Race? Why so important?

Question

All scientists and many people know, race is not a scientific term. It has become so, but there are no races, only genetic traits. A person with pure genes, if there are any, of one genetic type, can in 3 generations of mixing, become another genetic type. Since this hypothesis is proven, why do we as a race, the human, find it so hard to ignore skin color?

Thanks for answers. I know and have suggested to mixed people, that the world always sees them as the minority parts of them. I hate that this is generally true, but look at Halee Barree, and Senator Obama. Pressey was 1/12 African and couldn't get a seat in front of bus. Is this why many mixed people marry back to minority part?

Answer 1

Race is only useful in a scientific setting when a person's cultural background becomes relevant. While it's true that black people suffer higher rates of several conditions and diseases, there's little evidence that this stems from the simple fact that they are black; rather, there is more evidence to suggest that cultural conditions facilitate higher rates of these diseases. These cultural conditions exist in large part because race is so important in our society. This is a conclusion the evidence can point us to, and it's one I personally think is reasonable and supportable.

I could go on and on about science and race, and how they don't get along, but the really important things is that race is very important in a cultural context. People identify with race, they judge each other by race. I think there are a few possible reasons for this. The first is simply history. Race classification has so long been a part of our culture that it exists despite our best efforts to weed out such discrimination. I don't know if it's "human nature," but I do know the idea of race has a lot of historical momentum behind it, and we are conditioned to think about race from an early age, and through our lives from many different sources. Second, humans are more visual critters than we are auditory, olfactory, kinesthetic, or gustatory (sincere apologies to the blind or vision-impaired). We frequently and readily judge our surroundings by their appearance. Finally, race actually makes good sense on a very superficial level. It's really, really easy to group a bunch of people who look alike in some way and say they are similar in other ways too. It's not strictly logical, and with race it's not factually correct most of the time, but it's what we like to do.

Flash: That's the whole point of the fallacy. Saying it's "common knowledge" is not proof. The big problem is that people act like it's common knowledge without ever looking deeper than that. Match it up to the evidence. Better yet, look into studies where race was matched up to evidence. It doesn't work. If it did, we'd be using it. I'm a scientist. I follow evidence and make reasonable conclusions based on it. Looking at the evidence behind race, using it to categorize people is not reasonable or logical.

EDIT 2: Hi again, Science. I'm fine with the idea that "different
entities are not necessarily equivalent." Of course, the other half of that would be that "different entities are not necessarily inequivalent." I'd even agree with some of your list of the differences that the different races are supposed to have. But those traits occur freely enough outside the supposed race categories (especially aptitude and character traits) to convince me that race is the wrong way to be classifying people. There are just better, more scientific ways to do it. It has nothing to do with my political affiliation. Quite the reverse, actually.

Answer 2

It is hereditary. There are still so many people out there that are blind in the since as to the fact that slavery is long gone and the fact that there are so many people from other countries living here now and don't want to accept it. They are called rednecks. It is a shame that there are so many people who can't accept this. I was raised in a prejudice family, but over the years have overcome this way of thinking. If the white people could get over their past and just live with things as they are and quite trying to blame themselves for what their ancestors did and see that all races can live together and get along, this would be a better world, but unfortunately there are too many in-breads in this world that can't see past their white noses far enough to overlook the fact that someone else's skin is a different color. It's what's inside that counts.

Answer 3

Race is a scientific term. It is useful in medicine, for instance, in alerting doctors to investigate the posibility that a patient is more likely to carry a trait for diabetes, for instance, because they also have the trait for skin color, hair, and facial features common to people of sub-saharan descent.
I don't think humans are able to ignore skin color any more than they are able to ignore height or body fat or facial features. The difference between sexes in body shapes is more pronounced in humans than it is in any other mamal. After a buck has shed its antlers it looks, from a distance, very much like a doe. But a naked woman, from a distance, is usually distinguisable from a man.
I think you're asking a sociological question about prejudice. Racism, and its legitimate role in science, is no longer PC. But what people are really objecting to is when the term was misused as a substitute for tribalism.
Racism has a legitimate place in science but the politics no longer allow it to be called by that name.
We humans can not ignore race, (skin color, facial feathures, hair types,) any more than we can ignore the sex, (oops - 'gender') of a person or their age. That's just how it is.
Race is important in this culture because of associated social status and the like.
It's important because it's important.

