If "race doesn't exist", then how do you explain documented medical & biological differences between races?

Question

Allow me to expound on that. The "race doesn't exist" crowd is getting louder and more adamant with their silly little argument (the result of trying to inject politics into science) every day. I would like someone to show me how, if race really doesn't exist, do you explain, for example, the identification of a DNA segment on chromosome 8 that is a bigger risk factor for prostate cancer, for black men? Or, the discovery of a gene difference that explains why black women are more than twice as likely to give birth prematurely than White women. Or why people of African descent are more vulnerable to TB?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060822150248.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9802&print=true
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/821/4
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-08/aga-aah081606.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-04/aafc-rdi040206.php

Answer 1

I'm just curious as to where this "race doesn't exist" line came from.

There are a variety of diseases that are race-related, so how can someone deny that?

Answer 2

Of course race exist I don't think anyone is going to argue that but the fact is race has been mis-used to divide us as human beings into hating each other, believing one is better than the other or superior etc (it is true and it is happening).
I guess people want race to not exist in a utopian sort of way and I don't think they mean to argue with this idea. I mean what is race, it is simply the biological difference among us, So if color wasn't use then our height or may be even the kind of hair would we have define racial differences.
I am not sure I just made sense.
By the way you came off racist coz all the examples of bad health you gave was eg of black people how come you didn't say stuff like "so why are asian women prone to osteoperosis?" or something?!?!?!?! Think about it

Answer 3

Enviornmental factors contribute to the process of natural selection. For example, in Africa sickle cell protects against Malaria so it maintains because it has a positive side. As far as genes, if a black and white couple reproduce, they still pass on their genes equally. So any genetic conditions can cross racial lines. genetic conditions are a result of origin, not race.

Answer 4

Try not to just pick out the deficiencies in the black race. There are deficiencies in the white race as well. There are also advantages in the black race... Perhaps you need to re-investigate things like how blacks are faster runners, better boxers, resistant to heat stroke... or how whites are genetically susceptable to cystic fibrosis and downs syndrome.

Perhaps what that statement ("race doesn't exist") was trying to say is that we all have our individual faults and our strengths as HUMAN BEINGS...

Answer 5

Wow, someone finally speaks the truth. I've wondered the same thing, how does one say race exists for medical purposes and then turn their head and loudly proclaim that it does not exist?

Great links, I've bookmarked them! Here's one back at ya-

Answer 6

I think u r taking about diseases in BLACK people
Do u have a hidden agenda

Remember there a lot of diseases that affect White

like Cystic fibrosis,Malignant melanoma

Remember Most serial killers are Whites

Remember Hitler was a white

So what is n your Genes that makes u violent

Yes i agree Black r violent

But all the wars were fought because of Whites

Answer 7

Yeah, and isn't it great how you pointed out only all the diseases black people are more susceptible to, but didn't mention anything about any other race?

Answer 8

The word "race" has no *biological* definition.

The classification "race" is only applied to humans and is therefore not a general term of *biology*. In other species we talk of "subspecies" and occasionally "breed" (the result of deliberate breeding efforts). These are terms that are defined in terms of genetic isolation, and therefore do not apply to humans. If we were to apply the same concepts of classification to our own species that we do to every other species on the planet (the system of Order, Family, Genus, Species, Subspecies), the word "race" would have no meaning.

Or to put it another way, there are more points of genetic variation between two random human beings, than there are between two "races." The genomes of two "white" people will vary in hundreds of places that determine height, weight, hair color, size of ears, predisposition to baldness or cancer or depression, body hair, length of the third finger, artistic ability, left-handedness, etc. etc. etc. while the genomes of all "white" people differs from those of all "black" people in only a few dozen places (like chromosome 8).

The genetic differences you cite between, say people of Central African descent and people of Northern European descent are purely explainable by geography and migratory patterns.

Of course people who spent the last 10,000 years (or even a few hundred years) primarily in the same region will have a common recent ancestry and thus have certain genetic markers in common that they don't share with people in a distant region. But almost no human populations have been completely genetically isolated from their neighbors. There is a smooth transition of interbreeding from one region to the next right around the globe. So there are no "boundaries" between "races."

But 10,000 years is a blink of an eye in evolutionary/biological terms. As travel disolves geographical boundaries even more, the very concept of "race" will slowly become even more meaningless. I doubt if, 1,000 years from now, it has any meaning at all.

Yes, it is useful for medical purposes to identify genetically related groups, and so, yes, they will still talk of "race" as a shorthand for "ancestry". But they still use language like "African-Americans" to stress that this is purely an issue of ancestry and geography. There are lots of diseases associated with other ancestral groups that are not defined as "races", such as Celiac disease (associated with people of Irish descent), Thalassemia (affecting mediteranean groups ... Italians, Greeks, middle-eastern descent), Niemann-Pick disease (affecting people of French-Acadian descent in Nova Scotia), etc. So medical studies on the frequency of a disease in an ancestral or geographic group is not evidence of "race."

Now, in all of this I'm speaking purely about *biology* (as this is the Biology forum). In sociology, race is a much bigger issue, as this brings in issues of culture and history (collective memory of past events). But from the point of view of pure biology, Homo sapiens cannot be subclassified into meaningfully defined "races."

Answer 9

We are all genetically different, which makes us all unique. In that sense, we are all different races.
But really, we are all the same.

Answer 10

Does that make them any less human? Or do you know what the "human gene" is?