Moral Question--responses welcome

[Wombat]

Please allow me to repeat / rephrase my question: if races are a social construct, please explain diseases like Celiac Disease and Sickle-Cell Anemia which are found only in specific racial groupings and not within the entire species.

Are the diseases respectful of a social construct?

Do you believe that Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews belong to different races? If so, you are probably using the term 'race' like nobody else on earth. But only one group are likely to suffer from Tay-Sachs. The notion of 'race' doesn't explain why Ahkenazi Jews get Tay-Sachs but Sephardic Jews do not but that doesn't mean that the explanation isn't genetic.

If you use terms like "phenotype," "ethnic groups," or "genetically predisposed," that's fine, but please explain to me why these terms are not simply euphemisms for the term "race."

A phenotype is the observable features of an individual organism. If you can be dsitinguished by any observable means whatsoever from your brothers and sisters you don't share their phenotype. But no believer in race thinks that full brothers and sisters can be of different race,s so that term is a non-starter.

An ethnic group is a group that shares a culture and (often) a close genetic affinity to other members of the group. But northern Chinese are genetically close to Koreans without being members of the same ethnic group. Furthermore, you belong to an ethnic group if you are accepted into it. You can't join a race (as popularly understood.) You can be banished from an ethnic group but not from a race. So ethnic groups are too fluid to be races; again we have a non-starter.

I take it by 'genetic predisposition' you mean the totality of genetic predispositions an organism displays, ie, its genotype. Again this cuts humanity into too many groups to be a euphemism for race. Again, you have a different genotype from each of your full siblings unless you happen to have an identical twin. But you couldn't be of a different race to them.

The only term you offer that comes at all close to capturing the folk notion of race, insofar as it is coherent, is 'ethnic group', but that is tied too closely to culture and not enough to heredity to do the job.

With respect, there seems to be more of political correctness than science in avoiding the term "race."
--James

Only if you think that the only advantage of moving to Darwinian thinking in terms of populations over old-fashioned essentialist thinking is a political advantage. But nobody working in any field of modern biology, in particular, population genetics, thinks that. It's deeply ironic that notions of race that drove eugenics movements and worse in the first half of the 20th century hitched their wagon to half-digested or superficial aspects of Darwinism—survival of the fittest crudely understood—while failing to even notice the crucial shift that accompanies evolutionary biology—the shift from essentialist thinking to population thinking.

My view is that the terms 'genotype' and 'genetic' distance' do all the biological explanatory work the notion of race was designed to do and do it much better while the notion of an ethnic group does all the social explanatory work of that notion and does it better. Notions of race quickly degenerate into a pseudo scientific attempt to explain both social and physical observable differences in terms of a hidden biological essence. The notion of genotype explains all observable physical difference both gross and subtle. It doesn't require or underwrite any notion of race to do that job. The notion of genetic distance is a measure of (to put it crudely) degree of relatedness but it is a comparative notion that can divide the world as narrowly or as broadly as you like or simply permit the genetic comparison of two individuals without even raising the question of whether they are of the same or different races.

Countless authors tell this story better than I have, but you could do worse than to start with Ashley Montague or Anthony Appiah who explain it all in detailed but readable prose.

[djm]

The notion of genotype explains all observable physical difference both gross and subtle. It doesn't require or underwrite any notion of race to do that job.

Thanks for explaining your terminology. So, using your explanation, then, what are the genotype factors that you feel identify Jewishness?

djm

[Wombat]

The notion of genotype explains all observable physical difference both gross and subtle. It doesn't require or underwrite any notion of race to do that job.

Thanks for explaining your terminology. So, using your explanation, then, what are the genotype factors that you feel identify Jewishness?

djm

Are you having a laugh, or something? We've only just finished doing an abstract map of the human genome. Some particular characteristics can be explained in well-understood genetic terms but we are light years away from a project like the one you propose which, in any event, is too ill-defined for any scientist to bother with. Well, that is true for the forseeable future.

