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non_radical_centrist  2mo ago (astralcodexten.com)   2513 thread views

How Should We Think About Race And "Lived Experience"?

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I'm generally a fan of "blurry" definitions where something can qualify as X if it fulfills a few of many criteria. I think trying to create hard rules around blurry areas like race and culture is fool's errand, and Scott does a great job laying out how overly strict definitions can go wrong.

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People use the claim “there’s no such thing as biological race” for a lot of purposes, mostly to confuse and deceive people, but here it’s worth focusing on the tiny sliver of justification for such a claim: the biological clustering of populations isn’t exactly 100% the same as socially-defined racial categories

Scott seems to not understand. Race is still a social construct. There are genetic variations among different populations, but this doesn't mean the categories of race are not socially constructed. Who decided we are going to define one race white and another black, based on skin color? He uses the example with Jews, but this makes no sense since their categorization of race is different from the Western categorization. These racial categories have a purpose and are useful for a variety of reasons, but he's not making a convincing point that racial categories are not socially defined. Certain racial categories are fuzzier and an American invention: whites and blacks.

Certain racial categories are fuzzier and an American invention: whites and blacks.

If you socially define two categories, and then people in each category intermarry, they become biological categories.

Can you explain further?

With lots of intermarrying inside groups, and rare between groups, each group becomes more similar genetically and culturally. Africans from various countries were indiscriminately mated and their children do not longer retain differences in language, culture and genetics that their ancestors had.

Race is both a social construct and a biological category with real consequences independent of how society chooses to treat it. Consider for a parallel example, tallness. Different cultures have different standards of tallness and might treat people they consider tall or short differently. 'Tallness' here is basically how society decides to treat or respond to the very real feature of height.

Race is both a social construct and a biological category with real consequences independent of how society chooses to treat it What do you mean by this? I am pointing out how race is defined is a social construct. Could you clarify what you mean by real consequence and relate that to racial categories? If anything, your example with height is not really about race but more about a specific trait.

Race is obviously not just a social construct but both a biological construct AND in part a social construct and also does not count as a social construct in the way many people using that term mean.

How can it be both a social construct and not a social construct? Since a lot of the people using the term seem to be using it to mean arbitrary, existing only in our imaginations, when it isn't. Or as something in the exclusion of a biological group. To the extend there is a social construct is based in large part to biology, or as a synonym for broader or narrower ethnic group, where there other robust things about it related to shared culture, ethnic identification by them and by others, and also relate to ancestry.

Most ethnic groups have been described as races in the past.

In general most things called social constructs by deconstructionists and overly dismissive people are not that. The connotations carried with the words social constructs in such cases are misleading. Same would apply to someone who is pro barter economy, or pro communism saying that money is a social construct. Or even ethnic groups.

Certain racial categories are fuzzier and an American invention: whites and blacks.

Yes there is an element in social categorization but white and black people clearly exist as biological races.

There are biological differences between different populations and sub-populations, but deciding a group of phenotypes (like skin color) was unmistakably influenced by Western biases. You are probably aware of the issue of defining whiteness and blackness (Mixed ethnicities in United States or exclusion of certain ethnic groups from White category) . There is no perfect system of categorization of course, but the issue with Scott is he tries to conflate asserting race as a social construct as somehow not existing. Social construct doesn't simply mean "it doesn't exist" or "useless". I am sure there are radicals who think this, but that is cherry picking for easy wins

was unmistakably influenced by Western biases.

True! But are we not all sinners? There are tiny dust specks in my eye, yet I still see. What hasn't been influenced by biases? Our conception of "color" is biased by our photoreceptors, in turn biased by the distribution of light in our ancestral environment, but we still find color useful. The question should be - how biased is it? I think you should "put a number on it". How much, precisely, were race/ancestry groups influenced by Western biases? If the number is say, 80%, then yes we should probably abandon current categories of race. If the number is 4% ... then maybe they're good enough.

Of course not! I am pointing out this is just one mode of thinking that has dominated the way we perceive and categorize race. Racial categorizations are more complicated in different cultures was my point. Regardless, I am not disputing usefulness of these categorizations. Acknowledging biases when approaching and building conceptual frameworks is essential in science. It's not even because of political correctedness, but more for understanding limitations and accuracy.

An analogy is that when studying other religions, there is a tendency to interpret different religions from a Christian perspective (most likely because it is the dominant religion in the western sphere and most researchers who approached different religions were mainly Western). It's why early cultural studies has been updated to reflect a more accurate understanding.

