wirelessguru1 Wrote:
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> > What happens when you have a white and a
> black parent. what "race" is the child?
> > Logically there is a 50/50 mix and therefore
> the child could be classified as
> > either "white" or "black" however according
> to the rule of hypodescent most places
> > the child will be classified as "black" -- a
> perfect example of the utterly socially
> > constructed nature of racial classifications.
>
>
> YES, I completely agree with your comment. This is
> a GREAT example of an arbitrary social construct!
> Nevertheless this is still not a good reason for
> us to not get a much better understanding of the
> scientific aspects of such a 50/50 mix!!!
>
> I suppose that black is then dominant in such a
> mix, in some way, since at least society thinks
> this way without having any of the scientific
> evidence!

Neither "black" nor "white" is dominant. Skin color is determined by the amount of melanin produced. All the variation in skin colors you see is due to differences in the amount of melanin. skin color is controlled by 4 to 6 genes which is why this skin color is not either pure black or pure white and nothing else like a single-gene Mendelian trait where the concept of dominant and recessive is applicable. The multiple genes involved means that in the recombination during meosis there are a possible 256 different combinations-- what this means is that the possible phenotypes produced (i.e. the skin color) fall along a bell curve distribution.

What Science is telling you is 1)that what people socially contruct as "races" focuses on superficial differences-- not fundamental differences and 2) these attributes DO NOT reflect genetic relationships (or differences) between groups of people because these traits are not solely under genetic control but rather are crucially affected by their adaptability to the environment. These traits are clinal, for example skin color is darkest in populations who have lived close to the Equator for a long time and the darkness of the skin color diminishes as a function of distance from the equator. Exactly what defines a cline.

When science uses genetics (or cranial measurements) as a way to determine the relationships and differences between populations, a crucial requirement is to use non-adaptive genes and/or cranial measurements-- precisely to avoid complications due to adaptations to various environments and deal only with genetic relationships.


>
> Like I've said before science has yet to really
> help with this issue of race! So far no reasonable
> explanation has been given to where the PHYSICAL
> differences really come from?

I just told you-- and I told you before with my example of the Negritos of the Andaman Islands. The superficial PHYSICAL differences (actually the phenotypes) that laypersons fixate on-- come from a combination of genetic and adaptation to environmenal factors and therefore are 1)unreliable (Negritos are NOT genetically related to people in Africa who look exactly like them) and 2) have too many overlaps, if one really looks at a good sample of humanity, to be useful in really clasifying humans.

Bernard



IMHO, saying that
> race does not exist is not sufficient to deal with
> this critical issue specially when people can
> clearly see those physical differences...
>
> eom