Race/Genetics

I was reading an article in People Magazine where an adopted girl from China had some rare blood disease and needed a marrow donor.

Then they started getting into the whole thing about how it was hard for her to find a match because there are far fewer Asian donors than there are white/hispanic/african-american

but when we were talking about race vs genetics in sociology this past semester it was said that genetically there's little to no difference and that race was a socially created existence...

so why is it that the girl would have a better match in an Asian donor than any other kind????

I'm not trying to get into a racism dicussion, I just was confused... (which is easy to do, I know lol)

Toni, great topic! I think that our fear of offending someone is really hindering a lot of progress that can be made in this area; I think it is now that we have the DNA technology that we can truly answer some of those questions; of course, it's entirely possible we can offend some people in the process. ("Race" is indeed a more loaded word, and is largely a societal construct)

Doctors already make a lot of decisions based on ethnicity. For example, an Ashkenazi Jew gets certain pre-natal tests that are not necessary to the rest of the population. Recently, FDA approved the first African Americans only drug - the drug has almost no effect on the Caucasian population, but works very well for African American. There was a lot of protest about this, one of the arguments being that "African American" is a group of many different genetic components. I hope that in a decade or so the DNA technology will be become cheap enough that instead of relying on the fact that the person identifies him/herself as "African American" we will be able to simply to a DNA analysis and determine if a particular patient should be given a particular drug.

I think pretending that there is no genetic distiction between ethnicities is silly at best. Of course, once we get over the medical issues, we get to the behavioral and/or intelligence ones, and that's when things get truly politicaly incorrect. However, things can often be explained very logically. For example, recently Economist did a very interesting article on evolution. One example they sited was that Ashkenazi Jews often being very intelligent but physically weak could be a result of evolutionary process. For generations, European Jews were isolated from professions requireing physical prowess such as working the land. OTOH, Jews were allowed to go into professions such as banking which requires a certain ability with numbers, a business sense, etc. A part of evolutionary process is that in order for a male to reproduce he not only needs to survive, but be an attractive partner for a female (or, often in case of human society, be acceptable in the eyes of the female's father). Jews who succeeded in professions such as banking were therefore the ones that got wives, reproduced, etc. Which of course does not mean that Jews did not produce strong idiots, and plety of them.

Another example is how different bodies digest alcohol. Bodies of the Mongolians, for example, cannot process alcohol properly; OTOH, bodies of many of the peoples from the Caucuses process alcohol much faster than most other ethnic groups.

Bottom line, pretending that all ethnicities are identical could be very politically correct, but is essentially perpetuating a potentially dangerous lie.

Finding this subject rather intriguing, I did a bit of an online search to try and learn more about bone marrow donation in general, and apparently, based on what I uncovered, race is quite important in this area. It seems to be rather an extension of the principle that "the best match is from your own family", which I suppose would stand to reason. It is POSSIBLE for a person of a different race to be compatible, but apparently the odds are much greater to find a match within your own race. (It's unclear whether or not a person of mixed race would have a higher percentage of potential matches, or a lower one, but then I didn't dig too deeply.)

I don't understand this thing about "race is a socially created existence." Does this mean if I concentrate hard enough and hang around enough African-Americans, one day I'll wake up and I, too, will be African-American??? And who then is it supposed to be created by?

Ptichka said:

Another example is how different bodies digest alcohol. Bodies of the Mongolians, for example, cannot process alcohol properly; OTOH, bodies of many of the peoples from the Caucuses process alcohol much faster than most other ethnic groups. .

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Ptichka, your response was so interesting.

With alcohol, I know that this same conclusion has been attributed to the Native Americans and alcoholism.

Dee

JonnyCoop said:

I don't understand this thing about "race is a socially created existence." Does this mean if I concentrate hard enough and hang around enough African-Americans, one day I'll wake up and I, too, will be African-American??? And who then is it supposed to be created by?

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I didn't get it really either... but it had to do with the idea that "race" bases itself solely on teh color of skin... where as ethnicity is your actual genetic and cultural make up... race was just the 'white mans way' of segregating everyone (though I don't think whites are the only ones that segregate, look at the Middle East *shrugs*)

Ptchika - didn't understand all of what you said, but I got the gist and we agree that PC is getting in the way and doing more harm in a lot of areas... such is the story of American History... we have lawyers lying in wait for every sort of lawsuit they can make up... UGH

oh and JC - as for mixed race it's even harder to find a match... from what I have read if the person doesn't have a full blood sibling, they have a very hard time finding a match. I could be wrong though...

