Chuck,

Sorry for the delay. I'm held up by other work but I should finish my review shortly.

Content-wise, I am very impressed. As far as presentation goes, formatting needs work. A lot of paragraphs aren't properly separated and quoted paragraphs aren't indented.

The downloaded version should be better than the browser one. If you could point out errors that would be very helpful.

Currently, I am waiting for Peter Frost's and Michael Levin's reviews.

Can you post a PDF version too? DOCX is a proprietary format (owned by Microsoft) that isn't perfectly understood by LibreOffice. I don't have MS Word.

If I review the DOCX version, I may be commenting on formatting issues resulting from the the format alone.

It appears a number of the formatting issues I noted were the byproduct of LibreOffice's idiosyncratic reading of the document and are not present in the PDF version.

Part of the problem is that ""folk race" is used ambiguously. At times it is used to mean both sociological classifications like US "Asians" (which often don't cut out natural divisions) and at other times it is used to mean traditional race classifications like Mongoloid, Caucasoid, etc. (which do cut out natural divisions). Pigliucci & Kaplan (2003); Pigliucci (2013) seem to use it in the latter sense. Consider the following passage from Pigliucci (2013):

I said that when they refer to folk races, they are talking about the sociological classifications. This was true in the Kaplan's paper I have cited. If they did mean something else, you will have to show me this. And you did. By quoting Pigliucci (2013) which was referring to Pigliucci & Kaplan (2003), which was in fact the article I had in mind. And in that article, they said (p. 1170) :

This does not, of course, imply that our folk conception of race is not significant—while it does not pick out populations of biological interest, it does pick out populations of deep social and political interest. These populations do not, in fact, have many of the features they were historically supposed to have, but that does not prevent the application of the folk concept of race. Nor, we believe, should it. As long as the folk racial category to which one happens to belong is systematically related to other important aspects of one’s life, there is obviously still a need to pay attention to race in formulating, for example, social policy. And, it need hardly be said, it is. In the U.S., and in at the very least many other contemporary societies, one’s (folk) race is systematically related to one’s chances of acquiring most (if not all) important goods—everything from education to money to self-respect.

That definition is similar to the one from Kaplan (2010) that I have cited in the above comment. So, who is wrong here ? I hope you can sort that out. Because I don't know where to begin. I will email Pigliucci & Kaplan. I want to be sure we are talking about the same thing.

I agree with your changes, otherwise. I particularly appreciate this one :

"To render this position otherwise: biological races are not real because “races” refer to entities which we now know can not possibly exist."

Because by impossible biological entities, I wasn't certain whether you were referring to the biological essentialism discussed in section 3.

What do you suggest I do? If I list it, I will list it as: Kaplan, J. (n.d.). (How Much) Do the Semantics of “Race” Matter? A Note From a Parochial Perspective.

Fine by me. I would like, however, to have a link to the article, because the one you gave me isn't probably the correct one.

I'm extremely bothered, annoyed. Again, what's the use of this thread ? Think about how the journal will refer to the review thread. Usually, it's something like :

Links
Download Paper.
Download supplementary material.
Forum thread with peer-review.

With your 6 separate thread, that should be, for you :

Links
Download Paper.
Download supplementary material.
Forum thread with peer-review. Section 1.
Forum thread with peer-review. Section 2.
Forum thread with peer-review. Section 3.
Forum thread with peer-review. Section 4.
Forum thread with peer-review. Section 5.
Forum thread with peer-review. Section 6.

Now, what's the use of Full version thread, given the above ? If it's about the presentation, typos, and some other stuff like this, why not. But if it's for reviews, that's not OK for me. And I'm not ready to comment in this thread about the content of the article. I will use the previous thread 1 to 6. There is no use anymore for this thread, since the others already serve their own purposes. And some people have already commented on these threads. This starts to become messy.

Of course, you can answer that you can put a link toward thread 1 to 6 in this thread, but putting a link which refers to still another link, hm... that's not very practical.

I got an answer from Kaplan :

Your question below reveals the kind of selective quoting and biological ignorance Fuerst thrives on; also, it would appear, from the passages you are quoting, that Fuerst is attempting to conflate our use of 'folk-racial category' with our use of 'ecotype,' for reasons that escape me. But they are conceptually distinct (and, empirically, are, as we argued, very unlikely to align).

