Did humans evolve into separate races that differ in mental traits?

[EgalitarianJay]

Hello. I'm new to the forum.

 

I want to talk about a controversial subject. There is an area of research known as Scientific Racism or racialism which proposes that human races differ in innate mental ability including intelligence and personality differences. I have debated this subject for years on other message boards mostly against racists who believe in the inferiority of certain races. I want to get an idea from this board of how the majority of posters here feel about this subject and what they think the truth is about the topic. Please answer the poll and give your thoughts on the topic.

Edited January 29, 2015 by EgalitarianJay

[Phi for All]

Can we establish some definitions first? Since your poll question isn't the same as your title, do mental traits = intelligence? I consider perceptiveness to be a mental trait, but you don't necessarily have to be smart to be perceptive. Similarly, cunning seems to be a mental trait that some very intelligent people don't have, and some not very intelligent people have in abundance.

 

Evidence seems to support the idea that there are no biological races within humans to begin with.

[Dr. Funkenstein]

Empirical research historically seems to suggest, that intelligence takes a Transitory position within the dominate society. Thus The ancient Egyptians (Africans), Chinese, and other classifications of race, all played a part in possession of intelligence, at one point or another in the time-line of existence. So our present day intelligence, is at best cumulative, and can not speak to one sub portion of humanity having more or less of intelligence, then another.

[EgalitarianJay]

Can we establish some definitions first? Since your poll question isn't the same as your title, do mental traits = intelligence? I consider perceptiveness to be a mental trait, but you don't necessarily have to be smart to be perceptive. Similarly, cunning seems to be a mental trait that some very intelligent people don't have, and some not very intelligent people have in abundance.

 

Evidence seems to support the idea that there are no biological races within humans to begin with.

 

I would define mental traits as any characteristic that is rooted in mental function.

[Phi for All]

 

I would define mental traits as any characteristic that is rooted in mental function.

 

So we're polling strictly for intelligence, but we're discussing all mental functions?

[iNow]

Race is a social construct, not a biological one, and intelligence is generally defined as whatever one happens to put on that particular test. There are different forms and types of intelligence and few very good measures of it, which when stacked on top of the fact that race is a social thing and not a biological one makes answering your question in any reasonable way essentially impossible.

[EgalitarianJay]

 

So we're polling strictly for intelligence, but we're discussing all mental functions?

 

Yes.

 

Race is a social construct, not a biological one, and intelligence is generally defined as whatever one happens to put on that particular test. There are different forms and types of intelligence and few very good measures of it, which when stacked on top of the fact that race is a social thing and not a biological one makes answering your question in any reasonable way essentially impossible.

 

I think taking the position that there are no biological races and that there are different types of intelligence is a legitimate answer.

[Delta1212]

Like irregardless, racialism is a word with a couple of extraneous letters that in no way change the meaning of the word.

[EgalitarianJay]

Like irregardless, racialism is a word with a couple of extraneous letters that in no way change the meaning of the word.

 

I've grown accustomed to distinguishing racialism from racism when talking specifically about the scientific attempt to prove that races differ in mental traits.

 

Racialism = The belief that races differ in mental characteristics

 

Racism = Hatred or intolerance based on race

 

I adopted that distinction from the following article:

 

Racialism and Racist Agendas

 

 

C. LORING BRACE University of Michigan Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective. J. Philippe Rushton. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995. 334 pp.

 

 

 

 

Virtually every kind of anthropologist may be put in the position of being asked to comment on what is contained in this book, so, whatever our individual specialty, we should all be prepared to discuss what it represents. Race, Evolution, and Behavior is an amalgamation of bad biology and inexcusable anthropology. It is not science but advocacy, and advocacy for the promotion of "racialism." Tzvetan Todorov explains "racialism," in contrast to "racism," as belief in the existence of typological essences called "races" whose characteristics can be rated in hierarchical fashion (On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 31). "Racism," then, is the use of racialist assumptions to promote social or political ends, a course that Todorov regards as leading to "particularly catastrophic results." Perpetuating catastrophe is not the stated aim of Rushton's book, but current promoters of racist agendas will almost certainly regard it as a welcome weapon to apply for their noxious purposes.

 

 

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Moderator Note

Article snipped off here by Moderator - to best of my understanding this is still copyrighted and is behind a paywall here http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1996.98.1.02a00250/abstract

Edited January 30, 2015 by imatfaal
Moderator to remove potentially copyrighted material

[overtone]

All investigations into human racial variation that begin by taking the sociological "races" as biological categories are worthless, scientifically.

