| Author |
Message |
    
Brownbeauty123
Veteran Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 1572
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 01:37 pm: | 
|
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-x.htm
TEN THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT RACE
Our eyes tell us that people look different. No one has trouble distinguishing a Czech from a Chinese. But what do those differences mean? Are they biological? Has race always been with us? How does race affect people today?
There's less - and more - to race than meets the eye:
1. Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn't even have the word 'race' until it turns up in 1508 in a poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings.
2. Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait or even gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race.
3. Human subspecies don't exist. Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven't been around long enough or isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appearances, we are one of the most similar of all species.
4. Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone's skin color doesn't necessarily tell you anything else about him or her.
5. Most variation is within, not between, "races." Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian.
6. Slavery predates race. Throughout much of human history, societies have enslaved others, often as a result of conquest or war, even debt, but not because of physical characteristics or a belief in natural inferiority. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, ours was the first slave system where all the slaves shared similar physical characteristics.
7. Race and freedom evolved together. The U.S. was founded on the radical new principle that "All men are created equal." But our early economy was based largely on slavery. How could this anomaly be rationalized? The new idea of race helped explain why some people could be denied the rights and freedoms that others took for granted.
8. Race justified social inequalities as natural. As the race idea evolved, white superiority became "common sense" in America. It justified not only slavery but also the extermination of Indians, exclusion of Asian immigrants, and the taking of Mexican lands by a nation that professed a belief in democracy. Racial practices were institutionalized within American government, laws, and society.
9. Race isn't biological, but racism is still real. Race is a powerful social idea that gives people different access to opportunities and resources. Our government and social institutions have created advantages that disproportionately channel wealth, power, and resources to white people. This affects everyone, whether we are aware of it or not.
10. Colorblindness will not end racism. Pretending race doesn't exist is not the same as creating equality. Race is more than stereotypes and individual prejudice. To combat racism, we need to identify and remedy social policies and institutional practices that advantage some groups at the expense of others.
|
Brownbeauty123
Veteran Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 1574
Registered: 03-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 01:49 pm: |
|
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01.htm
HUMAN DIVERSITY - GO DEEPER
There is not one gene, trait, or characteristic that distinguishes all members of one race from all members of another. We can map any number of traits and none would match our idea of race. This is because modern humans haven't been around long enough to evolve into different subspecies and we've always moved, mated, and mixed our genes. Beneath the skin, we are one of the most genetically similar of all species.
Lots of animals are divided into subspecies. Why doesn't it make sense to group humans the same way?
Subspecies are animal groups that are related, can interbreed, and yet have characteristics that make them distinct from one another. Two basic ingredients are critical to the development of separate subspecies: isolation and time. Unlike most animals, humans are a relatively young species and we are extremely mobile, so we simply haven't evolved into different subspecies.
The earliest hominids evolved from apes about 5 million years ago, but modern humans (Homo sapien sapiens) didn't emerge until 150,000-200,000 years ago in eastern Africa, where we spent most of our evolution together as a species. Our species first left Africa only about 50,000-100,000 years ago and quickly spread across the entire world. All of us are descended from these recent African ancestors.
Many other animal species have been around much longer or they have shorter life spans, so they've had many more opportunities to accumulate genetic variants. Penguins, for example, have twice as much genetic diversity as humans. Fruit flies have 10 times as much. Even our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, has been around at least several million years. There's more genetic diversity within a group of chimps on a single hillside in Gomba than in the entire human species.
Domesticated animals such as dogs also have a lot of genetic diversity, but this is mostly due to selective breeding under controlled conditions. Humans, on the other hand, have always mixed freely and widely. As a result, we're all mongrels: Eighty-five percent of all human variation can be found in any local population, whether they be Kurds, Icelanders, Papua New Guineans, or Mongolians. Ninety-four percent can be found on any continent.
