Race and Ethnicity (and Nationality) 12/21/11

12/21/11

1. Every human's matrileneal line comes from a single woman within a single population 200,000 years ago in Tanzania (other womens' sons contributed sperm though). [FACT based on mtDNA studies] 2. Today there are many women and womens' sons all over the planet in many different populations with many different cultures and races. [FACT based on linguistic and genetic cluster studies]. Therefore, 3. Humanity expanded from Tanzania over the last 200,000 years to all corners of the word, and in the process populations diverged from one another both in culture and biology.

4. Evolutionary Biology has convincingly demonstrated that biological diversification occurs when populations stop mating with one another (FACT, or at least FACT BASED THEORY based in biology). 5. Because of 3 and 4, clearly human populations did not mate freely with other human populations in the past, which led to the different races. 6. Humans will mate with anything they can hold down or at least won't run away or beat them up. (FACT, needs no support - just google "kink" 7. Race, a biological phenomenon, is overwhelmingly associated with continental/geographic regions...(genetic cluster analysis). 8. ...as well as self perceived ethnicity (genetic cluster analysis). 9. 5,6 and 7 all show that human populations stopped mating with one another back in the past due to geographic separation, creating the different races. OK. Race explained. Time for the next step; correlating race with mtDNA, ethnicity and culture...

10. Culture refers to all human phenomena that are not purely biological. (FACT by definition). 11. Ethnicity is a function of one's culture, i.e. one is ethnic because one possesses ethnic culture (FACT by definition). 12. Because of 8 and 11, we can see that race, which is equally biologically determined by both father and mother, is correlated closely with ethnicity, and therefore with culture, i.e. race, culture and ethnicity all correlate extremely closely. 13. mtDNA correlates extremely well with racial genetics.

Posted by me at

http://www.playtheimmortalgame.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=131051&page=1

Original -

The latest genetic cluster analysis (that I know of) indicates that yes, human races do exist in a biological sense (vs. race being an artificial label without biological support). There are five races:

1) European/Middle Eastern/Indian
2) East Asian
3) African
4) (Indigenous) American
5) Pacific Islander

Tang, et al: Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies. Am J Hum Genet. 2005 February; 76(2): 268–275. Published online 2004 December 29.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/

Ethnicity is different from race. Ethnicity describes what culture a person identifies herself as and is generally rooted in the history and culture of their family. Ethnicites overlap and are amorphous. Ethnicities include:

Ainu
British
"American" (USA, offshoot of British)
Aztec
Basque
Celt
Chicano (offshoot of Mexican)
Criollo (offshoot of Spanish)
Japanese (non Ainu)
Jewish
Han Chinese
English
Javanese
Mexican
Tongva/Chumash
Afro-American/"Black American"
Roma/"Gypsy"
Slav
Scandanavian
Spanish (offshoot of Latin/Roman)
Tongva
"Western" (European based)
Etc.

Ethnicities - which basically describe culture - can, I believe, be nested inside other ethnicities; an American might be of English descent, which is a Germanic culture, which is part of European culture. Or, a person might be American of slave descent, these slaves having come from a particular tribe in West Africa. Another Afro-American might be the child of Ethiopian or Eritrean immigrants, and which one it is matters; don't insult a person of Eritrean descent by calling him Ethiopian. The words of an eccentric fellow employee of mine in the past come to mind "these kids aren't Black, they're African American. Their parents came from Ethiopia. I'm Black. My ancestors were slaves." While this may or may not be an accurate quote in every detail, it is true that immigrant Africans are much, much different than Afro-Americans whose families have been here since the slave days. Not only that, east Africans have a different culture than West Africans, though both share African culture, some but not all of which might be shared with descendents of slaves...

EDIT 4/4/10 Nationality is a third category often confused with the other two. For example, an Israeli might be a white Jew; or perhaps a white Arab. There could be black Americans of Mexican ethnicity, or east asian Mexicans of (British-)American ethnicity. There are white South Africans of Boer ethnicity, etc.

6/15/10

(A response to a Comment below)

except for the East Asians along the east coast pretty much ALL Eurasians are the same race. The Huns, Mongols etc I think were racially "white". Within this West Eurasian race there are many ethnic divisions and even genetic variations, but not enough to qualify as separate races. For some reason the East Asians kept to themselves and diverged biologically...maybe they were a sea people and so had little in common with the steppe people. I suspect mtDNA haplogroup R roughly correlates with the Eurasian race and haplogroup F to the East Asians. Not quite sure though. Linguistically we can see the connection in the phrase "Indo-European" which further subdivides into Indo-Iranian (south Asian) and European. Religiously, we can see the clear influence of the Abrahamic religions, and the clear division between the south Asians (Islam), the Europeans (Christianity) with the parent religion, Judaism squeezed in the middle. However this does not explain the Hindu religion's place in India.