While homosexuals are a numerical minority, there is no such thing as 'sexual minorities' at law. Activists have coined this term to draw a beguiling but fallacious association between homosexuals and legally recognised minorities like racial groups. Race is a fixed trait. It remains controversial whether homosexual orientation is genetic or environmental, perhaps both. There are no ex-blacks but there are ex-gays. ... Diversity is not licence for perversity.
-- Thio Li-Ann, in her argument for the retention of 377A in parliament, 22 Oct 2007
Race is not a fixed trait. There are no scientific evidence that race is a genetic property. But there are racial categories. Health-care scientists use racial categories as approximations since there are correlations between a few diseases and people grouped in these racial categories -- for example, more people who are supposedly racially Chinese are lactose intolerant, which, in any case, may be due to a social factor, in that milk is not commonly fed to children. In other words, racial categories are used for pragmatic purposes, not unlike the use of racial categories by our government for public housing quotas to ensure some degree of ethnic-cultural diversity in the estates. Race is an illusion; scientists have shown it to be so. Race is a historical artifact of Western colonialism which employed a fallacious science to show that the "colored" peoples of the world are less civilized by natural-biological-fixed fiat and should become the white man's burden.
So why is an "Asian", a "Chinese", an esteemed and highly educated one at that, spouting such outdated nonsense in our reasonable hall to call for the retention of colonial-era laws, born of Victorian racist-sexist conservatism, that make it illegal to engage in homosexual acts? Is she guilty of articulating one of the "distracting fallacies that obscure what is at stake" she accuses the pro-repeal camp of throwing up?
There can be ex-blacks. Race was invented to justify exploitation and oppression of peoples, minority or not (the black majority were long oppressed by the white minority in Apartheid South Africa). Before there was black, there were many African ethnicities. These cultural diversities and heritages were wiped out by the extreme dehumanities of trans-Atlantic slavery, and the slaves, identified by their skin color, became simply known as blacks by their white masters. Cultivating generations and centuries of resistance, the slaves developed their own culture and identity, and the slaves in America called this identity black, using the name used to oppress them to fight for their rights against discrimination.
In the fight against discrimination, in any fight against any type of discrimination, the recourse is to a common humanity as the highest morality. In this humanity, there are ex-blacks, ex-whites, ex-Chinese, ex-Malays, ex-Indians, ex-heterosexuals, ex-homosexuals. As an esteemed black man who longed to be ex-black once famously said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". In the ultimate discrimination of the Holocaust, ex-Jews and ex-gays were accomplished by annihilation. Race and sexuality belong to the same domain of humanity and, conversely, the same domain of anti-humanity discrimination.
We should be no less a dreamer in the domain of humanity, because this is the base of our sensible nation. When S. Rajaratnam wrote the sacred pledge of the nation, with the proud words of commitment "regardless of race, language or religion, to build a democratic society, based on justice and equality", he believed that becoming a Singaporean was a conviction that transcended all divisions by respecting differences among the diverse peoples collected here on this island. As realists as we are, of course, the differences should be respected as long as they do not undermine the nation. The burden is on the pro-retention camp to show with evidence that homosexuals going about their private business in their bedroom are undermining the nation. By the way, "perversity" doesn't undermine the nation but is an artifact of subjective opinion - your emotional disgust is a good gauge not of sedition but of your personal morality.
The majority should prevail? Well, for centuries, the majority of white people thought the blacks and the other colored peoples were savages, and even had commonly-held religious and scientific beliefs to support the status quo of discrimination. You, the handful of vocal representatives who claim to represent the silent majority, have neither commonly-held religious or scientific beliefs, and you are arguing to retain discrimination based simply on a numerical majority with their vague moralities. What happened to your visionary leadership to do the right thing against majority opinion? Ah, that applies only to casinos, ministerial pay and CPF annuities. Perhaps you have estimated the pink dollar and found it wanting? Since when have the People's Action Party retreated from a crossfire?
