[cactusface]

No, it's because he said it was due to genetic differences between population groups. This makes him a "true" racist in that he believe there are different races, or sub-species, of homo sapiens (sapiens). There is a scientific consensus that this is not the case, because races only exist if population groups are completely isolated, which humans never have been.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

[tjradcliffe]

Except that no one in ordinary discourse uses "race" in the way you are, which means "species" (the whole not-interbreeding thing is often taken as definitive of "species".)

"Race" as it is commonly used means "variety" or "breed", and the claim that there are observable and significant statistical differences between human populations in geographic regions is, one hopes, uncontroversial. Those differences come from different genes, and since we all know that a trivial edit to a single gene can result in a massive change in function, it is reasonable to ask about a wide range of characteristics that have some genetic influence.

To claim that "races" in this sense "do not exist" is to come across as incoherent and pedantic at the same time.

Whenever anyone has looked at any characteristic that is really significant in society and how it differs across "races" so defined, they have found that the differences are trivial at best, non-existent at worst. This is "controversial" because a bunch of idiots want to project their prejudices onto genes.

"Intelligence" is by far the most debatable target for this kind of nonsense because a) it is controversial as to whether or not anything like "g" is an objectively real feature of human beings; b) it is extremely controversial how heritable it is; and c) even if it is real and heritable, our ability to measure it is so poor that it is very difficult to make any claims about population statistics.

See... you can actually refute racist nonsense while at the same time acknowledging what everyone knows: varieties of humans exist, and redefining the word "race" so it does not apply to those varieties of humans does not make the fact that varieties of humans exist go away.

[cactusface]

Different races cannot interbreed, but only because they are geographically isolated.

Different species cannot interbreed (generally speaking), even if they are not geographically isolated.

Humans are not geographically isolated. Geographical barriers have contributed to the creation of population groups, but these are distinct from races in that there is a mechanism for DNA to move between them (somebody takes a trip and makes a baby).

Anyway, Wikipedia says in the lead sentence of that article I linked to that simply classifying people into discrete races is scientific racism.

"Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority, or alternatively the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races."

[theorique]

"Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority, or alternatively the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races."

The first three actions refer to value judgments ("better" / "worse" - compared to what? for what purpose?). Most people would agree that science should steer away from such judgments.

On the other hand, "classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races" seems distinctly unproblematic. There are different clusters of genetic types that arose due to relative geographic isolation, and gave rise to various differences and adaptions. Obvious examples of these include skin color, hair color and texture, average height and build, and so forth. I did not realize that making this observation, in the absence of value judgments, was now interpreted as "scientific racism".

[cactusface]

The problem is only that there are not discrete categories. For starters, how do you classify children of parents belonging to two discrete racial groups? And their children? And so on and so forth. Well, people have been spreading their genes around the globe for a long time, and the upshot is we all belong to the same racial group. Sure, there are clusters, but there are not purebreeds.

Further, culture / ethnicity is just a much more accurate way to classify people than genotype or phenotype. I don't have a source for this, but I believe the best way anthropologists have come up with to group people is by the kind of food they eat.

[devalier]

Science is not a democracy, and consensus means little when the peer review and tenure review process is designed to reward conformity rather than truth.

Use your own brain. Denying the existence of races is completely absurd. See for instance:

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for... and https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i...

And lots more reading here: https://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/#race

[cactusface]

There's a scientific meaning behind the word race - geographically isolated population groups, or more precisely groups that do not interbreed. Humans don't have those, and never have had those. I never said we were homogenous, any nitwit can see that most people in Asia have black hair, and there's no reason to think that only superficial physical characteristics sort geographically. Just that, there aren't distinct races. You know, a middle ground, as proposed by the guy who wrote that first article you linked to, at the end.

[andrewchambers]

I find asserting superiority of one race over another hard to justify, but is it crazy to think there are differences?

Dogs are the same species, but people do assign traits like aggression/playfulness to different breeds.

[cactusface]

There aren't "races" in the sense of Darwin's finches because there is interbreeding between population groups, that's all.

[tjradcliffe]

Redefining the word "race" so it does not apply to the human varieties does not make the fact of human varieties go away, and so fails to make a counter-argument against racists. "Racism" exists, and saying "race doesn't exist" doesn't change that. All it does is mean that to be consistent you'll have to call it "variety-ism", which is awkward and irrelevant.

[andrewchambers]

Racism is asserting superiority of one group of humans over another, and generalizing without evidence.

You could think certain people are genetically better adapted to cold or hot climates. That by itself is not racism, it becomes racism when you say that everyone who cannot stand cold weather is inferior, when in reality, it is totally dependent on circumstances.

I think people failing to see the difference stops some honest discussion and people go on a witch hunt. In this case, blocking the person may well be justified however.

[cactusface]

I'm repeating myself here, but per WP, "Scientific racism is [...] alternatively the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races."

[yarvin9]

It seems worth taking this criticism up with the authors of, for example, Risch et al 2005 [0].

From the abstract: "Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity."

It seems worth asking how a paper like this got published, as late as 2005. Scientific racism may be even more entrenched than many have feared...

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