If pursuing the truth and accurate information is the goal of any research field, then there should be no issues in acknowledging some limitations and biases of racial categorizations. I am not really concerned about political correctedness even, but more so it's a pretty big discussion amongst professional geneticists that there are issues with this classification.

If pursuing the truth and accurate information is the goal of any research field, then there should be no issues in acknowledging some limitations and biases of racial categorizations.

Okay, so, obviously if you're, like, writing a paper on the impact of race and IQ, you should more complicated measures of ancestry than self-reported race if you can. I don't disagree with that. However, I think "race" is close enough to "ancestry" in casual conversation.

also e.g. biobanks don't allow people to use their data for race and iq research, which is both unfortunate and ... potentially indicative of the kind of bias that would systematically affect science on the topic!

Of course ethnic categorizations relating to race has been influenced by more than past centuries white culturally right leaning westerners being prejudiced. And relate to actual real cultural spheres, and differences among groups and biological differences. There is a relation between race and broader ethnic groups and civilizations.

Italians, Irish, etc qualified as white.

Obviously, other non white groups and progressives have been part of this and created categorisations like Hispanic. Blacks obviously support the black categorization. Progressives of course support various categorizations relating to race, including whites being treated as a different category to non whites. Plenty of non whites support non only non progressive categorisations of race, as a way that makes sense for them, but even to an extend the progressive categorization for self serving reasons.

The narrative of Noel Ignatiev of evil white racists conspiring to create the concept of race, while his faction is just trying to deconstruct racism and prejudices, by destroying whiteness is inaccurate. On basically every claim he is making.

I do think that certain categorizations that make sense in an American case, and as a non American I am adamant in promoting them even when arguing with Americans, make some less sense in other contexts.

For example in the case of USA, white is more of a primary ethnicity while in the case of Europe, being European is more of an aspect of your primary ethnic categorization. Same with blackness and black Americans, in relation to Africans.

Anyway, I don't see why social constructs are illegitimate things as a result of prejudice, rather than categorisations based often in valid and important things, including biology. Not always, I would like to undermine the progressive way of seeing race without going full in opposite direction. And there is some validity in opposing the most hardcore white supremacist way of categorising the world, with again not going to the opposite direction which is the antiwhite supremacist categorisations done by progressives. Where these progressives also associate being indigenous with being non white, or Europeans existing at all as a group with prejudice and white supremacy.

Anyway, I don't see why social constructs are illegitimate things as a result of prejudice, rather than categorisations based often in valid and important things, including biology.

I've never disputed the usefulness of it, merely pointing out that others seem to conflate this as an easy argument to win against. It doesn't change that it is a social construct. To add from my previous comment, I was also pointing out that this is just one mode of thinking that dominated racial categorizations because I am sure you know already that different cultures do not have the same conception of race as the western system does.

Scott agrees with you, except for the assertion that biological race is entirely useless. Biological race is what ancestry.com identifies you as when you do a DNA test. It's different but has substantial overlap with cultural race. Biological race is, usually, less useful than cultural race, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist like how, say, a biological Star Wars fan doesn't exist. There are lots of genes associated with certain geographic regions and cultures, there aren't genes particularly associated with liking Star Wars.

I think Scott is opening with a straw man (or is it motte and bailey? I don't know). There probably are people who will deny that there is some genetic variation in different populations if you cherry pick for radicals, but just because something is a social construct doesn't mean it has no utility. I am not sure where this claim of his is coming from. It's understood that money is a construct, but we don't deny it's utility. Saying something is a social construct was never meant (in a serious discussion) to mean it is useless.

There probably are people who will deny that there is some genetic variation in different populations if you cherry pick for radicals, but just because something is a social construct doesn't mean it has no utility.

There are lots of people who deny that race has any biological basis. If you grill them on what exactly they mean by it they might eventually realize that obviously race has some biological basis, but otherwise, they'll be pushing HR policies and going to the ballot box working under the assumption there is no such thing as biological race.

Saying something is a social construct was never meant (in a serious discussion) to mean it is useless.

He concludes with essentially saying that the social construct definition, where race is based off lived experience, is more meaningful anyways.

As I understand, what the professional geneticists mean by "human racial classifications have no basis in biology" is something like the claim

(1) "Inasmuch as there's a sensible biological phenomenon of "race" or "subspecies" that we can talk scientifically about all across biology (not just humans), we've broadly agreed to define this phenomenon in terms of ratios of genetic variation within and between populations. Morphology and behavior isn't enough. If you want to tell me that you've discovered a new subspecies of gray flycatcher, the distinctive markings on its tail feathers and the distinctive song that it sings aren't going to cut it -- you have to show something about the ratio of overall genetic variation within vs between candidate populations of gray flycatchers.