It is done, history is made and hasn't end, it continues. The abolition of the slave trade was first raised in the British parliament twenty years before abolition became legal fact in 1807, and only after much clever energies expended by the dedicated minority. It took a lot of effort before the sensible nation with its conservative majority led by an entrenched religious and political elite would realize the inhumanities it perpetuated outside its borders. When the inhumanities are at home, the stakes are much higher and the conscious and unconcious blindness therefore deeper. It is going to be a long walk, but I am willing, and it does not matter whether I am gay or not and religious or otherwise, because it is about our humanity.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
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27 comments:
Dan,
Nice piece, and I am surprised by the PAP's retreat as well.
My favourite comedian, Stephen Colbert from US, has a funny line which I can add to the plate (the persona he used is a typical white republican) when interviewing activists on racial issues in the US, "I don't see race. I see beyond race."
Good piece to read. Well written. Thanks!
I paid Dr. Thio Li-ann a 'tribute' for inspiring my latest series of wallpapers. Check them out here: http://patlaw.wordpress.com/2007/10/28/straws-and-noses/
http://shrn.stanford.edu/workshops/revisitingrace/Scholarly%20Articles.htm
2 Scholarly Articles Diverge On Role of Race in Medicine
"A view widespread among many social scientists, endorsed in official statements by the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association, is that race is not a valid biological concept. But biologists, particularly the population geneticists who study genetic variation, have found that there is a structure in the human population. The structure is a family tree showing separate branches for Africans, Caucasians (Europe, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent), East Asians, Pacific Islanders and American Indians... Dr. Risch and nine co-authors say that ignoring race will "retard progress in biomedical research.""
Thanks BL, saltwetfish and pat law.
What's your point, agagooga? There still isn't any evidence that race exists as biological reality. One article based on arguments drawn from disease studies do not prove genetic variation among race - one would have to show significant genetic variation across the 5 racial categories, as opposed to variations internally or other ways to cut up the population. The 5 categories were first proposed by Ferdinand Blumentritt in the 18th Century, based on secondary reports of travelers and collected skulls. Note that the article says, "Ashkenazi Jews, French Canadians and the Amish", ethnic groups are not the same as race. Perhaps you are suggesting that the parallel irony of what Thio is saying about 'science of homosexuality': 'It remains controversial whether homosexual orientation is genetic or environmental, perhaps both"? If so, say it, so that I won't misinterpret your point of sticking a citation from a New York Times journalist's essay in 2003 (rather than the misleading academic authority signified by the Stanford link) here. What's your point?
That depends on what you mean by race.
As a clear-cut concept with various distinct and immutable categories, one of which anyone can be put into, race does not exist.
But as a broad spectrum with several clusters of individuals which correspond to races, and some scattered in-between, it does. The researchers constructed a family tree with branches for each race - I assume this uses the same method used to reconstruct species family trees: looking at genetic distances (eg with the PAUP and McClade programs).
The fact is that Ashkenazi Jews and the Amish (I'm not sure about the French Canadians) are relatively isolated gene pools, and within them there are genetic similarities. For example Ashkenazi are particularly prone to some neutral ailments, and this may explain their above-average intelligence as well.
It is also well known that various races are genetically more prone to various diseases. Besides those mentioned by the article: sickle cell anemia among Africans, and Tay-Sachs among Jews, Malays are more prone to diabetes.
There're other physical differences too; for example, Chinese are more likely to be lactose intolerant than Caucasians.
Biology aside, there're other markers of race. Analysis of bones classifies people into racial groups with a high degree of accuracy.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/first/gill.html
"Those who believe that the concept of race is valid do not discredit the notion of clines, however. Yet those with the clinal perspective who believe that races are not real do try to discredit the evidence of skeletal biology. Why this bias from the "race denial" faction? This bias seems to stem largely from socio-political motivation and not science at all."
As for homosexuality, based on studies of twins, there is evidence that homosexuality is partially genetic.
Excellent, then we can have a debate, instead of a rhetorical opinion a la Thio.
I made a mistake there, its Johan Blumenbach. Stephen Jay Gould did a piece on this: http://discovermagazine.com/1994/nov/thegeometerofrac441/
Race, as in human race, means a species. If we want to break the human species, homo sapien, down into further races, that means sub-species, which when organized according to genetic distances, means a species family tree. This is a proposition inherited from Blumenbach, sustained through anthropometric studies of bones and skulls. No statistically significant study on the genetic distances exist. The PAUP and McClade programs have been used in some cases and they show internal variations to be greater in racial categories (e.g. 'Chinese') rather than across.