Answer 4

Race is not that important. What is important is the culture. If the culture produces 25 times the normal amount of criminal activity, 50 times the normal amount of illegitimate babies, etc., then yeah, people aren't gonna like that.

Mixed people of different races tend to take on the characteristics of the minority culture, because it's easier to do so. It's easier to blame others, rely on welfare, act out and have atrocious behaviors and in some cases, become criminals, than it is to be a thoughtful caring normal person.

Answer 5

Welcome to my world. Human define themselves by differences.

I'm tall i.e not short. i have blonde hair. I can't take dairy. Differences make boundaries which make definitions of self seem clearer. I use it as a visual description and leave it at that (I'm and artist i need a mental picture) Half the time I'd ask more questions about people rather than concentrate on what they look like.

It does help to collect stories and find out how we are all really the same and my objective is to dispel the race card in conversations. My observation is it ripples out anyway.

Answer 6

Its not just skin color. Race goes further than that. Races have different religions, different cultures. The Mongols have smaller eyes, shorter bodies. While the caucasoids have larger eyes and are pretty tall (europeans are tall, not arabians).

Could a Thai have blond hair? No, but Europeans can. I do not agree at all with race-deniers, I believe races exist, its common knowledge.

http://racialreality.shorturl.com/ check this site out. It'll explain everything. Its pretty unbiased, its just facts.

Answer 7

Funny that you state the polar opposite of the truth. All scientists and most people
know that race is scientific. However, not everyone accepts what they know to be
true, due to the crude blind mental focus of disrupting truth in one's mind... which is
the same mental focus which causes the behavior of stating the polar opposite of the
truth, because nothing disrupts truth more than it's polar opposite.

'Race' is a synonym for 'subspecies', though 'subspecies' is the more accurate term,
at least when referring to the 4 macroraces. Humans, like many other species, can
breed between their subspecies. The term 'race' is more versatile though, because
it can refer to biological divisions that are smaller than subspecies.

I am aware why people believe that race (by it's webster's definition) does not exist,
but is a social construct. It is because of the crude blind mental focus of seeping
oneness, which disrupts, in one's mind, the fundamental logical truth that different
entities are not necessarily equivalent. Such people are usually far-leftists,
theocrats, or somewhere in between.

I find it humorous how you state 'skin color', as if it were the only genetic racial
subspecies trait. Other genetic racial traits include y-haplogroup, mt-haplogroup,
height, body build (ranging from leptomorphic to pyknomorphic), hair color, eye color,
hair strand thickness, hair strand shape (and the resulting degree of hair curvature),
blood groups, other biochemical differences, nasal index (ranging from leptorrhine to
platyrrhine), nosebridge prominence, presence or absence of browridges,
presence or absence of an epicanthic eye fold, degree of facial prognathism,
cranial index (ranging from dolichocephalic to brachycephalic), facial index,
numerous facial features, numerous body features, physical aptitudes, mental
aptitudes, and character traits.

Many of such traits come in associated sets, which define a subspecies or a race.
Apparently you and The Ry-Guy believe that it is all one big magical coincidence.

Answer 8

Wow, no everyone's right so far except for 'reillyov'.

I can't really expand upon what they've said without wasting too much time, so I won't even get into the science. I won't delve too deep in the psychiatric reasons either.

To me, it just shows (yet again) the lack of validity in human assumption.

In short, what I'm saying, is humans were not meant to ASSume, and not to convert feelings into assumptions, and place them as fact.

We are naturally intelligent, but ignorant; we aren't born 'knowing'. We make mistakes, which is why all historic civilizations have been created by thinking men.

^There's my two cents. ^

Answer 9

Humans are lazy observers. Initially, we assess others on their visible attributes alone and before we've even spoken to them, we have built up an idea of the sort of person we think they are. Usually these ideas are created purely from stereotypes we are exposed to from early on in life. This basic factor of human nature, is unfortunately why, initially at least, we find skin color hard to ignore. Fortunately, we can see past it one you get talking to a person for example, your initial impressions can change in an instant.

Answer 10

It's not so mucha scientific thing as it is cultural. No matter what skin colour you are, there are ways u have that others don't, so u r treated differently for it. Also, back when the USA was being formed, the whites weren't willing to accept blacks and Native Americans as one of their own, so they beat them and put them to work. Now, blacks have built up the reputation of being lower than whites, so that's how it's always going to be, no matterhow much we try to change it.