Many biological "subspecies" that were previously identified based on morphology and behavior don't hold up to modern genetic analysis. This is not to say that your candidate subspecies of gray flycatcher can't be reliably identified by genetic analysis -- maybe it has a handful of mutations that always appear in it but not in the rest of the species, and maybe those mutations underlie the distinctive behavior and morphology -- but those distinctive differences may be located in too few genes to make the cut overall. Maybe the genetically-mediated differences in morphology and behavior will drive true subspeciation in the future, but it's not there yet.

Applied to human races, the genetic differences between human racial groupings fail to stand out against the backdrop of human genetic diversity sufficiently, across the whole genome, to make the cut as biological subspecies, at any threshold of "sufficiently" to be useful across the rest of biology (not that biology has a lot of use for subspecies in general -- species are fuzzy enough already)."

What some people seem to want this to mean is more like

(2) "Observed average morphological and behavioral differences between members of different human races are not genetically mediated."

This is absurd on its face, and is not implied by (1).

There's plenty of room for different socially-defined and approximately ancestry-tracking racial groups of humans to exhibit genetically-mediated differences in morphology and behavior without qualifying as biological subspecies. There's plenty of room for greyhounds and pitbulls to do so as well, also without qualifying as biological subspecies.

we've broadly agreed to define this phenomenon in terms of ratios of genetic variation within and between populations

But then I have to press you: what exactly is this ratio, and how is it computed? How can I calculate it for various subspecies and for humans in order to verify independently that indeed, native Scandinavians and Aboriginal Australians are more closely related than any pair of subspecies of Chimpanzee?

And I have to point out that “subspecies” is a social construct too, in that the definition of subspecies is determined by biologists, who could very well define it as “subspecies are any subpopulations that have greater genetic differences than any two human subpopulations”. It doesn't tell you how to calculate genetic similarly, but it's clear that, by definition, there cannot be subspecies of Homo Sapiens, so problem solved. But of course that creates two problems:

  1. That's hardly carving reality at the joints: it's plausible that there are relevant distinctions that are more fine-grained than you allow. If there really is no significant difference between human subpopulations, you have to show that from first principle, not simply assert it by definition.

  2. Is this standard really being consistently applied? Again, think about the Chimpanzee subspecies. Are they really more differentiated than some human races? If biologists aren't using their own definition to determine subspecies in the first place, then appealing to the definition to assert there are no subspecies within the human race is meaningless.

(1) "Inasmuch as there's a sensible biological phenomenon of "race" or "subspecies" that we can talk scientifically about all across biology (not just humans), we've broadly agreed to define this phenomenon in terms of ratios of genetic variation within and between populations. Morphology and behavior isn't enough. If you want to tell me that you've discovered a new subspecies of gray flycatcher, the distinctive markings on its tail feathers and the distinctive song that it sings aren't going to cut it -- you have to show something about the ratio of overall genetic variation within vs between candidate populations of gray flycatchers.

I am pretty sure racial categories from professional scientific point of view has been criticised, not because of politcal pressure, but more or less along the lines of what you are saying, due to lack of precision.

Because of both. There are inherent problems in biological classifications and human races are nothing unusual about this. It is Lumpers and splitters when it comes to other organisms, but "progressives" and "evil racists" when it comes to humans. Species problem And even this: Ring species No anti-racist says that existence of ring species proves that biologists are doing something bad with classifications, that species don't exist, it's just isolated demand of rigor regarding humans.

I've never seen the claim that different human races should be considered sub-species, at least not by anyone who isn't absurdly racist.

I honestly don't entirely know what people who say "race is 100% socially constructed and not biological" are thinking. I usually give people the benefit of the doubt, but in this case I think it's really just double think.

Maybe the geneticists are just knocking down a straw man when they say humans don't have subspecies and therefore there aren't biological races of humans, but it is a thing they do. See Biological Races in Humans:

The word “race” is not commonly used in the non-human biological literature. [...] Of all the words used to describe subdivisions or subtypes within a species, the one that has been explicitly defined to indicate major geographical “races” or subdivisions is “subspecies” (Futuyma, 1986, pg. 107–109; Mayr, 1982, pg. 289). Because of this well-established usage in the evolutionary literature, “race” and “subspecies” will be regarded as synonyms from a biological perspective. In this manner, human “race” can be placed into a broader evolutionary context that is no longer species-specific or culturally dependent.