If you read the NYT article carefully, the only real evidence is here:
"But even with APOE4, Dr. Risch says, knowledge of racial background provides important insights because the risk conferred by the gene varies by race. Inheriting two APOE4 genes, one from each parent, raises the risk of Alzheimer's 33 times in Japanese populations, 15 times in Caucasians and only 6 times in Africans. This suggests that some unknown factor modifies the effect of the APOE4 gene in different races, he says."
Note, "UNKNOWN FACTOR", which may be social or biological. There still isn't any evidence. Based on this genetic evidence alone, we might as well say there is a dual-APOE4-gene race, a single-APOE4-gene race, and a no-APOE4-gene race.
As for your argument about bones. It seems that you are trying to speak through forensic anthropologist George W. Gill's words to say that my view is biased and stems largely from socio-political motivation and not science. Well, let's look at the precious bones. I quote Gill:
"Numerous individual methods involving midfacial measurements, femur traits, and so on are over 80 percent accurate alone, and in combination produce very high levels of accuracy" in "determining geographic racial affinities (white, black, American Indian, etc.)"
Bone growth is co-determined by environmental factors. Thus, to dig up the bones of the native Americans of a particular period and compare it to the Caucasian of the same period (which is what this 'science' is all about) is to measure the unknown proportion of environmental factor that determined the variation in bone growth. Better diet, for example, in modern consumption economies, would lead to the leveling of skeletal structures. Again, no evidence.
Yes, yes, sickle cell among Africans, Tay-Sachs among Jews, Chinese lactose intolerant. Like I said, this is a PRAGMATIC use of racial categories, where barely statistically significant CORRELATIONS of TENDENCIES do not indicate biological/genetic CAUSATION. Hey, this is basic science here.
As for your smart Ashkenazi Jews and the Amish, these are ethnic groups, strongly marked by endogamous descent, not race as it is defined by the NYT article, George Gill and you. I'll give it to you though, if you want to call them race, and I'll throw in the long isolated Icelanders and Inuits, who have been shown to have unique gene pools. So we have five races then. Ash Jews, Amish, Icelanders, Inuits and the Rest ... we need to change our IC categorization thus.
Ah, I see a link between your use of Gill's bones argumentation and Thio's argumentation, in an ironic way while showering in nice, cold water.
Yes, there is evidence that homosexuality has a biological/genetic base. Thio Li Ann's denial of this by claiming that science has been politicized is as fallacious as George Gill claiming that those who point out the flaws in the "the evidence of skeletal biology" as politically motivated. Both are doing the same sort of denial of science. For Thio, it is denial of scientific evidence by claiming the intrusion of politics (which therefore ingeniously leaves her as the objective knower... right...). For Gill, it is denial of scientific criticisms of his evidence by claiming the same intrusion of politics, of course, the others not him are guilty of it.
Oh, and the funny thing, Gill begins his essay by claiming numerical consensual MAJORITY too, on the biological reality of race, among BIOLOGICAL anthropologists. Amazing correlation between Thio and those who vocally claim the reality of race, what's the causation? This cuts deep...
Race does not mean species. Species refer to reproductively isolated groups of organisms, and plainly this is not true for race.
I do not know what you mean by 'statistically significant study on the genetic distances'. If you want to say that internal variations within races are greater than across races, and this means that race does not exist, you would be in a bind, since internal variation across sexes are greater than across genders, yet we do not deny the reality of gender. More importantly, genetic distances within species are greater than between species. Does this mean then that species do not exist? Surely not.
APOE4 is the only case where statistics about genetic variation affecting races is cited, but you can find many more. The claim that the unknown factor could be social is implausible, since these studies are carried out across people with a wide variety of social backgrounds. Besides which, it is problematic to assert that all members of race X will have social environment Y. Surely there is a diversity of social environments across races - the robustness of the effect of the APOE4 gene across individuals - with different social environments - surely says something about their underlying genetics.
