Posted: Aug 11, 2011 12:16 pm
Biowatch wrote:What does Kaplan mean by biological categories? See Risch et al:Populations that exist at the boundaries of these continental divisions are sometimes the most difficult to categorize simply. For example, east African groups, such as Ethiopians and Somalis, have great genetic resemblance to Caucasians and are clearly intermediate between sub-Saharan Africans and Caucasians [5]. The existence of such intermediate groups should not, however, overshadow the fact that the greatest genetic structure that exists in the human population occurs at the racial level...
Two arguments against racial categorization as defined above are firstly that race has no biological basis [1,3], and secondly that there are racial differences but they are merely cosmetic, reflecting superficial characteristics such as skin color and facial features that involve a very small number of genetic loci that were selected historically; these superficial differences do not reflect any additional genetic distinctiveness [2]. A response to the first of these points depends on the definition of 'biological'. If biological is defined as genetic then, as detailed above, a decade or more of population genetics research has documented genetic, and therefore biological, differentiation among the races. This conclusion was most recently reinforced by the analysis of Wilson et al. [2]. If biological is defined by susceptibility to, and natural history of, a chronic disease, then again numerous studies over past decades have documented biological differences among the races. In this context, it is difficult to imagine that such differences are not meaningful. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a definition of 'biological' that does not lead to racial differentiation, except perhaps one as extreme as speciation.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/
Thank you Biowatch. But it seems that no matter how often we post 1) The genetic distance between various creatures, showing that humans have just as much variability. 2) The fact that many other creatures are given taxonomic sub-species & even species categories based on systemitists' preferences (both in the past & currently). Our protagonists still conveniently ignore those arguments & evidences, & keep returning to "no such thing as race". Like a holy mantra, that if repeated often enough will morph into existence.
