I'm 88% Eastern European by Family Tree DNA test. Terroir and all that stuff.
I think that the racial discourse is not just unfair and smelly, but also unfruitful. You ought to really look at culture. This won't help the right with the left, of course, because they hate to admit cultural differencies either.
The Inuit people, among similar cultures, are having a problem with diabetes because their bodies adapted to a hunter's diet of high protein and fat low in glucose prior to the introduction of agricultural products from colonialism. Darn, that's actually a biological difference too.
I took the comment to mean that the complaints of many racists are really often more about what they perceive as "culture" rather than actual genetics. They simply use skin color as a signal and a proxy in assignment because racism is essentially a form of mental laziness.
Individualism vs Communitarianism is a very well studied broad example (with a nice bimodal distribution) and leads to pretty strong disagreements about some fundamental values for people from different cultures.
Worldview and religious differences also lead to disagreements about fundamental values. And among other concrete examples that I personally think are important: how much respect should be given to religious/spiritual/supernatural beliefs, what rights are inalienable human rights, how people with various illnesses should be treated, how resources are distributed, what behaviour is acceptable during disagreements (on large scales and small) and what subjects/ideas/beliefs/actions are taboo seem like the big ones.
If we're going to speak meaningfully about where Europeans come from, we need to include wherever they picked up Neanderthal DNA (hint: not in Africa; no African population has it).
How to “scientifically” determine race was a huge problem for racist regimes like Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa and the Jim Crow United States. They ended up with various kludges, because there is no such thing as pure “white” blood, nor a convenient clean line between white and black or any other such socially-constructed category.
It wasn't really a problem for the Nazis though. Hannah Arendt explained how in a way defying reality is a badge of honor for members (of one of the onion layers of) totalitarian movements.
> How to “scientifically” determine race was a huge problem for racist regimes like Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa and the Jim Crow United States.
Not really; sure, having some kind of superficially objective criteria to wave was important, but having it be scientifically valid (or even particularly rigorously applied) wasn't all that important.
I was born in Alabama. Growing up, I was repeatedly told that I was 1/256 Cherokee; this was supposedly the source of my mother's high cheekbones. When I got my 23andMe results, they showed 0% Native American, and .4% African.
Well, .4% is of course just about 1/256. I believe the 23andMe result. I believe that the Cherokee thing was just a cover story concocted at some point to hide the fact that one of my family's ancestors was an African slave. And I think the outcome demonstrates that the 23andMe analysis is, in fact, pretty accurate.
So when I read that some guy came out a whopping 14% African and wants to put it down to statistical error, I just laugh.
Once you go back 4 generations or so, the chance of inheriting no genes at all from a particular ancestor becomes quite high.
The other interesting scientific result I've read is that there's more genetic variation within the traditional "races" than between them. I put "races" in quotations at this point because the whole concept is somewhat meaningless.
There are certain genes that are more common in different groups. But if I understand it correctly, you'll be able to find people from a different "race" who are more genetically similar to you than some people from your own "race".
But if the results are generally unreliable, everything is open to one's own interpretation. In the article, they quote an genealogy expert who says the science is "murky":
>J. Scott Roberts, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, who has studied consumer use of genetic tests and was not involved with the study, said the companies tend to be reliable at identifying genetic variants. Interpreting them in terms of health risk or ancestry, though, is another story. “The science is often murky in those areas and gives ambiguous information,” he said. “They try to give specific percentages from this region, or x percent disease risk, and my sense is that that is an artificially precise estimate.”
I assume you're comfortable with the idea that you're descended from a slave and thus have chosen to override prior evidence to the contrary. But if you weren't comfortable with the idea, you can say the test is flawed and have just as powerful an argument.
Unless 23andMe can show statistical rigor behind their methods, everyone is going to see what they want in the results.
Is this at all surprising? Are there any "white" Americans who don't assume they have a few percent worth of some second ethnicity in their ancestry?