That does not mean that people can't do better than random in line up tests. The ability to do better than random in line up tests would be expected by any biologist to have a fantastically complicated explanation in terms of our ability, in general, to make judgements of relative similarity of genotypes based on phenotypes. But scientists are much too busy trying to find the genetic basis of particular characteristics like diseases. Nobody studies whole genotypes and their relationships to gestalt takes on whole phenotypes. It's too difficult and it doesn't have any obvious profitable application so who would fund it? My guess is that the kind of explanation your asking me for is 50 to 100 years away and would only be comprehensible to a professional biologist. Experimental verification that we have the skills to do better than random in line up identification tests can be had any day of the week if you can get together suitable subjects.

[djm]

No, not a laugh. I'm trying to understand, from your previous posts in this thread, how someone could look in mirror and decide, "Gee, I'm looking Jewish today." What does "Jewish" look like?

djm

[peeplj]

Womabt and Peter, thanks for the good information.

Nicely explained--I've learned something today.

--James

[Wombat]

No, not a laugh. I'm trying to understand, from your previous posts in this thread, how someone could look in mirror and decide, "Gee, I'm looking Jewish today." What does "Jewish" look like?

djm

There are thousands of ways of looking Jewish. There are thousands of ways of looking Scottish or Irish. People good at making identifications pick out gestalts. Hair and eye colour, complexion, cheek bones, noses all offer clues but only in combination with other features. Red hair is an indicator of Jewishness but also of Scottishness. You could only interpret it one way or the other by weighing other features and, even then, a skilful person could still get it badly wrong.

Lists of features would be of use only to racist cartoonists—I've never seen a Jew who closely resembles the creations of Nazi cartoonists. In real life the features combine in ways far too subtle for a list to be helpful. The recognitional capacities I'm talking about aren't verbal skills and can't be verbally explained by those who have them, rather like riding a bike.

That said, there is nothing deeply mysterious about any of this. If you were sent into a room containing ten sets of brothers close in age to eachother, wouldn't you back yourself to identify who was the brother of whom in a better than random way? You would be exercising a skill to detect relative closeness of genotypes. But that skill doesn't depend on you knowing a single word of modern genetics nor being able to say which aspects of the phenotypes presented you are being responsive to. Some people have more highly developed abilities to detect closeness of genotype than others, just as some people can tell from your accent where you come from more reliably than others. Phonetics is better understood in detail than human genetics so someone with the ability to pick accents is much more likely to be able to say what they base their judgment on than someone who can accurately group faces.

The story I described was full of people meeting eachother and, since they were related, saying things like: you look a lot like your grandmother. Where's the puzzle; every family talks like that? The boy who suspected Jewishness in his background would have been brought up thinking he was half Latvian. The Melbourne Latvian community isn't large but he would have met a lot of Latvians and noticed what they look like; that is how he would recognise them whenever they met. Living in Melbourne, he couldn't possibly have failed to meet a lot of Jewish folk. He knew there was some mystery about his father's past; some very painful early memories blocked out. At some point in time it occurred to him that he resembled some Jews of his acquaintance more closely than he resembled any Latvians. When I saw him on film, I would have come to the same conclusion. He didn't explain how he came to exercise this skill nor did he seem to have any knowledge of what it consisted in. But why should he have? There's nothing deeply mysterious going on here.

Edited to add: the skill the boy utilised is a simple extension of the same skill he and all of us use to identify our friends and acquaintances just by looking. Take someone you can identify easily just by looking, say, your mother or perhaps your wife, husband or best friend. How many of us could produce a verbal identifying description of that person, detailed enough and accurate enough to enable someone who had never met that person to identify him or her, just as quickly and easily as you can, in all the same situations? Nobody could do this. Recognitional capacities are practical skills not descriptive abilities.

[Doc Jones]

The world is full of remarkably stupid ideas...many of them held by remarkably intelligent people.

Jim, in your story about the wildly rascist Polish girl helping the Jewish refugee you ask if she's a good person.

I hope on judgement day we are judged for our actions and not our stupid ideas. Seems to me that behavior trumps ideaology every time.

I have some very strong ideas myself. Some of them, in the perspective of eternity, will likely look very stupid to me.

