US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1915

On May 01 2015 08:48 Slaughter wrote:


Jab? The 2 statements I made, That Identity is fluid and that race is a social construct are pretty well accepted among social scientists for the former and those who study human biology for the latter.

In a discussion of Race and global patterns of phenotypic variation, John Relethford plots human skin color variation: "The result is a continuous straight line ranging from the darkest extremes to the lightest extremes in skin color. There are no identifiable clusters. . . . Researchers are of course free to subdivide this continuum into different groups, but such clustering would be arbitrary and subjective in terms of the number of groups and the cutoff points used to distinguish them. The lack of apparent clusters is a reflection of the fact that skin color shows a classic pattern of clinal variation." (2009:17) [...]

Unlike some textbooks and pronouncements which use this information to declare all physical variation is clinal, Relethford proceeds to consider craniometric or skull variation. [...] Relethford considers racial labels as “a culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation” (2009:20). Variation is real, exists, and has been structured by geography and migration, but the labels we use are a “crude first-order approximation” (2009:21). Relethford uses the example of how we see height as short, medium, and tall: “We tend to use crude labels in everyday life with the realization that they are fuzzy and subjective. I doubt anyone thinks that terms such as ‘short,’ ‘medium,’ and ‘tall’ refer to discrete groups, or that humanity only comes in three values of height!” (2009:21). [...] Current scientific consensus is that craniometrics yields clustered geographic groupings, but those groupings are subjective and arbitrary. [...]

Skin color, like many other racial measures, is continuously variable. Crania may be structured geographically, but classifications based on geographic clusters would be arbitrary. But what about measuring all the bones? Television shows feature forensic anthropologists easily identifying race from skeletal remains. Does that mean race is real?[...] Sauer explains “the successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed ‘racial’ category” (1992:107). Forensic anthropologists have samples of bones from many geographic areas, and can classify bones according to what race society has assigned to people with ancestry in those geographic areas. However, examining the bones provides a probability estimate of likely race assignment: “In ascribing a race name to a set of skeletonized remains, the anthropologist is actually translating information about biological traits to a culturally constructed labeling system that was likely to have been applied to a missing person” (1992:109).

Despite the provocative and sometimes misunderstood title, Sauer pleads for forensic anthropologists to better explain what it means to make racial classifications from skeletal remains. He begs forensic anthropologists not to “sail on” without making an effort to expose people “to the notion that perceived races are not reflections of biological reality” (1992:110). We should “not fall into the trap of accepting races as valid biologically discrete categories because we use them so often” (1992:110). [...] What actually happens is forensic anthropologists match bones probabilistically against known existing assortments. Those assortments can be anything socially relevant. Changing the context of bone discovery could lead to different predictive classification–of the same bones: “The use of different priors also shows the importance of prior information, as ‘Mr. Johnson’ would have been classified as a Pacific Islander had his remains been found on Hawaii and as an ‘American Black’ had his remains been found in Gary, Indiana” (Konigsberg et al. 2009:83). [...]

Even after proving the continuous variation of skin tones, and even after showing how bones and skulls do not confirm traditional race classifications, there is still the sense that genetics offers real proof of race. Genetic testing companies amplify this misconception in a rush to market ancestry, while pharmaceutical companies sell race-targeted medications.

[...] Genetic classifications of races outside of Sub-Saharan Africa are simply subsets of Sub-Saharan African diversity. Moreover, and perhaps most strangely, “a classification that takes into account evolutionary relationships and the nested pattern of diversity would require that Sub-Saharan Africans are not a race because the most exclusive group that includes all Sub-Saharan African populations also includes every non-Sub-Saharan African population” (Long et al. 2009:32).

[...] This evolutionary history is explained in the article The global pattern of gene identity variation reveals a history of long-range migrations, bottlenecks, and local mate exchange: Implications for biological race. Once again, sophisticated techniques reveal a “nested pattern of genetic structure that is inconsistent with the existence of independently evolving biological races” (Hunley et al. 2009:35). The authors confirm greater genetic variation within Sub-Saharan Africa, and all other humans are a sub-set of this variation. Taxonomic classifications of race cannot account for observed genetic diversity. [...]"

On May 01 2015 09:29 kwizach wrote:

In support of Slaughter's point, here's a c/p from a previous post of mine in the European politics thread. Races are, like Slaughter said, social constructs.

"Races are social constructs which are based on the delimitation of groups when those limits have no objective scientific basis. [...] The point is that on the genetic level the "human races" you referenced make little sense, and that the very traits and characteristics that are used to define "races" in reality exist in spectrums across humanity (or at the very least exist without obvious "breaks"), making any such delimitation arbitrary and socially constructed.