We've been a multiethnic society since the first European boats landed and have redefined who counts as which race several dozen times since then. Even if there were some not insane standard for a "purebred" white person, it would be incredibly unlikely for any arbitrary bigot to happen to meet that standard.
>Are there any "white" Americans who don't assume they have a few percent worth of some second ethnicity in their ancestry?
We're talking about white nationalists, people who base their identity and self-esteem on a belief in their own racial purity. They wouldn't be seeking out these tests to validate something they already know to be untrue, or even suspect could be untrue.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 69.3 ms ] threadI think that the racial discourse is not just unfair and smelly, but also unfruitful. You ought to really look at culture. This won't help the right with the left, of course, because they hate to admit cultural differencies either.
Some other cultures got there mostly.
When these cultures meet and interact, the former just become stronger in their misgivings.
https://www.txbiomed.org/news-press/news-releases/inuit-diab...
Worldview and religious differences also lead to disagreements about fundamental values. And among other concrete examples that I personally think are important: how much respect should be given to religious/spiritual/supernatural beliefs, what rights are inalienable human rights, how people with various illnesses should be treated, how resources are distributed, what behaviour is acceptable during disagreements (on large scales and small) and what subjects/ideas/beliefs/actions are taboo seem like the big ones.
Yes, the remarkable aspect of this whole debate is how easy it is to feel superior to both sides ( https://xkcd.com/774/ ).
I don't think you went back far enough, keep going and you are likely to find your Eastern European ancestry migrated out of Africa.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-out-of-afr...
Africa -> ... -> Europe
Africa is still where it started.
If we're going to speak meaningfully about where Europeans come from, we need to include wherever they picked up Neanderthal DNA (hint: not in Africa; no African population has it).
Not really; sure, having some kind of superficially objective criteria to wave was important, but having it be scientifically valid (or even particularly rigorously applied) wasn't all that important.
Well, .4% is of course just about 1/256. I believe the 23andMe result. I believe that the Cherokee thing was just a cover story concocted at some point to hide the fact that one of my family's ancestors was an African slave. And I think the outcome demonstrates that the 23andMe analysis is, in fact, pretty accurate.
So when I read that some guy came out a whopping 14% African and wants to put it down to statistical error, I just laugh.
The other interesting scientific result I've read is that there's more genetic variation within the traditional "races" than between them. I put "races" in quotations at this point because the whole concept is somewhat meaningless.
There are certain genes that are more common in different groups. But if I understand it correctly, you'll be able to find people from a different "race" who are more genetically similar to you than some people from your own "race".
>J. Scott Roberts, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, who has studied consumer use of genetic tests and was not involved with the study, said the companies tend to be reliable at identifying genetic variants. Interpreting them in terms of health risk or ancestry, though, is another story. “The science is often murky in those areas and gives ambiguous information,” he said. “They try to give specific percentages from this region, or x percent disease risk, and my sense is that that is an artificially precise estimate.”
I assume you're comfortable with the idea that you're descended from a slave and thus have chosen to override prior evidence to the contrary. But if you weren't comfortable with the idea, you can say the test is flawed and have just as powerful an argument.
Unless 23andMe can show statistical rigor behind their methods, everyone is going to see what they want in the results.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-white-black-a-murky-distinctio...
http://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(14)00476-5
tl;dr: the average "white" American is of 98.6% European ancestry, contrary to what this thinkpiece suggests. And on Cobb's much-publicized result:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/11/white-suprema...
When an article so clearly plays into what we want to hear, or so clearly confirms our beliefs, we should be more skeptical, not less.
We've been a multiethnic society since the first European boats landed and have redefined who counts as which race several dozen times since then. Even if there were some not insane standard for a "purebred" white person, it would be incredibly unlikely for any arbitrary bigot to happen to meet that standard.
We're talking about white nationalists, people who base their identity and self-esteem on a belief in their own racial purity. They wouldn't be seeking out these tests to validate something they already know to be untrue, or even suspect could be untrue.