 

The sociological races are not useful, scientifically, outside of sociology. They have no other reality.

 

Illustration: There are places in South America where OJ Simpson and Michael Jordan and Bill Cosby, as seen walking down the street, would be members of the "white" race. In America in the late 1700s the Irish and Swedes were "black" (classified thus in the letters of Benjamin Franklin, among others). http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1062945.The_Invention_of_the_White_Race

 

So while it is obviously possible that humans have evolved into races that biologically differ in mental traits, at present nobody knows what those races are, or who belongs to each one. Identifying the races to be compared would be a necessary first step, in such research.

Edited January 30, 2015 by overtone

[EgalitarianJay]

 

The four races of man. Beginning at the right, the men in the picture are arranged as Caucasian, Negro, Mongolian, and American Indian. (Original caption reflects the concepts of eugenics popular in the early 20th century, all since repudiated by modern genetics.)

 

I thought it would be helpful to add some material to this thread. Basically I want readers to review the research below and give their opinions on how best to address it.

 

This is the type of research I have been discussing with racists:

 

Heredity, environment, and race differences in IQ: A commentary on Rushton and Jensen (2005).

Nisbett, Richard E.Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol 11(2), Jun 2005, 302-310.

 

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Race Differences In Average IQ Are Mostly Genetic, Not Cultural

 

A 60-page review of the scientific evidence, some based on state-of-the-art magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of brain size, has concluded that race differences in average IQ are largely genetic.

 

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Article Snipped by Moderator as potentially copyrighted material - the link to Rense.com is above.

 

 

The research provided by Rushton and Jensen appears to be damning at first glance. Their paper took me a long time to read but as you can see the summary is easy to grasp. Let me share some of the research I have gathered as a rebuttal to their assertions.

 

First of all other scholars have claimed that Rushton and Jensen were very biased and misrepresent the work of other researchers to make their case. One of those scholars, Richard Nisbett, wrote an article detailing the errors and omissions of Rushton and Jensen.

 

J. P. Rushton and A. R. Jensen (2005) ignore or misinterpret most of the evidence of greatest relevance to the question of heritability of the Black–White IQ gap. A dispassionate reading of the evidence on the association of IQ with degree of European ancestry for members of Black populations, convergence of Black and White IQ in recent years, alterability of Black IQ by intervention programs, and adoption studies lend no support to a hereditarian interpretation of the Black–White IQ gap. On the contrary, the evidence most relevant to the question indicates that the genetic contribution to the Black–White IQ gap is nil.

 

Heredity, environment, and race differences in IQ: A commentary on Rushton and Jensen (2005).

Nisbett, Richard E.Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol 11(2), Jun 2005, 302-310

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I should mention that Rushton and Jensen did respond to Nisbett's arguments.

 

The evidence that Rushton and Jensen presented which I found to be really curious was the claim that there were racial differences in brain size. I wondered how, even if they were wrong, they could come to the conclusion that races differ in brain size and since the size of the brain is a biological characteristic how could culture or environment possibly be the reason for the difference in brain size. This assertion of Rushton and Jensen's on the surface seemed to make sense. Bigger brains make smarter people. If races differed in brain size surely the bigger brained races were smarter than the smaller brained ones. I did some digging and came across an article by an anthropologist named Leonard Lieberman who critiqued the brain size claim in detail.

 

In the 19th century measurements of cranial capacity by Morton and others supported a “Caucasoid>Mongoloid>Negroid” hierarchy of intelligence. This continued through most of the 20th century but was challenged by a nonhierarchical view originating with Boas. Beginning in the 1980s Rushton correlated cranial and IQ measurements and presented a hierarchy with “Mongoloids” at the top. Each of these periods relates to its social context: the 19th-century hierarchy paralleled the height of European world domination; the nonhierarchy of the 20th century reflected worldwars, worldwide depression, and the breakup of empires; the “Mongoloid>Caucasoid>Negroid” hierarchy followed the economic success of several Asian nations.

 

Leonard Lieberman Current Anthropology

Vol. 42, No. 1 (February 2001), pp. 69-95

 

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During my research I came across the work of an evolutionary biologist named Joseph Graves who had critiqued Rushton's evolutionary theory and shown it to be invalid. He also had some comments to make about Rushton's claim of racial hierachies in brain size which he shared with me in the following email:

 

 

EgalitarianJay: Do you have any studies that directly address Rushton's claims of brain size differences between races?


