The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population.” ref

“Anthropologists such as C. Loring Brace, the philosophers Jonathan Kaplan and Rasmus Winther, and the geneticist Joseph Graves, have argued that while there it is certainly possible to find biological and genetic variation that corresponds roughly to the groupings normally defined as “continental races”, this is true for almost all geographically distinct populations. The cluster structure of the genetic data is therefore dependent on the initial hypotheses of the researcher and the populations sampled. When one samples continental groups, the clusters become continental; if one had chosen other sampling patterns, the clustering would be different. Weiss and Fullerton have noted that if one sampled only Icelanders, Mayans, and Maoris, three distinct clusters would form and all other populations could be described as being clinally composed of admixtures of Maori, Icelandic, and Mayan genetic materials. Kaplan and Winther, therefore, argue that, seen in this way, both Lewontin and Edwards are right in their arguments.” ref

“They conclude that while racial groups are characterized by different allele frequencies, this does not mean that racial classification is a natural taxonomy of the human species, because multiple other genetic patterns can be found in human populations that crosscut racial distinctions. Moreover, the genomic data underdetermines whether one wishes to see subdivisions (i.e., splitters) or a continuum (i.e., lumpers). Under Kaplan and Winther’s view, racial groupings are objective social constructions (see Mills 1998) that have conventional biological reality only insofar as the categories are chosen and constructed for pragmatic scientific reasons.” ref

“In earlier work, Winther had identified “diversity partitioning” and “clustering analysis” as two separate methodologies, with distinct questions, assumptions, and protocols. Each is also associated with opposing ontological| consequences vis-a-vis the metaphysics of race. Philosopher Lisa Gannett has argued that biogeographical ancestry, a concept devised by Mark Shriver and Tony Frudakis, is not an objective measure of the biological aspects of race as Shriver and Frudakis claim it is. She argues that it is actually just a “local category shaped by the U.S. context of its production, especially the forensic aim of being able to predict the race or ethnicity of an unknown suspect based on DNA found at the crime scene.” ref

“Recent studies of human genetic clustering have included a debate over how genetic variation is organized, with clusters and clines as the main possible orderings. Serre & Pääbo (2004) argued for smooth, clinal genetic variation in ancestral populations even in regions previously considered racially homogeneous, with the apparent gaps turning out to be artifacts of sampling techniques. Rosenberg et al. (2005) disputed this and offered an analysis of the Human Genetic Diversity Panel showing that there were small discontinuities in the smooth genetic variation for ancestral populations at the location of geographic barriers such as the Sahara, the Oceans, and the Himalayas. Nonetheless, Rosenberg et al. (2005) stated that their findings “should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of biological race… Genetic differences among human populations derive mainly from gradations in allele frequencies rather than from distinctive ‘diagnostic’ genotypes.” Using a sample of 40 populations distributed roughly evenly across the Earth’s land surface, Xing & et. al. (2010, p. 208) found that “genetic diversity is distributed in a more clinal pattern when more geographically intermediate populations are sampled.” ref

“Guido Barbujani has written that human genetic variation is generally distributed continuously in gradients across much of Earth, and that there is no evidence that genetic boundaries between human populations exist as would be necessary for human races to exist. Over time, human genetic variation has formed a nested structure that is inconsistent with the concept of races that have evolved independently of one another. As anthropologists and other evolutionary scientists have shifted away from the language of race to the term population to talk about genetic differences, historians, cultural anthropologists, and other social scientists re-conceptualized the term “race” as a cultural category or social construct, i.e., a way among many possible ways in which a society chooses to divide its members into categories.” ref

“Many social scientists have replaced the word race with the word “ethnicity” to refer to self-identifying groups based on beliefs concerning shared culture, ancestry, and history. Alongside empirical and conceptual problems with “race”, following the Second World War, evolutionary and social scientists were acutely aware of how beliefs about race had been used to justify discrimination, apartheid, slavery, and genocide. This questioning gained momentum in the 1960s during the civil rights movement in the United States and the emergence of numerous anti-colonial movements worldwide. They thus came to believe that race itself is a social construct, a concept that was believed to correspond to an objective reality but which was believed in because of its social functions.” ref

“Craig Venter and Francis Collins of the National Institute of Health jointly made the announcement of the mapping of the human genome in 2000. Upon examining the data from the genome mapping, Venter realized that although the genetic variation within the human species is on the order of 1–3% (instead of the previously assumed 1%), the types of variations do not support notion of genetically defined races. Venter said, “Race is a social concept. It’s not a scientific one. There are no bright lines (that would stand out), if we could compare all the sequenced genomes of everyone on the planet.” “When we try to apply science to try to sort out these social differences, it all falls apart.” ref

“Anthropologist Stephan Palmié has argued that race “is not a thing but a social relation”; or, in the words of Katya Gibel Mevorach, “a metonym”, “a human invention whose criteria for differentiation are neither universal nor fixed but have always been used to manage difference.” As such, the use of the term “race” itself must be analyzed. Moreover, they argue that biology will not explain why or how people use the idea of race; only history and social relationships will.” ref

“Imani Perry has argued that race “is produced by social arrangements and political decision making”, and that “race is something that happens, rather than something that is. It is dynamic, but it holds no objective truth.” Similarly, Racial Culture: A Critique (2005), Richard T. Ford argued that while “there is no necessary correspondence between the ascribed identity of race and one’s culture or personal sense of self” and “group difference is not intrinsic to members of social groups but rather contingent o[n] the social practices of group identification”, the social practices of identity politics may coerce individuals into the “compulsory” enactment of “prewritten racial scripts.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

• Between 7,000-5,000 Years ago, rise of unequal hierarchy elite, leading to a “birth of the State” or worship of power, strong new sexism, oppression of non-elites, and the fall of Women’s equal status
• Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State)
• Around 5,000 years ago: “Birth of the State” where Religion gets Military Power and Influence
• The Rise of Inequality: patriarchy and state hierarchy inequality
• Where to Report a State/Church Violation (violating the separation of religion and government)
• State Capitalism: economies of the Soviet Union/Eastern Bloc, Maoist China/current China relate to state capitalism

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):

Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism

My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com