Your feelings on Race

[The Grey Wolf]

Good sir, a look on this observation from 19th century's finest scientific minds will quickly convince you:

Mr. Anglo-Teutonic has quite the forehead.

Along with a nose and chin.

[The Grey Wolf]

Good sir, a look on this observation from 19th century's finest scientific minds will quickly convince you:

Since I am from the 19th century, I just want to clarify, I had nothing to do with that publication.

Sure you didn't, Monitor. I'm sure you have plenty of Irish crew members.

[Jochistan]

Frankly, I've never understood why Latinos/Hispanics have been considered a distinct race when they can be classified as white, black, Amerindian, or a mixture thereof. It is, in my opinion, arbitrary to regard a pale, blond Mexican as "Latino" while simultaneously viewing an olive-skinned Italian as "white."

Ikr?
It's sort of a mix depending where the Hispanic culture in question is. Sort of varies depending on the region.

[Zoice]

I recognize two races. American and Arab.

[USS Monitor]

Since I am from the 19th century, I just want to clarify, I had nothing to do with that publication.

Sure you didn't, Monitor. I'm sure you have plenty of Irish crew members.

A couple of black ones too.

[Genivaria]

Sure you didn't, Monitor. I'm sure you have plenty of Irish crew members.

A couple of black ones too.

How very progressive of you.

[Wallenburg]

I recognize two races. American and Arab.

[Southern Knight]

I believe race is a real thing, but there is no superior race and all races were created equal.

[USS Monitor]

I believe race is a real thing, but there is no superior race and all races were created equal.

You, sir, are a traitor to the Confederate cause.

[Southern Knight]

I believe race is a real thing, but there is no superior race and all races were created equal.

You, sir, are a traitor to the Confederate cause.

Slavery was a tragic mistake.

[USS Monitor]

You, sir, are a traitor to the Confederate cause.

Slavery was a tragic mistake.

So many un-Confederate ideas coming out of your keyboard... If I didn't know better I might think you were one o' them damn Yankees.

[Jochistan]

Slavery was a tragic mistake.

So many un-Confederate ideas coming out of your keyboard... If I didn't know better I might think you were one o' them damn Yankees.

Actually, Robert E Lee had similar views himself.

[Digital Planets]

Well, there's black people and then there's white people.

And then there's the fucking Belgians, who make really good booze and gummy bears.

[USS Monitor]

So many un-Confederate ideas coming out of your keyboard... If I didn't know better I might think you were one o' them damn Yankees.

Actually, Robert E Lee had similar views himself.

Only after we knocked some sense into him. Before the war, he was spewing crap about how slavery was necessary for the negroes' "instruction as a race."

[The Archregimancy]

"There are two kinds of people; Caucasians & Trash."

*** Warned for trolling ***

[The Silver Sentinel]

I recognize two races. American and Arab.

American is a race now? And here I thought it was a nationality. I myself am Canadian. Does that mean I don't actually exist?

[Cetacea]

I'm white. I'm also a Libra, and I have blood type AB negative, and a middle child. I'm not sure which one says the least about me.

ah you're the middle child - that explains everything

[Baltenstein]

I recognize two races. American and Arab.

American is a race now? And here I thought it was a nationality. I myself am Canadian. Does that mean I don't actually exist?

I think it's from that Sasha Baron Cohen movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dILmZn0I4Pw

[Prussia-Steinbach]

I know race is biologically nonexistent, and feel as if it's been an idiotically-major source of strife throughout history, based entirely on minor superficial differences and the ignorant bigotry firmly intertwined within many societies.

I feel americans of African descent, some of them atleast in my anecdotal experience, have somewhat of an inferiority complex and are particularly sensitive to perceived racial issues.

This sounds like a pretty fucking racist feeling.

If you were attacked by dogs almost every day of your life, severely lowering the quality of your existence, you'd be particularly fucking sensitive to perceived canine threats.

[Neues Nationalsozialistiches Reich]

I know race is biologically nonexistent, and feel as if it's been an idiotically-major source of strife throughout history, based entirely on minor superficial differences and the ignorant bigotry firmly intertwined within many societies.

I feel americans of African descent, some of them atleast in my anecdotal experience, have somewhat of an inferiority complex and are particularly sensitive to perceived racial issues.

This sounds like a pretty fucking racist feeling.

If you were attacked by dogs almost every day of your life, severely lowering the quality of your existence, you'd be particularly fucking sensitive to perceived canine threats.