Graves: The evolutionary arguments are more important than any physical measurements because they address why and how any physical difference could exist. If Rushton cannot explain the mechanism that is responsible for any reputed difference, then his argument collapses like a house of cards. This is why his 1994 book was entitled Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective. Its goal was to explain using evolutionary theory (the only scientific means to explain human variation) why racial differences in intelligence exist. As I point out in my work, evolutionary science does not support this conclusion.

As for supposed physical differences in head (or brain size). First, there has been no systematic measurement of cranial sizes for sufficient numbers of populations in humans. This is important because Africa and Asia are huge continents with many populations/ethnic groups. No physical measurement taken from 1 or a few populations could be expected to represent all Africans or Asians.

Second, the relationship between "intelligence" and brain size/body ratio holds broadly over species level, but not within a species. So we can infer that Velicoraptor was more intelligent than T. Rex, but we cannot infer that any specific raptor was more intelligent than another due to differences in that ratio. In the same way we cannot infer that a larger brain gives more cognitive power in humans. Frederich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, had an incredibly small head and brain. Autopsy of his brain did reveal that his cerebral cortex had an incredibly high number of folds. But even if we could determine that there was a difference in cerebral cortex folding between Africans and Asians, we could not determine that that difference was due to genetic differences.

The brain's development (and hence that of the intellect) is profoundly influenced by environmental and developmental factors. Genetically identical groups of rats deprived of environmental stimuli were measured as less intelligent and had less cerebral folding than rats given environmental stimuli. In the modern world, there is no equivalence of social and physical environments between Africans/African Americans and Europeans/Euro- and Asian Americans. Therefore any intelligence difference one might measure (say in mean SAT scores, AFQT Tests etc.) cannot be shown to have anything to do with genetic differences between groups. There are far easier explanations for these differences, including social discrimination (stereotype threat), toxic environment, and malnutrition (which are all differentially visited upon African Americans). The heritability of intelligence (how much the trait is determined by genes or environment) has been estimated at around 0.50. This means that intelligence is about 50% genes and 50% environment. With this much environmental contribution, only experimental or observational designs that can equalize environment can give you any reasonable explanations. For the most part, this is impossible in racially stratified societies.

I made all these points to Rushton directly in our 1997 debate at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. To say the least he really had no cogent response.

Dr. Joseph L. Graves, Jr.
Associate Dean for Research
Professor of Biological Sciences
Joint School of Nanosciences & Nanoengineering
Suite 2200, Rm 104
North Carolina A&T State University
UNC Greensboro
2901 E. Lee St.
Greensboro, NC 27401

 

 

These are Graves arguments against Rushton's evolutionary theory as well as an email exchange between Graves and Rushton which I orchestrated:

 

 

 

 

Originally posted by Joseph Graves:

 

1. Rushton's arguments rely on r- and K- life history theory. These designations are general descriptions of investment in reproduction and somatic tissue on opposite ends of a spectrum (r- = more reproduction/less soma and K- = less reproduction/more soma.) The problem with this notion is that it has been shown to be incorrect in a series of experiments with a wide variety of organisms. No one took this theory seriously after about 1990.

2. Even if r- and K- theory were correct, I showed that Rushton applied it backwards. By the theory, Africans should be K- selected (K selection occurs in stable environments, such as the tropics) while r-selection was to be favored in fluctuating environments, such as the temperate zones. So by Rushton's reasoning, Africans should be more genetically capable of intelligence, and Europeans/Asians less.

3. Throughout his work, Rushton selectively uses examples to support his ideas. I have caught him manipulating data in unclear ways, for the purposes of making his points.

4. Rushton requires the existence of biological races, which humans do not have. The existence of geographically based genetic variation is not the same as proving races exist, or that in life history features all Africans are different from all Europeans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Originally posted by J Philippe Rushton:

 

Several years ago Joseph Graves did write a book chapter critique of my life-history explanation of race differences. I no longer recall it in detail except that he had ducked the main part, that is, the data.

As you know, most race research focuses on Black-White differences in the US in IQ, education, crime, and marital stability. My research went a lot further to cover some 60 variables such as speed of maturation, brain size (three separate indicators), rate of producing twins at birth, longevity, testosterone, sexual behavior, etc. Moreover, I looked at African descended people in the Caribbean, Canada, the UK, and sub-Saharan Africa. and found the same Black-White differences where ever they were studied. Most crucial, I looked at East Asians on all the same 60 characteristics and found they had higher IQ scores, larger brains, less sexual activity, less crime, fewer twins per 1,000 births etc.