Bone growth is partly determined by environmental factors, but bone analysis is not based on factors such as size and length alone (probably not even mostly), but upon factors such as ratios, curvatures and such. Anyhow, if bone growth were so influenced by environmental factors that racial variations were undistinguishable, how then can an accuracy of over 80% - on single measurements alone - be achieved? Bone traits are used to trace population movements and flows, and distinguish them from other populations, see http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7316(199907)64%3A3%3C527%3AMATSTO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 for example.
I don't get what you mean by 'pragmatic' use of racial categories.
What do you think causes sickle cell disease among Africans, Tay-Sachs among Jews, and lactose intolerance among Chinese? The racial effects are seen across social environments - lactose intolerance, for example, comes from genetic factors which prevent lactase, the enzyme that digests lactose, from working properly. It is true that environmental factors can increase lactose tolerance, but this does not mean that genetics are totally unimportant.
The point about Ashkenazi and Amish are to establish that genetic clusters can occur. Although these are very strong examples, it does not mean that we cannot make a less strong for conventional races. As I have pointed out, there're genetic correlations for various traits for them like diabestes, lactose intolerance, Tay-Sachs etc.
Perhaps you are accusing me of poisoning the well - the issue has been politicised and, ipso facto, arguments on XXX side are politically motivated and thus we should not believe them.
If politicisation were the only reason offered to disbelieve certain claims, that would indeed be fallacious. Yet when it is one of a host of reasons, there is arguably some merit in it.
Indeed, this is used in conventional academia. When Social Darwinism is discussed, not only is it debunked on a scientific level, but to top it off it is pronounced as racist and the product of colonialism. Do these denouncements mean that we should not believe those who denounce Social Darwinism as unscientific? Surely not.
Gill's claim is that political motivation makes one disregard the evidence. The politically correct side has unreasonable claims while the non- (or less-, if you like) ideological side denies evidence. There is an analogous situation here in other realms. For example, most gay advocates champion the claim that homosexuality is 100% genetic, whereas those who say that homosexuality is partially environmental do not say that it is 100% environmental and 0% genetic. Nonetheless, the advocates continue to dogmatically insist that it is 100% genetic. A similar thing is happening with race - race proponents do not say that races are fixed, immutable and clearly distinguishable categories whereas race discrediters say that race does not exist - AT ALL. One is clearly a more extreme position than the other.
if i may just jump into this really scientific conversation and say something - i am studying about evolution and human bones in my class on prehistoric life!
and also, <3 this post! WHOOT.
On the most general level, that's what race means, as in 'the human race', it has been confused by conjectural usage to indicate sub-species divisions - conjectures born out of speculative natural philosophy in the context of European colonial expansion.
What I mean by 'statistically significant study of genetic distances' refers to the family tree of genetic distances that you mentioned, it is a mere proposition that has not been shown to be statistically significant in any existing research. Thus, there is no evidence to show that it even stands as a tentative proposition. The existence of species is not predicated on genetic distance/difference, but reproduction, as you have mentioned. I am talking about sub-species differentiation here (the splitting of race into 'classic' 5 categories and then further). Here genetic distance/difference matters, and if internal variation in each of the categories is much more than across, then the 5 categories are meaningless.
On APOE4. Precisely. There is variation of these genes, but what has this got to do with race? The study of effects of such genes take into account social environments that are coded in shorthand reference using the ethnicity of individuals - Japanese, Ash Jews etc. - this does not refer to race as has been argued for by George Gill and mentioned in the NYT.
Pragmatic shorthand reference -- because that's the category that is widespread and available. When one is doing applied science, studying say the interaction of a set of genes with the social environment of the individual to produce disease, one has to use some categories to refer to the latter, and the easiest is ethnicity, which in some societies like the US and Singapore, slips into race. These studies show the effect of GENE x SOC ENV (ETHNO/RACE) --> DISEASE; or if the genes are not yet discovered GENE (ETHNO/RACE) x SOC ENV (ETHNO/RACE) --> DISEASE. As you can see the latter is more problematic because of the usage of similar proxies for two variables.