Animals are also limited by habitat and geographical features such as rivers and canyons, so it is easy for groups to become isolated and genetically distinct from one another. Humans, on the other hand, are much more adaptable and have not been limited by geography in the same way. Early on, we could ford rivers, cross canyons, move great distances over a relatively short time, and modify our environment to fit our needs. We are also extremely mobile as a species. Even the remotest island tribe in the Pacific originally came from elsewhere and maintained some contact with neighboring groups.
We may think global migration is a recent phenomenon, but it has characterized most of human history. Whether we're moving halfway around the world or from one village to another, the passage of genes takes place under many circumstances, large scale and small: migration, wars, trade, slave-taking, rape, and exogamous marriage (marriage with "outsiders").
It takes a long time to accumulate a lot of genetic variation, because new variants arise only through mutation - copying errors from one generation to the next. On the other hand, it takes just a very small amount of migration - one individual in each generation moving from one village to another and reproducing - to prevent groups from becoming genetically distinct or isolated. Humans just haven't evolved into distinct subgroups.
But I can see obvious differences between people - don't those translate into deeper differences, like propensity for certain diseases?
The visual differences we are attuned to don't tell us anything about what's beneath the skin. This is because human variation is highly non-concordant. Most traits are influenced by different genes, so they're inherited independently, not grouped into the few packages we call races. In other words, the presence of one trait doesn't guarantee the presence of another. Can you tell a person's eye color from their height? What about their blood type from the size of their head? What about subtler things like a person's ability to play sports or their mathematical skills? It doesn't make sense to talk about group racial characteristics, whether external or internal.
Genetic differences do exist between people, but it is more accurate to speak of ancestry, rather than race, as the root of inherited diseases or conditions. Not everyone who looks alike or lives in the same region shares a common ancestry, so using "race" as a shorthand for ancestry can be misleading. Sickle cell, for example, often thought of as a "racial" disease afflicting Africans, is actually a gene that confers resistance to malaria, so it occurs in areas such as central and western Africa, the Mediterranean, and Arabia, but not in southern Africa. In medicine, a simplistic view can lead to misdiagnoses, with fatal consequences. Racial "profiling" isn't appropriate on the New Jersey Turnpike or in the doctor's office. As evolutionary biologist Joseph Graves reminds us, medicine should treat individuals, not groups.
On the other hand, the social reality of race can have biological effects. Native Americans have the highest rates of diabetes and African American men die of heart disease five times more often than white men. But is this a product of biology or social conditions? How do you measure this relationship or even determine who is Native American or African American on a genetic level? Access to medical care, health insurance, and safe living conditions can certainly affect medical outcomes. So can the stress of racism. But the reasons aren't innate or genetic.
Believing in race as biology allows us to overlook the social factors that contribute to inequality. Understanding that race is socially constructed is the first step in addressing those factors and giving everyone a fair chance in life.
|
Kola_boof
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 4136
Registered: 02-2005
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 01:50 pm: |
|
As I've always stated.
The issue for "black people" is not RACE.
The issue for "black people" is COLOR.
Race is a social construct, but color...is not.
And it's always been on COLOR that "the black colored humans" were defiled, mistreated and dehumanized.
|
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3050
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 01:52 pm: |
|
If any of the above were true and race isn't biological then -
Why do Black people suffer from Sickle Cell Anemia?
Why do Black people suffer from other diseases more than other races? Heart disease, high blood pressure, etc.
Why is the life expectancy of Black people shorter than that of whites?
Why are there disparities in the infant mortality rates between races?
Why???????????????????????
(And those are just some quick questions that come to mind. I'm sure there are many other differences between the races.)
|
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 7962
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 01:54 pm: |
|
BB123,
Race has always had and likely always will have associated with it the issue of economics & influence: Have & Have Not, Master & Servant and Lord & Serf.
Simply, the better I can create/maintain division amongst the masses, the better I can rule ALL of them for MY benefit. This thing we call race has become the PRIMARY means to effect such.
So we can go on and on about prior historical bonds and our physiological connectedness, as your article illustrates. Still, there never will be a cure for our addiction to race that does NOT include some resolution of that which some men fancy and will do most ANYTHING for: Money & Power.