The question of the existence of human “races” now becomes the question of the existence of human subspecies. This question can be addressed in an objective manner using universal criteria.

This guy goes on to argue that by the broader race/subspecies criteria, there are biological races of chimps, but not of humans.

I also have no idea what people who think race is 100% socially constructed and not biological mean. Do they think a baby born to self-identified black parents is not likely to have noticeably darker skin than a baby born to self-identified white parents? There's something to be said for "racial classifications are not cross-culturally consistent", such that in Brazil people might be called "white" while having a large percentage of African ancestry than many people in America who are called "black", but that just reflects how the map is socially constructed, not the territory -- which is a truism.

Maybe the geneticists are just knocking down a straw man when they say humans don't have subspecies and therefore there aren't biological races of humans, but it is a thing they do.

There are admittedly an handful of absurd racists out there, so at some point I think scientists do have to knock those down. Like how scientists also have knocked down flat earthers; they're hardly a serious position, but they do exist, and occasionally you need to remind the mainstream population why they're absurd.

I also have no idea what people who think race is 100% socially constructed and not biological mean. Do they think a baby born to self-identified black parents is not likely to have noticeably darker skin than a baby born to self-identified white parents? There's something to be said for "racial classifications are not cross-culturally consistent", such that in Brazil people might be called "white" while having a large percentage of African ancestry than many people in America who are called "black", but that just reflects how the map is socially constructed, not the territory -- which is a truism.

Yeah, I really think this is just pure doublethink. I'm not sure if there's any other political issue where doublethink is as common; usually I think people just hold regular false beliefs instead believing two contradictory things at once.

There are lots of genes associated with certain geographic regions and cultures, there aren't genes particularly associated with liking Star Wars.

Only because they haven't been selected for. If anything- but I digress.

We should expect to see alleles associated with, among other things, industriousness, parental investment, general levels of aggression, punctuality, cognitive ability, sexual fidelity, impulse control, and many other things which have been selected for. I also contend that at some point we'll figure out the alleles for all sorts of various aesthetic preferences, and even preferences for narrative tropes. At which point it will indeed be possible to score someone's propensity to enjoy Star Wars. Although, the franchise is a mixed enough basket by now that it'd be fairly messy. After all, most people prefer some Star Wars to other Star Wars.

I also contend that at some point we'll figure out the alleles for all sorts of various aesthetic preferences, and even preferences for narrative tropes.

I might be wrong, but I expect that a lot of that has a very large influence by the environment. If you had a perfect understanding of the influences of human genes, you could probably make a slightly better than chance guess at whether someone would be a Star Wars fan if you knew their genes, but it really wouldn't be useful to create a genetic "Star Wars fan" category because it would be very divorced by the actual reality of which people enjoyed Star Wars.

If you had a perfect understanding of the influences of human genes, you could probably make a slightly better than chance guess at whether someone would be a Star Wars fan if you knew their genes

Maybe consider that we can do much better than that just based on whether the person has a Y chromosome!

There are genetic variations among different populations, but this doesn't mean the categories of race are not socially constructed.

What word would you like people to use to describe genetic variations among different populations?

That's not for me to decide. I am simply just pointing out that it is a socially defined categorization. If someone wants to come up with a better system, they can. It has utility, but Scott misunderstands and makes an error (not sure if this is motte and bailey or strawman) by conflating social construction as useless or non-existent. Not just him but many of the responses here seems to misunderstand what a social construct is imo.

Population sub-group?

Do you also dispute the wavelength basis of color? It fits in perfectly:

gardenofobjections seems to not understand. Color is still a social construct. There are wavelength variations among different colors, but this doesn't mean the categories of color are not socially constructed. Who decided we are going to define one color white and another black, based on photons? He (doesn't) uses the example with Hanunoo, but this makes no sense since their categorization of color is different from the Western categorization. These color categories have a purpose and are useful for a variety of reasons, but he's not making a convincing point that color categories are not socially defined. Certain color categories are fuzzier and an American invention: whites and blacks.

Put plainly, everything is a fuzzy socially-defined category, even the categories used in the hardest of hard physics. Bringing up this argument for genetics only is an isolated demand for rigor.