Race biologically exists, it just determines how you look and what kind of diseases you'll get. Perhaps early humans were of one race, but since they all had to adapt to their conditions, they developed genes that gave them slightly different characteristics from each other, and that's how race was born.

However, genes that determine capabilities (strength, intelligence) haven't been pinpointed to races or ethnic groups, and character is determined by lots of psychological factors.

[Hantao]

Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid are morphological groupings and have to do with body traits not genetic history. Race isn't a valid biological taxon.

What Race are you and how do you feel about it?
I identify as an Asian, and I'm proud of my Asian heritage.

How do you identify yourself racially/ethnically?
I identify myself as of mixed Chinese, Spanish and Filipino ancestry, but I follow some Confucian ideals alongside Western ideals of tolerance, equality and liberalism.

What issues do you perceive affecting your race?
I think Asians are suffering from severe disunity and vast differences in wealth and power.

How do you feel about your race relative to other races?
I think all races are equal, but many Europeans do not achnoledge Asian dominance and technological achievements prior to the Industrial Revolution and do not take Asian reemergence seriously.

Is ethnicity more important than your race?
Yes.

[Saranesh]

I believe in race, but purely as a cultural thing. No race is superior to another.

[Digital Planets]

I believe in race, but purely as a cultural thing. No race is superior to another.

Except the Armenians, right?

[Conscentia]

I know race is biologically nonexistent, and feel as if it's been an idiotically-major source of strife throughout history, based entirely on minor superficial differences and the ignorant bigotry firmly intertwined within many societies.

This sounds like a pretty fucking racist feeling.

If you were attacked by dogs almost every day of your life, severely lowering the quality of your existence, you'd be particularly fucking sensitive to perceived canine threats.

Race biologically exists, it just determines how you look and what kind of diseases you'll get. Perhaps early humans were of one race, but since they all had to adapt to their conditions, they developed genes that gave them slightly different characteristics from each other, and that's how race was born.
However, genes that determine capabilities (strength, intelligence) haven't been pinpointed to races or ethnic groups, and character is determined by lots of psychological factors.

That is an inaccurate and highly oversimplified view of human history and the distribution of traits across human populations. Humans populations have not been isolated from each other in such a way as to result in delineation into subspecies (races). Human variation is distributed across clines, which does not allow for the delineation of human populations into subspecies.

In 1942, Ashley Montagu, a student of Franz Boas, claimed that “there are no races, there are only clines.” Traits considered to be “racial” are actually distributed independently and depend upon many environmental and behavioral factors. For the most part, each trait has a distinct distribution from other traits, and these traits are rarely determined by a single genetic factor.

This type of distribution of a biological trait is referred to as a cline. For example, skin color is related to the amount of solar radiation, and dark skin is found in Africa, India, and Australia. However, many other genetic traits in peoples of these areas are not similar. Furthermore, similar traits such as skin color are convergent; different genes can cause similar morphological and behavioral characteristics.

For example, genetic pathways to dark skin are different in Tamil Nadu and in Nigeria. Genetic traits usually do not correlate with one another and are not distributed in the same place or in the same way over time.

Race is supposed to tell us something about our genetic history. Who is related to whom? How did populations evolve over time and how isolated were they in the past?

Recent studies have shown us that humans have been migrating since Homo sapiens evolved some 200,000 years ago. This migration has not been in one direction but had happened back and forth. Our genes have been mixing since we evolved, and our genetic structure looks more like a complex, intermixed trellis than a simple candelabra.

It is very difficult to tell what our particular genetic background is over human historic time. We humans are more similar to each other as a group than we are to one another within any particular racial or genetic category. Many anthropological books have been written to explain this phenomenon.

Our view of genetics has also changed in recent times. Although many people still believe that genes, or a series of genes, directly determine some of our most complex behavioral or cognitive characteristics, the reality is more complicated.

Studies now show that each gene is only a single player in a wondrous, intricate drama involving non-additive interactions of genes, proteins, hormones, food, and life experiences and learning that interact to affect us on different levels of cognitive and behavioral functions. Each gene has an effect on multiple types of behaviors, and many behaviors are affected by many genes as well as other factors. The assumption that a single gene is causative can lead to unwarranted conclusions and an over- interpretation of any genuine genetic linkage.

Before beginning this story, however, it is important to understand how scientists define the concept of race. How is race defined in biological terms? What do we mean by the term race when describing population variation in large mammals such as humans? Do the criteria used in describing these variations hold when we examine human population variation?