But then, again...
There's a great line in Deep Cover where Jeff Goldblum character attempts to woo the comraderie of Laurence Fishburne's character by saying "There are no more Black or White people in the world (Baby). There's only rich people and poor people."
Perhaps that's always been the case. But that's appearing ever MORE prevelant now that ever before.
Don't pay much mind me. I'm mostly jes ramblin'... |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 6808
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 02:15 pm: |
|
The idea was advanced a long time ago that there is no such thing as the "white" race. This classification was a social construct, an umbrella term all European ethnics clustered under in America in order to distinguish themselves from people of color whom they considered inferior. |
Kola_boof
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 4141
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 02:21 pm: |
|
ABM,
I still disagree with your point about class.
Poor whites still get better treatment than
poor blacks...and that's GLOBALLY.
It's never been about RACE.
If people would open their eyes, then they
will see---it's always been about COLOR.
And it has.
And the more color you have as opposed
to the people in your environment, the
more you are likely to be on the bottom.
How are we all missing that fact?
|
Kola_boof
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 4142
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 02:28 pm: |
|
In the United States in 1660, 99% of "Free Blacks" (not the FREED blacks who could "pay" for their freedom, but the FREE blacks) were documented as being Mulatto and Octoroon....with the majority of them being Octoroon.
Now why were all the free ones heavily
admixtured with WHITE blood?
It shows that RACE didn't prevent blacks from being in that class, color did.
Another good example is South Africa's
APARTHEID system that allowed "Coloureds"
to have many more privileages than the
"blacks"----but they're the same race,
right? (according to whites).
Again...it's NEVER been about race.
|
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 7966
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 02:30 pm: |
|
Kola,
Well. Here's my problem with agreeing it's been primarily about color. Because that implies there are NO hierarchy, enslavement and subjugation amongst those who are the same or very similar color when, of course, we know that such has and still does exist.
Now I will agree that color distinctions help FACILITATE these inadequacies, largely because it's EASIER to mischaracterize and to vilify foks and turn others against those who do NOT favor them.
But the will to dominate others - no matter color, religion, village or stripe - always HAS been there and likely always WILL be there. |
Kola_boof
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 4145
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 02:54 pm: |
|
But CLASS prejudice is separate from RACE prejudice, ABM.
And I am arguing that "Race Prejudice" is
really and truly about "COLOR"---far more
than race, because if you can aquire the
right color, then your race can be "overlooked".
And you're right, it's HUMAN to want to dominate and have power over others. Nowhere did I suggest that would ever change, and I don't see how COLOR could change that.
I don't see CLASSISM and RACISM as the same animal.
Nor do I see RELIGIOUS HATRED and RACISM as the same animal.
I do believe that Colorism is the "root activator" of racism.
|
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 7970
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 03:07 pm: |
|
Kola,
I agree Race Prejudice is mostly about color, though to a lesser degree it's also about heritage (African's and many East Indians may be BLACKER than most African Americans YET - because they are NOT descendants of American Slavery - receive better, more respectful treatment from many Whites than do African Americans). |
Kola_boof
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 4149
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 03:10 pm: |
|
|
Yukio
Veteran Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1608
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 03:37 pm: |
|
I and others have made these comments before...but just to jump into the fray...It isn't about color, its abour racism.
Kola, just because something is not vertiable, doesn't mean that people do not live their lives believing it is so.
The exploitation that African Americans encounter[ed] in this country wasn't based on color alone. It was the assumption, codified in law, that regardless of your color, if you had one drop of African blood, you belonged to the "African race."
Thus, there are cases, where you find Indians[from India], Greeks, etc...spanning a variety of colors and shades who were able to circumvent the type of racism African Americans experienced because they were not considered to be part of the black race. In other words, if it was just about color, then the darkest of Italians should have been treated worse than the lightest African American.
