Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 34

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Edit questioned

Acaciosc What did you do when you performed this edit? Mitchumch (talk) 08:21, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Mitchumch Totally unnecessary from you to ask such question in a talk page. What I did is clearly shown, highlighted, when you compare the actual edit with the previous one. I removed extra round brackets/parentheses, if that helps you. Acaciosc (talk) 15:35, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
@Acaciosc: I'm specifically asking about . You added that along with removing the parenthesis. What is that? Mitchumch (talk) 15:48, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
Mitchumch What is your problem? "[...] evolved out of African Homo erectus ((sensu lato) or Homo ergaster)". Clearly, there are two parenthesis together before "sensu lato", which is gramatically wrong, obviously. Along with this correction, I removed an extra parenthesis as well in "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).". The removed extra parenthesis is placed after "Homo ergaster", if that rings you a bell. Acaciosc (talk) 16:09, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
@Acaciosc: This is in fact an appropriate place to ask such questions. Doug Weller talk 17:51, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: No, it isn't. As I already explained, there is no need to show what was changed in the edit, since it can be seen in history when comparing with the previous edit. Acaciosc (talk) 22:37, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
Acaciosc The article's talk page is THE place to goto regardless if you think your edit is obviously correct. Secondly, you need to stop using "obviously", "Clearly" and "that rings you a bell". Whether it's your intent or not, it makes you sound arrogant, pompous or in my neck of the woods, highfalutin.
@Mitchumch: I can understand why Acaciosc is confused, because I was too until it dawned on me. The text went from no special unicode symbols to two "invisible" symbols with a space in between.
The text went from:
''[[Homo ergaster]]'').<ref>
to:
''[[Homo ergaster]]U+FFFC U+FFFC.''<ref>
The U+FFFC symbol is an "OBJECT REPLACEMENT CHARACTER, placeholder in the text for another unspecified object", where the unspecified object is a video, image, photo, etc. If you are doing a Word document and you will be placing an image in a certain spot, but don't have the image yet, the U+FFFC are used to mark the spot where the photo will go. Well, what a M$ Word document will actually do is unknown as the manual for Word resides in Hell (not my in-laws in this case). Invisible Unicode symbols are added to Wikipedia articles all the time (386 articles found yesterday) and 99.9% of them unintentionally added. Most of the time, it comes from copy/pate or a couple of scripts that shouldn't be adding them. So, Acaciosc's adding them could be unintentional or intentional.
Soooooo.... what I think Mitchumch is asking is, was adding the two unicode symbols intentional and if so, why? Bgwhite (talk) 22:40, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
Bgwhite Oh, now I understood. Sorry, I'm writing through an Android device, which is probably why that "invisible" symbol has appeared. Not the first time, by the way, although that never happened to me when I edited in both Ubuntu 14.4 and Windows 10). No, it wasn't intentional and I have no idea why that happened. I'm not all that great in Wikipedia codes, especially when trying to edit with smartphones. My intent was exclusively to remove improper punctuations. In this case, it's DEFINITELY ("sorry" if that word also sounds arrogant to you, but I don't think a person's personality should matter at all anyway, as long as there is no pejorative terms being used) appropriate to talk here about the symbols per se, though. I thought s/he was only asking what was edited (because I didn't believe there had anything else besides my appropriate remotion of the punctuations because, as said, it's "invisible"). I considered the capslock in "the" arrogant as well, but I don't really care, because it is irrelevant and even if it were, I'm not offended by things like this. Almost everyone (except those in a coma, for example) is arrogant at different levels, including who reads this right now... why should it be different to me? Hypocrisy is much worse, and that is what is indeed harmful socially, but, again, it's irrelevant to this conversation. Acaciosc (talk) 23:46, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Deleted section initiated by another Mikemikev sock

If anyone objects they can of course replace it, striking through the sock, but it's seems more preventive to just delete it completely, so I've been bold and done that. If anyone wants to see how unpleasant and racist this editor can be, look at the edit summaries of Luftballoon (talk · contribs) to see why we don't want to encourage him by letting him think his posts will be allowed to remain. Doug Weller talk 21:43, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

I may be unpleasant and racist, but at least I'm not a pseudoscientific liar. 193.61.28.47 (talk) 21:07, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
Well, I would say that you definitely are. So would actual scientists.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 21:13, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
Like Alan Templeton and Joseph Graves? 193.61.28.47 (talk) 21:34, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
Or your heroes Franz Boas, Jared Diamond, Alan Goodman, Steven Gould, Melville Herskovits, Max Horkheimer, Leon Kamin, Otto Klineberg, Richard Lewontin, Leonard Lieberman, Jonathan Marks, Barry Mehler, Ashley Montagu, Steven Rose, Edward Sapir, Robert Sussman, and Gene Weltfish. It's so good we have these people who can rise above ethnic self-interest and give us a fact based view of things. The only problem is that White Supremacists own the media so one doesn't often get to hear their views, since they all happen to be Jews. 193.61.28.47 (talk) 21:36, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
Jared Diamond? Wtf? Anthropologists despise Jared Diamond. I didn't know Joseph Graves was jewish.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:05, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
The funny thing is most of those scientists Mikemikev lists are/were "race realists". Franz Boas for example believed in race, he never denied it. Montagu wrote in his Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy Of Race (1942) that: "In the biological sense there do, of course, exists races of mankind. That is to say, mankind is comprised of many groups which are physically sufficiently distinguishable from one another to justify their being classified as separate races." For Montagu, the "fallacy" of race in his book title was not that races exist. Shouldn't Montagu be a hero to Mikemikev? IonianGreek (talk) 02:54, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

New survey of members of the American Anthropological Association

This asked them 53 questions on race, eg:

“The human population may be subdivided into biological races” - 86% of respondents strongly disagreeing or disagreeing.

“Racial categories are determined by biology”, 88% strongly disagreed or disagreed.

Anthropologists' views on race, ancestry, and genetics Authors Jennifer K. Wagner,Joon-Ho Yu,Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe,Tanya M. Harrell,Michael J. Bamshad,Charmaine D. Royal First published: 22 November 2016[1] - that's the full paper:

"Results demonstrate consensus that there are no human biological races and recognition that race exists as lived social experiences that can have important effects on health.

Discussion Racial privilege affects anthropologists' views on race, underscoring the importance that anthropologists be vigilant of biases in the profession and practice. Anthropologists must mitigate racial biases in society wherever they might be lurking and quash any sociopolitical attempts to normalize or promote racist rhetoric, sentiment, and behavior." Doug Weller talk 16:26, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

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What is racial essentialism?

The concept of "essentialism" is mentioned a few times in the article but never defined. What is it? --Nanite (talk) 03:38, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Essentialism is the idea that a membership of category is defined by having one or more traits that are shared by all category members, an that may be considered exclusive to members of that category. For example all birds have wings and feathers, all reptiles lay eggs, all mammals are warmblooded. So for example an essentialist idea about race is that if you have white skin then you are white (many asians have skin of the same color as many europeans), and if you have black skin you are black (dark-skinned people in Africa, SouthAsia and Australia are not closely related genetically). But it is also the idea that all African americans have a higher risk of sickle cell anemia, and all european americans have a low risk (because many African Americans have a lot of european ancestry and therefore lower risk, and many european americans have south european ancestry with a relatively high risk of sickle cell anemia).·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:26, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 August 2017

The first line "Race, as a social construct, (,...)" needs to have "as a social construct" removed unless a citation, evidence or a credible and non-politically motivated source can be provided. MythologyEnthusiast (talk) 14:33, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. Please be aware that the principal function of the lead section is to summarize the main points found in the body of the article. RivertorchFIREWATER 16:09, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

More sockpuppetry moved to archive page

"It's current year" isn't an argument. The concept is about shared ancestry causing shared genetics, it's standard biological classification. Nobody claims it "pinpoints haplogroups" or whatever strawman nonsense you want to apply only to humans because it's fashionable to pretend we're "the same". Gurdasani et al. (2014) found higher diversity in Africa is both intragroup rather than intergroup (I'm sure you understand the significance of that right? Show off your understanding and go through it) and largely due to migrations into Africa. Where is your data? Even if that wasn't the case Africans would simply be several races vis a vis Eurasians. I think biologists and geneticists understand that. The survey of cultural anthropologists you guys reference not so much, especially American ones. Then skin color? Really? Your segway into invoking Dunning-Kruger really made me laugh out loud, so thanks for that. Rupert the Frog (talk) 12:59, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

It is not a survey of cultural biologists but of all types of anthropologists who work with race, including biological and forensic anthropologists who are members of the AAA.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:34, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
The string "it's current year" doesn't appear anywhere on this page other than your own post, so it's not clear what you're talking about. You also made incorrect changes to Race (biology), which two editors have reverted. Do you have some reliable sources to present, for particular wording changes in the article you'd like to see? This is not a debate forum.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  22:52, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
"Scare quotes". Specifically the notion that "Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed". A section does, notably American social anthropologists. A survey of international biologists would find something quite different, especially one where they could respond anonymously to avoid harassment from Marxist activists, such as happened with James Watson, who was the subject of harassment from Marxist activists, and is not himself a Marxist activist, as far as I know. Also I would put a semi-colon after "social relations" in the first sentence, and change the "and" following to "or". Also it seems to be you debating, at length, and entirely incompetently. Rupert the Frog (talk) 07:00, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Repeat: Do you have some reliable sources to present, for particular wording changes in the article you'd like to see? This is not a debate forum.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  16:38, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
You don't know sources supporting the biological race concept outside American sociology? Rupert the Frog (talk) 17:42, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
We're all volunteers here with limited time, and most of us work on hundreds+ articles in many topics. If you have an issue with something on this page, it's up to you to source the matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  18:46, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
There are very few scholars today in any discipline, biology, genetics or anthropology, who consider a biological race concept to be useful or empirically supported. Those who do are using the concept in a fairly novel way that means any population that can be defined as having a discernible genetic profile - which is a kind of microracial that is completely different from how the concept has been traditionally used about broad continental groupings. You will have a very hard time to find major mainstream sources in any discipline today that simply assert the existence of biological race - even forensic anthropology textbooks are tedning to take a more nuanced stance today. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:53, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Nonsense. E.g.
We performed a genome wide meta-analysis of 16 independent cohorts totaling 279,930 participants of European ancestry and 9,398,186 genetic variants passing quality control[2]
That's a Darwinian ancestry based race construct. Take a look at the scholars responsible for that paper. Apparently people who actually do useful science don't agree with regular Wikipedia editors, or nonsense babbling American sociologists, between which there may be some overlap. Rupert the Frog (talk) 19:03, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
It's also not a racial classification, but a geographic one. The "white" or "Caucasian" racial classification extends way beyond Europe to Central Asia. Peer-unreviewed, unpublished papers at arXiv are self-published, primary sources, and are thus not reliable sources, anyway. Nothing in that paper is about race, and European subjects are not being compared to non-Europeans; it's a study of factors within a European sample. So, you're barking in entirely the wrong forest.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  20:47, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Lol, you're very cocky. Perhaps you know more than Deary, Plomin and Visscher. They specifically used European, not White or Caucasian so you are creating dishonest strawmen. No it's not a geographic classification. That would be "European location". European ancestry is something different. It's going to be published. If you understood anything apart from being obnoxiously contrary on a disreputable website you'd have more respect. Rupert the Frog (talk) 20:51, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
See WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOR. See also WP:CIVIL. The fact that we have sourcing policies and some of us actually follow them doesn't make us "cocky", it makes you wrong about how Wikipedia works.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  20:59, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
See WP:HAVING A LIFE OFF WIKIPEDIA Rupert the Frog (talk) 21:08, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

even better, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mikemikev. Doug Weller talk 16:01, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Garbage article

Too long, has no useful info, instead focusing on some scientific debates, but not on the concept. Came here to see the nowadays listing for races and sub-races. Guess what, there is NOTHING like that, only wall of irrelevant text. 188.112.131.133 (talk) 19:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Which "nowadays listing" would those be? RivertorchFIREWATER 20:26, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
Of interest may be list of ethnic groups, list of indigenous peoples, Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup or Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. If not, I recommend asking at the science reference desk. —PaleoNeonate – 20:12, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Race is real, lets look what an an actual geneticist says

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/a-sensible-article-on-human-race/ David Smythe5 (talk) 20:47, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Not a reliable source. EvergreenFir (talk) 20:53, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, it's just a summary of someone else's article, itself a "politics of science" opinion piece, not actual science.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  21:07, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Readdition of "as a social construct"

Everymorning, regarding this edit you made in July, I personally view race as a social construct, but I want to go ahead and note here again that we have had issues with the first sentence identifying it as a social construct. See Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#Social Concept?, Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#Lead sentence, Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#"Consensus" of social construction and Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#First sentence? Sources? and Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#Maunus suggestion for a new Lead for what I mean.

In terms of Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mikemikev Tiny Dancer now blocked for antisemitic attacks, the lead seemed to be doing fine without "social construct" in the first sentence. As I've stated before, we can include the "social construct" bit without it being in the first sentence. But then again, the lead already makes it clear that "there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable."

Anyway, if you and others want "social construct" to remain in the lead sentence, I won't object. It's just annoying to keep having editors (including one persistent WP:Sock) contesting the "social construct" bit, which takes us into yet another debate about the matter. And, yes, I'm aware that this thread may result in yet another debate about it. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:15, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

  • I'm fine with it not being in the lead as clearly as it was when I added it, I guess. Everymorning (talk) 19:23, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
  • I support removing it.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 21:19, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
Sangdeboeuf removed it and a made a wording change to the lead. I'm not sure how I feel abut the wording change, but since the second sentence states "Although such groupings lack a firm basis in modern biology, they continue to have a strong influence over contemporary social relations.", I'm not strongly opposed to the new wording. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:02, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
There is WP:Citation overkill, though, which was there before Sangdeboeuf's edit. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:03, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Article move?