To argue that that the study of the causes of the disease therefore show evidence of the reality of biological race is a scientific fallacy and also tautological. Genetic clusters do not prove race, they are simply genetic clusters. Besides, these genetic clusters are pragmatically discovered and defined according to diseases. A proper study of race would be to measure the genetic distances between the family tree proposition, not use disease as a proxy for race, because if we are to use diseases, we would have to agree on a basket of diseases that are significant for racial differentiation, which is already tautological. The same goes for bones (put BONES in place of DISEASE in above; so far physical anthropometry is in the realm of the problematic 2nd equation, since no causation by specific genes has been proposed).
Notice that I have not argued that genetics is not important. For all purposes, I am firmly in the evolutionary theory camp and favor a field called sociobiology against my more trenchantly culturalist colleagues. Saying that there is a genetic basis to behavior, ailments, appearances etc. is not the same as saying that race exists. Race as it has been defined is completely false, does not exist AT ALL. Genetic groups exist, but they do not correspond IN ANY WAY to the existing categories, and they shift according to the scientific problem at hand - particular disease, particular behavior etc. So I may be dual-APOE4 for the purpose of that study and non-LactoseIntolerant for another, and short-Bone for another etc...
And this precisely the problem with the continued usage of 'race' by science. The concept refers specifically to the sub-species differentiation of the human species, and has been used for political purposes. To preserve scientific objectivity and accuracy, genetic groups/clusters are preferred, unless these are not yet discovered by genetic mapping, in which scientists therefore pragmatically use the shorthand reference (2nd equation).
Again, about your correlations between diseases and race, refer to the above argument using the equations. Theoretically, the proposition is genetic cluster interacts with environment to cause disease X. If there is correlation between race and disease, that's because this is an artifact of scientific short-handing - 'race' in place of environment or genetic cluster. Genetic cluster/group is not race. Lastly and in addition, your correlations do not prove race, the focus of these studies is the causation of the diseases not the study of race (which would need statistical mapping of the family tree proposition), it is fallacious to use the studies to show proof for race, because the studies are on the diseases!
As for your article on the bones...
"Microevolution and the Skeletal Traits of a Middle Archaic Burial: Metric and Multivariate Comparison to Paleoindians and Modern Amerindians" by Marjorie Brooks Lovvorn, George W. Gill et al. It gives very bare evidence of measurement using ONE skull and the authors recognize the limitation of the study. It tests the hypothesis that Native Americans (Amerindians) descended from Eurasian Paleoindians crossing over through the Bering Straits and postulate that the ONE skull shows intermediate evolution from Paleoindians to Modern Amerindians. I like the paper actually but you have cited it wrongly and out of context. It gives evidence, though barely and only suggestively since it is only one skull, that the Eurasian migration hypothesis is true (the other hypothesis which is still a viable challenger is autogenesis of Amerindians in continental America). It doesn't prove in anyway that Native Americans are a race, scientifically speaking.
Social Darwinism is racist and a product of colonialism, it is not pronounced as such, it is studied social scientifically, with different measures of evidence from statistically-based physical sciences. There is nothing analogous in the politics of racial science to the politics of gay science as you described. Both the 100% genetic gayness and 100% environment champions are clearly wrong in terms of scientific evidence. Their extreme positions are therefore wrong. Race discreditors like me who say that race (not genetic variation, mind you) does not exist are taking an extreme position, which is RIGHT based on current scientific evidence. Race champions who either argue moderately that races can change or extremely that races are fixed are WRONG based on current scientific evidence. I don't really care if I am taking an 'extreme' position, because the 'middle path' is not naturally right. And my position is as intertwined with my politics as anyone else's. I am not the one accusing others of being politically motivated and therefore wrong. Any scientific position is intertwined with political positions. George Gill is just being rhetorical, like Thio, when he dismisses counter-arguments on the basis on political motivation.