You mention anthropology. Have you read the "Race Reconciled: How Biological Anthropologists View Human Variation" special issue of vol. 39, issue 1 of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (May 2009)? The authors clearly and unambiguously demonstrate that "race is not an accurate or productive way to describe human biological variation" (Heather J.H. Edgar and Keith L. Hunley in the introduction of the special issue, p. 2). You can read a detailed summary of the findings here (this is the page where I initially learned about these papers - I "only" read three of the articles themselves). Here are a few quotes from that summary:


In short, and as I said, variation among humans obviously exists (nobody is claiming otherwise), but races are social constructs."

On May 01 2015 09:29 kwizach wrote:

In support of Slaughter's point, here's a c/p from a previous post of mine in the European politics thread. Races are, like Slaughter said, social constructs.

"Races are social constructs which are based on the delimitation of groups when those limits have no objective scientific basis. [...] The point is that on the genetic level the "human races" you referenced make little sense, and that the very traits and characteristics that are used to define "races" in reality exist in spectrums across humanity (or at the very least exist without obvious "breaks"), making any such delimitation arbitrary and socially constructed.

You mention anthropology. Have you read the "Race Reconciled: How Biological Anthropologists View Human Variation" special issue of vol. 39, issue 1 of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (May 2009)? The authors clearly and unambiguously demonstrate that "race is not an accurate or productive way to describe human biological variation" (Heather J.H. Edgar and Keith L. Hunley in the introduction of the special issue, p. 2). You can read a detailed summary of the findings here (this is the page where I initially learned about these papers - I "only" read three of the articles themselves). Here are a few quotes from that summary:


In short, and as I said, variation among humans obviously exists (nobody is claiming otherwise), but races are social constructs."

On May 01 2015 10:04 Millitron wrote:

It's kinda ridiculous to claim that a person with no ancestry of say, Pacific Islander heritage could suddenly claim to be a Pacific Islander. I mean, he might be able to fool people into believing he is, but that doesn't make him one. If he cannot point to any ancestors who were at least born on a Pacific island, how can he claim to be a Pacific Islander?

The other thing I question is Haplogroups. There is evidence of human migration branching into multiple different, relatively isolated groups. For most of human history, there was absolutely no contact between the hunter-gatherers of say, Europe and China. Meaning for hundreds of thousands, maybe a few million years, these groups developed by themselves. Now, they didn't have quite as long, and the isolation wasn't quite as total as Darwin's finches, but you can see what I'm getting at. It's naive to assume that groups could spend thousands of generations isolated in different environments and not evolve to be at least a little different.

I'm not saying this or that race is a different species. Hell, they're all even more similar than different breeds of dog. But to say there's no differences shows a lack of understanding of the theory of evolution.

On May 01 2015 08:48 Slaughter wrote:


Jab? The 2 statements I made, That Identity is fluid and that race is a social construct are pretty well accepted among social scientists for the former and those who study human biology for the latter.

In a discussion of Race and global patterns of phenotypic variation, John Relethford plots human skin color variation: "The result is a continuous straight line ranging from the darkest extremes to the lightest extremes in skin color. There are no identifiable clusters. . . . Researchers are of course free to subdivide this continuum into different groups, but such clustering would be arbitrary and subjective in terms of the number of groups and the cutoff points used to distinguish them. The lack of apparent clusters is a reflection of the fact that skin color shows a classic pattern of clinal variation." (2009:17) [...]

Unlike some textbooks and pronouncements which use this information to declare all physical variation is clinal, Relethford proceeds to consider craniometric or skull variation. [...] Relethford considers racial labels as “a culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation” (2009:20). Variation is real, exists, and has been structured by geography and migration, but the labels we use are a “crude first-order approximation” (2009:21). Relethford uses the example of how we see height as short, medium, and tall: “We tend to use crude labels in everyday life with the realization that they are fuzzy and subjective. I doubt anyone thinks that terms such as ‘short,’ ‘medium,’ and ‘tall’ refer to discrete groups, or that humanity only comes in three values of height!” (2009:21). [...] Current scientific consensus is that craniometrics yields clustered geographic groupings, but those groupings are subjective and arbitrary. [...]