Sangdeboeuf, your move of the article seems okay, and it matches the lead previously stating "is a classification," but do you think it should perhaps have been discussed first? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:06, 22 August 2017 (UTC) Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:07, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. Several sources refer both to "classification" and "categorization" with respect to race, but "classification" is the more concise and elegant term, which seems to have a greater history; for instance, the 1950 UNESCO statement uses "classification". —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:12, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Sockpuppets

Mikemikev's socks sometimes can write rationally. However, more typical is the message he left today on my talk page, "ommunistuseful idiot Doug Weller supports the Semite led genocide of the European people and Semitic fake science and should be executed for treason== What an asshole" and another one "Doug Weller supports White genocide and the rape of little White girls in England by low IQ filth from Pakistan What an asshole." Don't let his sometimes almost reasonable sounding socks fool you. Doug Weller talk 20:39, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, you know how I am. When I see a sock, I am likely to call out the person as a sock, like I recently did at this talk page. Of course, there is the occasional annoying sock who will cite WP:Assume good faith and/or threaten to report me at WP:ANI. But when they report me at WP:ANI, it is the usual case that a WP:CheckUser looks the matter over and blocks the sock. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:10, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
And if not that, other experienced editors scrutinize the sock's edit history and also conclude that the editor is a sock. So I look forward to being taken to WP:ANI in such cases, even if some experienced editor admonishes me for pointing out the obvious (or what is at least obvious to me). Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:21, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
It would help to get this and related articles set to auto-confirmed protection. Then at least the anons will be blockaded (they never seem to do anything constructive at these articles), and sockpuppetteers will have to keep creating accounts to cause problems here, and those accounts are subject to checkuser, unlike IP addresses.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  22:32, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
To be fair, though, we can block IPs based on behavior just as easily... although sleeper checks are a plus for registered accounts. GABgab 23:04, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
@EdJohnston: What do you think? This would apply to at least Race and Intelligence as well. Pinging him as we've been discussing this on my talk page. Doug Weller talk 10:53, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
I support the continued semiprotection of the race-related pages that are frequented by Mikemikev, including this talk page. It seems that Mike intends to keep going forever, so we should reduce the level of nuisance when we can. EdJohnston (talk) 18:47, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
I also support this. I am very wary of semi-protecting talk pages, but in this case it seems appropriate. I'd support indef protections for articles and perhaps a month for talk page. EvergreenFir (talk) 18:51, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
Yep. Include Race (biology) as well; he hits that one and its talk page pretty often.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  04:51, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
Feel free to archive this section.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:26, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

A related RM and RfD

 – Pointers to relevant discussions elsewhere.

Please see:

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:52, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Template:Very long?

Regarding this, given what this topic is about, I don't view this article as too long. We have bigger Wikipedia articles than this. We can judge the article on WP:SIZE (with prose size being the main focus, rather than the references that have added to the article size), but we do not have to follow WP:SIZE. It's a guideline. If we do split the article, how many splits? And what should get split? A number of the sections are already designed with WP:Summary style in mind, pointing to the main articles for further detail. We can simply trim the existing sections. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:40, 23 August 2017 (UTC) Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:44, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that § Modern debate should be split off. Given that the modern consensus among scholars is pretty clear, I don't think the debate itself warrants taking up essentially half a third of the article – it would be better to summarize it. And yes, several other summary-style sections could also be condensed. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:26, 24 August 2017 (UTC) (updated 14:34, 24 August 2017 (UTC))
I think that the section can do with a trim, especially since it is pointing to sub-articles or main articles in different sections, but I don't think that the topic itself needs its own article. Modern debate among scholars is a pretty big aspect of this topic; so the section's current size is understandable. I don't even think it takes up that much of the article. But, again, I do think it can do with a trim. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 14:01, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
There's a lot of opinion surveys in this article; I think that a good chunk of it could be better made into part of Scientific opinion on race (parallel to Scientific opinion on climate change). Reading through this material isn't a basic part of understanding the concept.--Carwil (talk) 21:04, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
I still don't see a need for a split, though. And the scientific opinion is one of the essential aspects to understanding the concept, which is why we address the matter in the lead and is why so much about it is in the article now. Also, given that this article is already subject to contentious edits and POV editing, which takes consistent maintenance, as is also the case for the Scientific opinion on climate change article, do we really want to go through the same thing with a Scientific opinion on race article? I know I don't. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:42, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
My impression is that the article and any subpages will continue to be a magnet for contentious/POV editing regardless of its structuring into subpages. Given that, I'd prefer to make these decisions in terms of encyclopedic usefulness, not editorial maintenance.
So, the "Views across disciplines over time" segment really does seem overly detailed in terms of the density of contemporary material, and under-described in terms of its historical material. (Much of the older material would really be a WP:SUMMARY of Scientific racism). The role of an article on a scientific/social scientific topic is not to present opinion polls of scientists, but to use the scientific consensus as established through peer-reviewed articles and the scholarly literature. But on some issues, including this one and global warming, scientists' opinion on the topic has become a question of scholarly interest (hence all the polling, and even some books like Ann Morning's The Nature of Race).
I would also go so far as to say that coverage of scientists' disagreement on this issue, as currently represented in this article, gives WP:UNDUE weight to the view of race as genuine biological classification, but regardless of whether this policy requires a split, I think that splitting out some of this material would be helpful to the encyclopedia.--Carwil (talk) 14:06, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
Also, on reviewing the article, I agree with @Sangdeboeuf: that much of the "modern debate" material should be split off, though clearly not all of it. This article is just plain too long and intricate to be easily understood, and it's far too easy to get lost in irrelevant arguments with no contemporary proponents. For example, pace Sewall Wright, contemporary biologists see humans a belonging to a single subpecies Homo sapiens sapiens, yet we take five paragraphs to discuss the definition and applicability of subspecies.--Carwil (talk) 14:23, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
So you would be fine with splitting the material off into existing articles instead of a creating a Scientific opinion on race article? As for encyclopedic usefulness, with regard to size, I'm still of the opinion that all the article needs is some trimming and that we can regulate other stuff to existing articles if it needs to be retained (and is not already covered in other articles). If we truly do need a Scientific opinion on race article, I won't oppose. I'm just more of a WP:HASTE and WP:No split person; I usually feel that splits are not necessary; for example, they cause readers to leave the main article just to get more detail on a matter that is better served in the main article. Often, when our readers leave the main article, they don't return and instead get caught up in a link-like Wonderland. This is one reason that WP:Overlinking is cautioned against; readers can get overwhelmed by too many links, sometimes not knowing which ones are more relevant. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:56, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
I'm up for a thorough but gradual culling of extra material from this article. I'd propose that Scientific opinion on race be drafted slowly and carefully in User- or Draft-space. Right now, most of the extra material seems to be about anthropology. It's not bad text, just text that is in too general of an article, since some kind of history of anthropological approaches to race is totally encyclopedic. But again, something that I don't have time to work on right this month.--Carwil (talk) 14:52, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
Concur with Flyer22 Reborn. "Modern debate about [foo]" isn't a sensible stand-alone article for any topic, unless something is modern debate about an ancient abandoned idea that has surprisingly been un-abandoned recently, and that debate has become independently notable as a debate, per se. Like if a new debate about phlogiston were to dominate the headlines for a few years, maybe that would be a good topic for a "Modern debate about phlogiston" article. This article isn't in danger of violating any size limits, but I agree that some of the SUMMARY summaries can be compressed, otherwise they kind of defeat the purpose of spinning things out to side articles and doing summaries.

Maybe a "scientific views on race" piece could work, but I'm skeptical, because the entire history of the concept is people claiming that their ideas were scientific. We only recognize them as proto-scientific or pseudo-scientific in the rear view mirror. So, I would expect the articles to end up substantially duplicating each other.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:03, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Essay worth citing

Jablonski, Nina (2015). "Race". In Brockman, John (ed.). This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress. Edge Question Series. Edge Foundation / Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0062374349. Retrieved October 20, 2017 – via Edge.org. (Collection originally published online as Edge Question 2014: What Scientific Idea is Ready for Retirement?). Jablonski is a biological anthropologist and paleobiologist; Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology at the Pennsylvania State University.

Concise overview of the whole issue. Even structurally, it's a good model of how to do our own article better.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  10:42, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Revert of "racial classification" for the start of the lead sentence

Oldstone James, regarding this edit you made, see this and this edit that SMcCandlish and I made afterward. I object to your "Racial classification is" wording because it makes the article appear to be solely about classification. For example, instead of stating that "Race is a way of categorizing humans into groups" or "Race is the categorization of humans into groups," your wording stated "Racial classification is a way of categorizing humans into groups." This article is about the topic of race, period. As the hatnote makes clear, the article is about races as a social concept and in anthropology. When the article states "Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable," it means race as a concept, not simply the classification. The social concept/classification obviously exists, but scientists dispute the biological onceptualizations that people usually think of when they think of race. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:51, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

I rewrote the first part of the lead sentence after this, into "Race is a term used in the categorization of humans into groups, called races or racial groups, based on ...".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  18:35, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
I think we should go back to that or something like it (or come up with something new), because the version after mine, "Race is the categorization of ..." isn't an accurate statement. Categorization is an activity/action, and race is not one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  18:54, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: @Flyer22 Reborn: I don't object to any of your edits at all. Just hated the wording "race is a way of dividing people into races". OlJa 19:21, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, that's why I said "or come up with something new", above. I would suggest splitting the "races or racial groups thing into a separate sentence. However, it is not as redundant as it looks. "Race" at the start of the sentence means the term/concept race; it is a mass noun. "Races" means the categorizations used under that concept; it is a count noun. It's not wonderful that the words so closely correspond in form (are identical when the count noun is singular), but it's a fact.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  19:29, 1 November 2017 (UTC) @Flyer22 Reborn:
Any thoughts on a redraft?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  19:30, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
Regarding this edit you made, I disagree. WP:Refers is specifically about the opening (the lead sentence) of articles that are not about terms. This article is not about a term; it is about a concept. That is why changed the lead to state "is a concept." As for race not being a categorization, this article was titled "Race (human categorization)" for years before it was recently moved to "Race (human classification)," and a simple Google search shows that it is defined in terms of categorization. Some sources use the term categorization, while others use the term classification. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:14, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
I'm fine with your suggested "split the sentences" proposal. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:19, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
Your change to "Race is a concept used in the categorization of humans into groups ..." may sufficiently resolve it. Should have thought of that. I blame lack of coffee and distraction by kitteh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  21:29, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, I sometimes have blind moments when it comes to wording issues on Wikipedia. I'm not a coffee person, but caffeine via the occasional coke has likely helped to keep me alert at times. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:44, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
PS: I'm having the undiscussed move reversed at WP:RM/TR, with the following explanation: 'Reverse undiscussed move (22 August) with a contextually invalid rationale ("More precise title" [3]). The name Race (human categorization) was chosen at a full RM on 27 July 2015 [4], for the very reason that "classification" was inappropriately precise, and did not address the full scope of the article; it implies systemic classification which is often not evident. If someone wants to move it back to Race (human classification), they can open an RM about it, if they have a new argument to present that wasn't already covered in the last RM.'  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  21:45, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

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WP:DENY, WP:BE, etc. Grayfell (talk) 22:24, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I notice that the book "Race" by Prof John R. Baker, Oxford University Press, 1974, which was once in the bibliography, has been deleted. Any reason for this?69.123.131.248 (talk) 03:07, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Age, I would think. Scientific understanding of this topic has radically shifted just in the last decade and half or so. The Human Genome Project didn't finish its main work until 2003, and much of the mitochondrial DNA work and other haplogroup tracking has happened since then, with more of it coming out all the time with surprising results. See how many sources you can find from 1974 with the word "Denisovan" in them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  07:31, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

An interesting dodge. When "Race" was first deleted, age was given as a reason. So I then deleted 18 older articles that were anti-race. This did not go over well. Then a notorious left-wing sociologist stated the reason was" Possibly because it is worthless as a source on the topic. ArtifexMayhem (talk) 11:26, 17 February 2015 (UTC)" An interesting assessment about an Oxford professor of cytology with nine books to his credit by a ideologue to whom no work describing the biological concept of race could possibly be acceptable. (And you wonder why people are abandoning Wiki in droves...)69.123.131.248 (talk) 02:38, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

"Dodge". Go elsewhere if you want a place to rant. You clearly already knew why the book was deleted, so this was an inappropriate and misguided attempt at a "gotcha". Are you here to discuss how to improve the article, or are you here to play troll games? As the scientific understanding of a topic advances, some resources will remain useful, and some wont. Some will remain historically significant even when the science is no longer part of the mainstream consensus. Baker's book is not, particularly, significant anymore, except perhaps among niche academic racists. These sources would have to be contextualized as such, to avoid misleading readers into embracing WP:FRINGE nonsense. The big-name credentials of a decades-dead author are not justification for legitimizing a scientifically regressive agenda. Grayfell (talk) 03:14, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
Let's avail ourselves of WP:DENY. This is obviously the same banned "gadfly" socking via IP address again; see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mikemikev/Archive.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  13:22, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
I figured it was Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tholzel, but it's quite likely those are the same. Regardless, you're right, and I've hatted this discussion. Grayfell (talk) 22:24, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

