racist acid throwing maniac apprehended

Oh.
I haven't gotten involved in the discussions about the origins of our species; I'm not very well read on the subject but I dont think discussing the possibility of originating from somewhere besides Africa is racist at all, as long as the claims are backed by scientific evidence and not just motivated by a longing to not have African ancestry lol.
And I mostly agree with what Barros said about any perceived superiority in certain skills being due more to cultural rather than racial distinctions. But I wouldnt label someone as racist just because they state that asians are better at math or Africans have more physical prowess. If someone believes Africans and people of African descent are only good at physical activities and have no intellectual abilities, on the other hand, I would be inclined to call them out on their racism

 

I briefly looked into this when you mentioned this in the other thread, and discovered that apparently there are genes that encode for skin pigmentation and I read an article which suggests it's an area of research where there is still much to potentially be discovered.


"Human skin color is one of the most visible aspects of human diversity. The genetic basis of pigmentation in Europeans has been understood to some extent, but our knowledge about South Asians has been restricted to a handful of studies. It has been suggested that a single nucleotide difference in SLC24A5 accounts for 25–38% European-African pigmentation differences and correlates with lighter skin. This genetic variant has also been associated with skin color variation among South Asians living in the UK. Here, we report a study based on a homogenous cohort of South India. Our results confirm that SLC24A5 plays a key role in pigmentation diversity of South Asians."

The Light Skin Allele of SLC24A5 in South Asians and Europeans Shares Identity by Descent

 

Interesting quandary. It's my experience that chauvinistic claims tend to be backed up by this or that pseudoscience or conspiracy theory. On the one hand, freedom of speech and the interests of free scientific inquiry argue for tolerating such expressions on the principle that it might lead to some new beneficial discovery or truth. We learned from the experience of Galileo and others that it's a bad idea to suppress inconvenient truths out of fear that they could undermine cherished theories like biblical inerrancy. On the other hand, many of these ideas are so farfetched or inconsistent with known facts and so prone to lead to dangerous conduct that holding them can be taken as a sign of being a real crackpot, fanatic or miscreant of some sort. I'm thinking Holocaust deniers, members of the Flat Earth Society, and Pizzagate believers. More prevalent, and therefore perhaps more dangerous, examples would include Six Day Creationists and believers in Murray's The Bell Curve. Believers in such tripe are folks who may fancy themselves as intellectuals but hold beliefs that are so unfounded that I'd have no qualms not taking them seriously. Should we call them names and treat them as bad people? It depends on the harm they do and their likely culpability for it. If they try to ban teaching of evolution in the schools or implement eugenics, they need to be opposed.

Face it. As a result of the Nazi experience, there has been a general taboo against entertaining theories that support racial difference--as Carlton Coon found out when he released his Origin of Races in the early sixties arguing that the races are at different stages of human evolution. I'm uncomfortable with silencing such voices, but I have no problem with criticizing denouncing them in strong language unless their theories are supported by substantial evidence.

 

I think that you're in the minority with this one, Asmo.

 

It begs the question -- do such taboos hinder research?

I wonder if there are scientists and/or scientific organizations that won't go there because they don't want their name on it if findings are in conflict with the cultural zeitgeist. If so, practically anyone who presents ideas suggesting racial differences is going to have limited evidence and seem provocative.


A bit unsettling too, if science is supposedly a bastion of inquiry.

 

Let's just say a group of scientists did want to research racial differences

What would be the basis for "race" in the first place?

 

I don't really track this topic, hence the question.

 

Isn't that backwards tho? Don't you need to study race so you can define it and not start with your own definition and work your way back?

 

I guess. Personally, I see nothing wrong with acknowledging race and the differences between us all. I believe that the idea of racial superiority has long since been debunked and that our differences are largely arbitrary and physical, but those physical differences make us all uniquely beautiful. I love that I don't live in a racially homogenized society

 

It would likely depend on the study but skin pigmentation could be one variable.

 

Gene-Therapy, genetic modification. I think those could both be tremendous benefits to society.

 

I have not read about this gentlemen.

 

Barros basically said it, but skin pigmentation varies subtly by clime. You could study genetic differences in people from particular parts of the world but I dont really think it would be productive to study differences between the arbitrary classification of what we think of as race because there could be a wide genetic variation even between those who are classified as "white" or "black", etc

Like, in terms of skin pigmentation...just an example, but Scandanavian people and Mediterranean people are both classified as "white" despite having very obviously different skin tones. And adapting to very different climates

 

You seem to be viewing this from a broad anthropological perspective. I was thinking of more specific population subsets, where skin pigmentation would be defined.

 

Then I think we're in agreement?
Studying specific population subsets that can trace their heritage back to the same part of the world makes sense. Studying biologival differences in terms of how race is generally defined (white, black, asian) doesnt make sense because those categories are too broad

 

You lost me, I think I entered this convo when other conversations were going on. My posts were follow up to that article I linked with there being a genetic component to skin color in allele expressions.

 

Yeah I dunno lol, maybe it's me not following the thread of conversation. I didnt see your link

 

Mate, Racism is the lowest of low you can go. You need to educate people instead of picking on people who are from a different country

 

This line of reasoning strikes me as very similar to the way we view "consciousness". I see this parallel in that we use this container word to describe phenomena we clearly understand on some deep level but which has many different aspects that are difficult to describe comprehensively in any one particular research or study.

I don't like the idea that because we cannot fully describe the phenomena on a macro level, that then all facets of the phenomena are off limit. Science can have an inherently provisionary quality to it and usually limitations are acknowledged in studies.

I was expecting you to provide an article about this Black Non-African African-American.

Regardless, even assuming there were no errors in the DNA testing, I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater over one outlier.

 

Education is the way to go.
Your mates might pick on you because you are a little different.
If you remember that whole argument you had earlier with that racist person, education is the key for her because of her ignorance.

Where i come from is here in Australia.