In other words, a highly consistent three-way pattern of racial differences exists in brain size, intelligence, sexuality, personality, speed of maturation, life span, crime, and family stability in which East Asian descended people fall at one end of the spectrum, African descended people fall at the other, and European descended people fall intermediate, typically close to East Asians. East Asians are slower to mature, less fertile, less sexually active, with larger brains and higher IQ scores. They also engage in greater social organization and less crime than Africans who are at the opposite ends in each of these areas. My 1995 book, Race, Evolution, and Behavior summarized these theories and the evidence supporting them.

So, the fundamental question is, how do we explain the consistent three-way pattern? No environmental theory alone can do so. Only evolutionary theory in which genetics are crucial can account for the pattern If Dr. Graves can come up with a better theory or show the data is different than I described, he should do so. But he has not done so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Originally posted by Joseph Graves:

 

Rushton's memory of my critique is quite limited. First, it began with an evaluation of the efficacy of r- and K- theory in general. Professional life-history evolutionists (of which I am, and he is not) no longer regard r- and K- theory as a useful research paradigm. This dismantling occurred due to a series of experiments that tested the predictions of r- and K-theory and showed that they did not hold up in a wide variety of species. Second, I demonstrated that Rushton misapplied r- and K- theory; indeed by MacArthur and Wilson (the originators of r- and K-theory) Africans would be K-selected and Europeans and East Asians (r-selected); just the opposite of what Rushton claimed. Third, I demonstrated that much of the data he cited to make his case was flawed either in collection or source; particularly data like "social organization" and "crime". Thus at three levels his r- and K-theory approach to human life history variation fails. So I challenge the notion his 3-way spectrum is real; secondly even if it were real, he has not presented an evolutionary theory that could explain it; and third that environmental differences could easily explain much of what he reports.

 

 

These are Graves articles where he critiques Rushton in detail:

 

Joseph L. Graves, jr

What a tangled web he weaves: Race, reproductive strategies and Rushton's life history theory

Anthropological Theory June 2002 2: 131-15

 

 

Joseph L. Graves, jr

"Misuse of Life History Theory..."

Chapter Three

in

Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth

Jefferson M. Fish
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002

 

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Here too is a video where they debated each other:

 

 

I recommend looking at all of this research to develop an informed opinion on the subject. I appreciate the contributions so far and look forward to seeing more discussion on the topic.

Edited January 30, 2015 by imatfaal
Removal of potentially copyrighted material

[iNow]

You're not addressing valid criticisms. You're soap boxing and continuing forward as if those criticisms didn't exist. You should use a blog instead of a discussion forum to copy/paste your ideas if you don't plan to actually discuss anything.

[EgalitarianJay]

You're not addressing valid criticisms. You're soap boxing and continuing forward as if those criticisms didn't exist. You should use a blog instead of a discussion forum to copy/paste your ideas if you don't plan to actually discuss anything.

 

No, I've read everything that others have written in this thread. If you read what I wrote I clearly introduced arguments from the other side along with research I have found that counters it and I want people to discuss it.

[Delta1212]

I've grown accustomed to distinguishing racialism from racism when talking specifically about the scientific attempt to prove that races differ in mental traits.

 

Racialism = The belief that races differ in mental characteristics

 

Racism = Hatred or intolerance based on race

 

This is a distinction without a difference.

[StringJunky]

This is a distinction without a difference.

Yes, the Editor of the Online Oxford English Dictionary thinks so too.

[imatfaal]

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Moderator Note

 

Thread locked whilst I tie up some loose ends and set a few ground rules

 

Thread re-opened.

 

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Moderator Note

 

EgalitarianJay

 

Please note that just because you can find a copy of an article on the internet does not mean that the article is no-longer copyrighted.

 

You cannot paste whole articles from other websites unless you are sure it is free from copyright nor should you post links to sites providing articles with un-ascertained copyright status. I have gone through your above post and removed the links, trimmed some of the quotes, and added in academic citations for members to look up themselves if they have access.

 

 

On a separate note: We need to move away from soapboxing and towards a discussion. Please respond to arguments with your own thoughts and counterarguments (with supporting works cited of course) rather than by en-bloc pasting of pre-existing material (either your own or others).

 

This site does not exist for you to announce your ideas - but rather for the entire membership to discuss them.

 

 

Do not respond to this moderation in the thread. Report this post if you feel it is incorrect or unjust

 

[iNow]

No, I've read everything that others have written in this thread.