I am not sure what your counterargument is for. I am not disputing the existence of genetic variation in different populations. I am pointing out race (mostly Western system) is a social construct. I am not even disputing the utility of these categorizations. I am just saying Scott makes the conflation that social construct means it doesn't exist.

For your example... Color is a spectrum. It's not that one color definitely ends here and starts there. Language is a limiting factor. There are terms for different types of colors that aren't existent in Anglo Saxon. Useful categories, but doesn't mean they aren't socially defined. Socially defined doesn't necessarily mean there are no differences between a certain part of the spectrum compared to the other.

Though I understand you are just using an example, it's not a very good one since genetic differences between races aren't always clear. I am pretty sure ethnic differences are larger within one race than between different races. Way less clear than physical phenomena in hard sciences. Defining it by skin color or certain phenotypes is just one way of doing it.

/images/1709960115303152.webp

I mean everything is a social construct. Rape is a social construct. Property is a social construct. Google is a social construct. The Internet is a social construct. Love is a social construct. Anti-racism is a social construct. Yet we still have uses for all of these, they're in fact extremely important, and can debate the way we act on them in the exact same way Scott is doing. It's reasonable to say that I probably shouldn't consider the entirety of San Francisco to be "my property", even though it's a social construct, because it's not very useful and may have negative effects. It's similarly reasonable to say that maybe it's better to consider "race" to just mean "ancestry" than to jump between "group membership/identity social construct" and "ancestry" depending on the situation, leading to the plight of the professor in the OP.

I am just saying Scott makes the conflation that social construct means it doesn't exist.

I don't think he is?

I am pretty sure ethnic differences are larger within one race than between different races.

You mean genetic differences. There are a lot of technical arguments here but ... sure, why not. There are many white people with lower IQ than the average black person. This doesn't mean that the average black IQ isn't lower than the average white IQ, and it doesn't mean that doesn't have a genetic component to its cause.

I don't think he is?

https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/how-should-we-think-about-race-and-list-share-cta&comments=true&commentId=51163221

You mean genetic differences. There are a lot of technical arguments here but ... sure, why not. There are many white people with lower IQ than the average black person. This doesn't mean that the average black IQ isn't lower than the average white IQ, and it doesn't mean that doesn't have a genetic component to its cause.

Do you have any strong evidence that controls different factors (socioeconomic, historical, cultural and even diet) for the claims of IQ? When I looked, most of these differences between IQ are overblown or if the data does show differences, it often is more complex and can't be taken by face value. This isn't exclusive to just IQ of course but even other traits like skeletal structure and even height.

...the conflation that social construct means it doesn't exist.

That's a very common conflation in my experience, which makes it a valid target for counterarguments.

The socially constructed definition of race includes genetic information, which means that it is a physically-grounded system instead of an arbitrary one. This puts limits on how much society can change the definitions without going off the rails.

Though I understand you are just using an example, it's not a very good one since genetic differences between races aren't always clear.

First, differences between colors aren't clear either. Light with uniformly-random wavelengths is widely agreed to be "white". What about light with 1/3 each 450 nm, 550 nm, 650 nm? It might appear identical or different depending on the situation, so we've created the color rendering index to deal with that. What about fluorescent objects? They reflect visible light in a way that's easily-describable using standard terms, but they also create some extra by converting UV light. Category differences not being clear is completely normal, and there's nothing special about genetics in that sense.

Second, it doesn't look that bad? Look at the graphs Scott included just above your quote: they sure look like clusters to me, and the line-drawing isn't too egregious. Also remember that we're looking at a 2D projection of an N-dimensional analysis, so some more differences will show up in the later principal components.

I am pretty sure ethnic differences are larger within one race than between different races.

I've heard that statement before, but I still haven't got a good explanation of what the factual claim is supposed to be. My attempts all end up in nonsense.

My first thought was "a random pair of coethnics is more genetically different than a random pair of non-coethnics humans", which seems trivially false. My second was "a random pair of coethnics is more genetically different than a random pair of archetypal members of each race", which seems like a category error for the comparison and also plausibly false (see the graph again: races have size 0.2ish, while the distances between their centers are 0.35ish).

What do you mean in a hard statistical sense by that statement?

I am very confused because it seems there is confusion between map for territory. You talking about genetic material being different between different populations and sub-populations doesn't mean that race is not socially constructed. It seems we agree that social construction of race is not useless nor does it mean that there are differences between groups of people?

A black man and a white man has more similarities in genes, just different expressions of phenotypes, which often is what is used to classify race to begin with.