"Social construct" removed

I stopped watchlisting this on a daily basis some time ago, for blood pressure reasons. I note that now the well-sourced scientific consensus that race is primarily a social construct has been stripped not just from the lead but from the entire article. I don't think this is a consensus change.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  07:33, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Can you point to a previous page revision where the social construction of race was explained well? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 07:46, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
Having it linked in the lead, a here was of value, though I'd have to dig around in history more to see if the article body got into it well. The talk page archives from around two year ago have a huge source dump I did, fully formatted in cite templates, for anyone who wanted material. I don't personally want to work on this article much because of the drama, but I did a whole lot of leg-work for people who want to.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  07:53, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
That material is at Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#"Consensus" of social construction, ff.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  07:57, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
It looks like the first paragraph of the lead section was rewritten in this edit. I'm not sure it necessarily has the problems you say it does - the second sentence is "Although such groupings lack a firm basis in modern biology, they continue to have a strong influence over contemporary social relations", which seems pretty straightforward, and in my opinion gets the sources across more clearly than the previous version. I did just re-add a few words that got dropped without explanation, though (the part Maunus pointed out down below.) It's a bit of a run-on sentence, so I can see why Sangdeboeuf trimmed it down, but as far as I can tell every part of the list is important. --Aquillion (talk) 16:48, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
  • I agree with SMcCandlish, that the current version is not good - it is not based on the best available sources, and is consequently overly simplistic. For example racial groups are not only based on shared physical traits, genetics or ancestry - but also on shared cultural and social traits and assumptions about correlations between those and physical traits.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:36, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
Are you sure you're a scientist? The point of science is to remove all the unnecessary flak, rather than add so much to the definition it becomes vague gibberish, a catch all term thats unfalsifiable. No, culture or things like accents and handshakes are not a part of race, ones race ONLY has to do with the physical aspects, not with anything else, because it comes out of the word "racism" and thus only has to do with the physical and genetic components. You might be looking for the word "ethnicity"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by A10000000000975 (talk • contribs) 19:27, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Per the #Readdition of "as a social construct" discussion above, "social construct" in the lead has repeatedly been an issue. The article has been fine without it. Aquillion recently re-added "or social relations, and the relations between those groups," but that's not the same as adding "social construct." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:12, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
    • It's repeatedly been an issue because WP suffers waves of racialist trolling and PoV pushing. It's pseudo-science, and the article has not "been fine" without leading with the real-world scientific consensus that race is primarily a social construct. The specific phrase "social construct" is sourced to the moon and back.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  09:52, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
I think it was a good idea to remove the specific way the definition was worded "race, as a social construct, is" because this implied that this is only one potential way of understanding race, and that there is a parallel "race, as a biological grouping, is". When reality is that race is a socially constructed grouping of biological traits - i.e. a biocultural grouping. So while I do support removing the original wording, I do not support the current wording which simply took the article back to a previous racialist definition which is not current in any field of study.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:28, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, in the case of some editors, not seeing race as a social construct is not about those editors being racist and/or trolls. As has been noted before, there are anthropologists who disagree with simply defining race as a social construct. Maunus's point is valid. Per the continued debate about leading with "race is a social construct" or "race, as a social construct, is," I do think that the lead has been fine without it. The lead already makes it clear that "Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways, some of which have essentialist implications." We can also make it clearer in the lead what the scientific consensus is without beginning with "race is a social construct" or similar. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:39, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
Only the tiniest minority of anthropologists would consider race to not be primarily a social construct.[5] "Our data indicate there has been a “dramatic rejection” of race concepts among professional anthropologists regardless of subfield. We observed consensus that there are no human biological races and recognition that race exists but as lived social experiences that can have important effects on health. As such, anthropologists agree that it is important to understand the relationships among race, genetics, and health."·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:44, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
My words were "there are anthropologists who disagree with simply defining race as a social construct." The keyword is simply. And I've read a number of sources showing some anthropologists not as willing to reduce race to simply a social construct. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:49, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
There is nothing simple about a social construct. Most of the things that matter most in human lives are social constructs. That something is a social construct does not mean that it is not also something else. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:37, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
That's a given. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:24, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
To elaborate on not everyone who refuses to accept that race is a social construct is a racist, look at some of the sources on the matter that make it clear that society in general is unlikely to view race as a social construct any time soon. The idea of human races is ingrained into society due to the social, political and economic meanings of race. Judging groups as a race based on the way they look is a part of that. Society doesn't seem to want to do away with the notion of race, no matter how many scientists state that it doesn't exist. I've tried to tell many people -- black, white, or other -- that race does not exist, and most are beyond skeptical when I state this. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:52, 4 October 2017 (UTC) Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:59, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
Race exists, so don't tell anyone that it doesn't. It just doesn't exist independently of how human societies choose to construct it.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:11, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
I tell them it doesn't exist based on what scientists state. And those scientists do indeed use the wording "doesn't exist." Of course, they clarify, like this source you cited does. So do I. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:49, 5 October 2017 (UTC) Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
You mean it doesn't exist according to those scientists selected by the newspaper editors you cite. Rupert the Frog (talk) 14:08, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Nope. But I see you have returned to WP:Sock yet again. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:37, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
But they are racialists, pursuing a set of ideas from the 1800s to the mid-20th century, and which has been debunked by genetics. It's all about haplogroups, when it comes to the biology side, and it's all about human perception and our innate need to categorize and label things on the social side. Race "exists" primarily as a set of social effects, not underlying facts. As I think I've noted here before, we know that, e.g., neighboring but endogamous peoples in Africa generally have more genetic diversity between then than is found between Spaniards and Okinawans. But human perception leads most of us to want to lump Africans together as all "the same thing", to call them all "black" or "African" as a type, a race, because of superficial similarities like dark skin (convergent evolution – there's strong pressure in the tropics to be darker, for multiple reasons covered in innumerable papers, but it hasn't been operating long enough on some populations, e.g. indigenous peoples of the tropical belt of the Americas, and various groups in India who've moved south within historical times, to have had much of an effect on them yet).

This article is always going to be difficult to maintain because it's always going to be edited sporadically by people who do not understand genetics. E.g. you'll find reasoning like "how can it be that all populations in this particular cluster are not all one real race when they all have the same anti-malaria adaptation?", and you'll find that reasoning in various non-scientific publications, not just in editors' heads. This is the Dunning–Kruger effect at work; people figure out what a "sciencey" term means, in broad strokes, and think they understand the real-world mechanisms the term refers to, but they usually do not. People on and off WP engage in massive confirmation bias, seeking out sources that agree with their pre-conceived notions, and passing over any that give them a feeling of cognitive dissonance. This problem is compounded by social "science" being pretty much completely addicted to racialism, and various other disciplines (like psychology and psychiatry in the United States) using it as a convenient short-hand. What they're dealing with is the effects of racialist thinking in society over a long span of time – i.e. they're working with race as a social construct – not with whether the underlying Victorian-era idea behind race was sound to begin with. We have to distinguish these things better on Wikipedia, the way we distinguish between a religion's doctrine and the historicity of various claims the religion makes. The belief in race is very similar to religious faith.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  22:47, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Thanks for this. I'm very impressed. Doug Weller talk 12:12, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
I do my best. :-) PS: If anyone wants to know why the anti-malarial sickle-cell anemia thing isn't proof of a single race in Africa (and a different anti-malarial adaptation doesn't prove a single race in Asia), it's because an advantageous adaptation (even one problematic in later life, as long as it enhances survival rates to breeding age) will sweep through a population geometrically in just a few generations, and stick, and will also jump (through very few interbreeding events – possibly just a single case), into a neighboring population and become dominant in it as well just as quickly, and so on, until it reaches an area where it is no longer strongly or at all advantageous; meanwhile, genetic material that does not provide such an advantage will be quickly lost in the sea of "foreign" DNA and not retained. I read some really good stuff on this (in a secondary source, not just a primary research paper) last year; I can probably dig that up if we think it will come in handy, but I'll need to go through a big book stack to find it again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  12:30, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
  • I've tweaked the changes to the definition somewhat. I think it is a really bad idea to have the definition be in the definite singular "a race" - the article is about the concept of race itself - which is the nature of how racial groups come to be. Using the definite singular contributes to reifying the idea that these groupings are units with objective construct validity of some sort, and it also flies in the face of the general practice nowadays which is to avoid pluralizing "races" and instead talk of "racial groups". The lead still needs to give much more information about the social significance of race - its links to social inequlity etc - but this is also missing from the article.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:51, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
    Good point.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  10:44, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Please remove the concept that "race is the categorization of humans into races, based on shared social or cultural traits" as per "race" @wiktionary "A large group of people distinguished from others on the basis of common physical characteristics". There is a separate page for culture - the social behavior and norms found in human societies'. This is a fringe terminology used by anthropologists and the social sciences and not a mainstream meaning. Dougmcdonell (talk) 23:15, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Um, no. It's not logically possible for the prevailing anthropological and sociological view on an anthropological and sociological topic to be WP:FRINGE. The fringe view is that the social sciences are all wrong about their own concept. This article is about that. It is not about the dictionary definition of "race"; see WP:NOTDICT and WP:NOT#DICT. There is no encyclopedic article to write about a dictionary definition of this (which varies by dictionary anyway). Dictionaries are not reliable sources for details about fields of study, only about word usage, and we're not really writing about the word usage, though we could have a section on that, covering conflicting dictionary definitions, and the shifting of them over time as anthropological conception of race has itself shifted. Even that's kind of iffy, though; it would be better to arrange the article chronologically and integrate any definitional shifts into a material on different conceptions of race in different eras.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  23:30, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
If anthropologists' terminology about groups of humans were fringe, one might well wonder what might constitute the mainstream! As SMcCandlish notes, a dictionary is not an acceptable source for this content. I'd further note that Wiktionary is not an acceptable source in any context, as far as Wikipedia articles go. RivertorchFIREWATER 04:46, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: @Rivertorch: Mainstream is really quite an easy concept, it's the view held by some large part of the six billion people that are involved in the human race. Fringe is quite easy too, it's the view held by a 100,000 western anthropologists since 1990. Surprising that the dictionary meaning of "race" is off topic, has the word been changed? A somewhat broader world view would be very helpful. Dougmcdonell (talk) 19:17, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
Re-arguing that we should be going with dictionary definitions after it's been explained why we don't is just circular argument.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  04:43, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
Hi SMcCandlish, I had some trouble with your final explanation, things like "social sciences are all wrong about their own concept", nope - racial groups is not their concept, see "history". You also tried to explain that "It is not about the dictionary definition of "race" and linked to WP:NOTDICT which says "Wikipedia articles should begin with a good definition" - was the word "not" an accident or did you mean to link to some other guidance? A further explanation was "Dictionaries are not reliable sources for details about fields of study, only about word usage" - yes "word usage" is helpful, whether "social construct" is a common description of "racial groups" is exactly this talk page topic. If we could settle that, then we would know what "details about fields of study" follow.
I would claim that the "social construct" is only found in science. I get the impression you're clearing up what racial group really means to the "social sciences", while I claim that is a fringe opinion in an article where genetics, is the only science(often used to disprove claims). I also looked for "race" at the articles on social science and Anthropology without one hit. If you would like to substantiate the claim that "racial group" is part of those sciences wouldn't that be the place? And it would probably be less contentions to use "ethnic group" which does include social. Regarding my previous comment where I brought up fringe and said "A somewhat broader world view would be very helpful", you seemed to miss that I was asking you to look beyond science, race has a huge history and the science of race does not. Dougmcdonell (talk) 20:07, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
If you don't accept my version of an answer I don't see how re-stating my version of an answer will be helpful. You also don't appear to accept Rivertorch's. So, I guess you can wait for someone else to provide a third one, or just move on.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  20:41, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
I see I was pinged above, but the notification didn't work. Dougmcdonell, I'm afraid I don't know what you mean. The global population is around 7.5 billion, not 6 billion. Is the missing 1.5 billion not "involved in the human race"? I don't get it.
Wikipedia is most definitely biased towards science in its coverage of the natural world and its various components, including humans and the categories they've bestowed on themselves. Anthropology is the study of humans and humanity; it is the group of basic scientific disciplines most relevant to this topic. If you're arguing that a crowd-sourced dictionary is more useful than sources such as review articles for determining the scope of this article, then all I can say is that that's not the way Wikipedia works. RivertorchFIREWATER 07:45, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
Yes, "biased toward science in its coverage of the natural world and its various components" is what any encyclopedia or any other work of true non-fiction is. We're not here to attempt to document the unverifiably subjective, the assumptive and untestable. The science focus Dougmcdonell finds objectionable somehow is not what WP:BIAS refers to here. This is just properly encyclopedia writing. "I came to this article expecting to have my ideas about race covered and reaffirmed and didn't get that" isn't a valid rationale for us to rewrite this article or any article like it. Given some secondary, independently, reliable sources' analyses of various assumptions and perceptions about race, we can cover that here, in a section about it, but by its nature, it's not the actual central topic of the article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  17:29, 19 November 2017 (UTC); revised: 20:46, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
Very few geneticists or biologists specializing in human physical and genetic variation will now flat out only state that race "doesn't exist", and always have to use ambiguous and verbose descriptions along with a statement if ever claiming such, because they know the enormity of genetic and physical anthropological evidence now is quite clearly the opposite. Scientists know very well that sub-species exist in most vertebrates, and the variation is similar to that between human racial groups. There are varying categories of differentiation, and many human racial groups have greater genetic distance, and isolation over time, than that found between well documented sub-species in other mammals. Only certain human groups are now known to have genetic traits from other Homo species, like neaderthalensis, floresiensis, erectus, etc, and none of these markers are found in unmixed, indigenous sub-Saharan Africans. There is only a tiny amount found at points where the groups intersect, such as in the Horn of Africa in East Afric among Semitic-speaking groups, but the occurence there is still extremely rare, and does not reach the presence found among Caucasians, Asians, or Australasians. Even in those places, these markers, such as those from Floresiensis, are only found in Australoid peoples like Papuans and Australian aborogines.
To claim race or sub-species don't exist in human groups, when some of our groups have been fully isolated from one another for well over 100,000 to 150,000 years, and have markers from other homo species which were separate for 400,000 to 500,000 years, is the most ridiculous statement any biologist can make on this topic. This is especially so given that sub-species are widely accepted to exist in other mammals who have only been genetically isolated for as little as 4,000, to 5,000 years, such as in the case of the time of separation between some subspecies of wolves, or those of some bear species. Sub-species have clines or gradient of varying degrees and steepness at certain geographic junctures as well, as do species like Polar Bears and Brown Bears, but it doesn't stop scientists from separating their clusters into obvious specific species and sub-species. Small, restrictive areas where there is overlap doesn't negate the difference between 99% of the members between each population. The gradients also are not equal, with the overlap being more abrupt in some cases than others. This is the same thing for human sub-species, racial groups, ethnicities, populations, clines, etc. Pygmies, Khoisan people and Negritos have physical and genetic traits which no indigenous European or East Asian possess, and are different enough that they are a separate sub-species from us, and from one another. Steatopygia for example does not occur in indigenous Caucasian or East Asian peoples. 2607:FEA8:1C5F:ECA3:1D62:7613:C57B:44A2 (talk) 06:00, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
There are no human populations that have been fully isolated for anything approaching 100,000 years. Humans are significantly less genetically diverse than most other species, even the small and geographically concentrated population of Chimpanzees humans have much less genetic diversity. The same goes for dogs (a subspecies of wolf). ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:04, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
I wonder why it has been removed. Because it doesn't matter how many fools you can quote foolishness from, it doesn't change the nature of that foolishness. It's bunk. Pseudoscience. And I agree with you that there are inaccuracies, but you need to agree that as with any category concerning billions and billions of people, you must accept innacuracy, otherwise you're not really interested in science. Then again, it's very doubtful you're interested in the science to begin with, I mean, you can't see past the pretty obvious piece of social engineering and marketing called "race is a social construct", that is only here to undermine even the possibility of discussing race. — Preceding unsigned comment added by A10000000000975 (talk • contribs) 19:22, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Blacklisted?