In biological terms, the concept of race is integrally bound to the process of evolution and the origin of species. It is part of the process of the formation of new species and is related to subspecific differentiation. However, because conditions can change and subspecies can and do merge, this process does not necessarily lead to the development of new species.

In biology, a species is defined as a population of individuals who are able to mate and have viable offspring; that is, offspring who are also successful in reproducing. The formation of new species usually occurs slowly over a long period of time.

For example, many species have a widespread geographic distribution with ranges that include ecologically diverse regions. If these regions are large in relationship to the average distance of migration of individuals within the species, there will be more mating, and thus more exchange of genes, within than between regions.

Over very long periods of time (tens of thousands of years), differences would be expected to evolve between distant populations of the same species. Some of these variations would be related to adaptations to ecological differences within the geographic range of the populations, while others might be purely random.

Over time, if little or no mating (or genetic exchange) occurs between these distant populations, genetic (and related morphological) differences will increase. Ultimately, over tens of thousands of years of separation, if little or no mating takes place between separate populations, genetic distinctions can become so great that individuals of the different populations could no longer mate and produce viable offspring.

The two populations would now be considered two separate species. This is the process of speciation. However, again, none of these criteria require that speciation will ultimately occur.

Since speciation develops very slowly, it is useful to recognize intermediate stages in this process. Populations of a species undergoing differentiation would show genetic and morphological variation due to a buildup of genetic differences but would still be able to breed and have offspring that could successfully reproduce.

They would be in various stages of the process of speciation but not yet different species. In biological terminology, it is these populations that are considered “races” or “subspecies”. Basically, subspecies within a species are geographically, morphologically, and genetically distinct populations but still maintain the possibility of successful interbreeding.

Thus, using this biological definition of race, we assume that races or subspecies are populations of a species that have genetic and morphological differences due to barriers to mating. Furthermore, little or no mating (or genetic exchange) between them has persisted for extremely long periods of time, thus giving the individuals within the population a common and separate evolutionary history.

Given advances in molecular genetics, we now have the ability to examine populations of species and subspecies and reconstruct their evolutionary histories in an objective and explicit fashion. In this way, we can determine the validity of the traditional definition of human races “by examining the patterns and amount of genetic diversity found within and among human populations” and by comparing this diversity with other large-bodied mammals that have wide geographic distributions.

In other words, we can determine how much populations of a species differ from one another and how these divergences came about.

A commonly used method to quantify the amount of within -- to among -- group genetic diversity is through examining molecular data, using statistics measuring genetic differences within and between populations of a species. Using this method, biologists have set a minimal threshold for the amount of genetic differentiation that is required to recognize subspecies.

Compared to other large mammals with wide geographic distributions, human populations do not reach this threshold. In fact, even though humans have the widest distribution, the measure of human genetic diversity (based on sixteen populations from Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Australia-Pacific region) falls well below the threshold used to recognize races for other species and is among the lowest value known for large mammalian species. This is true even if we compare humans to chimpanzees.

Using a number of molecular markers has shown that the degree of isolation among human populations that would have been necessary for the formation of biological subspecies or races never occurred during the 200,000 years of modern human evolution.

Combined genetic data reveal that from around one million years ago to the last tens of thousands of years, human evolution has been dominated by two evolutionary forces: (1) constant population movement and range expansion; and (2) restrictions on mating between individuals only because of distance.

Thus, there is no evidence of fixed, long-term geographic isolation between populations. Other than some rare, temporary isolation events, such as the isolation of the aborigines of Australia, for example, the major human populations have been interconnected by mating opportunities (and thus genetic mixture) during the last 200,000 years (as long as modern humans, Homo sapiens, have been around). As summarized by A.R. Templeton, who is among the world’s most recognized and respected geneticists:

Because of the extensive evidence for genetic interchange through population movements and recurrent gene flow going back at least hundreds of thousands of years ago, there is only one evolutionary lineage of humanity and there are no subspecies or races. . . . Human evolution and population structure has been and is characterized by many locally differentiated populations coexisting at any given time, but with sufficient contact to make all of humanity a single lineage sharing a common, long-term evolutionary fate.

Thus, given current scientific data, biological races do not exist among modern humans today, and they have never existed in the past.

http://europe.newsweek.com/there-no-suc ... ace-283123

[Saranesh]

I believe in race, but purely as a cultural thing. No race is superior to another.

Except the Armenians, right?

I`m not Armenian ?