Happy to hear it, but I never said you weren't reading it. I said you weren't addressing it and I said that you were carrying on as if those things had never been written at all.

[Moontanman]

 

No, I've read everything that others have written in this thread. If you read what I wrote I clearly introduced arguments from the other side along with research I have found that counters it and I want people to discuss it.

 

All humans are members of the same gene pool, gene flow between various peoples has never stopped and to say that one group is distinct from another cannot be a viable option. For a particular group of humans to be distinct enough to say they are really different on some way other than superficially would require isolation and no human population is isolated from nor have they ever really been isolated from all other humans.

 

I know videos are frowned on but this guy says it all so eloquently in easily understood terms I think he is worth watching if your interest in this idea is driven by curiosity...

 

 

[Greg H.]

I;m going to comment on this, despite my better judgement.

 

Racial distinctions are social constructs based on morphological differences, and have nothing to do with the actual potential of any human being. I have had the joy of working with some very intelligent people of a wide variety of races, and I have seen some frighteningly stupid representatives of a lot of them as well. Apparent intelligence can vary depending on the situation, and intelligence tests can be (intentionally or not) biased by how they are constructed.

 

The idea that otherwise normal human beings are somehow less intelligent because of morphology is not only offensive, it's poor science, and I would strenuously question any methodology that purports to show otherwise.

[EgalitarianJay]

This is a distinction without a difference.

 

The difference as C Loring Brace explained it is that racism is discrimination based on racial prejudices and racialism is the belief in racial differences in mental characteristics. I believe that most people who believe in racialist theories are motivated by a racist ideological agenda. Depending on the definition it might be a distinction without a difference but I've seen several scholars use the terminology in this way.

 

Happy to hear it, but I never said you weren't reading it. I said you weren't addressing it and I said that you were carrying on as if those things had never been written at all.

 

Well I didn't intentionally ignore any one. I was just posting material I felt was relevant to the thread.

 

 

I;m going to comment on this, despite my better judgement.

 

Racial distinctions are social constructs based on morphological differences, and have nothing to do with the actual potential of any human being. I have had the joy of working with some very intelligent people of a wide variety of races, and I have seen some frighteningly stupid representatives of a lot of them as well. Apparent intelligence can vary depending on the situation, and intelligence tests can be (intentionally or not) biased by how they are constructed.

 

The idea that otherwise normal human beings are somehow less intelligent because of morphology is not only offensive, it's poor science, and I would strenuously question any methodology that purports to show otherwise.

 

I agree with you. I find racialist research to be highly offensive and a definite insult to the intelligence especially of groups who have been discriminated against to the point of affecting their standard of living and other variables including IQ which racialists say is rooted in genetic differences. I also believe these racialist researchers are extremely biased but I do admit that it is challenging to refute their arguments.

 

One of the arguments often repeated in this thread is that race is a social construct not a biological one. This is the official position of the American Anthropological Association. I have spoken to several scholars about this, most notably Joseph Graves who has explained why human biological variation is not structured in to races. I understand how race has been socially constructed. For instance in America rules of descent were enforced by law and became social customs on racial classification. A member of the White race was defined as a person of pure European descent and a member of the Black race was defined as anyone with detectable Sub-Saharan African ancestry (One-Drop Rule). The argument against biological races existing was a bit more confusing to me because variation in physical traits obviously exist and there are clearly some differences between populations most of which are skin deep but does that mean that there are no other differences? I had to investigate this question.

 

Here is another email I recieved from Joseph Graves about biological differences vs. racial differences:

 

 

 

 

Question: How would you respond to someone who claimed that races exist and cited as evidence human races being as different as breeds of dogs or anatomical differences such as craniofacial morphology, height or body structure?

 

Graves: To address this question we must first make no assumptions about the partitioning of humans. In other words, you cannot start answering this by assuming that the socially-defined racial groups are really “races.” Instead you have to look at the characters in question and ask do they differ in a way that allows us to define groups with any reliability; and if so, what are the groups. When this is attempted with physical traits (such as craniofacial morphology) or any others, the groups which result do not match genetic/genomic variation. For example, the diagram below resulted from using a variety of physical traits and attempting to draw a tree of relatedness (phylogeny.)

 

 

This figure is taken from Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., Menozzi, P., and Piazza, A., The History and Geography of Human Genes, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press), 1994.

