Comments on: Racial Projects and the Wizardry of Dr. Oz

By: Maeghan

Maeghan — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 02:14:00 +0000

You might have missed my point. Race is not skin colour, it’s a social category. You could just as easily group people by other physical characteristics, but we don’t.
For example, a person who is from a black family and backround but was born with albinism could still identify as black—actually I imagine they probably would.

If everyone had identical colouring and facial features, humans would probably find another way to categorize themselves and each other.

By: Bagelsan

Bagelsan — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 01:34:00 +0000

Okay, well in the US “race” is constructed partly around a person’s skin color. If everyone had identical coloring and facial features there wouldn’t a concept of race like the one that currently exists.

By: Maeghan

Maeghan — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:24:00 +0000

But that doesn’t necessarily suggest that race is biological. That just means skin colour is biological, in the same way hair and eye colour is. One could easily argue that the concept of “race” is socially constructed, not biological at all.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:56:00 +0000

MHC don’t really get selected “for.” MHC is kind of a weird gene complex in that it seems to undergo stabilizing selection and allelic diversity is actually a selective advantage in a population.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:54:00 +0000

Agreed….sort of. In the case of African-American hypertension, the real question in my mind is whether this is an actual genetic phenomenon or whether we’re seeing is a more general human health concern that is being exacerbated by American socioeconomic factors. So.

By: Bagelsan

Bagelsan — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 08:06:00 +0000

I have no idea whether salt was plentiful or not, honestly. :p But the hypothesis isn’t Lamarckian because it’s not like “Dr.” Oz is proposing that the slaves individually adapted themselves to low salt and then passed that adaptation onto their children so much as that, among a group of enslaved people with varying abilities to retain salt, slaves who were less able to retain salt died while the others survived to pass on their salt-retention genes (increasing the frequency of the putative salt-retaining alleles and so a salt-retaining phenotype among their descendants.)

By: Bagelsan

Bagelsan — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 07:59:00 +0000

Anyways, talking about Neanderthal contributions to MHC diversity isn’t really related to whether a population of people may have slightly different kidney function than other populations, and that this may be due to a selective pressure applied along “racial” line.

By: Bagelsan

Bagelsan — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 07:56:00 +0000

…Like in a population?

By: Bagelsan

Bagelsan — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 07:53:00 +0000

How in the world do you know they are 100% superficial? o_O

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:02:00 +0000

I’m not arguing against the idea that there exist populations of humans who are more closely related to each other and who have similar phenotypes.

I’m arguing against the idea that the racial groupings we use are a biologically meaningful way to divide up human genetic and phenotypic diversity.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 02:06:00 +0000

Besides the point when we’re talking about race. Very few people think about MHC haplotypes when they talk about interracial variation. Additionally, your specific MHC haplotype doesn’t really contribute to specific immunity so much as it contributes to herd immunity. So.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 02:02:00 +0000

That’s nice. The paper was published is PLoS so it’s free access. The only real point of it was that the initial measurements of cranial capacity were accurate, which was a response to essentially an aside that Gould mentions once and then ignores. The statistical mishandling that Gould attacked is still a concern, as is the issue of confounding factors like height. The new paper has basically been overhyped because a lot of people still do want to believe that racial differences in economic achievement can be attributed to innate intelligence.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:29:00 +0000

Race is a social construct. There are genes for skin color, but the racial categories created and who fits in them often have had little to do with population genetics.

By: Kelly H

Kelly H — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:54:00 +0000

That sounds weirdly Lamarckian to me. African Americans have hypertension because their ancestors were subjected to a lot of stress?
Seriously, though, how would retaining salt help one survive a terrible ocean journey, where surely salt would be plentiful, water not so much.

By: Kim

Kim — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:58:00 +0000

Yeah, okay, that’s true.