Skin color, like many other racial measures, is continuously variable. Crania may be structured geographically, but classifications based on geographic clusters would be arbitrary. But what about measuring all the bones? Television shows feature forensic anthropologists easily identifying race from skeletal remains. Does that mean race is real?[...] Sauer explains “the successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed ‘racial’ category” (1992:107). Forensic anthropologists have samples of bones from many geographic areas, and can classify bones according to what race society has assigned to people with ancestry in those geographic areas. However, examining the bones provides a probability estimate of likely race assignment: “In ascribing a race name to a set of skeletonized remains, the anthropologist is actually translating information about biological traits to a culturally constructed labeling system that was likely to have been applied to a missing person” (1992:109).

Despite the provocative and sometimes misunderstood title, Sauer pleads for forensic anthropologists to better explain what it means to make racial classifications from skeletal remains. He begs forensic anthropologists not to “sail on” without making an effort to expose people “to the notion that perceived races are not reflections of biological reality” (1992:110). We should “not fall into the trap of accepting races as valid biologically discrete categories because we use them so often” (1992:110). [...] What actually happens is forensic anthropologists match bones probabilistically against known existing assortments. Those assortments can be anything socially relevant. Changing the context of bone discovery could lead to different predictive classification–of the same bones: “The use of different priors also shows the importance of prior information, as ‘Mr. Johnson’ would have been classified as a Pacific Islander had his remains been found on Hawaii and as an ‘American Black’ had his remains been found in Gary, Indiana” (Konigsberg et al. 2009:83). [...]

Even after proving the continuous variation of skin tones, and even after showing how bones and skulls do not confirm traditional race classifications, there is still the sense that genetics offers real proof of race. Genetic testing companies amplify this misconception in a rush to market ancestry, while pharmaceutical companies sell race-targeted medications.

[...] Genetic classifications of races outside of Sub-Saharan Africa are simply subsets of Sub-Saharan African diversity. Moreover, and perhaps most strangely, “a classification that takes into account evolutionary relationships and the nested pattern of diversity would require that Sub-Saharan Africans are not a race because the most exclusive group that includes all Sub-Saharan African populations also includes every non-Sub-Saharan African population” (Long et al. 2009:32).

[...] This evolutionary history is explained in the article The global pattern of gene identity variation reveals a history of long-range migrations, bottlenecks, and local mate exchange: Implications for biological race. Once again, sophisticated techniques reveal a “nested pattern of genetic structure that is inconsistent with the existence of independently evolving biological races” (Hunley et al. 2009:35). The authors confirm greater genetic variation within Sub-Saharan Africa, and all other humans are a sub-set of this variation. Taxonomic classifications of race cannot account for observed genetic diversity. [...]"

On May 01 2015 07:18 Millitron wrote:

I think it's a brilliant showing all around. I especially like Slaughter's jab.

On May 01 2015 08:48 Slaughter wrote:


Jab? The 2 statements I made, That Identity is fluid and that race is a social construct are pretty well accepted among social scientists for the former and those who study human biology for the latter.

In a discussion of Race and global patterns of phenotypic variation, John Relethford plots human skin color variation: "The result is a continuous straight line ranging from the darkest extremes to the lightest extremes in skin color. There are no identifiable clusters. . . . Researchers are of course free to subdivide this continuum into different groups, but such clustering would be arbitrary and subjective in terms of the number of groups and the cutoff points used to distinguish them. The lack of apparent clusters is a reflection of the fact that skin color shows a classic pattern of clinal variation." (2009:17) [...]

Unlike some textbooks and pronouncements which use this information to declare all physical variation is clinal, Relethford proceeds to consider craniometric or skull variation. [...] Relethford considers racial labels as “a culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation” (2009:20). Variation is real, exists, and has been structured by geography and migration, but the labels we use are a “crude first-order approximation” (2009:21). Relethford uses the example of how we see height as short, medium, and tall: “We tend to use crude labels in everyday life with the realization that they are fuzzy and subjective. I doubt anyone thinks that terms such as ‘short,’ ‘medium,’ and ‘tall’ refer to discrete groups, or that humanity only comes in three values of height!” (2009:21). [...] Current scientific consensus is that craniometrics yields clustered geographic groupings, but those groupings are subjective and arbitrary. [...]

Skin color, like many other racial measures, is continuously variable. Crania may be structured geographically, but classifications based on geographic clusters would be arbitrary. But what about measuring all the bones? Television shows feature forensic anthropologists easily identifying race from skeletal remains. Does that mean race is real?[...] Sauer explains “the successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed ‘racial’ category” (1992:107). Forensic anthropologists have samples of bones from many geographic areas, and can classify bones according to what race society has assigned to people with ancestry in those geographic areas. However, examining the bones provides a probability estimate of likely race assignment: “In ascribing a race name to a set of skeletonized remains, the anthropologist is actually translating information about biological traits to a culturally constructed labeling system that was likely to have been applied to a missing person” (1992:109).