 

 

 

You will note that general anthropometric traits shows that Swedes and French people are more similar to each other, than either is to Eskimos or North American Indians. This fits your intuition, however, Eskimos and North American Indians are closer to Swedes and French than they are to Japanese, Chinese, or to South American Indians should not! Indeed the notion that North and South American Indians fall on different branches already shows you the weakness of physical traits to define genetically meaningful groups. The lower branches to the tree are also wrong, as Sub-Saharan African Bantu speaking people come out next to Australian and Papuan, New Guineans; these groups are much further separated from each other genetically.

 

 

 

 

The neighbor joining genetic phylogeny above shows Sub-Saharan Africans in the orange group next to Europeans as the closest group, not Micronesians or Australoids (pink group.) Thus, while groups of humans differ in physical traits they do not do so in ways that allow physical traits to mirror genetic relationships. This would be necessary to define biological races. The reason physical traits do not match in this way is due to the principle of discordance (natural selection acting on different portions of the genome in different ways; as I explained in my presentation in Portland.) Good articles that help explain this general idea can be found in the Encyclopedia of Race & Racism 2nd Ed. (such as C. Loring Brace’s Clines, and Clusters articles.)

 

 

 

The dog breed example is one commonly misunderstood and used inappropriately to describe human biological variation. This is often cited from a Frank Miele and Vince Sarich book on human races (a book that I reviewed for a publisher and rejected for publication) Dog (or any other domestic breeds) are produced by conscious high level artificial selection. This selection is maintained for many generations and leads to inbreeding, increasing a number of physiological and anatomical pathologies resulting from increased homozygosity (genes identical by state.) In a recent paper published in Science, Parker et al. 2004 showed that the population subdivision statistic for dogs is FST = 0.333. This exceeds Sewall Wright’s threshold for the existence of biological races (0.250), and as I said in my presentation, FST for humans is less than 0.150. In addition, human inbreeding is never as high at that seen in domestic breeds, so this example again is simply an incorrect way to understand human genetics, which generally never sees that much inbreeding.

[Phi for All]

I recommend looking at all of this research to develop an informed opinion on the subject.

 

You need to amend your cut and paste habits for a forum like this. You're preaching to the choir, and the choir is ready to move on.

 

And since the data this perspective is drawn from is supported by scientific evidence, there really is no opinion involved. In this instance, it's not a racist "opinion", it's just wrong.

[EgalitarianJay]

 

You need to amend your cut and paste habits for a forum like this. You're preaching to the choir, and the choir is ready to move on.

 

And since the data this perspective is drawn from is supported by scientific evidence, there really is no opinion involved. In this instance, it's not a racist "opinion", it's just wrong.

 

Noted. I see that mass quotes and posting copyrighted material is frowned upon here. I think my last post fits the preferred posting style, does it not?

 

In any case I see that pretty much everyone who responded is on the same page. I was looking to see if there are any unique arguments people knowledgeable about evolution could present but the responses so far are in line with the mainstream anthropological position.

[Ten oz]

Skins ability to darken, or tan, hair color, eye color, and etc are determined by genes that have nothing to do with brain function. The question asked in this thread is akin to wonder if yellow labrador retrievers behave differently than black labrador retrievers. It is a superficial difference and at the end of the day a Labrador is a Labrador. Genetically humans are 99.9 similar. When animals are this close we consider them the same. Race is highly subjective concept that only seems to apply to us humans. Unless there is some science that reflects pigmitation impacts brain function the answer to the question is no.

[EgalitarianJay]

Skins ability to darken, or tan, hair color, eye color, and etc are determined by genes that have nothing to do with brain function. The question asked in this thread is akin to wonder if yellow labrador retrievers behave differently than black labrador retrievers. It is a superficial difference and at the end of the day a Labrador is a Labrador. Genetically humans are 99.9 similar. When animals are this close we consider them the same. Race is highly subjective concept that only seems to apply to us humans. Unless there is some science that reflects pigmitation impacts brain function the answer to the question is no.

 

 

That's the real issue here. How different are humans genetically and what is the scientific basis for claiming differences in brain function between human populations? Racists assume that because human genetic variation exists some of it can account for differences in IQ. But to assume that races would really have to be different. There's no selection based mechanism that operated only on one population and since intelligence is a polygenic trait there's no reason to believe that the trait is unevenly distributed across populations.

Edited January 31, 2015 by EgalitarianJay

[StringJunky]

I think the idea that non-white people are intellectually inferior in some peoples' minds is a groundless hangover that's persisted from slavery days when Europe was technologically more advanced and urbanised than those born on the African/Indian continents.