If you look at situations that involve individuals, then color can be more significant at times, but in general, not the exception, your color just meant that you, perhaps, had greater privileges, but you still wasn't white...and if the law said black people couldn't vote....then black people of all hues could not vote... |
Brownbeauty123
Veteran Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 1575
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 03:43 pm: |
|
THE MISUSE OF RACE IN MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS
by Richard Garcia
The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 9, 2003. Volume 49, Issue 35, Page B15.
Reprinted with permission.
I am a 39-year-old Hispanic male born in Stockton, Calif., to a mother who -- after many years of unwise eating -- has recently been diagnosed with diabetes and to a father I didn't know who floated away at the end of a needle in his sister's garage. I prefer being called Mexican to Hispanic, though I've never been to Mexico. I eat a fat American's diet. Speak American English. Although I don't smoke, I have been living in a big city with polluted air. An American city where I recently was an assistant professor of pediatrics, working in a profession that tries to define my indefinable race without asking for my input.
I helped train medical students and residents who are all taught, as I was when I was a medical student, to assess each patient first in terms of age, race, and gender. Always in that order. A 52-year-old white female, a 3-month-old Asian male, a 39-year-old Hispanic male. The actual identity of patients remains ignored: A 47-year-old African-American female -- who's never been to Africa and prefers to call herself black if ever asked by a white doctor, though none ever asks -- two-pack-a-day smoker, still living with her mother in South Central Los Angeles, presents with fatigue.
The doctor asks the patient -- or the parent of the patient, if you're a pediatrician -- for his or her age. The gender is determined during the physical exam. But the doctor usually just assumes the patient's race by looking at the person. My professors told me, and current textbooks still say, that knowing the patient's race helps the doctor make an accurate diagnosis. So the doctor looks at the patient's skin, nose, hair, lips -- the silent mouth -- and defines ancestry in a single word: Asian, Hispanic, white, African-American. I smiled when one doctor described the Nigerian father of a patient as an African-American. The Nigerian father didn't smile.
The textbooks say that a patient's race can, and should, influence the doctor's thinking about possible diagnoses. An Ashkenazic Jewish baby might have Tay-Sachs disease. A black boy might have sickle cell anemia. A Southeast Asian girl might have thalassemia. Of course, I know that Ashkenazic Jews get Tay-Sachs, but the only baby I ever saw with Tay-Sachs was a Mexican child. I didn't misdiagnose the disease because he was Mexican instead of Jewish.
Do all Hispanics have the same genetic risk for asthma? Do Mexicans and Puerto Ricans eat the same diet? What about a patient from Spain -- is he Hispanic in the same way that I am?
My childhood friend Lela wasn't diagnosed with cystic fibrosis until she was 8 years old. Over the years, her doctors had described her as a "2-year-old black female with fever and cough ... 4-year-old black girl with another pneumonia. Lela is back." Had she been a white child, or had no visible "race" at all, she would probably have gotten the correct diagnosis and treatment much earlier. Only when she was 8 did a radiologist, who had never seen her face to face, notice her chest X-ray and ask, "Who's the kid with CF?"
An emergency-room physician referred a patient to me with this history: "A 14 y.o. black male from South Central LA with a positive tox screen presents with headache. He's probably in a gang." I ordered a CT scan of the patient's head and discovered a large cyst that had blocked the normal flow of cerebral spinal fluid until the fluid had backed up and squashed his brain against his skull. Yes, he had a headache, and he had smoked a joint before going to the hospital.
Those are just two examples of incorrect diagnoses caused by doctors who use racial assumptions to arrive at incorrect medical conclusions. As a physician, such misdiagnoses disturb me. I am also concerned as a father. I am Mexican from California, and my wife is black from Los Angeles. Our daughter is blonde with green eyes and pale skin. I have no known white ancestors, and that kind of heritage -- even if it is just a legend -- would not be left out of my family's stories. In my wife's case, her mother is now tracing their family's roots back through American history; as of 1843, she has not found a single white ancestor. But my wife's relatives generally have fair skin, and I suspect that my mother-in-law will eventually find a slave owner or overseer or some other white man who is responsible for that, and for my daughter's appearance.