Despite the provocative and sometimes misunderstood title, Sauer pleads for forensic anthropologists to better explain what it means to make racial classifications from skeletal remains. He begs forensic anthropologists not to “sail on” without making an effort to expose people “to the notion that perceived races are not reflections of biological reality” (1992:110). We should “not fall into the trap of accepting races as valid biologically discrete categories because we use them so often” (1992:110). [...] What actually happens is forensic anthropologists match bones probabilistically against known existing assortments. Those assortments can be anything socially relevant. Changing the context of bone discovery could lead to different predictive classification–of the same bones: “The use of different priors also shows the importance of prior information, as ‘Mr. Johnson’ would have been classified as a Pacific Islander had his remains been found on Hawaii and as an ‘American Black’ had his remains been found in Gary, Indiana” (Konigsberg et al. 2009:83). [...]

Even after proving the continuous variation of skin tones, and even after showing how bones and skulls do not confirm traditional race classifications, there is still the sense that genetics offers real proof of race. Genetic testing companies amplify this misconception in a rush to market ancestry, while pharmaceutical companies sell race-targeted medications.

[...] Genetic classifications of races outside of Sub-Saharan Africa are simply subsets of Sub-Saharan African diversity. Moreover, and perhaps most strangely, “a classification that takes into account evolutionary relationships and the nested pattern of diversity would require that Sub-Saharan Africans are not a race because the most exclusive group that includes all Sub-Saharan African populations also includes every non-Sub-Saharan African population” (Long et al. 2009:32).

[...] This evolutionary history is explained in the article The global pattern of gene identity variation reveals a history of long-range migrations, bottlenecks, and local mate exchange: Implications for biological race. Once again, sophisticated techniques reveal a “nested pattern of genetic structure that is inconsistent with the existence of independently evolving biological races” (Hunley et al. 2009:35). The authors confirm greater genetic variation within Sub-Saharan Africa, and all other humans are a sub-set of this variation. Taxonomic classifications of race cannot account for observed genetic diversity. [...]"

Investigators believe Freddie Gray suffered serious head injuries while he was in a police transport van, although they have not concluded how the injuries occurred, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.

One wound occurred when Gray struck his head on a bolt that jutted out in the van, the official said, but that was not Gray’s only head injury. And the injuries overall are consistent with what medical examiners often see in car collisions, the official said.

The findings, which have not been publicly released, are part of an investigation into Gray’s death that Baltimore police handed over to prosecutors Thursday. The new information leaves many unanswered questions for a city roiled by riots and unrest after the 25-year-old’s death from injuries that occurred while in police custody...

The van made four stops before arriving at a police station, including one that police officials on Thursday said they had not initially known about. They said that stop was captured by a private security camera but did not provide additional details. From the police station, Gray was taken to the hospital, where he died a week later. Authorities said he suffered a severe spinal injury.

On May 01 2015 14:21 coverpunch wrote:
More info from WaPo:


The giant question mark in this story is that the van didn't crash. If it had, this would make a lot of sense, since he was handcuffed in the back but not strapped to the vehicle so he might have been relatively helpless to break his fall and protect his head if he were thrown suddenly.

To play out the crazy accident scenario, I think the idea is he somehow struck his head the first time and knocked himself out and thus was completely helpless when the van made a sharp turn and he was thrown hard onto his head or neck. This is how people get severe head or neck injuries in (American) football too. It's a defenseless, knocked out player who is unable to protect themselves and gets hit again.

I think it's far more likely he was injured when he was apprehended by police putting their knees into his back. The actual vertebrae is fairly fragile if someone is pushing against it directly, which is why you are explicitly told never to touch it in massage and every combat sport has rules against attacking the spine.

On May 01 2015 22:38 Plansix wrote:

The really damning part of that report is that if he was injured in a freak accident in the back of the van, why didn't the police officers call for medical assistance right away? The idea of freak accidents is plausible, but their response to never call for medical assistance is completely illogical and doesn't fit with that narrative.

On May 02 2015 00:07 Millitron wrote:

What do you mean by "right away"? I haven't heard how long it took for them to get medical assistance.

Because if they only waited till they got to the jail, that actually is not so unbelievable. There are medical professionals at all jails. Were I in the same situation, I might think the best course of action would be to just get him to the jail as quick as possible. That'd be faster than stopping and waiting for an ambulance to come get him.

Now, all bets are off if they didn't get him any help as soon as they arrived at the jail.