The Polish girl had stupid ideas. She, in spite of her stupid ideas, risked her life to save another human bieng she didn't know. To me that shows a wealth of character and goodness. Our true character is evidenced by how we treat people that can do us no good (someone smart said that...can't remember who).


Would that we were all so good in spite of our stupidity.

As far as the friendship goes, your good example will do this person more good than your alienation. If she begins to have stupid or hateful behavior...run.

To the good Jewish folks that have responded I'd say the same thing I'm afraid. Your friendship will do more good than your alienation. If the bigot walks away from the friendship when he learns your a jew, his loss, but if you walk away and he's still willing to be friends, you rob him of the chance to know someone that might help him think better.

My own Mormon ancestors suffered wholesale murder and theft of their lands and property right here in the Land of the Free. They were driven from New York to Ohio, to Missouri to Illinois. Finally, they fled to a desolate salt desert in Utah to escape the persecution. I frequently encounter people that have really stupid ideas about what the Mormons are like or what we believe. I smile and identify myself and keep right on being friends (if they're willing). More often than not, over time, ignorance is replaced with information and reason returns.

Doc

[buddhu]

The great thing about this thread is that so many different approaches and perspectives can be right at the same time.

Where da :: Totally serious and not at all sarcastic or tongue-in-cheek :: smiley at when I need one?

[djm]

Wombat, sorry, but we seem to be operating from very different POVs. I know Jewish people who are short, very blond, very blue-eyed. I know Jewish people who are tall, sallow-skinned, brown eyed. I just don't see how one can say that someone "looks Jewish". You pointed to red hair. I identify red hair with Norway first, Scotland or Ireland only secondarily.

If someone comes from a geographic region where the people have dwelt for a long time, e.g. Latvia, it can be obvious to our eyes that certain physical traits are shared amongst those people. If the Jews were a separate people who shared a common physical appearance, it was centuries ago, and I would think of them nowadays as a religious belief, not as a bloodline. Just look at the many different faces of Israelis to see how widespread those different faces are.

djm

[buddhu]

Wombat, sorry, but we seem to be operating from very different POVs. I know Jewish people who are short, very blond, very blue-eyed. I know Jewish people who are tall, sallow-skinned, brown eyed. I just don't see how one can say that someone "looks Jewish". You pointed to red hair. I identify red hair with Norway first, Scotland or Ireland only secondarily.

If someone comes from a geographic region where the people have dwelt for a long time, e.g. Latvia, it can be obvious to our eyes that certain physical traits are shared amongst those people. If the Jews were a separate people who shared a common physical appearance, it was centuries ago, and I would think of them nowadays as a religious belief, not as a bloodline. Just look at the many different faces of Israelis to see how widespread those different faces are.

djm

Arthur Koestler tried to separate the Jewish diaspora from Semitic stereotyping in The Thirteenth Tribe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Koestler#Judaism

Bearing in mind that there evidence seems to indicate that Koestler was mistaken, and that the ancestry of a significant fraction - even a majority - of European Jewry can be DNA traced back to palestinian ancestry, it is not unreasonable for someone to think that there may be some propensity for a tentatively identifiable set of physical characteristics to manifest in the Jewish community that may be more rare in communities whose predominant ancestry (on a similar timescale) was, for example, north west European. And, yes, this will be made less clear by the conversion and assimilation of people with other ancestries, but there could still be a predominance.

Couple that with certain speech characteristics and mannerisms of gesture that can arise within close communities, and even sartorial trends which can arise on such a small scale - and, yes, perhaps there is a chance that one may be able to make guesses at which group someone belongs to, and get a success rate higher than that predicted by random probability.

As Wombat said (at least partly), the ability to attempt to identify in this way has arisen through the Darwinian process. The tendency to do so probably developed along with it.

Most of us probably sometimes stereotype without wanting to. It may well be built in.

[Nanohedron]

This has been all very interesting, but it's gone on long enough, and I find it rather poor form that it wasn't started at TEH BOARD where it should have been. And my apologies for letting it drag so.

Take it here:

http://cnfpoli.informe.com/index.php

Thanks.