My understanding is also that differences within one race are higher than between. African populations have more genetic diversity within different sub-populations as an example.

https://ksj.mit.edu/tracker-archive/new-study-confirms-africans-are-most-gen/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12493913/

You talking about genetic material being different between different populations and sub-populations doesn't mean that race is not socially constructed.

Of course it is, just like everything else. The mere fact that a category is socially constructed is utterly unremarkable. If you want to build policies from that, then you need a stronger grounding. Is it arbitrarily socially constructed, and therefore easy to change? Are there unprincipled exceptions in the social construction, that should be rectified? Is it too complex (or variable across regions and cultures) so it can't be used to communicate clearly? If you could argue that something is a bad social construction, then I'd listen to your ideas about what a good one is.

It seems we agree that social construction of race is not useless nor does it mean that there are differences between groups of people?

It has uses (I'll leave whether it's net useful unanswered), and the causation flows the other way: genetic differences caused racial classification, the classification didn't affect the genes.

A black man and a white man has more similarities in genes, just different expressions of phenotypes, which often is what is used to classify race to begin with.

What is "more" referring to?

If it's a comparison of the average black+white vs. white+white, then I'd say it's plainly incorrect.

My understanding is also that differences within one race are higher than between.

Thanks for the link. It's an interesting find, but the comparison is nigh-meaningless and shouldn't drive your decisions.

Using that same within/between comparison can lead you wildly astray: The income differences within genders are higher than between, but the wage/earnings gap is still a live issue. The life expectancy differences within countries are higher than between, but it's still used as a key indicator of progress. The temperature changes within a year are higher than between, but climate change is still concerning.

Comparing the variance between different individual things to the variance between different large aggregates will practically always say that the individuals are more distinct.

African populations have more genetic diversity within different sub-populations as an example.

That's a neat bit of trivia, but not remarkable either. Sticking with the color example, there's more diversity in wavelengths in "Red" (130 nm) than in "Green", "Yellow", and "Orange" combined (125 nm). Groups aren't always the same size, so "African" being more diverse than "European" and "Asian" combined isn't (wouldn't be?) notable.

EDIT to add: Yes, the category is socially constructed, and yes, the tea has quantum mechanical effects inside your body.

African populations have more genetic diversity within different sub-populations as an example.

That's a neat bit of trivia, but not remarkable either. Sticking with the color example, there's more diversity in wavelengths in "Red" (130 nm) than in "Green", "Yellow", and "Orange" combined (125 nm). Groups aren't always the same size, so "African" being more diverse than "European" and "Asian" combined isn't (wouldn't be?) notable.

In addition, the elision between discussing West/Central black African genetics (from which black Americans draw the majority of their ancestry) and African genetics as a whole is another common and classic tactic to distract, when the Western discourse is centered around black Americans. Africa contains populations such as North Africans who are more closely related to other Mediterranean populations (albeit with some more recent black admixture related to reasons such as the slave trade and/or Arab expansion), Ethiopians (who have significant Arab ancestry), Khoisan (who were the first to branch off from the rest of humanity), African pygmies (the second to branch off from the rest of humanity), the Malagasy (who were originally Austronesian).

It'd be like trying to poo-poo the genetic differences between birds and non-Avian dinosaurs because the majority of Archosaurian genetic diversity is found within crocodilians, pterosaurs, and non-Avian dinosaurs.

On a side note, African pygmies have long been on the wrong side of systematic replacement, genocide, rape, and even cannibalism from their West/Central black African neighbors, persisting to this day. Somehow, this phenomenon remains largely undiscussed in mainstream Western discourse.

and even cannibalism from their West/Central black African neighbors, persisting to this day.

Joke: a black African caught a pygmy and cooks him on a spit. An European walks by, sees it and says "No, you cannot eat people!". The African in surprise responds he doesn't. The Europeran points to the pygmy and asks "What's this?". -- "AAh, but it itsn't a human"

I am pretty sure ethnic differences are larger within one race than between different races.

I've heard that statement before, but I still haven't got a good explanation of what the factual claim is supposed to be. My attempts all end up in nonsense.

It's an old feel-good rhetorical device to cope with and minimize the importance of differences across races, a device possibly older than most of us participating on this site.

Obviously, when it comes to genetic differences, this can't be true from a smell test alone, as about 15 years ago it was already possible to assign Europeans to their country of origin based on solely their genetic information, and it's much easier when it comes to races. Any of us can download publicly available genetic data, run a PCA on Europeans, East Asians, and Sub-Saharan Africans to get a clean triangle with each of the three populations on a node.

