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Genes for Skin Color Rebut Dated Notions of Race, Researchers Say

nytimes.com

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Re: Genes for Skin Color Rebut Dated Notions of Race, Researchers Say

#21

Post by astrodust »

Mz wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a link to any? I'm drawing a blank; the (high level pop science writing) consensus appears to be that while there are obviously powerful ethnolinguistic features, what limited evidence there is for inter-racial physiological voice features is swamped by the evidence for intra-racial vocal differences. It might be tricky to de-confound the ethnolinguistic stuff from the physiological stuff, because som…

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-an-African-American-persons-v... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_profiling https://io9.gizmodo.com/5928125/do-people-of-different-races... Of course, it is a bit like differences in height for the genders: while men are, on average, taller than women, there is overlap in height as well as statistical outliers (so, no, you cannot definitively say "They are x height, so I can c…

Differences in averages of 5-10% are pretty marginal when you consider the standard deviation on this sort of thing is going to be 50% or more.

You'd be better able to predict someone's physical size from their voice than anything else, but even then it's a guess. I've known very big people with unusually high-pitched voices, plus small women with surprisingly deep voices. It's all over the place.

Re: Genes for Skin Color Rebut Dated Notions of Race, Researchers Say

#22

Post by astrodust »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #13
kemerover wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Uh, voice? That seems dubious. Apart from vernacular or speaking styles that are generally racial in nature, there's really nothing there. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17342877 >It's not the obvious cases that matter, but the borderline ones. Is that person Japanese or maybe Inuit? First of all, I don't think it is appropriate to classify "Japanese" or "Inuit" as races. Race is a more general concept. Anywa…

Really depends on the European though... Europe is an extremely diverse continent despite its relatively small size.

It's still pretty big: https://twitter.com/mariachong/status/918553777031954432

Re: Genes for Skin Color Rebut Dated Notions of Race, Researchers Say

#23

Post by kemerover »

astrodust wrote: post #20
kemerover wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Uh, voice? That seems dubious. Apart from vernacular or speaking styles that are generally racial in nature, there's really nothing there. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17342877 >It's not the obvious cases that matter, but the borderline ones. Is that person Japanese or maybe Inuit? First of all, I don't think it is appropriate to classify "Japanese" or "Inuit" as races. Race is a more general concept. Anywa…

That link about vocal characteristics is only relevant when talking about huge populations. On an individual basis it's meaningless, there's just too much variation. You need samples of a thousand or more to develop a picture. Where biological differences do exist that might affect intonation in a particular dialect, but not when soemeone was raised with a different dialect or intonation. Now if "Japanese" isn't a ra…

>That link about vocal characteristics is only relevant when talking about huge populations. On an individual basis it's meaningless, there's just too much variation.

If we are talking about white/black voice difference, then it is meaningful.

>Now if "Japanese" isn't a race then nothing is. The vast majority of Japanese are identifiable on a genetic level due to the relative isolation of the country.

Race is just a more broad concept than an ethnic group, that's what I mean.

>If you're talking some stereotypically Polish person compared to some stereotypically Arabic person from Egypt, obviously, but there's cases where ordinary Turkish people look more "European" than some groups of Europeans do.

That's what I meant when I said that it would be easier if you take groups 100 hundred people, it averages out. And yeah, Europeans and Arabs are white, so there is little difference between them.

>The bell curve on these things is just too wide, there's nothing but overlap in all but the most extreme fringes.

Yes, "cline" is a better description than "race" but it is not as useful in daily life as "race" is.

Re: Genes for Skin Color Rebut Dated Notions of Race, Researchers Say

#24

Post by HillaryBriss »

tptacek wrote: post #7
HillaryBriss wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the article is claiming that the skin-color-centric definition of race doesn't make sense any more: “If you ask somebody on the street, ‘What are the main differences between races?,’ they’re going to say skin color,” said Sarah A. Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania. i suppose that Tishkoff is right, but to be a bit more rigorous about it, i would be curious to see the sociological resea…

I think you're answering a question the article doesn't pose. Tishkoff didn't claim to have refuted the concept of races, but rather just the notion that they were directly tied to skin color.

huh?

i'm not trying to start an argument but i think i was saying pretty much the same thing you're saying.

i think we actually agree on this.