A note at the beginning of the article states that the following link has been "blacklisted":

http://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/on-the-concept-of-race-in-chinese-biological-anthropology-alive-and-well.pdf

I followed the link, and read the article. It seems to be a legitimate article, about a legitimate study, with citations referencing bona fide scientific journals.

Why is it "blacklisted"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 01:58, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I have removed the tag, as it's no longer on the blacklist. —PaleoNeonate – 05:23, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Ref & Cite confusion

I've just fixed some broken Ref / Cite links. I've left others unfixed, mostly because I'm not sure how to fix them working from the info in the article, particularly Templeton and Montagu cites. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 05:40, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

add Sociology to discussion of disciplinary approaches

I'm part of the pilot Wikipedia Fellows program, and I'm a sociologist. I'm interested in writing a section about the history of sociological thought about race that would go in the Views Across Disciplines subsection. I'll be working in my sandbox, found at AnaSoc AnaSoc (talk) 01:19, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Please, do not forget to cite your sources. Dimadick (talk) 10:33, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

@AnaSoc: Sounds good! Let me know if I can help at all. Generally, secondary sources like textbooks and state-of-the-literature articles might be the best sources to use. On topics like this, overuse of primary sources often get scrutinized as WP:SYNTH. EvergreenFir (talk) 19:23, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I added a section on the history of sociological thought on race as a system of human categorization. I am looking forward to comments and suggestions. AnaSoc (talk) 01:24, 19 February 2018 (UTC) Thanks to BradleyZopf for the suggestions of sociologists who theorized about racial classification systems.AnaSoc (talk) 01:43, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

race

According to "The Journey of Man" there is so such thing as race. This is genetics.

Sherry Schaller Marshall Assistant Professor — Preceding unsigned comment added by SSMarshall (talk • contribs) 19:15, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

As a social construct

I've restored the term social construct to the lead section based on the relevant entry in the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society, SAGE, 2008 (p. 1091). To wit:

In contemporary scholarship, four main concepts characterize race. First, race is socially constructed [...] This means that race is not an intrinsic part of a human being or the environment but, rather, an identity created using symbols to establish meaning in a culture or society.

—Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:06, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

You added mention of it in a different way than it was before. It doesn't start with "As a social construct," and not starting like that is an improvement. I don't have an issue with what is there now, except that "shared physical traits, ancestry, genetics, and social or cultural traits" is replaced with "shared physical or social qualities into categories." Furthermore, the lead already stated, "Although such groupings lack a firm basis in modern biology, they continue to have a strong influence over contemporary social relations."
SMcCandlish, thoughts? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:20, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, any changes to that material are apt to be controversial and should be discussed in detail (calmly). There are many "camps" on the matter, and even seemingly simple changes can result in objections on the basis of things the changers hadn't considered. I'm not personally having an overwhelming reaction one way or other, mind you. However, I think it's best if the material in the lead reflects diversity of opinion on the matter. We shouldn't say something like "race is a social construct", but rather indicate that many sources treat it as such. If some of the sources (that aren't fringe, or old which in this context amounts to fringe because old science gets replaced with new science) specifically bring up genetics and culture, we should not lose those terms (though ancestry = genetics).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:22, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

What is with this completely unscientific attitude to this article?

Chart showing human genetic clustering.[1]

There are actual reports on actual human gene clustering who happen to overlap with phenotypes of "race" and a few select people completely remove this information? If a study is countered by another study then talk how the study A says X and study B contradicts X. Don't remove A altogether because of own agenda. There are plenty of studies actually following up on A in the literature that explain why X exists. Nergaal (talk) 15:00, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

We have an article on human genetic clusters, that describes in some depth the challenges of using genetic clusters as if they are directly relevant for the question of races as biological groupings. The current article also describes this debate, though perhaps we could summarize that article better here - but simply reproducing Rosenberg et al's findings as if they are conclusive is not the right way to do this.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:07, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Well, I see that the current state of the article states that race has no roots in biology, which for several years now has been more and more countered. I am sure the entire article is in pitch perfect shape of actual most recent scientific research, and is not instead the representation of the personal opinion of a few select editors. Nergaal (talk) 15:14, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
  • And no, Nicholas Wade is not an neutral or reliable source for anything having to do with the relation between racial categories and the genetic sciences (read here how scientists have received his work). You clearæly do not actually know what the standing of this question is in the literature or in the relevant scientific fields.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:16, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
  • You are the one who are selecting a couple of sources that argue in favor of biological race without having any apparent clue of their actual scientific standing or how they have been received. That is unscientific cherry picking in the extreme, and is the wrong way to write a balanced informative article.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:19, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Oh, turns out you really wanted to prove me right. I love how a new article actually just happen to appear again in NYT just two days ago: With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real. Have fun making sure you misinterpret the actual consensus amongst the scientific community. I am sure you will prove that the the geneticist at Harvard Medical School has retrieved DNA from more than 900 ancient people. His findings trace the prehistoric migrations of our species is wrong.Nergaal (talk) 15:22, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I love how you resort to passive aggressive handwaving and additional cherry picking instead of actually informing yourself.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:24, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I see your NYT op ed and raise you with a The Guardian feature article.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:34, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
    • "Gavin Evans lectures at Birkbeck College and is the author of several books, including the memoir, Dancing Shoes is Dead. He has written widely on issues of race, IQ and genetics" Or in plain language, he does NOT do research. Anyways, even people who argue against race as an objective genomic classifier use the diagrams you are so quick to ignore. Nergaal (talk) 15:43, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
You are not mounting an actual agrument here, just a pissing contest. There are hundreds of genetics researchers who disagree that genetic cluster analysis is vindicating the race concept - 140 of them signed the statement rebutting Nicholas Wade. It is absurd to think that Rosenbergs cluster analysis which has been widely criticized as basically one random clustering structure that is an artefact of alreayd having used racial categories in the sampling process, should be featured prominently and with no discussion of the problems and arguments. Noone gets wiser from that. You are the one who is on a crusade here to make it appear as if one side in a complex and controversial debate is "winning", I am telling you that that is not the case, and that we do not help wikipedia or any of our readers by presenting it like that. If you start making some argued proposals for how to change the article and you get consensus for those proposals here - then we can proceed, but continuing with snarky passive aggressive comments and cherry picked sources is a waste of both your and my time.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:56, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Nah, this article in its current state is flawed since it starts from the statement "race is a social construct". There is absolutely no mention of genes inherited with intermixing with Neanderthals/Denisovarians/Erectus that happened after "out of Africa" event. There is no mention how some physiologic outcomes are traced from genes that came out of these interbreeding events. Even the least controversial section, "Race and health" completely ignores actual outcomes that are strongly correlated to what people in the field call "Race". If you think that the most important thing of an encyclopedia is to make people comfortable, instead of actually presenting balanced opinions than you are doing a great job. Have fun babysitting this article. Nergaal (talk) 15:59, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
The most important thing in an encyclpedia is to give a view of topics that is actually representative of the mainstream scientific views on a tpoic and which does not privilege certain random viewpoints that we may personally be attracted to. You seem to be more interested in having it representing a certain hotly contested viewpoint as if it were now the dominant one.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:04, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Nah, as this opinion puts it nicely, you fight racism with understanding what DNA says, not with ignorance. Right now the article reads like a hit-piece, completely ignoring the most recent research in the field because it has thoroughly been curated by personal views. Nergaal (talk) 16:09, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
I agree. What is important is understanding what DNA says - and a majority of geneticians do not think that genetics contradict the statement that race is a social construct, or that it validates traditional rwcial categories. Genetics can give us an extremely nuanced and detailed understanding of human biological variation, and reducing that to outdated and socially harmful ideas about racial categories does the exact opposite of making us more informed about human biology or about race. I am no huge fan of the article as it is ow, and I would prefer to rewrite it fro scratch giving a much better and more nuanced picture of both the biology of human genetic variation and ancestry and the historical processes and social dynamics that create racial groups as meaningful social categories . But in practice the hidge podge that is this article is the result of a deadlock between editors who want to represent the biological view of race, and those who dont and there are few possibilities of actually advancing. Fruitless exchanges like this one come up every one or two months, and keep the article in a permanent state of limbo presenting neither side of the argument well and giving a confused view of the issue.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:27, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Fruitless exchanges like this one come up every one or two months, and keep the article in a permanent state of limbo presenting neither side of the argument well This is the expected outcome to the de facto stance you adopt "anything new will not be put in". I am sure every time you or someone like you takes it out you think "I can't possibly expect someone else come in 2 months and mention the same exact thing, since me putting the head in the sand now is what is "a majority[citation needed] of geneticians think". Nergaal (talk) 16:40, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
You are not attempting to put anything new in. You areb attempting to put a POV in that we have already discussed extensively about how to include. You are also not producing any new arguments, only snarkiness and handwaving. And you are not demonstrating that you have anything more than a passing familiarity with the literature on the topic. So yes, that is what a fruitless exchange looks like. A fruitful exchange would start with actually recognizing that the topic is complex and that your favourite articles may not represent the consensus view.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:23, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

As I've been pointing out on the talk pages for related articles, WP:RS specifically discourages us from using isolated studies. Isolated studies are usually considered tentative and may change in the light of further academic research. If the isolated study is a primary source, it should generally not be used if there are secondary sources that cover the same content. Especially in scientific articles, we're meant to summarize the broad scientific consensus, not to serve as a dumping ground for random one-off studies that gave the results individual editors wanted. If a study is significant, and its results have been borne out elsewhere or its interpretation of the data is broadly-accepted, then it should be easy to find secondary sources elsewhere. --Aquillion (talk) 17:35, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't think this has to do with an isolated study. A tenured professor at Harvard has publications on this. But if you think "race is a social construct" is what wikipedia "ought" to be about then fine by me. Nergaal (talk) 19:45, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
There are tenured professors at Harvard who have books about race being a social construct. Please drop the idea that because Reich is at Harvard he represents the final truth. It is an intellectually immature idea. If you take the time to look at the major recent publications in the field, in textbooks that students are being taught after about race and about human biological variation then you have a chance to mount a sensible argument about what is or isn't an isolated study. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 05:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, we can look at recent publications to see whether an ancestry based race concept is in use.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=(asian+ancestry%2C+african+ancestry%2C+european+ancestry)
Apologies for referencing international biology rather than American sociology regarding whether something is biological. I see that it's not done in your article. Слагмастер (talk) 14:37, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

______

References

  1. ^ Rosenberg, Noah A.; Mahajan, Saurabh; Gonzalez-Quevedo, Catalina; Blum, Michael G. B.; Nino-Rosales, Laura; Ninis, Vasiliki; Das, Parimal; Hegde, Madhuri; Molinari, Laura (2006-12-22). "Low Levels of Genetic Divergence across Geographically and Linguistically Diverse Populations from India". PLOS Genetics. 2 (12): e215. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0020215. ISSN 1553-7404.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

is human categorization by race pseudoscience?

  • eugenics is often deemed a pseudoscience because what is defined as a genetic improvement of a desired trait is often deemed a cultural choice rather than a matter that can be determined through objective scientific inquiry.
  • Scientific racism is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority; alternatively, it is the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes or genotype into discrete races.

I suggest we add this article to the category pseudoscience and perhaps place a note at the top warning readers the concept is viewed as false by a majority of scientist. Darkstar1st (talk) 14:15, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Categorization into races is no pseudoscience, it is a social process just like the formation of nations or ethnic groups or football teams. What is pseudoscientific is to claim that such social groupings are defined primarily by shared biological traits.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:26, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Race as used by natural scientists is defined by shared ancestry like any other taxa. That's how they (Kant, Darwin, Rushton, et al.) defined it. Of course this article lies by omitting this. Race by that definition is very obviously a biological construct. Lying about this fact is the only pseudoscience here. Some race concepts are of course not strictly defined by ancestry and could be called "social". If someone defines race by ancestry (standard biological criterion), how can you claim their definition is different? Are you so arrogant as to make up fraudulent strawman definitions for the concepts of others? Tl;dr some race concepts are biological, and not "social", if we take "social" to imply "not biological". Слагмастер (talk) 14:20, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
It is true that it would be possible to have biological races if they did in fact make up well defined taxa within the human population. That would not be pseudoscience. But the groups that are generally considered human races are not taxa and are not defined by ancestry - and therefore it is pseudoscientific to treat them as if they are, which is what for example Rushton did.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:35, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
It's completely irrelevant whether "the groups that are generally considered human races", whoever is generally considering them and what they consider them to be, are taxa defined by ancestry. Let's assume you're right and "generally considered" races whatever they are are defined by skin color or something and don't match ancestry based taxa. The point you're evading is that some race concepts, notably those used by Rushton, Darwin, etc. are defined by ancestry, and so were not your "generally considered" non-ancestry based concepts. It's just a brazen lie to claim Rushton did not use an ancestry based concept, rather a "generally considered" one, whatever that is. Слагмастер (talk) 14:46, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
No, Rushton simply claims that social races are ancestry groups, but that is a pseudoscientific belief contradicted by fact. So yes, his race "concept" is ancestry based, but all of his actual applications of the concept to data are not. Which is kind of discrepancy between theory, evidence and application that is pretty characteristic of pseudoscience.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:51, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Nope. Africans share ancestry versus Europeans versus East Asians. I'm not sure what logical contortions you have to go through to deny that. I'm guessing some fake data about "diversity" from PBS or something. The entire field of medicine and genetics seem to disagree with you:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=(asian+ancestry%2C+african+ancestry%2C+european+ancestry) Слагмастер (talk) 15:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
The entire field you say [6][7]?·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:08, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
So in the face of an ancestry based race concept, conforming to the classic categories, being in regular use throughout medicine and genetics right now, you bring up a letter supporting no current evidence (either way) for genetic IQ differences from genetics? That's totally irrelevant. Слагмастер (talk) 15:17, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Include Darwin's definition of race in the article to balance the strawman definitions