When it comes to phenotypes, this would clearly be trait dependent and false in many cases. The variation in height between Western-born whites and East Asians is almost certainly less than the variation within them, but clearly the variation in lactose tolerance would likely be greater between than within them (it's like 90% one way and 10% the other). By cursory inspection, the variation in skin color is greater between than within European whites and Sub-Saharan blacks. The variation in facial and skeletal morphology is greater between than within whites, East Asians, and blacks, as can be found in forensic anthropology and x-rays.

Of course, just because the variation within groups is larger than the variation between them doesn't mean the differences between them aren't meaningful or important. Men are around two standard deviations taller than women and their within-group variances are similar; it's a coin-toss as to whether if even the variation in height between men and women is greater than the variation within them. For randomly drawn pairs, if the variances are equal at a 2SD average difference and normally distributed, the man will be taller than the woman over 92% of the time.

This is only exacerbated by tail effects, as discussed many times here. If whites have an average IQ a standard deviation higher than blacks and their within-group variances are equal at 15, e.g., 100 vs. 85, then when comparing equal sized populations of whites and blacks, the white population would have over 16 times more individuals with IQs over 130. Blacks would have 7 times more those with IQs under 70 than whites. A randomly drawn white would be smarter than a randomly drawn black about 76% of the time.

Species are also a social construct, as are genus, family, order, etc. and everything in between. What's considered the same or different species (or any group) can be reclassified over time as new information is obtained or as fads change. Yet, hardly would anyone deny the biological underpinning behind classifying organisms. Conservationists generally lean left, but are heavily invested in Organism BioDiversity. Suggest that we should just let gorillas, cheetahs, the red wolf, or the loggerhead sea turtle get replaced and go extinct (what's the big deal, we already have hominids, felids, canids, and turtles? They're all in this together) and see a conversationist react as an ardent purist that would make the most extreme Stormfront member blush.

If you get bitten by a King Cobra, you want King Cobra antivenom ASAP—at least mamba or synthetic Elapidae antivenom as a temporary stopgap—not some antivenom from a random Naja or much less other snake species. While paralysis and tissue necrosis ensues, you definitely don't want a lecture on how species and genera are a social construct and how the King Cobra is not considered a True CobraTM but more closely related to mambas nowadays, although it was considered a cobra at one point. Thus, any random snake antivenom should do. Many different so-called snake "species" can interbreed and can have tremendous overlap in morphology and geography. Are you even sure if it was a King Cobra, or if "King Cobra" is a valid group in the first place? Maybe you're just indulging in and promulgating negative stereotypes involving "King Cobras." After all, you're not some sort of weird bigoted extremist when it comes to snakes, are you?

Obviously, when it comes to genetic differences, this can't be true from a smell test alone,

It's more that there are many ways you could interpret it as an incredibly broad claim, and that some of them are technically true but misleading. I think it usually refers to Lewontin's claim in this article.

Lewontin's Fallacy also works here and usually I mention it in such discussions, but I was thinking about "differences" in a more colloquial sense from the perspective of how a layperson might think of it, before switching to variation when it comes to phenotypes (most people have an easier time imagining phenotypical than genetic variation, especially at a locus-level). Hence the smell test using something more readily visualized, especially since most people are already at least cursorily familiar with commercial ancestry kits like 23andMe.

At a given locus there might be more variation within groups than across groups (not true in many cases, for example, the loci associated with lactose tolerance and skin color would likely have more between-group than within-group variation when it comes whites vs. East Asians, and whites vs. blacks, respectively), but once you consider more and more loci you start to get clean separations. Hence the aforementioned exercise Europeans and PCAs when it comes to Europeans, East Asians, and Western Africans. A randomly selected young athletic man might on average be only about 10% taller, 10% faster, 50% stronger, and have a slightly faster reaction time than a randomly selected young athletic women, with both groups having substantial intragroup variation for each of those traits. However, in terms of overall athleticism, almost always the man will be more athletic than the woman.

Any of us can download publicly available genetic data, run a PCA on Europeans, East Asians, and Sub-Saharan Africans to get a clean triangle with each of the three populations on a node.

I have not performed this exercise, but my understanding is that the first two PCs you'd use as the axes of this plot will usually explain a negligible percentage of the total variance in a genomic dataset. PCA will always rank axes by variance, but that doesn't mean the top few PCs are any good, in an absolute sense, at reducing the data dimension while preserving structure. Even if the PCs that let us reliably identify these clusters happen to be the relatively 'best' PCs we could use to collapse the multidimensional data onto a graph, they could still suck, in an absolute sense.

