Should we "do away" with racial classification?

Question

Some argue that although "race" is a valid taxonomic concept in other species, it cannot be applied to humans.Many scientists have argued that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of races delineated vary according to the culture making the racial distinctions; thus they reject the notion that any definition of race pertaining to humans can have taxonomic rigour and validity. Many contend that while racial categorizations may be marked by phenotypic or genotypic traits, the idea of race itself, and actual divisions of persons into races, are social constructs.

I think race is on a grey scale. With so many people being x%+y%+z%, defining ourselves to 1 or 2 race(s) is absurd. Especially like if your Egyptian or Brazilian, or whatever.

I don't want to offend anyone, I want all of your opinions. Please & thanks

Answer 1

Anthropology always argues for or against it. As said its a good taxonomic device, however what should be done away with is biological determinism.

Answer 2

In my country the race is not the issue but religion is.

Answer 3

Well, a lot of anthropologists and scientists argue that race IS a valid scientific and medical concept, as it's very easy to discern someones race by DNA tests. The 'there is no race' has more support in the media than among scientists. Given genetic information on several hundred people and told to divide them into similar groups, a computer divided them neatly into their races (Niell Risch).

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:8YU...

Generally, they just replace the word race with population now. Most genetics studies do this.

You have to accept racial differences, if you don't you get a useless 'one medical treatment fits all' attitude that ignores very real difference between racial groups. For example, until a few years ago no-one realised black women had shorter pregnancies, and babies died as a result.

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsh...

Also, Africans react differently to blood pressure medication, and one arthritis treatment tested and shown to be harmless in the Japanese caused liver failure in Europeans.

Racial tests are based on DNA clusters. For example... if gene A happens in all populations, but only in group X at a high rate, that your probably a member of that group X. This applies to a lot of human DNA, and it only takes ten genes to nail someones ancestry pretty precisely After sixteen tests, they've not got a misidentification yet.

http://dnaprint.humid.e-symposium.com/dn...

You should also rememeber, that we are not 99.9% the same. This is a bogus figure not even accepted by the man who originally stated it ( Craig Venter).

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007...

It's actually 99% the same, but we share 98.4% of our DNA with Bonobos. Of our human only DNA, about 4% defines racial differences, and that's actually quite a lot of DNA difference, as just one mutation can have a very major effect on an organism.

There's a commonly quoted phrase that '80% of the difference occurs with in groups, it's easier to more closely genetically related to any memeber of any other groupt than a memeber of your own', which has also been shown to be wrong, but is endlessly repeated in the media. It's now called 'Lewontins fallacy'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin's_...

Lewontins assertion only apllied to 'one gene only' testing. If you do large scale DNA tests on individuals they ALWAYS turn out to be more genetically similar to their own race.

As for mixed race individuals, that there is an orange does not mean there is no red or yellow. It means you are mixed, and less likely to have dodgy recessive genes.

Answer 4

You could say the same thing about describing different tools.  The definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of tools delineated vary according to the culture making the tool distinctions; thus they reject the notion that any definition of tools.  

Yet the fact remains, there are different tools.

Answer 5

No thank you, I've grow-en attached to my race after all these years of being in this skin.

Answer 6

Who is the "we" and how does one "do away" with any human conceptualization?

In these days of Political Correctness, some might argue that there is no need for the differentiation of humans by what is called Race.  There are probably more that are fighting tooth and nail to keep the concept alive.

It is not always a matter of taxonomic rigor and validity.  Similar to Gender differentiation, the concept of Race for crude physical phenotypes is highly useful for the medical profession.

It is not because of the strange mixture of genetic material in some humans that changes the concept of Race for peoples who are mostly of one genetic background.

Yes, Race is a social construct.  It always has been.  It has lead to many adverse interactions of people in the past, but an attempt to eliminate the concept may have no valid point.  Those who are the strongest supporters of the concept learned it at home and not in any school system.  Nothing will change by eliminating the word Race from educational materials.

The best that humanity can hope for is to pass on to our children the concept of Humanity as a whole and to not judge any individual by the way he or she looks.

Answer 7

I think it all depends on how one approaches the issue. I think that the concept of doing away with race serves little, if any, pragmatic value. If anything, one could argue that it would reverse social progress and studies. Genetics aside, I think that as long as race continues to play a central role in society's architecture that neglecting it would be utterly futile. If anything, we shouldn't allow political correctness to impose on the necessity to involve race on an even deeper level. As doing so would prevent further human social advancements towards a more accepting society.

Answer 8

As you have seen here, "doing away with race"  will do more harm in some areas.  It would also make it more difficult to make facial reconstructions based on skeletal remains (of which help authorities identify victims in many cases).  Osteologists will tell you that there are definite categorical and distinctive differences along lines of race and geographic origin of people.  Forensic reconstructions certainly couldn't be as precise without the knowledge of racial differences on the human body.

However, I think this whole issue was raised due to the morphing of the word race.  It's definition has changed subtly with time in a way that can make it very negative.  This is what people are fighting.  I am with them in their fight; but rather than getting rid of it all together, I think we need to educate people more.  Especially, since race is basically our bodies' cosmetic differences (although some of those cosmetics do penetrate a little deeper).  They are features that form as our bodies adapt to the surrounding culture and environment.  We need to get the education of this process as well as cultural education (like anthropology) more into the mainstream.  They have shown studies where people with such an education have a lower incidence of racism and racial issues.

If we can make this more widespread and a common education worldwide, there will be little reason to "do away" with it all together.  That is just my opinion.

Answer 9

You're certainly correct in that "race" is a biologically useless term.  However, it is a useful social variant that has many influences on how one is treated and therefore in combating racism it is important to be able to distinguish by race to see where the problems are.

One of the best things to help combat racism would be to educate people about the objective comparison by race which happens to prove that we cannot judge anything based on it although I would like to think that even if there were differences we would still act nicely to one another.