You are not poisoning the well, just making the water murky with bad science.
race schmace...criminal law is meant to protect harm to others. If Thio Li Ann can prove that homosexual sex directly harms third parties, then I can accept s377A. but she has abjectly failed to do so and has merely sprouted off some self-righteous moralistic BS. whose morals? christian morals? should that be relevant?
goddamn, i meant protect others from harm
Haha Shafiqah, thanks, feel free to jump into the debate, though we are not talking about prehistoric life/race/genetic clusters here, but contemporary ones. =)
Hi anonymous, hahaha, you are quite funny, the ironic use of 'goddamn'. I agree with your liberal position, which is close to mine here, which is a multiculturalist position, that's why I said that "the burden is on the pro-retention camp to show with evidence that homosexuals going about their private business in their bedroom are undermining the nation". Yeah, vague morals, in any case, the vocal retention minority speaks only for a portion of all Christians, who in any case, are a minority in Singapore.
Race schmace race indeed. Why do people need to believe in the biological reality of race? Answer: in Thio's case in her speech, (since I don't know whether agagooga needs to or just happen to be intrigued by bones paleo-anthropology and has confused that with race) so that she can argue that gay discrimination is not the same as ethnic discrimination, thereby excluding gays from basic human rights and respect (and down the slippery slope: excluding gays from humans? only ex-gays are humans?).
"To slouch back to Sodom is to return to the Bad Old Days in ancient Greece or even China where sex was utterly wild and unrestrained"...
sounds good if yer ask me
I would rather be a pillar of tasty salt
Than be part of the repressed moral lot
Imposing on others their civilized inner rot
Wow. Just came across your blog after it was tomorrow'ed in the 377a debate. Your intellectual prowess has not waned since your Soci Hons days.
Do you ever encounter this Thio Li-Ann character on campus?
When people say 'the human race' they do not mean 'race' in the same sense as when they refer to people's races.
What would you consider 'statistically significant' genetic distances? Genetic distances are currently used to ascertain lineage and paternity and so such investigations would be prey to the same objections about statistical significance as your criticism of race tracing.
The definition of species is not predicated on genetic distance, but then neither is race. Genetic distance is just a way to show the branching of family trees, common descent and the history of reproductive relationships. I am not sure why genetic distance would matter for race but not for anything else - you can take any characteristic and you will find that genetic distances vary more among those with that same characteristic than people who differ in that characteristic. Sex and eye colour are 2 examples of that. Does it still make sense, then, to split people into male and female, brown-eyed, black-eyed and blue-eyed then?
Once again, I must stress that race is not a clear-cut concept with various distinct and immutable categories, one of which anyone can be put into. It is one of various attributes we have, all of which in tandem form our physical self.
The point of referring to APOE4 and such genes is simply to show that racial groups do share certain genes in common, and grouping them by these genes happens to overlap with racial categories as is commonly understood.
You say that 'genetic clusters do not prove race, they are simply genetic clusters'. Yet going back to the definition of race, those of a certain race are said to share some genes in common since they have common ancestry. If genetic similarity does not define race, then what does?! You say that it is tautological to agree on a basket of diseases significant for racial differentiation, yet this is not how spotting racial patterns happens - study of the data just happens to notice that some diseases crop up more in people of a certain race.
If we applied your criticism to looking at correlations of other factors with diseases, no science could be done at all - we could say that saying that lung cancer was due to smoking was tautological since we had agreed that lung cancer was a significant disease for cigarette smoking differentiation. Besides which, you said a proper study would look at genetic distances, yet on the other hand you proclaim such distances statistically insignificant. Trees of common descent are generated using multiple methods and datasets, and they seem to come to common conclusions - we have trees reproducing racial categories as are commonly understood.
You also say that physical anthropometry is problematic since no causation by specific genes has been proposed, yet if we see people in different social environments with similar characteristics, it is hardly a stretch to say these cross-cultural/social differences come from genes. Even if we hadn't found a gene for brown eyes, and we found brown-eyed people across different social environments but sharing similar ancestry we would not conclude that it was due to environmental causes. Fossil identification relies on looking at bone structures and characteristics, since the organisms are long dead and we cannot observe if they can mate (how we would demarcate species with living organisms). If we applied the same 'environment can cause all the differences' theory, then the discipline of paleontology would collapse.
As I have said, it is problematic to assume that all members of race A have social environment B, and all members of race C have social environment D. We live in a globalised and modern world, and there is a diversity of social environments not only between but also between racial groups.
"When people say 'the human race' they do not mean 'race' in the same sense..." and therein lies the beginning of the problem at hand.