Depending on the publication, they can get up to 30% from the first two PCs, although it can be low like high single digits.

Regardless of the number, they're not sucky nor negligible when you can do a PCA using 5,000 random SNPs from 300 random individuals (100 individuals each of the three populations of Europeans, East Asians, and West Africans) and get a clean triangle. Pick another 5,000 random SNPs from another 300 random individuals and you'll get another clean triangle. Rinse and repeat. Quite robust.

If anything, it's a testament to how different genetically Europeans, East Asians, and West Africans are, that one can get consistent, clean separation in such low dimensionality (e.g., 2), robust to using different individual and different loci. One can always add more PCs to get more total variation captured, but it's just unnecessary for separating those three populations.

I have not performed this exercise, but my understanding is that the first two PCs you'd use as the axes of this plot will usually explain a negligible percentage of the total variance in a genomic dataset.

that is, assuming 1 gene corresponds to 1 trait and all traits are equally important. But suppose some trait (say, amount of melanin in skin) is determined by 10 genes and one population has 35% frequency of dark allele and other population has 65% frequency of dark allele. Most genetic variation is within populations but looking at their resulting color, they are visibly distinct. Height or intelligence are much more polygenic.

There are lots of genes related to immune system in which variants are no worse or no better, they just make it harder for germs to jump from one individual to another, and selection will favor diversity in this gene. Other genes would be selected in one direction and can reach fixation. Pick traits you are interested about, and then estimate how much PCs explain it.

The original argument was about - is there a genetics-related meaning of "race", or is it just a social construct?

I'd argue that race is, genetically, as real as the color of a fruit or vegetable. If you had huge matrix with tens of thousands of low-level properties of various fruits, the 'color' variable would explain very little of the total variance, but color is still a property worth discussing, a common kind of variation. The question of how much of traits we care about race 'explains' is a different one with a higher bar for evidence, but the PC does show that "race" does have some meaning, even if a weak one. It rebuts "race is a social construct" when itself used as a rebuttal to more substantial arguments about race.

Undoubtedly there is a genetics-related meaning of race, in the sense that there are identifiable genetic markers that discriminate (heh) between people of different racial categories.

I should have made clear in my reply above that I was specifically questioning the implication, in the post I was replying to, that a PCA plot showing distinct racial clusters can rebut 'the old feel-good rhetorical device" that there's more genetic variation within than between. It does not necessarily do this, in the situation where the PCs showing those distinct clusters themselves explain a negligible fraction of overall variation.

But that's fine! Rebutting "more variation within than between" does not seem not necessary for race to have a genetic basis.

genetic differences and variations exist, but race as a category is socially defined. Socially defined does not negate usefulness (as with many systems in our society). Money is a social construct, but we don't consider it useless. The genetic variation and differences are real, but you also need to keep in mind most of these broad claims about IQ or even physical characteristics fail to take it a step further and discuss the numerous factors that influence such differences (socioeconomic, environmental, cultural and geographical).

genetic differences and variations exist, but race as a category is socially defined. Socially defined does not negate usefulness (as with many systems in our society). Money is a social construct, but we don't consider it useless

This is technically true, but I think what you mean to do is imply that the social construct "race" doesn't map perfectly onto "ancestry / genetics" in a way that affects our interpretation of things like "race and IQ are related". I think "race" and "ancestry" are close enough that it's not important to clarify you mean "ancestry's effect on genetics" when you say "race".

mind most of these broad claims about IQ or even physical characteristics fail to take it a step further and discuss the numerous factors that influence such differences (socioeconomic, environmental, cultural and geographical).

The sophisticated ones don't! It is true that BasedHitler1488 on twitter has a very inaccurate view of the literature on the heritability of IQ or the association of that with race, but that's pure a weakman.

The science on the topic of the heritability of IQ and physical characteristics among individuals is extremely clear and mainstream, and directly deals with factors "socioeconomic, environmental, cultural, and geographical!"

The race-causes-iq-differences arguments are not scientific consensus. Imo this is mostly because saying 'black people are dumber because genes' is something that most existing Americans, including most smart ones, (for various reasons) have extremely strong negative reactions to. But they do directly deal with "socioeconomic, environmental, cultural, and geographical" too.

For some intro reading, check out JayMan: https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-iq-f-a-q-f-r-b/ https://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/

Note that JayMan is black!

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