What concerns me is that many years from now, when she is old enough to see a doctor with neither me nor my wife present, the doctor will use what he assumes is her race to misdiagnose her: "A 19-year-old white female presents with irritability."
Here is the crux of the problem: My daughter's race can never be known. Her genetic risk for this or that disease is necessarily imprecise because she is a person, not a race.
Americans used to define anyone who had "one drop of Negro blood" as a Negro, but we now know that definition makes no sense. We learn nothing if we group together as Asian-Americans a man in Seattle who was born in the far eastern portion of the former Soviet Union, a Korean woman living in Toronto, and a child in California with maternal grandparents who immigrated from China and a father whose ancestors came to New Jersey from Europe. There are almost as many definitions of Hispanic as there are Hispanics. Do I have the same genetic risk for sickle cell anemia as a Puerto Rican, a Spaniard, or a Mayan? What about my daughter, and the millions like her in this country, whose racial and ethnic ancestry defies geography and time?
If by using a patient's ancestry in medical discourse we can narrow the range of possible diagnoses, then at least we must be careful to describe accurately the genetic, ethnic, cultural, or geographical variables involved; guessing what category a person fits in is not acceptable. And when "race" cannot possibly matter, let us omit it. What difference does it make if it is an African-American or an Asian who has an earache or ingrown toenail?
Medical-school professors must teach students that a Hispanic is not real. That an Asian-American doesn't exist. That whites exist only in America: They are Irish in Ireland, Italian in Italy, Spaniards in Spain. That harm -- real, physical harm -- can come from calling a child with cystic fibrosis an African-American.
Race does exist in America, alas. It's why my daughter's history here starts in slavery. It's why my Mexican face identifies me to strangers before they know I'm an educated member of the middle class. It's why nobody dares to ask for details about anybody else's identity.
Richard S. Garcia is a pediatrician at a medical center in Stockton, California. He was an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Nevada School of Medicine at Las Vegas.
|
Brownbeauty123
Veteran Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 1576
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 03:49 pm: |
|
I wondered the same thing, Mzuri. This is what I found:
"Like sickle cell, most traits are influenced by separate genes and inherited independently one from another. They are said to be "non-concordant." Someone with brown hair might carry A, B or O blood. Sub-Saharan Africans tend to have dark skin. But so too do Dravidians from India, Aborigines from Australia, and Melanesians from the South Pacific. Large numbers of West Africans are lactose intolerant as are Japanese, but East Africans aren't. German and Papua New Guinean populations have almost exactly the same frequencies of A, B and O blood. At one point on the genome an individual might share a gene form common in Africa, at another site East Asia, and still another, Europe. Jared Diamond and others have pointed out that for each trait we can classify people into "races" by that trait, each giving us different and overlapping races depending on the trait selected."
also:
"First, doctors might be tempted to use race as a very unreliable surrogate for an individual's own unique ancestry and patterns of inheritance. And insofar as 94% of all genetic variants can be found within any continent, assigning someone to a "racial" continent of origin is too gross a scale to narrow down the range of possibilities very much. (Some variants do correlate on a finer scale with ethnic groups, and on a scale smaller yet with recent family descent.)
But a belief in biological race also obscures the very salient consequences of race as lived experience. Race may be a biological myth, a social construction, but it nonetheless remains very real. It can even have biological effects. African Americans have among the highest rates of hypertension in the world. This was long assumed to be genetic, a "marker" of their nature. But then it was found that West Africans have among the world's lowest hypertension rates. A focus on race as innate biology, as genetic difference, would lead health professionals and policy makers to overlook social factors that might contribute to African American hypertension and heart disease, including the added stressor of living in a racist society."
|
Nels
Veteran Poster
Username: Nels
Post Number: 685
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 04:02 pm: |
|
It all sounds like more meaningless hubbub to me. |
|
Email This Page