Why "race" is a societal construct

Now that I've talked about why ethnicity does determine genetic differences, let me say why "race" is largely a societal construct. What exactly is "white"? In the US, we generally see only people 100% white as "white". OTOH, in Brazil anyway who is about half Caucasian is considered "white". So, an American doctor and a Brazilian doctor can really miscommunicate if they used the word "white". Of course using "Hispanic" for race is extremely confusing because it can mean almost any combination of Caucasian/ African/ Amerindian blood. So, indeed, "race" is rather subjective, and is largely made up by each society.

JonnyCoop said:

I don't understand this thing about "race is a socially created existence." Does this mean if I concentrate hard enough and hang around enough African-Americans, one day I'll wake up and I, too, will be African-American??? And who then is it supposed to be created by?

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Nope! If that were the case, Eminem would've been a scientific miracle!

Sorry to interrupt y'alls truly interesting & thought provoking conversation with my attemps at comedy... I shall slink to the backrow now...

At one point in time, anyone with a drop of African blood was considerd 'black', even if they had only 1 ancestor many generations ago that was from Africa.

As a person of Chinese ancestry, I do believe there are certain stereotypes both negative and positive. Since I was born and raised in the US, many of my attitudes clash with the stereotypical image of a Chinese woman.

LOL - my mother's friend gave my phone # to her son's friend. When he called, he didn't understand that he was expected to participate in a conversation - just thought it was a given that we would meet. Needless to say, it did not go well. We didn't make plans to meet. Afterwards, he called his friend and asked 'Why'd your Mom try to set me up with a white girl?'

IMHO, medical research is one thing. But the danger of our current obsession with race is that it threatens to supercede attention to the talents and character traits of individuals.

To use Ptichka's example of Hasidic Jews, suppose I advertise a job opening for a stevedore. A man presents himself as a candidate for the job. Seeing that he has a beard and is wearing a black hat, I say, sorry, everyone knows you're not strong enough to do this type of work, why don't you go down the street to the bank where you belong?

Then the guys says, no, no, I'm a Mennonite!

Oh, OK, you're hired.

MM

Toni, as a college student you are quite right to listen to the theories presented in your social science classes with a skeptical ear.

Academic fads come and go. Today's politically correct is tomorrow's insensitivity, and out the window go dispassionate objectivity and the scholarly temperament.

Remember that "theories" (this is true in the "hard" sciences like physics, too) are only models of some aspect of the object of study. The real world is always incomparably more complicated than the theories we cobble together to cope with it.

MM

Mathman, you are right that this is a danger. In fact, while I don't think it is a big danger for work hiring, it can be a big danger in school - why push a student academically if he is from a "not so intelligent" ethnic group or make a kid go to PE if she is in a "psycially weak" group. However, I sincerely believe that having more information is always beneficial in the long run.

Ptichka said:

or make a kid go to PE if she is in a "psycially weak" group.

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ooo ooo I want what that girl has! LOL

hated PE, with a passion... I could never do a good enough stretch-reach because my legs are longer than most of the other kids and my arms aren't that long and the teacher would always fail me on that test... it was depressing...

then in Jr. High our PE teacher was... rather large and would eat her bag of doritos and drink out of her mega big gulp while we ran around the gym for 20 minutes... and would yell at us if we walked, stopped, talked, or got a drink...

PE sucks lol (high school PE was good though)

Ptichka said:

However, I sincerely believe that having more information is always beneficial in the long run.

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No doubt about that. In the long run, knowledge is our only salvation.

But what I was saying to Toni is, in the meantime, since we know next to nothing, I think we should be cautious about the claims of science, especially as regards the "science of people."

For instance, if we decided to learn about biology at the feet of the world's greatest biologist in the late 1700s, we would go to Linnaeus, the "father of taxonomy" and the person most directly responsible for our penchant for classifying living things in orders, genera and species.

Linnaeus would tell us that the incontestable scientific evidence reveals that mankind is naturally divided into 6 races. Here they are, together with their genetic characteristics:

1. Americans: Red, choleric and erect. Hair black and straight, face harsh, beard scanty. Obstinate, merry and free.

2. Europeans: White, sanguine and muscular. Hair flowing and long, eyes blue. Gentle, acute and inventive.

3. Asiatics: Yellow, melancholy and stiff. Severe, haughty and avaricious.

4. African: Black, phlegmatic and relaxed. Hair black and frizzled. Women without shame. Crafty, indolent and negligent.

5. Feral humans: Wild men on all fours, unable to speak, hairy.

6. Monsters: The giants of Patagonia and other genetic mutants.

Are you ready for your midterm exam? True or false, the giants of Patagonia have frizzled hair.