But, to answer your question: By folk racial category, we meant just that. Folk racial categories are the sort of racial categories used by people in the U.S. in thinking about race in everyday life. We included things like the sorts of categories used on the U.S. Census, OBM, etc. surveys and reporting, but recognize that in fact there is no one set of "folk racial categories" in the U.S. -- different survey instruments recognize different races, and the same instrument will recognize different races at different times, and individual people differ in what races they recognize in their everyday lives, etc. Nevertheless, there is a kind a broad overlapping sense of what races get picked out in everyday life, and how those races are identified, in the U.S. context, and it is that we motion towards with "folk racial category."

Note well that folk racial categories do not always align well with e.g. genomic clusters; "non-Hispanic Whites" is not a genomic cluster, but it is *precisely* what the racists who profess to be worried about "Whites" soon being a "minority" in the U.S. are worried about.

"Eco-types" are generally defined as local populations genetically adapted to specific local environmental conditions; this definition is pretty standard, pace Fuerst's selective reading (and mis-readings) of the literature.

So: First, conceptually, a population can clearly be a folk race without being an ecotype, and an ecotypic population of humans need not be a folk race. That should be obvious to anyone who actually read the definitions.

Second, empirically, the populations identified as folk racial categories come from regions too large and diverse to count as ecotypes in the usual sense defined above (a sense, again, that is the standard one to take in the literature). That, again, should be obvious to anyone who actually studies the way that "ecotype" is used in the biological literature (as opposed to, say, spending their time searching for rare uses to fit their preconceived ideas for racist ends).

So: In humans, ecotypes need not be identified with folk races, conceptually, and empirically, they are not so-identified.

There is one word that I have modified from the original message because this is, hm... how can I put it... more "suitable". That word is highlighted.

I'm extremely bothered, annoyed. Again, what's the use of this thread ? Think about how the journal will refer to the review thread. Usually, it's something like :

You asked me to post the full paper. I did.

Chuck,

The following is a list of my impressions after reading your manuscript. I'll read it over again and come back to you if I have any more comments.

-----------------

The tone of this book is often legalistic, sometimes making the writing style needlessly heavy and sometimes exaggerating contradictions and inconsistencies in criticisms of the race concept. For instance, you describe one antiracist argument as follows:

“while there do exist biological races in other animal species, there are none in ours” (p.3)

Stephen J. Gould argued that the race concept was often just as inapplicable in other species as it was (so he felt) in humans. The general antiracist argument is that most intra-specific variation starts off being clinal and then only gradually coalesces and becomes racial. Humans would fall between the two.

In general, a legalistic style of argument is poorly suited to a situation where different people are trying to define “fuzzy sets,” which by their nature have fuzzy semiotic boundaries.

- What sort of audience are you aiming for? You might want to summarize your argument in boxes, perhaps as highlights.
- Are you using the royal “we” in this text?
- You make a good point that most biological concepts are vulnerable to the same criticisms made against the race concept. The same could be said for almost any concept. What is a battleship? What is a planet?
- You make a good point that all concepts have a social utility. All concepts – by their very nature – are human constructs, since they are literally constructed in the minds of one or more persons.

“we imagine that the dominant classification system of the future will be one based on genotypic, that is overall DNA, similarity” (p. 10)

The problem with that system is that it ignores the effects of natural selection, and these effects are only weakly related to overall DNA similarity. Most DNA is of little or no selective value, so it is possible for two populations to be very different in terms of overall DNA, while looking and behaving very similarly. The reverse is also true. If we take humans, the physical differences between East Asians and Europeans are greater than the physical differences between Andaman Islanders and Africans, yet genetically we see the reverse pattern. In short, if two populations are subjected to very divergent selection pressures, they will come to look and behave very differently, even though the overall genome shows an overall degree of similarity. Conversely, if those two populations live under similar selection pressures, they will diverge from each other sluggishly in terms of appearance and behavior.