WP:EVADE/WP:DENY EvergreenFir (talk) 18:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

"Grant all races of man descended from one race; grant that all structure of each race of man were perfectly known—grant that a perfect table of descent of each race was perfectly known.— grant all this, & then do you not think that most would prefer as the best classification, a genealogical one, even if it did occasionally put one race not quite so near to another, as it would have stood, if allocated by structure alone. Generally, we may safely presume, that the resemblance of races & their pedigrees would go together."[8] Слагмастер (talk) 14:25, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, and so what? Of course Darwin also thought "races" were ancestry based groupings. But we know that he was wrong in that belief. We know know that it is not possible to know perfectly the structure of each "race" or to could have a perfect table of descent. So whether he is right in that under those circumstances a genealogical understanding of race would be logically preferable, is irrelevant. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:57, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
He defined races as ancestry based groupings. How could that be "wrong"? That's his definition. Would you apply the same arguments to other ancestry based groupings in biology? That we may not be able to get a "perfect" table of descent? Flatly asserting that the definition is "wrong"? How about you take your absurd sophistry to the phylogenetics page? Tell them their definition of classifying by descent is "wrong" and their results aren't "perfect". Слагмастер (talk) 15:30, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
The definition was wrong in that it does not correspond to the reality of the groups we talk about as "races". It is not wrong a priori, but only in its lacking correspondence with empirical reality. I have no problems with phylogeny or ancestry based classifications, but human racial groups are not taxa, and much less are they monophyletic taxa..·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:39, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

First sentence is clumsy

The first sentence of the article is very clumsy. I don't have a quick fix, as I'm not an expert and the topic may be contentious. Nurg (talk) 01:43, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Yep, it is clumsy, and yes we have worked very hard on it and not found a better way to phrase it.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 01:50, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
I suspect it's clumsy because the concept of race is itself such a clumsy one, and has many different meanings to different people. To me, the words "generally" and "society" epitomise those problems, both being words with no certainty attached to them. But if you get any more certain, you will be guaranteed to upset somebody. HiLo48 (talk) 02:04, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
Although I questioned the current lead sentence, as seen at Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 34#As a social construct, before later tweaking it, I think it is fine. I also said it was fine back then. It's supported by the source the wording is based on. I don't find it clumsy at all. Perhaps Nurg will explain why he or she finds the line clumsy. As for "generally," it is synonymous with "typically" and "usually" (in most cases at least). I see no problem with using it, especially when reliable sources do. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:51, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
Give us precise definitions of "generally", "typically" and "usually". We are aiming to be a quality encyclopaedia, and sloppy language doesn't help anybody. HiLo48 (talk) 04:56, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean, and I will not be arguing perfectly fine use of "generally," "typically" and "usually" with you, as if readers do not know what those terms mean, and especially not when those terms are supported by reliable sources. We do not need to spell out what "generally" means for readers. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:01, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
Given the controversial nature of this topic, and the diverse views on it around the world, I find that response particularly unhelpful. And don't just resort to the sources as an excuse. They write for much narrower audiences than we, as a global encyclopaedia, must.— Preceding unsigned comment added by HiLo48 (talk • contribs) 05:07, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
"Generally" is used by the source. I really don't see a problem here. EvergreenFir (talk) 05:11, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm from a country where people are not labelled according to their race at all. We simply don't use the term. Can you see the problem that someone with my perspective might have? HiLo48 (talk) 05:18, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Truly fascinating EvergreenFir (talk) 05:38, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
You need to read where that link takes you more carefully. It's from 1991. The word "race" occurs twice. The first use is misleading because the document is 27 years old. There has been no question mentioning race on the census for many years. Respondents are asked to self-declare their ancestry. That's a very different thing. HiLo48 (talk) 05:48, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
My response is particularly unhelpful? Your response is particularly unhelpful. You are not making a bit of sense on "generally," or even on "society." "Generally", "typically" and "usually" are common sense words, and there is no way to define them other than citing them as a synonym of the other, or stating "mostly" or something like that. Go ahead, Google is at your disposal. We use "typically" in our medical articles as well. Should we try to define the common sense word "typically" in those article too? You only started watching this article because of this and/or this discussion, and I am not interested in the same type of non-arguments and aggravating antics you pulled in either of those. You stating "don't just resort to the sources as an excuse" makes me want to point you to WP:Verifiability. At times, I honestly cannot tell if you are trolling. This is my last response to you on this matter. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:31, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
What makes you think you have any idea of why I watch this article? That I disagree with you? You're wrong about why and how long I have been watching it, BTW. Personal attacks won't help. HiLo48 (talk) 05:37, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
Exercise extreme caution. "Yep, it is clumsy, and yes we have worked very hard on it and not found a better way to phrase it" is entirely correct. It's taken a great deal of stress and struggle to get even to this level of agreement on the wording, and this article has long been covered by discretionary sanctions. Any changes to that sentence really need to have a thorough consensus discussion, I would say.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:28, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Infrasubspecific divisions have taxonomic significance

I'm burying this dead horse before it draws any more flies. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:16, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

WP:POINTY and not the place to opine on statements in article EvergreenFir (talk) 04:46, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

"argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance by pointing out that all living humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens, and (as far as applicable) subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens."

But it's policy here to copy paste self-evidently false material from "reliable sources". Han Jo Jo (talk) 11:30, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Do infrasubspecific divisions have taxonomic significance?

  • Yes Han Jo Jo (talk) 20:02, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
  • WP:NOT#FORUM. Wikipedia polls do not determine reality. As for RS: infrasubspecific taxa are used in botany, but not in zoology; see MOS:ORGANISMS for bullet-point summary of how this stuff works across various fields. If zoology were to adopt the idea, it would probably start with livestock breeds, but the real world has not done anything like this; such fine distinctions are entirely outside zoological nomenclature.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:48, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
  • The poiint is moot since there is a general consensus among paleoanthropologists and population geneticists that racial groupings are not a taxonomically significant subdivisions of Homo sapiens.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 03:07, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

"The ICZN deals with nomenclature, not taxonomy. So it is not up to the Commission to declare whether something has taxonomic significance or not." ICZN, personal communication.

Why are the sociologists here cherry picking extreme minority views from 2004 to represent the ICZN when the ICZN themselves disagree? Han Jo Jo (talk) 07:01, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Me: "So it would be fair to say the referenced statement is incorrect? That the ICZN don't record a taxon is irrelevant to whether it has taxonomic significance?"

ICZN: "Yes" Han Jo Jo (talk) 08:03, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Can you show us where that has been published? See WP:VERIFY's nutshell:" Readers must be able to check that any of the information within Wikipedia articles is not just made up. This means all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources." Doug Weller talk 08:08, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Personal communication. Contact them and check. Clearly your sources are not reliable at all. Han Jo Jo (talk) 08:14, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Repeat: Personal communication isn't a reliable source. No matter who it comes from.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:02, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
This is pointless hairplitting. Professional consensus among anthropologists and geneticists is against the notion. More to the point of this new wave of blather: ICZN sets nomenclature; there is no nomenclatural level (no taxonomic rank) to which human "races" are assigned in modern science, by any body that deals with taxonomy, i.e., with assigning particular subspecific or infrasubspecific names – taxa – at ICZN taxonomic (nomenclatural) ranks. That is, Han Jo Jo is barking up the wrong tree, in the wrong forest. PS: As I think I mentioned earlier, this is exactly the same "un-taxonomy" situation as with breeds and landraces of domesticated livestock. (However, they're otherwise not very comparable – no one is selectively breeding humans to fix particular traits; humans mate with whoever they feel like and can get away with mating, and we move around, a lot).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:13, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Please stop making the argument that because there's a "consensus among professionals" that "race does not exist" (which is completely dubious incidentally) that any race denial statement is justified. Whether there is a consensus or not, the argument that because the ICZN do not record an infrasubspecific division that it's therefore of "no taxonomic significance" is without question false. You're just making a non-sequitur assertion, repeating what I already said, that the ICZN deals with nomenclature not taxonomy, then randomly accusing me of "barking up the wrong tree". The statement is simply wrong. If you don't have the integrity to admit that because of your "race does not exist" POV there is little I can do. Sad article, sad website. Han Jo Jo (talk) 20:05, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Straw man, twice over. This discussion has nothing to do with whether "race does not exist", but with whether there's any RS support for the idea of classifying humans racially by taxa. There isn't. Secondly, neither the article nor anyone in this discussion has said "race does not exist"; rather, it is social construct, and a concept not supported by modern, reputable biological, anthropological, genetics, and other sources. It's a concept that retains currency pretty much only in sociology (i.e.: it is a social construct). People who don't understand or refuse to accept this are making a logic error, confusing the current scientific understanding that various human populations (overlapping and shifting) have averagable phenotypic traits and are distinct via various criteria, with the old idea of three (or four, or five) "races". It's like trying to apply a map of the surface of the moon to Eurasia and declaring you're going to navigate by it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:02, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
No it's not a general point about "whether there's any RS support for the idea of classifying humans racially by taxa" (there is). It's specifically about the statement in the article that race has no taxonomic significance because humans belong to the same first level subspecies division, which is a false statement. You're just repeating the same "race does not exist" mantra (throwing in some more diversionary fake arguments) to justify any nonsensical statement which has that conclusion. Fake science. See also WP:NOTFORUM Bobby Kwan (talk) 07:34, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Lede tone is un-encyclopedic

Currently the lede section does not talk about what race is but instead sets up unflattering targets to knock down to persuade the reader not to think certain things about race.

This is an inappropriate tone for an encyclopedic article, it reads like the forward to an undergraduate 'intro to social philosophy' chapter.

The article seems to be written mostly from within the sphere of a particular brand of social anthropology. It uses snarl words to describe other approaches. Even if population genetics does not primarily deal with the language and concepts used to discuss race in a social context, it nonetheless deserves great weight and prominence since its findings are the primary evidence by which any past or current theories implicating race can be evaluated.

The lede section needs to neutrally explain the modern concept of race in the relevant disciplines and as a heuristic in medicine, government censuses. The historical theories can be laid out later. We would not begin an article on disease by laying out an ancient theory of evil spirits. If nobody works to reform the lede, after an appropriate period I will begin rewriting it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beepborpwhoorpp (talk • — Beepborpwhoorpp (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. contribs) 17:37, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah the article is maintained by American sociologists not biologists. Han Jo Jo (talk) 11:23, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Contradiction (paragraph on France) and lack of references

The article currently says "approximately five percent of the French population is non-European". This is arguably a false statement as by definition French citizens are European. You may rephrase it for example by saying that the contemporary French population has various origins, some of which come from its former colonies.

Another point of contention is that the five percent figure is not justified by a reference. There are no ethnicity information in national French census, so I don't know how the author came up with that number. If it comes from a statistical survey, the reference should be mentioned.

Lastly I suggest that the sentence "Since the end of the Second World War, France has become an ethnically diverse country." could be revised as follows: "Ethnic diversity in metropolitan France has increased after the second world war and the rapid dismantling of its colonial empire." The current version seems to imply that it wasn't ethnically diverse before the war. The colonial empire brought ethnic diversity early on. A famous example of a metis in nineteenth century Paris is Alexandre Dumas. And though possibly rare it was by no means an isolated phenomenon.

But more than anything, I believe that the article wouldn't suffer if we would remove that paragraph on France entirely. Regards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:C50E:89BE:C800:2164:5432:F048:946 (talk) 13:15, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

I think you may be confusing European as defined by location and as defined by ancestry. And I think you need better sources for "diverse" than one person. 99.999999999...% ethnic European isn't "diverse". John Burgundy (talk) 10:17, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Let me insist on the lack of references in the paragraph on France. I suggest that all the text up to "French policy agenda." be removed: it presents figures that are not backed up by references. 2A01:C50E:89BE:C800:C9E2:37C3:7477:70DB (talk) 06:32, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Nah, just source it. This is basic stats stuff. Our existing articles on these places already provide the sources to use for doing so.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:26, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

New York Times article on racial genetics

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/us/white-supremacists-science-dna.html

Apparently it's bad because of supremacy and eugenics and racism. Apparently everybody's "flummoxed" over the "fraught topic" or something. It sounds like politically motivated whining, with zero understanding of the science. Actually it sounds like they don't like the science because it blows out their political delusions. I guess this isn't a reliable source. Nicholas Richardson (talk) 17:30, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Actually, it is a reliable source, and it doesn't say any of the bullshit you just said. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:25, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
>Races not being exactly the same is white supremacy
>Reliable source
>Facepalm Nicholas Richardson (talk) 20:38, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
Go back to /pol/. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:26, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

MPants at work dictating discussion

Why does user "MPants at work" think he has the right to end discussion like some judge? He is more than welcome to refute my point, if he can. Has he been appointed commissar of official state science? Bobby Kwan (talk) 13:51, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

You made no points at all, all you did was use this page as a forum for your bitching and bullshit and hypocritically link another editor to WP:NOTFORUM. If you do not stop this you will be blocked from editing. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:56, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
You're a liar and my point is clear in my post. It's specifically about an article error, and a request for editors to stop trying to distract from this with WP:FORUM lectures and now procedural shenanigans. The environment here is disgraceful. Bobby Kwan (talk) 14:09, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Whatever. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:18, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Just noting that shock, horror! - after Bobby Kwan was blocked he came back with a sock. Doug Weller talk 19:49, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
I was eating limburger cheese at the time so I didn't even notice till someone took out the laundry. Supposedly, this is MikeMikev, a prolific sockpuppeteer. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:58, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Title

Simplification of title: Wouldn't race (categorization) or race (category) be simpler to use as a title and link? What is the history of how this article is named? Human race seems almost the simplest, although its ambiguous with the human race as a whole concept. Race by itself should redirect here, shouldn't it? There is an idea of where proper titling accomplishes something of enforcing neutrality, but then there is still the excessively long title and article link.