Tonichelle said:

PE sucks lol

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My school had this program that if you could prove that you participated in a sport more than 3 hours a week you didn't have to go to PE (the instructor had to sign on a form at every class). I was able to argue that my ballet, Jazz, tap dancing classes satisfied the requirement. So that got me out of PE for at least a few years!

Race and sports

It's obvious -- right? -- that certain races -- well, OK, one race in particular -- dominates the sport of basketball.

Here is why, according to the well-respected sportswriter Paul Gallico writing in the New York Daily news in the 1930s.

"The reason, I suspect, that basketball appeals to the Hebrew with his Oriental background," wrote Paul Gallico, sports editor of the New York Daily News in the 1930s, "is that the game places a premium on an alert, scheming mind, flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smart aleckness."

Other writers declared that "Jews had an advantage in basketball because short men have better balance and more foot speed." They were also thought to have sharper eyes, which of course cut against the stereotype that Jewish men were myopic and had to wear glasses.

Well, there must be some genetic reason why all the good basketball players of that era were Jewish, and why the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association won multiple national championships from 1918 to 1950, when they became the Philadelphia Warriors of the NBA.

Personally, I'll go with the "smart-aleck" gene.

Mathman said:

It's obvious -- right? -- that certain races -- well, OK, one race in particular -- dominates the sport of basketball.

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And the reasons vary. Height; Motivation; Accessability; Opportunity.

There were few ladies from Asia in figure skating until recent times. Can Afro American ladies come on strong eventually? Moreso than I think African ladies will because of the four reasons above.

I think Toni's question on racial blood lines is a serious topic in medical circles but not in the scholastic and recreational worlds.

Joe

About classification into races, the point that I was making is that this is us doing this, for whatever purpose, not nature.

Do the San (colloquially, "bushmen") and the Khoi (colloquially and derogatorially, "Hottetots") share enough genes to warrent being lumped together as a racial group? Are they sufficiently different from the other peoples of southern Africa (the Zulu and Xhosha people, for instance), to deserve their own exclusive sub-species?

These are question of interest to the assigners of labels. I am not aware of any scientific merit to them.

MM

Ptichka said:

My school had this program that if you could prove that you participated in a sport more than 3 hours a week you didn't have to go to PE (the instructor had to sign on a form at every class). I was able to argue that my ballet, Jazz, tap dancing classes satisfied the requirement. So that got me out of PE for at least a few years!

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I was able to do that for homeschool... so my senior year PE was the best. I did archery and hiking counted as well... whatever works, right?

Mathman, I am rather ignorant about the particular ethnic groups you site. Though take Lemba - a South African group that has been proved genetically to be related to Jews despite being black! Or another group - its name absolutely escapes me - also in South Africa, that has been found to be similar to most other grops around the world.

I can also tell you that among Jews (sorry to go back to my own ethnicity, it just happens to be one I am most familiar with) there are enough differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim (roughly speaking European vs. Asian Jews) to warrant different medical diagnosis - for example the latter group does not need to be tested for Tay-Sachs and Canavan deseases.

The issue of genetics in sport is an interesting one. In Russia, when a girl went in to sign up in a sports school for certain sports (gymnastics, dancing, etc.) she had to come with her mom, and they looked very carefully at the mom's body. Basically, they wanted to predict what a girl's body will look like in a decade or so (in a sport like gymnastcs you must have a certain body type), and they considered looking at mom the best bet. So they accomplished their own genetic analysis without the benefit of a single scientist around! (Whether or not that approach is correct is a different issue.)

BTW, here is an interesting article on the issue: http://www.jonentine.com/reviews/africana.htm

Ptichka - it stands to reason... that a girl would follow the maternal make up more than the paternal...

but then I take after my dad when it comes to how my body works out (I have long legs, short torso, my dad is 6' and my mom is 5'6" but if you looked at them sitting side by side you'd never no it as my mom has a tall torso vs long legs)... I also have every stupid med. problem my dad does. Like the nerves in my feet being in the wrong place, my needs didn't develop correctly so I'll most likely have to have surgery when I get older... etc...

but I do have something all my own: an extra bone in my right foot lol

anyway... this is neat how the thread has evolved in the discussion, I'm learning way more this way than I did for a full semester at UAA... and this is free lol