Re: Genes for Skin Color Rebut Dated Notions of Race, Researchers Say

#25

Post by Mz »

astrodust wrote: post #21
Mz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-an-African-American-persons-v... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_profiling https://io9.gizmodo.com/5928125/do-people-of-different-races... Of course, it is a bit like differences in height for the genders: while men are, on average, taller than women, there is overlap in height as well as statistical outliers (so, no, you cannot definitively say "They are x height, so I can c…

Differences in averages of 5-10% are pretty marginal when you consider the standard deviation on this sort of thing is going to be 50% or more. You'd be better able to predict someone's physical size from their voice than anything else, but even then it's a guess. I've known very big people with unusually high-pitched voices, plus small women with surprisingly deep voices. It's all over the place.

And, yet, most of the time, most people can fairly readily infer gender based on voice alone.

I know it isn't politically correct to talk about any differences at all between ethnicities or even genders. The PC thing at the moment seems to be that "all such differences are social construct." So, it would probably be wise for me to just walk away here as a lot of people will assume I am a racist trying to justify racism. And this isn't some kind of hill I care to die on.

Re: Genes for Skin Color Rebut Dated Notions of Race, Researchers Say

#26

Post by tptacek »

Mz wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a link to any? I'm drawing a blank; the (high level pop science writing) consensus appears to be that while there are obviously powerful ethnolinguistic features, what limited evidence there is for inter-racial physiological voice features is swamped by the evidence for intra-racial vocal differences. It might be tricky to de-confound the ethnolinguistic stuff from the physiological stuff, because som…

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-an-African-American-persons-v... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_profiling https://io9.gizmodo.com/5928125/do-people-of-different-races... Of course, it is a bit like differences in height for the genders: while men are, on average, taller than women, there is overlap in height as well as statistical outliers (so, no, you cannot definitively say "They are x height, so I can c…

Those links all demonstrate that you can make an educated guess about ethnicity from the sound of someone else speaking, but don't establish that you can use physiologically-determined elements of someone's voice as a cue to infer their race.

Re: Genes for Skin Color Rebut Dated Notions of Race, Researchers Say

#27

Post by Mz »

tptacek wrote: post #26
Mz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-an-African-American-persons-v... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_profiling https://io9.gizmodo.com/5928125/do-people-of-different-races... Of course, it is a bit like differences in height for the genders: while men are, on average, taller than women, there is overlap in height as well as statistical outliers (so, no, you cannot definitively say "They are x height, so I can c…

Those links all demonstrate that you can make an educated guess about ethnicity from the sound of someone else speaking, but don't establish that you can use physiologically-determined elements of someone's voice as a cue to infer their race.

This is the original statement being dismissed that I am agreeing with:

But every human can easily identify black/white/Asian based on facial features or voice.

Put another way, you could describe that in your words: you can make an educated guess about ethnicity from the sound of someone else speaking.

I have already allowed that race is a nebulous social construct at best. I don't know what your point is. You stating that we can't yet prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that these differences are purely physiological in origin is not really a rebuttal.

There is no real way to readily separate something like voice from things like lifestyle and socioeconomic class. Similarly, on average, men are taller than women. We could argue about how much of that is actually genetic and whether or not there is some culturally determined stunting of women going on globally, but it doesn't change the measurable average height difference between the genders as a group.

Re: Genes for Skin Color Rebut Dated Notions of Race, Researchers Say

#28

Post by uoaei »

kemerover wrote: post #3

I don't really understand the point of the article. How does this research “dispels a biological concept of race”? >“If you ask somebody on the street, ‘What are the main differences between races?,’ they’re going to say skin color,” said Sarah A. Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania. Yep, that's true. Skin color is the most prominent and easily identifiable feature. But every human can easily ide…

>it is a modern interpretation that is pushed by leftists

It may be reinforced by virtue of their giving time to use it in their rebuttals, but the issue lies deeper in the reason these rebuttals come up in the first place--people in general use this marker more than most when discriminating. Since when has "broad nose" or "high cheekbones" been something that is so highly correlated to being the victim of discrimination?

We didn't win the civil rights war, though the major battle that took down institutional discrimination was won. People still discriminate today, and they do it by relatively few high-profile indicators, e.g. skin color and name.

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