“But we grant that such critics would have a point were “race” to not denote a particular type of biological division” (p. 10)

This kind of writing is legitimate but awkward. I would write: “Such critics would have a point if “race” did not mean a particular type of biological division”

“phenotypic characters are seen, in turn, as a product of, and means of inferring, overall genetic relatedness” (p. 13)

No. To infer genetic relatedness, we use special genetic markers (mtDNA, certain enzymes, blood groups, etc. that have low selective value; otherwise, they would produce false phylogenies)

“Another problem, from the perspective of the monophyletic requirement, is that subspecific taxa – along with species19 -- can be and often are hybrids” (p. 16)

Genetic introgression from other species can also introduce useful alleles that enable some subgroups to diverge more quickly from other subgroups. (see Greg Cochran's writings on genetic "cherry picking")

“What it means to be ‘biologically meaningless’ is never explained, presumably because it means nothing at all: the statement is vacuous” (p. 18)

Not exactly. The “race does not exist” position has become so monolithic that people no longer feel obliged to justify it. But there are arguments for that position (as you note in your text on p. 20)

“Underlying the word usage was a notion of race which involved the idea of genealogy and of the inheritance of traits” (p. 22)

Also, the direct action of climate.

p. 24 – excessively long paragraph

p. 30 – excessively long paragraph (in the box)

“If we take “cline” to mean population continuum, then we might rephrase the American Anthropological Association’s question as: “Races or population continuums?" (p. 40)

Yes, but that isn’t how clines are usually imagined. The general view is that different genetic traits display different patterns of clinal variation because each genetic trait is responding to its own set of selection pressures. That’s the theory. You might want to refer to Cavalli-Sforza, who showed that when we superimpose patterns of geographic variation at many different gene loci, we end up with a single map of human genetic variation.

“Insofar as Hispanics are descended from mixed-race populations, they could be treated, consistently with evolutionary classifications, as their own biological race,” (p. 52)

Not sure I agree. For one thing, the mixture varies from one country to another. Dominicans tend to be a European-African mixture, whereas Mexicans tend to be European-Amerindian. Even within Mexico, there are interesting differences because the degree of European admixture varies and because the Amerindian nations are themselves different.

“Sailer (1998) put forth a concept of race as a linebred extended family; by this, races represent different genealogically delineated groups.” (p. 53)

Shouldn’t that be “inbred”? I suspect Steve put forth that definition because the term “family” resonates well with social conservatives. As Greg Cochran noted, this definition is deficient because it makes no reference to natural selection as a reason why races become different from each other. Unfortunately, “natural selection” does not resonate well with part of Steve's target audience.

“For example, an ethnic Hui individual might have a ratio of one South Asian to 511 Han ancestors. In pedigree, as in genotype, this Hui individual would be more related to Han than to South Asians.” (p. 54)

Again, you see genealogy as the only source of similarity or difference. The Hui may also have become different through a different set of selection pressures (because of their social position and submission to Islamic law.

"The authors concluded that the rejection of the concept (as understood by the experts in question) “varies from high to low with highest rejection of race occurring amongst physical anthropologists in the United States, other English speaking nations (mostly Canada), and Poland; moderate rejection of race in Europe; and sizeable, though quite low, rejection of race evidenced in Poland and Cuba.” (p.73)

Why does Poland appear twice in this list? In general, the race concept is more widely accepted in the former Eastern bloc because the Iron Curtain restricted the penetration of Western media (books, films. programs) and thus hindered dissemination of the anti-racist world view.

pp. 73-77 – excellent!

The term gene-culture co-evolution appears twice in the document. You should provide a brief definition and some illustrations, perhaps in a box.

“Shades of de Gobineau” (p. 105). This title is unfortunate. Please find another one. (It’s also incorrect to refer to someone as “de … whatever.” It’s like writing “of Man” instead of “the Isle of Man”. Either write “Gobineau” or “the Comte de Gobineau”).

“[A]lthough differences of racial mental qualities are relatively small, so small as to be indistinguishable with certainty in individuals, they are yet of great importance for the life of nations, because they exert throughout many generations a constant bias upon the development of their culture and their institutions” (Mathews, 1925). (p. 105)

The above was not written by Franz Boas. It was written by Basil Mathews, a Christian missionary writer. The young Franz Boas wrote many texts similar to the above, like the following:

"We have shown that the anatomical evidence is such, that we may expect to find the races not equally gifted. While we have no right to consider one more ape-like than the other, the differences are such that some have probably greater mental vigor than others. The variations are, however, such that we may expect many individuals of all races to be equally gifted, while the number of men and women of higher ability will differ." (Boas, 1974, p. 242)

This is from a speech he gave in 1894 under the title "Human Faculty as Determined by Race."