You are not getting the point. Alright, let me change the language a little bit, and I am not going to discuss this for too much, because your definition of race assumes too much and too loosely and you still have not shown me any scientific evidence, except very bad proxies with fallacious logic.
Go look up 'clines', which has been used in replacement of 'race' by evolutionary biologists, because the latter is scientifically meaningless. Your eyes and bones variation etc. belong to the category of clines.
It is fallacious to say that studies of diseases in specific ethnic groups prove race exists. Studies have shown that smoking causes lung cancer because of statistically significant correlations and a theory of how it does so. Lung cancer cannot be used for proof of smoking. Ask any insurance fellow and he will understand this simple logic.
Trees of descent show ethnic descent, not race. They have a tree showing that a lot of people in central asia, and in fact, the whole world, descended from Genghis Khan. That does not constitute a race.
I did not say that environment can cause all the differences. My equation says, GENES X ENVIRONMENT.
And I did not say that physical anthropometry is problematic since no causation by specific genes has been proposed. It is just one limitation. It is problematic for a whole series of reasons. But it appears to be an article of faith for you.
I see what you mean when you say race is changeable now (your moderate position). It is your loose definition of race, one minute you are using it as though you are defining clines, the next you are referring to ethnic descent. And then you leap to the conclusion that race exists. Let me ask you simply then, what are the 'races' existing today? What's your definition of race?
BTW, go look up the statement on race and evolution by the american association of physical anthropology. You are seriously on the fringe here, with bad science, together with a lot of far right groups, you really don't want to look and think more closely about the flimsiness of your 'evidence'?
Hey From the old days, eh, who are you leh, not fair, I want to know too, if you on facebook, there's a group for our soc hons class. Nope, law campus is in the beautiful Bkt Timah campus. Besides, I'm way down the evolutionary ladder among faculty here, and this is a large eco-system.
Agagooga: http://www.physanth.org/positions/race.html
Your oft-quoted George Gill should be a member of this professional association.
You need to update your science. BTW, population is not equivalent to race, and that is the unit of analysis for population genetics, and also for paleoanthropology if studying Homo Sapien migration. In any case, paleoanthropology is mostly concerned with the species evolution of Hominids, not sub-speciation (i.e. race).
dan song, why are your colleagues culturalists unlike you? how do they justify themselves? i'm doing a lot of cognitive science readings for my philosophy class and i find the arguments very convincing so i probably belong to the same camp as you do right now but i thought i'd look at both sides.
hey jabir,
I won't say they are all/mainly culturalists. It is just that the culturalists tend to be louder in the past two decades. I believe this is a perennial problem in the social sciences, as we are caught in the confluence of the natural sciences and the humanities, as these reflect the subject of our study: human behavior. I don't disagree with the culturalist on their interpretive approach, in fact, I am very much a specialist in cultural studies myself. It is just that I also, at the same time, like you I suspect, consider the merits of both sides. At times, I believe that both approaches can be combined.
One of the culturalist arguments for rejecting the natural sciences is their analysis of the production of natural scientific knowledge as strongly co-determined by social and cultural processes. I don't disagree with this, but neither do I think that, ipso facto, natural scientific knowledge is not valid.
A third reason is, simply, over-specialization, a disease which inflicts academia, and the politics of disciplinary recognition leading to blinders and ridiculous claims. Since the 'race' debacle of the 19th and early 20th century, where sometimes a few skeletons were used to make huge claims about sub-species evolution, biologists have learned to recognize the value of making appropriately limited claims based on existing evidence. Social scientists have to learn this too.
Janadas Devan is my aspirin to the throbbing headache that is Thio Li-ann.
This blog entry is my soothing massage.
Glad to be a word-masseuse, i like it, will add that to my occupation ;)
dear sir, on the somewhat unrelated topic of "race", if you have the time, may I ask what you think of this article?
http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/
Dude, we have the same name! But I think I have done less than 10% of the Soci readings you have.
Passed through NUS campus recently and the place looks very different, big new buildings everywhere... I didn't know Law was not in Kent Ridge anymore! At least Fong Seng Nasi Lemak is still there.
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