tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post3716544731153811576..comments2024-02-29T03:57:00.088-05:00Comments on The Mermaid's Tale: The pseudo-science of race claimsAnne Buchananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09212151396672651221noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-52955039554254278932014-07-08T12:37:32.374-04:002014-07-08T12:37:32.374-04:00It's a problem, partly because we have to eat ...It's a problem, partly because we have to eat and that means other species have to be our dinners. But our extreme egocentrism when it comes to industrial level society poses long or even short-term risks of unprecedented amounts. Are we egocentric enough to fix things---for our own good--before it's too late?Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-78299407417915568892014-07-08T12:01:11.304-04:002014-07-08T12:01:11.304-04:00Nice post on a delicate subject. On another point ...Nice post on a delicate subject. On another point - I feel we all are guilty of being egocentric specie-ists - as in humans being the center of the universe. Sto-ologyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04401464603035108957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-74589112101440211782014-06-18T07:19:28.812-04:002014-06-18T07:19:28.812-04:00Thanks for this comment. Brazil is a well-known e...Thanks for this comment. Brazil is a well-known example, and it's good of you to point out that Portugal is,too. The people insisting on race, however, will just point out that the races they really mean are the indigenous or aboriginal ones, before all of this historical moving around. That assumes of course that we can identify such people easily and that gene flow was negligible before that relative to the categories they find the way they analyze the data. They are trying to make a different point, which is their view that major genetic adaptations for important traits characterize their category groups. So there isn't a chance that view would cede an inch to what you say--it's like people speaking two different languages. And add to this, that they are working a strong political agenda, and feeding subterranean hate-groups as well.Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-63140011464826714662014-06-18T06:27:56.386-04:002014-06-18T06:27:56.386-04:00Very nice post.
As a biologist, I am often amused ...Very nice post.<br />As a biologist, I am often amused by the "race" fields in various forms and documents. As a Brazilian biologist, this is magnified many-fold. First, we do not fall under "hispanic"- even if Brazil were purely an ethnic offshoot of Portugal, that would have to be "iberian" (I know live in Portugal, and the natives are very touchy about that distinction). And would that be white or European in any sense? Portugal is a pretty good mix of North Africa/Sephardic with celtic/germanic and other European groups, with abundant sprinklings from subsaharan Africa, China (Macau) and India (Goa), among others.<br />But that was just the portion of my family that immigrated from here to Brazil. When you get to Brazil, it really becomes impossible for simple classifiers, and I have African slave ancestors, Italians, native Brazilians, and that's just what I know so far. <br />It is also interesting, as many have noted before, that the categories Americans and Brazilians call Black don't overlap very well. And you try explaining to a Han Chinese and a Hmong person that they form this homogenous group called "Asian". Finally, to talk about a "black african" genotype requires a complete and total ignorance of population genetics and human evolution.<br /><br />On a side note, it should be noted that while Darwin often spoke of race as a valid biological category, in his time and place (both geographic and social) he was quite progressive in arguing for the unity of the human species- which was not at all consensual in the second half of the 19th century, to say the least.Thiago Carvalhohttp://thumb.igc.gulbenkian.pt/blog/noreply@blogger.com