Boas, F. (1974). A Franz Boas Reader. The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911, G.W. Stocking Jr. (ed.), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

For more Boas quotes, go to:
http://evoandproud.blogspot.ca/2014/07/the-franz-boas-you-never-knew.html

“It might seem as if we are setting up extra-high standards to dismiss moral arguments, but moral arguments against race often purport to show the above. For example, Ashley Montagu argued that “race” was man’s most dangerous myth – not that it was “one of many potentially dangerous concepts”. (p. 136)

It reflects the thinking of the postwar era. There was a real fear, especially among Jewish scholars, that the Holocaust of WWII would be followed by a second one, which would be committed by the usual suspects. Marine Le Pen described this kind of thinking in a recent interview:

“The reality is that there exist in France associations that are supposedly representative of French Jews, which have stuck with a software that came out of the Second World War,” she said, meaning that members of the Jewish leadership are still preoccupied with the threat of Nazi-like fascism. “For decades they have continued to fight against an anti-Semitism that no longer exists in France, for reasons of—how should I say this?—intellectual laziness. And by a form of submission to the politically correct. And while they were doing this, while they were fighting against an enemy that no longer existed, an anti-Semitism was gaining force in France stemming notably from the development of fundamentalist Islamist thought.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/03/is-it-time-for-the-jews-to-leave-europe/386279/

Peter,

I will reply later. Thank you for taking the time to read the work over and to comment. I really appreciate that. I will take under consideration everything you said. That noted, it would be helpful if you also explicated your conditions for approval i.e., what you require either that I amend or convince you that I don't need to.

Chuck,

The only thing I would insist on changing is that sub-title "Shades of de Gobineau." It sounds ... creepy. Find something more positive. There's also the Basil Mathews quote, which is mistakenly attributed to Franz Boas.

Chuck,The only thing I would insist on changing is that sub-title "Shades of de Gobineau." It sounds ... creepy. Find something more positive. There's also the Basil Mathews quote, which is mistakenly attributed to Franz Boas.

Chuck: I change the first to "Sociobiological Speculations". I change the second to:

"This point was made by the prominent early 20th century psychologist William McDougall. In 1920, he noted, “The principle is that, though differences of racial mental qualities are relatively small, so small as to be indistinguishable with certainty in individuals, they are yet of great importance for the life of nations, because they exert throughout many generations a constant bias upon the development of their culture and their institutions” (Lamb, 1999). Ninety-four years later, after reviewing a number of societal and civilizational differences in light of human biodiversity, Wade (2014) concluded much the same,“[T]hese minor differences, for the most part invisible in an individual, have major consequences at the level of a society”.

The William McDougall reference is: Lamb, K. (1999). Individual & group character in the social psychology of William McDougall.

Now as for the other points:

1. Peter: ..."sometimes exaggerating contradictions and inconsistencies in criticisms of the race concept. For instance, you describe one antiracist argument as follows:

“while there do exist biological races in other animal species, there are none in ours” (p.3)"

Chuck: Many arguments have been made. As I discussed in section V-B, the above is a currently prominent one. It was recently restated by Sussman (2014):
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674417311
And by Agustin Fuentes: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/busting-myths-about-human-nature/201405/things-know-when-talking-about-race-and-genetics Quote:

"In fact if you use the common level of genetic differentiation between populations used by zoologists to classify biological races (which they called subspecies) in other mammals, all humans consistently show up as just one biological race."

If you can find strawman argument, please point it out to me.

2. Peter: "In general, a legalistic style of argument is poorly suited to a situation where different people are trying to define “fuzzy sets,” which by their nature have fuzzy semiotic boundaries."