Maybe sending race category links to racialism would work, like race activity links to racing. Seems the 'concept of race' and racialism are largely equivalent.

-Inowen (nlfte) 06:23, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

What issue do you have with the current title? The most recent discussions concerning the title are seen at Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 34#Article move? and Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 34#Revert of "racial classification" for the start of the lead sentence. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:02, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 December 2018

Please remove and replace the link in the citations for the citation: "The Myth of Race". Medicine Magazine. 2007. Archived from the original on 1 January 2009. Clicking the link to the original article downloads software rather than directing the reader to "The Myth of Race" article. 73.115.144.109 (talk) 12:17, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks for finding this problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Double

There is a doubling (based on based on) in the section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)#Ancestrally_differentiated_populations_(clades) that I cannot correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevensite (talk • contribs) 10:22, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

 Done Fixed it. Good catch. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:29, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

What's the point of the "Defining race" section?

OP has been blocked for obvious reasons.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

No offense to all the people who contributed to this article, but the entire "Defining race" section seems to be /NOT/ defining race, or more specifically, it spends most of it's words defining away races. It seems as if someone deemed this to be necessary in order to calm people who are offended by the idea that race may be biological or genetic, or by those who might view the concepts as racist. A "soothing" section for those who are easily offended is a complete contradiction to what Wikipedia stands for. I'd argue that this section either needs to be a) entirely re-worked or b) deleted completely, as it contributes absolutely nothing to the rest of the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.54.0.181 (talk) 00:40, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Race is defined by shared ancestry like any other taxa in biology. They reference unsourced strawman definitions from people hostile to the race concept.

  • Darwin (1857): "Grant all races of man descended from one race; grant that all structure of each race of man were perfectly known—grant that a perfect table of descent of each race was perfectly known.— grant all this, & then do you not think that most would prefer as the best classification, a genealogical one, even if it did occasionally put one race not quite so near to another, as it would have stood, if allocated by structure alone. Generally, we may safely presume, that the resemblance of races & their pedigrees would go together."
  • Dobzhansky (1970): “A race is a Mendelian population, not a single genotype; it consists of individuals who differ genetically among themselves … This is not to deny that a racial classification should ideally take cognizance of all genetically variable traits, oligogenic as well as polygenic."
  • Hartl and Clark (1997): "In population genetics, a race is a group of organisms in a species that are genetically more similar to each other than they are to the members of other such groups. Populations that have undergone some degree of genetic differentiation as measured by, for example, Fst, therefore qualify as races."
  • Leroi (2005): "Populations that share by descent a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else."
  • Coyne (2014). “To a biologist, races are simply genetically differentiated populations, and human populations are genetically differentiated. Although it’s a subjective exercise to say how many races there are, human genetic differentiation seems to cluster largely by continent, as you’d expect if that differentiation evolved in allopatry (geographic isolation)
  • Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele in their book Race: The Reality of Human Differences (2004: 207): "Races are populations, or groups of populations, within a species, that are separated geographically from other such populations or groups of populations and distinguishable from them on the basis of heritable features."
  • Neven Sesardic stated in the paper Race: a social destruction of a biological concept (2010): "First, the basic meaning of "race" seems to imply that, due to a common ancestry, members of a given race A will display increased genetic similarity, which will make them in some way genetically different from individuals belonging to another race, B. Second, it is frequently assumed that A-individuals will also differ systematically from B-individuals with respect to some genetically determined morphological characteristics (skin color, hair texture,facial features,etc.), with these morphological differences being the basis for the common-sense racial recognition and classification. And third, A-individuals could differ from B-individuals with respect to some genetically determined psychological characteristics as well."
  • Richard Lynn in his book Race Differences in Intelligence (2006: 7): "A simple and straightforward definition of race is that it consists of a group that is recognizably different from other groups. A fuller definition is that a race is a breeding population that is to some degree genetically different from neighboring populations as a result of geographical isolation, cultural factors, and endogamy, and which shows observable patterns of genotypic frequency differences for a number of intercorrelated, genetically determined characteristics, compared with other breeding populations. Geographical contact zones between races generally contain racial hybrids, who show intermediate values of gene frequencies from the more central distributions of the breeding groups."

It's clearly just a lie that there's a consensus about this. Note how they only reference people hostile to the race concept, including charlatans like Templeton. They are lying by omission. Von Clown (talk) 07:17, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

So Doug Weller has threatened to block me unless I make suggestions about how to improve the article. My suggestion is that you put these definitions in the definitions section. I understand it kind of contradicts the garbage you have there already. Von Clown (talk) 12:23, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

"race is not an inherent physical or biological quality"

OP has been blocked for obvious reasons.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

In the lead. Is any taxonomic classification an "inherent physical or biological quality"? Does a cat have an inherent physical or biological cat quality? This sophistic gibberish could be used to impugn all taxonomy. Classifications are based on similarities, not some imaginary "inherent quality". Von Clown (talk) 07:20, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

I'd say that, yes, cats do. So do humans. But within the human RACE, it all becomes too vague and imprecise. And cultural. And political. HiLo48 (talk) 07:37, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
Oh it's political alright. Which is exactly why you charlatans come out with this ad hoc pseudoscientific crap to bolster your Marxist delusions. No cats don't have an "inherent cat quality". What are you even talking about. They just share ancestry and overall similarity with other cats. It seems the chosen strawman lie of this article is that "racists" believe in Platonic essentialism. How absurd. You people are an embarrassment to scholarship. If there is any "essential quality" it's shared ancestry. Is that false science? Perhaps you should go and come out with this crap at the phylogenetics page. Oh wait, you people know sod all about biology and only parrot Marxist gibberish from your fake science anthropology departments. Von Clown (talk) 07:38, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
While carefully contemplating my Marxist delusions, one thing I have no delusions about is that insulting other editors is not acceptable here. Please read Assume good faith. HiLo48 (talk) 07:50, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
Filling articles with cherry picked lies is though, apparently. Von Clown (talk) 07:54, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Request that only editors with a history of working on biology edit this page

OP has been blocked for obvious reasons.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

If there are going to be claims about biology in this article they should not be the postmodernist gobbledegook we're getting from whatever clowns are editing it now. Von Clown (talk) 07:58, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Have you read Assume good faith yet? HiLo48 (talk) 08:04, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
What is there to assume? The article is filled with one-sided pseudoscience gibberish. It's a simple fact. Von Clown (talk) 08:20, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Grayfell's revisions

OP has been blocked for obvious reasons.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This article relentlessly discusses biology. Even if you think race is always and only a "social construct" or whatever, this article clearly has relevance to biology. It should be in Category:Biology. And further, we need to get some biologists to review. Since when do cultural anthropologists get to decide what is biological? By voting no less. Von Clown (talk) 15:12, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

I notice now more editors ("Flyer22") are appearing to revert and tell me to "discuss", after I opened a discussion, and while not discussing. So this is the kind of tactic people here engage in? How absolutely disgusting. Von Clown (talk) 17:33, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
As the hatnote says at the top of the page: "This article is about human races as a social concept and in anthropology. For the sociological concept, see Race and society. For "the human race" (all of humanity), see Human. For the term "race" in biology, see Race (biology)." It doesn't make sense for the page specifically devoted to the social / non-biological aspect of race to be tagged as biology. Beyond that, tags are required to be neutral; obviously, tagging the page devoted to the social / non-biological aspects of race with "biology" is not neutral, since it implicitly contradicts what many sources in the article say. --Aquillion (talk) 01:12, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
For what it's worth, this article is in a subcategory of Category:Biology, so all else aside, it shouldn't be in the top-level category. Guettarda (talk) 02:40, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
It's a POV that human races are only sociological. That's a minority opinion among biologists. This article per the title is about human categorization. To claim that's only sociological is POV pushing. Sure the tag contradicts the cherry picked sources that fill the article. The reason for that is simple, most biologists disagree with those sources. The problem here is that the article is one-sided, POV, it's full of people out of the field speaking for the field. It's a joke. Von Clown (talk) 06:12, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
This is wrong, there is a broad consensus among geneticists and other spoecialists in human biological variation that race is a socicultural concept that fiuts badly with biological reality. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:24, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
If you're going to claim that most biologists disagree with this you're going to need sources. My experience is that most biologists don't spend much time thinking about this and don't have an opinion. But that doesn't change what I said - this can't be in parent and daughter categories. Guettarda (talk) 10:35, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
From the article:
"A survey, taken in 1985 (Lieberman et al. 1992), asked 1,200 American scientists how many disagree with the following proposition: "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens." The responses were for anthropologists: physical anthropologists 41% cultural anthropologists 53%...
"In the same 1985 survey (Lieberman et al. 1992), 16% of the surveyed biologists and 36% of the surveyed developmental psychologists disagreed with the proposition: "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens.""
Who's qualified to say something whether something is a biological construct? And this is just Americans, where race denial is highest. The whole article is biased towards an out of field view from people not qualified to judge. What a mess. Von Clown (talk) 11:11, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
The argument is silly, cause who is qualified to say that something is a cultural construct? These ancient surveys that keep getting recycled by "race realists" are completely irrelevant, for how this concept should be covered.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:24, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

France

3.3.3 (France) appears to be copying the cited article word-for-word. The article is also rather outdated, from 2001, (before immigration surged in Europe) and claims France to be about 5% non-white, despite there being no official statistics on race in France (while estimates put it at around or over 15%; the country being 7-9% muslim alone). Its comparison to the United States also rather lacks relevance. I would say to remove the section since there is already one on the European Union.

Also, the phrase "non-European and non-white" seems to denote 'European' as a demonym referencing ethnicity, not nationality, as if those deemed 'non-white' cannot be European? Are non-whites in France not French/European? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:186:4301:20E:3598:8DE7:5C:28D0 (talk) 20:42, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Just noting that this complaint was addressed by Doug Weller on January 27th with this edit. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:37, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Just noting that Von Clown was a sock of the racist Mikemikev

Who left me, using an IP with an obscene talk page message yesterday.[9] Lovely guy. Doug Weller talk 09:43, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

More recent research shows natural differences in race

More recent genetic research shows that we can now predict geographic ancestry almost with 100% accuracy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/#bib1

This is not to say that race is not a social construct (as almost anything is, including color shades), but it is an important point to add. This confirms that it is false that we might select inter-population genetic samples which are more genetically similar than intra-population samples, as was, and is still widely disseminated.

There are clear differences between our apparent selection of races, both empirically and genetically. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weagesdf (talk • contribs) 23:57, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Per the source's abstract:
...Phenotypes controlled by a dozen or fewer loci can therefore be expected to show substantial overlap between human populations. This provides empirical justification for caution when using population labels in biomedical settings, with broad implications for personalized medicine, pharmacogenetics, and the meaning of race.
And in the last paragraph:
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. Thus, caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes.
Grayfell (talk) 01:38, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
It sounds to me like this study shows that while race in the sense of a population is not a taxonomic rank below a species or subspecies, a race/population is "an inherent physical or biological quality", in contradiction to the Britannica source in the article.[10]
The first (ten year old) source is written by Richard T. Schaefer, is he a Scientologist?? That was suggested by Google search results referencing his book, Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Lifestyles. I have not otherwise researched his notability. [11]
I haven't researched all the sources in the article, but maybe it needs updating? I'm sure this has been discussed many times.... Kolya Butternut (talk) 19:25, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
This study seems consistent with this section of the article, which I think would make a good addition to the lead:

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."[12]

I also feel like the common conception of race as "regional ancestry" belongs in the lead, summarizing George W. Gill and C. Loring Brace, as does the controversial but common opinion that "races are real" and when that possibility is not presented "we are not dealing with science but rather with blatant, politically motivated censorship".[13] Kolya Butternut (talk) 23:57, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

David Reich op-ed

This seems quite notable:

In March 2018, Harvard geneticist David Reich published a New York Times op-ed, entitled “How Genetics is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race.’”[14] In the piece, Reich argues that geneticists “are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.” The article prompted 67 natural and social scientists, legal scholars and public health researchers to draft an open letter in response to Reich’s claims. The letter, published by Buzzfeed,[15] asserts that Reich misrepresents critiques of of the use of ‘race’ and ‘population’ in biomedical and genetic research."[16]

Kolya Butternut (talk) 02:40, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

You've pointed out the criticism Reich has received. And yet you added this and this to the article? And with no mention that Reich has been criticized? And you added a BuzzFeed source. I am very close to reverting you.
Maunus, thoughts? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:00, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
The criticism of Reich is not against his argument in that quote. The scholars who wrote the open letter published by Buzzfeed News (not Buzzfeed) state the same idea in the quote in the section below. Kolya Butternut (talk) 03:20, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Lead needs clarification

I feel like the open letter mentioned above concisely summarizes what our lead does not:

[The] robust body of scholarship recognizes the existence of geographically based genetic variation in our species, but shows that such variation is not consistent with biological definitions of race. Nor does that variation map precisely onto ever changing socially defined racial groups.

I think our lead should clearly explain these three issues: the social concept of race does not fit the zoological definition of race (Roberts 2011), "differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real" (Reich 2018), and there are no "sharp, categorical distinctions" (Roberts 2011) among "regional ancestry" (Brace 1995) groups. I'm hesitant to make any changes without discussion. Kolya Butternut (talk) 17:51, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

You've pointed out the criticism Reich has received. And yet you want to add his argument to the lead? No. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:00, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I made an attempt at an edit. [17] Kolya Butternut (talk) 02:30, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

And I reverted. You know that this is a contentious topic. You knowing that this is contentious is why you stated that you are "hesitant to make any changes without discussion." Despite this and my objection, you made the edit you made anyway.
Given what I stated above and our very unpleasant history with each other, it is much better if other watchers/editors of the article weigh in. So pinging Doug Weller, Carwil and Sangdeboeuf for their thoughts. As seen, I already pinged Maunus above.
Wait for others to comment. Let's not edit war. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:50, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
I didn't see your comment here until after I made the edit. I felt I made a careful edit. Can you state why you disagree with my edit? My edit to the lead was supported by many sources; it wasn't Reich's argument. Kolya Butternut (talk) 03:10, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Changes to the lead

Kolya Butternut proposes replacing this:

While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is not an inherent physical or biological quality.

with…

The race construct is partially based on physical similarities within geographic groups, but these particular shared genetics do not fit the zoological definition of race, and there are no "sharp, categorical distinctions."