Chuck: I agree that fuzzy set concepts of race tend to be conceptually fuzzy. It set out demystify things by:
(a) uncovering a historically consistent core concept (intraspecific nature divisions)
(b) explaining its relation to other local concepts
(c) providing a precise definition of the concept

In section II-A, I reconcile different biological-anthropological concepts across time. In section III-A, I reconcile different philosophical concepts. In section II-J I reconcile different statistical concepts (descrete versus fuzzy sets).

The point was to draw out a general concept. You can compare this aspect of the project to something like:

De Queiroz, K. (1998). The general lineage concept of species, species criteria, and the process of speciation: a conceptual unification and terminological recommendations.
Or:
Wilkins, J. (2010). How many species concepts are there?

3. Peter: "What sort of audience are you aiming for? You might want to summarize your argument in boxes, perhaps as highlights."

Chuck: Biological Philosophy -- Should I elaborate in the conclusion?

4. Peter: “The problem with that system is that it ignores the effects of natural selection, and these effects are only weakly related to overall DNA similarity. Most DNA is of little or no selective value, so it is possible for two populations to be very different in terms of overall DNA, while looking and behaving very similarly."

Chuck: Some clarification is in order. Modification on the higher category levels is strongly related to overall DNA similarity. For example birds versus reptiles. Whole genomic similarity then corresponds nicely with Darwin's descent plus modification. Thus it is the basis of evolutionary taxonomic systematics (Mayr and Ashlock, 1991). What you are thinking of, I think, are relatively superficial local environmental modifications common on the intraspeciifc and maybe specific level. Darwin pondered over this problem:

[Then], a genealogical one, even if it did occasionally put one race not quite so near to another, as it would have stood, if allocated by structure alone. Generally, we may safely presume, that the resemblance of races & their pedigrees would go together.
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-2150

How does one classify in the event of discordance between appearance and overall genotype? We can just look at wildlife which you are familiar with for specific examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreal_woodland_caribou

"Mallory and Hillis[19] argued that, "Although the taxonomic designations reflect evolutionary events, they do not appear to reflect current ecological conditions. In numerous instances, populations of the same subspecies have evolved different demographic and behavioural adaptations, while populations from separate subspecies have evolved similar demographic and behavioural patterns... "[U]nderstanding ecotype in relation to existing ecological constraints and releases may be more important than the taxonomic relationships between populations"

So we do have these divergences. And we see them with human races, too. For example, the light color of Europeans versus the dark hue of many South Asians. It seems to me though that other concepts -- such as morph, form, or ecotype -- should be used to describe such differences. And that "race" such be understood, as it traditionally was, as a genealogical/genomic concept. Now for hierarchical taxonomy, I think that these situations pose a problem, since hierarchical taxonomy presupposes a privileged way of classifying -- and I imagine that this problem will become amplified with the event of increased genetic engineering, which will weaken the connection between overall genetic relatedness and resemblance e.g., glow in the dark plants. OK, but I don't see this as a problem for "race", as such, which is a lineage concept.

5. Peter: " This kind of writing is legitimate but awkward. I would write: “Such critics would have a point if “race” did not mean a particular type of biological division”"

Chuck: Agreed. I will look through the paper again.

6. Peter: "“phenotypic characters are seen, in turn, as a product of, and means of inferring, overall genetic relatedness” (p. 13)"...No. To infer genetic relatedness, we use special genetic markers (mtDNA, certain enzymes, blood groups, etc. that have low selective value; otherwise, they would produce false phylogenies)"

Chuck: A commenter asked how evo. taxonomic classifications, which purport to be based on "genetic program" were made before genotyping became common. I added the sentence to explain. Mayr discussed this issue -- he noted that one weighs phenotype by presumed phylogenic importance. Darwin made the same point: " We have no written pedigrees; we have to make out community of descent by resemblances of any kind. Therefore we choose those characters which, as far as we can judge, are the least likely to have been modified in relation to the conditions of life to which each species has been recently exposed."

I changed this to: "Phenotypic characters are seen, in turn, as a product of overall genetic relatedness. Insofar as they are used when classifying, they are used as indexes of overall genetic similarity. Before the event of modern genetics, nothing else could be used. To avoid misclassifying with respect to ancestry, “correlated or aggregated characters” which were the “least likely to have been [recently] modified” were used (Darwin, 1961)."