Well, the propsed sentence (1) has an unfounded leap between "physical similarities" and "particular shared genetics" (there are, for example, multiple genetic causes for differences in skin color that between Africans and Europeans and members of each group don't all share the same genes even for skin color); (2) misses most of the largely consensus critique of race from a genetic basis. In particular, the following are all true:

  • Genetic variation and race aren't well aligned: "This doesn’t mean that genetic variation is unimportant; it is, but it does not follow racial lines." (open letter)
  • Genetic clustering is radically inconsistent: "further attempts to identify major human groups by clustering genotypes have yielded inconsistent results. … The inconsistencies in these results reflect a well-known feature of human diversity, that is, different genetic polymorphism are distributed over the world in a discordant manner. … It comes as no surprise, then, that if we look back at the many racial catalogs compiled since the 17th century, and at more recent genomic analyses (compare Refs 19, 32, 34, Figure 1), the only point they seem to have in common is that each of them contradicts all the others" (Barbujani, G., S. Ghirotto, and F. Tassi. “Nine Things to Remember about Human Genome Diversity.” Tissue Antigens 82, no. 3 (September 1, 2013): 155–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/tan.12165.)
  • Because of wide variation in individual genes, membership in a group does not predict individual genetics: "Whatever term one uses to define a group of people, be it population, ethnic group, or even race, both the authors and the readers must understand that there is no deterministic connection between being part of such groups and carrying a certain genotype or phenotype." (Barbujani, G., S. Ghirotto, and F. Tassi. “Nine Things to Remember about Human Genome Diversity.” Tissue Antigens 82, no. 3 (September 1, 2013): 155–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/tan.12165.)

The cited sources in the original version observe:

  • Barnshaw: "race is not an intrinsic part of the human being or the environment but, rather, an identity … Although physical characteristics constitute a portion of the concept of race, this is a physical rather than a biological distinction."
  • Britannica: "Genetic studies in the late 20th century refuted the existence of biogenetically distinct races,"

The following scientific sources concur:

  • "racial classifications are inadequate descriptors of the distribution of genetic variation in our species" (Tishkoff, Sarah A., and Kenneth K. Kidd. “Implications of Biogeography of Human Populations for ‘race’ and Medicine.” Nature Genetics 36 (November 1, 2004): S21–27. https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1438.)
  • "In sum, we concur with Lewontin’s conclusion that Western-based racial classifications have no taxonomic significance" Long, Jeffrey C., and Rick A. Kittles. “Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races.” Human Biology 81, no. 5 (2009): 777–98.

In my opinion, "race is not an inherent physical or biological quality" effectively sums up this research in a way the replacement text does not.--Carwil (talk) 17:33, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

My goal was to make the lead more clear for the reader; my change may have had problems, but I feel like the current text is vague; it's not clear what the word choices mean. This is why I like "zoological definition" of race or "taxonomic definition" of race; it's clear that these are specific scientific concepts which are different than the word race as it is commonly used. I don't see that the sources say the race (contruct) is not an inherent physical quality, what I see is that Barnshaw states that people define the race (construct) based on physical characteristics which do not have intrinsic biological meaning. So I think it works to say that the social construct of race does not fit the taxonomic/zoological definition, despite that the concept is partially based on observable physical characteristics. This seems supported by the open letter and Dorothy Roberts.
It may be more appropriate to say "shared genetics and physical characteristics" than to make a connection between the physical characteristics and shared genetics. Kolya Butternut (talk) 21:44, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
I tweaked the lead here[18]. Kolya Butternut (talk) 04:35, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Changes to "Defining race"

Kolya Butternut has added the following to this section:

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." These biological differences in geographic ancestral populations are not consistent with zoological definitions of race, and there are no "sharp, categorical distinctions".

Silently, the second sentence, which appears to elaborate on the second is from an open letter refuting Reich's approach. Which is, at best, an awkward mix.--Carwil (talk) 17:33, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I actually quoted Dorothy Roberts; I should have paraphrased rather than quoting without attribution. I felt this was a point where Reich and the scholars of the open letter agreed. Kolya Butternut (talk) 21:51, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Why are we using an op-ed to define race, instead of peer-reviewed science? Guettarda (talk) 22:11, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
They are scientists discussing the science. Maybe there are better source here. Kolya Butternut (talk) 23:10, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Sure, Reich's opinion on this is notable. But it's essentially being presented to undercut the more-or-less mainstream view. We should never use an opinion piece to rebut the mainstream view. An op-ed is always going to be somewhat polemic - it's not the place where you craft a nuanced view of the science. If Reich published a review article in a peer-reviewed source, it would be appropriate to cite here. But I just don't see how using an op-ed to contradict the mainstream view is acceptable per WP:UNDUE. Guettarda (talk) 13:48, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
But the actual quote is consistent with the mainstream view isn't it? His other statements in the op-ed may not represent the mainstream view. Kolya Butternut (talk) 04:43, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Jablonski

Although I didn't mention it in the summary for this revert, I don't think that that TED talk belongs on this page. It's more about skin color than the concept of race, and beyond that a TED talk isn't a great source for such a large paragraph in and of itself. The rewrites to the defining race section also felt like they were privileging one definition of race above the others; the section already covers a broad survey of different positions in a more neutral fashion, so taking one definition and saying "and others are wrong" doesn't seem great. --Aquillion (talk) 03:29, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree completely about the defining section, and for the TED talk I would also like to add the following.
She actually says that skin color has nothing to do with predetermination of race, but changes (and has changed in the past) based on the UV levels of the place were you live, and that health problems can occur with regards to sunburn or vitamin D deficiency when people move (or, with things like slavery, are moved) to a place with different UV levels without having a few generations' time to adapt. --Yhdwww (talk) 14:09, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Ongoing discussion on Talk page of article Armenoid race

Is it fair to characterise the "Jewish race (Armenoids) as a straight Wikipedia entry as: Günther regarded Jews as people of multiple racial origins but defined the Near Eastern race as their major basis, and described the race's characteristics such as its "commercial spirit" and as being "artful traders" who had strong psychological manipulation capacities that helped their trade, as well as being known to exploit people. (Gunther was a Nazi anthropologist) What about entries for all the other races? The Brittanica articles on Race are edited by university proffesors and the Brittanica (and Stanford encyclopedia) have no articles on the Armenoid race. Wikipedia is open to those who would dearly love to cling to (and disseminate) pre- DNA race theories. RPSM (talk) 11:44, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

First sentence

Based on the content of the article, I think the first sentence is flawed. I would like to suggest the following to replace it, as a paragraph on its own:

  • A race is defined biologically as a grouping of humans based on what is accepted as a largely meaningless frequency of certain genes, and defined socially as a grouping based on constantly changing and largely misconceived subjective perceptions of shared physical and social qualities.

Nick-philly (talk) 16:46, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

That doesn't sound neutral.  This isn't the place to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS.  Why do you prefer this suggestion over your previous draft?[19]. Kolya Butternut (talk) 18:54, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
I deleted the Talk post you referenced shortly after I added it, because I was dissatisfied in that it did not include the biological aspect. In any case, what I had added seemed to more accurately quote the source.
In reference to my suggestion to edit the article's definition, I'm surprised you thought I was attempting to right great wrongs, when I only wished to reflect, in one sentence, the gist of the article.
The article repeatedly notes how, basically, scientists believe a few genes do come into play, that they do so in superficial ways, and that even though biological studies still use "race" in their findings, their use to define "race" is considered obsolete, ergo the importance of including the biological aspect in the definition, and my descriptive as the "largely meaningless frequency of certain genes" in defining "race".
As to the second part of my sentence, I felt that the statement in the article's initial sentence, "shared ... qualities ... generally viewed as distinct by society," is contrary to numerous parts of the article that suggest views are neither shared nor distinct by pointing to constantly changing views as in, for example, "conceptions ... vary over time," "types ... based on perceived traits," etc.
Even as far back as 1915, when W.E.B. Du Bois wrote the following in The Negro, the futility of using shared qualities to define "race" was recognized: "In general the Negro population in the United States is brown in color, darkening to almost black and shading off in the other direction to yellow and white, and is indistinguishable in some cases from the white population."
I value all that you have added to, and your close monitoring of, the article, and hope it can continue to reflect objectivity. Nick-philly (talk) 20:22, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
I don't feel like the first sentence needs to get into all that; that's what the whole lead is for.  "Viewed as district by society" is a plain language way of saying "social construct".  Kolya Butternut (talk) 20:12, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society.

Does this mean to say race can be understood in accordance with any of the following three definitions:

  • (1) "A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society."
  • (2) "A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society."
  • (3) "A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or and social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society."

or just the last one? Kuiet (talk) 23:44, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

According to the source it appears that race can be understood to be all three. Kolya Butternut (talk) 00:29, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Then is not

While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning.

which follows three sentences later in direct conflict with the first sentence and definition (1)? If race can be defined as a grouping based only on physical qualities, how can race not have inherent physical meaning? Forgot to sign, hope this will work. Kuiet (talk) 00:58, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
It's confusing, but I believe the key word is "meaning". The concept of race may be based on shared physical traits, but that grouping may not particularly mean anything. That's my understanding. Kolya Butternut (talk) 02:16, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Another comparison which might be helpful is to languages. Languages are social constructs which are based on physical traits (the larynx, Broca's area, etc.) Still, it would be very confusing to discuss the difference between two languages as being "biological". What, for example would "biological English" mean? How would it be different from "biological Latin"? Perhaps this idea might mean something in context, but that would have to be explained, first. Likewise "biological race" is meaningless without context. Grayfell (talk) 03:10, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Could you further elaborate your understanding, especially 'may not particularly mean anything'. Would not such a grouping necessarily mean groups share (a) physical trait(s)?Kuiet (talk) 22:22, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
I understand this to be an improper comparison. All languages (exempting morse code or grasshopper languages etc.) are based on the same physical traits (the larynx, Broca's area, etc.). So if you choose to group languages based on physical traits, would not necessarily all languages be grouped into the same group? Since they would posess no 'biological' difference. So if you grouped languages according to biological traits, there would be no group called English or group called Latin, just one group called for example 'larynx-broca-group'. Or are you suggesting the physical traits like larynx etc. vary from language to language? Your comparison is indeed very confusing, so please correct me if I understand it improperly.Kuiet (talk) 22:22, 15 February 2020 (UTC) *Edit made on 22:30, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
The category of vocal languages is useful when contrasted to sign languages (Morse Code is not a language, it's a cipher). Sign language also correlates with physical characteristics (even hereditary ones), but that doesn't mean it's not a social construct.
Wikipedia has many articles on linguistic typology, because these categories are important and widely used in linguistics. By comparison, there are very few biological contexts for "human race" as a category, and each of these varies based on subjective cultural values. This category of "race" needs to be explained every time it's used, and inclusion criteria set, before these categories are studied.
This is what I mean by context. We don't just make categories because we can, we make them for a purpose, and we should be aware of what that purpose is. If we don't know why we're making categories, and we also don't know who exactly belongs in these categories, we need to rewind and try again, otherwise it's just pseudoscience.
So yes, in a way, this was a flawed and simplistic comparison between languages and race. "Race" is a deeply flawed and simplistic categorization scheme. Linguists have developed many useful ways of categorizing languages, but this all relies on context. Context is also necessary for "race", except that even in context it's not always particularly useful or consistent. Grayfell (talk) 05:21, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
For instance, "black" as a race represents almost an entire continent. Pretty much the only shared trait is dark skin. It gets much more complicated than that, but that is the most basic explanation of how race is a social construct. The rest of the article and the sources may get into more detail. Kolya Butternut (talk) 04:22, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm grateful for your replies because I feel like I've learned many interesting things. But I've only created this new section to ask a simple and specific question. Do you mind if we return to that?Kuiet (talk) 03:52, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
Brilliant idea. When dealing in abstracts, a concrete example often helps.
A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society.
Let's go with the example of 'black' race you defined. Pretty much the only shared trait is dark skin. Now please look back to my original question.
People of this race pretty much only share one trait - dark skin. So being of this race pretty much only means having dark skin. So having dark skin is pretty much the only meaning of this race. So pretty much the only meaning of this race is dark skin - an inherently physical/biological meaning.
Do I now, finally, make myself clear?(: Kuiet (talk) 03:52, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
It's more clear to say race has no taxonomic meaning, but that's too narrow.  The point is that "black" as a race is a social construct.  Black Africans don't have enough in common to be defined scientifically as a race.  I agree that the lead is vague, but you'll have to look at the sources to come to your own understanding of how to best write the lead.  Kolya Butternut (talk) 00:03, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
At first I thought you genuinely weren't familiar enough with the concepts involved to realise you were changing the goalposts with your every message. I was prepared to guide you to proper, disjunctive understanding. But after shifting AGAIN to somehow pretending the conversation is in any way affected by 'scientific races', an absurd concept whose glaringly obvious lack of definition finally achieved in making your purpose in this conversation painfully clear. Injecting for the first time a concept that was literally never even vaguely implied and trying to obfuscate your equivocation by invoking 'social constructions' despite the fact you were patiently reminded many times the definition discussed is purely biological and what's even worse despite me being courteous enough to have pretended not to notice your previous attempt at constructionist big brain time since your
"Viewed as district by society" is a plain language way of saying "social construct"
gives a clear inkling of what level of ability would follow. I've lost all will to continue this fruitless endeavour.Kuiet (talk) 19:09, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
#iamverysmart Kolya Butternut (talk) 20:10, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

biological essentialism

@Bonadea: et al. I'm here to make the obvious seeming case that the statement 'all scientists think biological essentialism is obsolete' is factually incorrect. @Flyer22 Frozen: has kindly offered that "Sources should also speak on scientific consensus" which I deny. Sources which speak on behalf of all scientists should speak of scientific consensus. Scientists who speak of themselves should only speak of themselves. Here are my examples, which took about 3 mins to find, just look at intros mostly, or ctrl+f:

The University of Chicago Press

  • Contemporary evolutionary biology witnesses a renaissance of essentialism in three contexts: “origin essentialism” with respect to species and supraspecific taxa, the bar coding of species on the basis of discontinuities of DNA variation between populations, and the search for laws of evolutionary developmental biology.]

Springer

  • I address that issue from a biological basis, arguing for the Kripkean view that an organism has a partly intrinsic, partly historical, essence.

The British journal for the philosophy of science

  • This paper argues—against the prevailing orthodoxy—that essentialism of this sort is indispensable to evolutionary biology.]
  • Note 2: Various attempts to rehabilitate some form of biological essentialism—quite different from myown—have emerged. See Webster and Goodwin ([1996]); Boyd ([1999]); Griffiths ([1999]);

Okasha ([2002]) and (perhaps) Gould ([2002]).


The University of Chicago Press

  • Recently, the received view has come under fire. Some philosophers have countered that biological taxa do have essences (Griffiths 1997, 1999; Boyd 1999a, 1999b; Wilson 1999; Okasha 2002; LaPorte 2004; Devitt 2008).


Places of publication stand to attest these are not loner fringe thories with no value to the community. Thus, to me, the proper conclusion seems "biological essentialism is a subject of debate".

What starts to rise as the true question is how many scientists do actually think it's obsolete? Majority? Let's see your sources.

And I shall also make a polite reminder that not a single argument for "all cosider it obsolete" has been put forward. No, I do not think a reference to a book - with no pages given and no clear way to access it and search through it - counts as a valid source.Kuiet (talk) 03:23, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Arguing, at excessive length, for a narrow use of sources to support a WP:FRINGE perspective, is disruptive. Grayfell (talk) 04:28, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
@kuiet, If you think all or most or some support some position you should probably provide it since you seem to know the material somewhat. What we need are good peer reviewed survey studies. Don't know if they exist or not. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:06, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Straw man argument. The article says "Scientists". "Scientists" ≠ "Every single scientist". "Some" is weasel wording. The book by Sober devotes a chapter to this discussion, and I'll check the pages to be able to add them to the reference. A book from 2000 is not exactly hard to get hold of so it is patently not true that there is "no clear way to access it"; my local library has two copies. --bonadea contributions talk 06:09, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Oh, perhaps you lost sight of the fact that this article concerns "race" as a concept in human categorisation. The sources you cite do not discuss human "races" at all :-) Where they do mention humans, it is in terms of how humans differ from other organisms. I think we can trust our readers to be smart enough to understand that in an article called "Race (human categorization)", the word "race" applies to homo sapiens, not other species. (And the source you added here argues against this kind of essentialism, in the section "The Human Species" on page 53.) --bonadea contributions talk 10:19, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
@Grayfell: It's disruptive and an utter waste of time. But when I simply edited the article, adding "Some", the source from Essentialism and explained in the summary it disagrees with it:
the role and importance of essentialism in biology is still a matter of debate.[5]
— Source Essentialism
I got reverted because of Make your case on the talk page. And with more than one source. Sources should also speak on scientific consensus.
So I complied for a third guy to drop by to accuse me of being disruptive? What do you suggest?
Cherry on consensual top, wanting to avoid this whole mess I've sought counsel on Teahouse and got this opinion: Knowing nothing about the subject, I would say the first example is the more extreme and non-neutral, seeming to say that all scientists think it's obsolete, which is virtually impossible. Please read the whole thing, it's quite short.Kuiet (talk) 10:38, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
@Peregrine Fisher: 'good peer reviewed survey studies' would be nice to prove there is no consensus, yet a flurry of good peer reviewed articles arguing for one or the other side achieves the same objective, no?Kuiet (talk) 10:38, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
@Bonadea: please avoid selective answering and re-read Weasel word. "Some" transforms 'there is a consensus on obsoleteness' to 'there is no consensus on obsoletness'. Is that vague or ambiguous? Then be sure to recommend something better. And please note the articles' publication years (2010, 2018, 2006, 2010) and the words 'Contemporary, renaissance, Recently'. Why do you think that 20 year old book can be considered a reference for current state?
As for your second reply, I have no clue what you are even talking about. Please explain yourself.Kuiet (talk) 10:38, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Nope, that is not what "some" does, not even close, and I am not that interested in feeding sea lions. You are a smart person, I'm sure you can work out why sources presented on this talk page and in the associated article would be evaluated based on their relevance for the topic of "race" as a concept in human categorisation. As I said, I am sure our readers can work out what "essentialism" refers to in the lede. --bonadea contributions talk 10:47, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
I don't understand the semantics of "sources should also speak on scientific consensus" vs. "scientists should speak of scientific consensus." If you mean that only scientists should speak on what the scientific consensus is and we should only use those sources to speak on what the scientific consensus is, what type of scientist is being considered? There are different types. Also see our WP:Reliable sources guideline, including its WP:SCHOLARSHIP section. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 00:36, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Race and intelligence#Requested move 4 March 2020

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Race and intelligence#Requested move 4 March 2020. Levivich [dubious – discuss] 04:37, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Remove the term 'miscegenation'

I removed the term miscegenation from the article, and I substituted neutral language. There were two instances in the Brazil section. See discussion here about a similar issue with the Race and ethnicity in Brazil article. LaTeeDa (talk) 20:53, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Move/merge discussion at Talk:Miscegenation

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Miscegenation regarding moving content from that article to several new articles, and merging out some of the rest. The current article has >150 kB prose. - LaTeeDa (talk) 16:48, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

The specific case of the US relativized

Maybe only my perception, but the introduction of the article relativizes the peculiarity of the understanding of "race" in the United States. For instance, the introduction contains: "scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways, some of which have essentialist implications." The statement is vague, there is no reference to back it, and it implies that even in modern science, the idea of "race" is accepted as valid everywhere (in different "ways"). It seems to me to pull the article towards a US-centric view, especially as the body of the article does not correct it. Granted there is a section on the United States, but it fails to explain the very specific US situation.

Let me give some evidence. If you read Encyclopedia Britannica on "human race", for instance [20], it insists on the specific case of the United States, apart from any views in other parts of the world (yes, South Africa too, but not as a scientific concept).

In all the countries that I know and where I have lived, except the US, using the word "race" as a human taxonomy is considered racist. And not just in science. Where is all this in the article? In short it seems to suffer from US-oriented WP:POV.

At the very least, instead of the vague-kind-of-dismissive (and wrong) sentence above, I would have expected in the introduction something like: "During the 20th century, the concept of race has been used to justify the organization of the Holocaust by the Nazis, the Apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the United States. In most countries in the world, except notably in the USA, it is no longer used in the description of the living world except to refer to species and subspecies of the animal world in general." We cannot get away without mentioning this in my opinion.

Vincent Lextrait (talk) 14:37, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Find some sources to support your suggested text, then. We can't rely on your personal experience. Dimadick (talk) 17:48, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I know, I've been around long enough. Yet, the snippet I quote from the introduction made its way without any supporting reference. And the first sentence I suggested: "During the 20th century, the concept of race has been used to justify the organization of the Holocaust by the Nazis, the Apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the United States." is both missing and not controversial enough to require much backing, I guess? Vincent Lextrait (talk) 20:55, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Distinction Between Race and Ethnicity

Howdy y'all.

I was just wondering what the consensus was on race including social qualities in addition to physical ones. Everything I've read suggests that race includes physical characteristics and ethnicity covers cultural characteristics. I'm new to this, so I can't make the edit but I wanted to start the discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcmuffin6o (talk • contribs) 14:18, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Contradiction

At the start, the article says scholars believe race is a social construct. But later in the article, it's clear there is no consensus about this. Retired Farmer (talk) 09:28, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Enlightening article

Whatever quibbles readers may have with the specifics of this article, I found it very enlightening. Thank you for writing it. I have often wondered about the US Census with its vast number of categories for some, but basically one, "White" for everyone of European decent and some others. This results in a big lump of "White" that includes some, as you say in your article, that don't consider themselves "White". I have read that in its beginning, people in what is now the US did not think of people in terms of race but rather of ethnicity and that only later the concepts of skin-color based "race" become so predominant. Apparently "race" as it is used in the US is a relatively recent conceptualization. Thanks, Krok6kola (talk) 18:16, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Immigration was restricted to white people by the 1790 Naturalization Act. Beet Farmer (talk) 13:54, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
Here is a history of race categories from the US census since 1790 [21]. Most people did not consider themselves "white" or speak in those terms, but from the government's stance, it had the disclaimer of "free". Just being white was not enough, you had to be free. Then just 40 years later they renamed another category to "free colored persons". Then it changed again after that many times over. It really is unstable so the modern notion of white is certainly a modern thing and that had more to do with growing populations of other people (blacks, natives, and Mexicans) up to the present.Ramos1990 (talk) 23:40, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
None of this impugns the use of white as a classification. If the legal status of "free colored persons" changed, that's just irrelevant. White is still a classification. Beet Farmer (talk) 10:48, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
Yes, but it's a very sloppy categorization which changes from person-to-person and from year-to-year. This makes it either a social construct, or just plain ol' pseudoscience. The article White people explains this further, but this talk page isn't the place to periodically complain in vague terms. If you have specific, actionable changes based on reliable sources, propose them, otherwise this violates WP:NOTFORUM. Grayfell (talk) 08:48, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Defining Race

This will probably be a contentious point. I understand that in modern American academia it's fashionable to say that race was socially constructed to oppress people. However, if we look at the works of those most responsible for developing the concept, namely Kant, Blumenbach and Darwin, we can see that they simply applied theories of biology to humans, and produced a genealogical division. This piece is especially informative. Here also from Darwin. It's clear they simply applied standard taxonomic ancestry based divisions to humans, and weren't trying to "oppress" people. It's rather devastating to the accusatory narrative of modern American scholarship. But surely we must include all relevant sources, and not hide things that contradict a narrative? Retired Farmer (talk) 09:39, 11 July 2020 (UTC) (Striking sockpuppet comment) Generalrelative (talk) 15:57, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

It seems really bizarre to me that only the political definitions are listed, and the biological (ancestry based) definitions from these scholars are ignored. It's like this article was edited to push a POV by lying by omission. Can we include the development of the genealogical concept via Kant, Blumenbach and Darwin? I realise this explodes the modern politically correct narrative, but we do a disservice to our readers by lying to them so brazenly. Beet Farmer (talk) 13:53, 11 September 2020 (UTC) (Striking sockpuppet comment) Generalrelative (talk) 15:57, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

This is literally the most piece of garbage article I've ever read, race is not a social construct and citing a couple sociologists doesn't make it so. Wikipedia adopting political arguments and presenting them as a biological argument is not only an affront to readers, it's an affront to science. It's also not scientific, and the article linked is pointing to a supposed article that doesn't even actually exist, this entire bullshit assumption for political purposes is completely unfounded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by UmNoItsNot (talk • contribs) 06:49, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Of course they applied theories of biology to humans, the problem is that they applied them wrongly. TFD (talk) 17:31, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
It's also worth emphasizing that this article is full of citations and discussions of actual science, and represents the actual scientific consensus on the topic. Characterizing it as unscientific is flatly false, and this should be stated clearly in response to such complaints. Generalrelative (talk) 17:34, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
There's a consensus that Blumenbach and Darwin applied ancestry classification to humans to oppress them? Is that how it works? You don't actually look at what they said (Blumenbach opposed slavery and was complimentary of blacks), but a bunch of people vote on what they said, and then that's what they said? How bizarre. Redundant Farmhand (talk) 11:38, 12 February 2021 (UTC) (Striking sockpuppet comment) Generalrelative (talk) 15:57, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
How so? South Asians share ancestry with Europeans versus East Asians and Africans n'est-ce pas? It's pretty simple. Genomic diversity is actually irrelevant to this, which a sociologist would realize if they studied biology. Redundant Farmhand (talk) 12:02, 12 February 2021 (UTC) (Striking sockpuppet comment) Generalrelative (talk) 15:57, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
@Redundant Farmhand: Your comments look like those of Retired Farmer. Both of you were active only on this talk page. BTW: The article doesn't accuse Blumenbach or Darwin of wanting to oppress anybody. Please read the article, WP:FRINGE, and WP:MAINSTREAM before commenting. --Rsk6400 (talk) 12:55, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
Shouldn't we at least note the fact that the people that actually developed the race concept did so using a biological criterion (not "colors" or "hairstyles") and had no social or political motivation for doing so? This fact remains regardless of how many thousands of American sociologists sign a statement asserting the opposite. The article rather reads like a slander upon them, since despite your claims it clearly implies that this was their motive. Redundant Farmhand (talk) 14:33, 12 February 2021 (UTC) (Striking sockpuppet comment) Generalrelative (talk) 15:57, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
This page is not the place to defend their "social or political motivations", but it is utterly absurd to pretend these motives did not exist and did not inform their work. Per our article on Blumenbach:
Blumenbach claimed that Adam and Eve were Caucasian inhabitants of Asia (see Asia hypothesis), and that other races came about by degeneration from environmental factors such as the sun and poor diet. Thus, he claimed, Negroid pigmentation arose because of the result of the heat of the tropical sun, while the cold wind caused the tawny colour of the Eskimos, and the Chinese were fair-skinned compared to the other Asian stocks because they kept mostly in towns protected from environmental factors. He believed that the degeneration could be reversed in a proper environmental control and that all contemporary forms of man could revert to the original Caucasian race.
It is also very silly to pretend that this was purely a "biological criterion". Grayfell (talk) 09:09, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
It seems to be the place where we attack their political and social motivations, with vague insinuations and guilt by association because some other people did "mean things" around the same time. The mechanism by which differences arose is independent of the criterion used to group people. Is Blumenbach here trying to "justify oppression" as your article insinuates? The central point here is that you have omitted his method of classification, and put in various political ones. This is a glaring omission. In the bullet points under "Defining Race" the first one should mention that Blumenbach and Darwin defined race by shared ancestry. Stop lying by omission. Redundant Farmhand (talk) 09:32, 13 February 2021 (UTC) (Striking sockpuppet comment) Generalrelative (talk) 15:57, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
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