7. Peter: “What it means to be ‘biologically meaningless’ is never explained, presumably because it means nothing at all: the statement is vacuous” (p. 18)

Not exactly. The “race does not exist” position has become so monolithic that people no longer feel obliged to justify it."

Chuck: I meant that the meaning of "biologically meaningless" is often not clarified. It can mean a lot of different things -- for example that races don't correspond with natural divisions, that there are no biological differences between them, that they don't correspond with any biological type of thing e.g., "population", etc.

I changed this to: " Rarely, in these contexts, is it explained what ‘biologically meaningless’ actually means; one wonders if the authors themselves know. "

8. Peter: "p. 24 – excessively long paragraph

p. 30 – excessively long paragraph (in the box)"

Chuck: Fixed.

9. Peter: "If we take “cline” to mean population continuum, then we might rephrase the American Anthropological Association’s question as: “Races or population continuums?" (p. 40)

Yes, but that isn’t how clines are usually imagined. The general view is that different genetic traits display different patterns of clinal variation because each genetic trait is responding to its own set of selection pressures. That’s the theory. You might want to refer to Cavalli-Sforza, who showed that when we superimpose patterns of geographic variation at many different gene loci, we end up with a single map of human genetic variation."

Chuck: Yes, of course. I explained that:

"More to the point, his cline concept describes a character gradient. As such, a "cline is an arrangement of characters, not of organisms or of populations" (Simpson, 1961). As a result, a race can belong to as many different clines as it has characters; if it belongs to more than one, it is no less a race... When the “clines, not races” argument is not altogether conceptually confused—when it is only semantically so —it raises an issue that we must address."

The argument only makes sense if we treat cline as population continuum, because there is no contradiction between race/natural division and character gradient.

10. Peter "“Sailer (1998) put forth a concept of race as a linebred extended family; by this, races represent different genealogically delineated groups.” (p. 53)

Shouldn’t that be “inbred”? I suspect Steve put forth that definition because the term “family” resonates well with social conservatives

Chuck: I thought "inbred" might be derogatory in the way that "miscegenation" is.

11. Peter: "As Greg Cochran noted, this definition is deficient because it makes no reference to natural selection as a reason why races become different from each other. Unfortunately, “natural selection” does not resonate well with part of Steve's target audience."

Chuck: This is a "problem" with all descent-only based definitions. Unlike the cladist concept, though, Sailer's doesn't necessarily exclude modification. Anyways, my solution was to conceptualize these as a subtypes of a more general concept. They are not "wrong" just "narrow".

12. Peter “Insofar as Hispanics are descended from mixed-race populations, they could be treated, consistently with evolutionary classifications, as their own biological race,” (p. 52)

Not sure I agree. For one thing, the mixture varies from one country to another. Dominicans tend to be a European-African mixture, whereas Mexicans tend to be European-Amerindian. Even within Mexico, there are interesting differences because the degree of European admixture varies and because the Amerindian nations are themselves different."

Chuck: Hispanics means US Latin Americans. What I meant is that insofar as they, despite being mixed, formed a genetic cluster -- due to being descended from sufficiently endogenous populations --they could be treated as a race.

I was thinking of Tang, H., Quertermous, T., Rodriguez, B., Kardia, S. L., Zhu, X., Brown, A., ... & Risch, N. J. (2005). Genetic structure, self-identified race/ethnicity, and confounding in case-control association studies. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 76(2), 268-275.

I rewrote this as: " In the United States, commonly defined sociological races, such as Asians, Caucasians, Blacks, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders, correspond somewhat with historic continental-level races – respectively, Mongoloids, Caucasoids, Negroids, Amerindians, and Australoids/Pacific Islanders. The correspondence is far from perfect. For example, the Asian classification includes both South Asian Caucasoids and Mongoloids, and the African-American population largely represents a hybrid Caucasoid-Negroid population, one with an admixture rate such that one might not consider this group to be Negroids. Nonetheless, the genomes of those who identify as East Asian, White, and Black tend to cluster with those of the continental-level natural divisions (Lao, et al., 2010, figure 3).

Correspondence with historic continental-level race is not, of course, a prerequisite for constituting different biological races. What is is that groups cut out different natural divisions with respect to each other. An analysis by Tang et al. (2005) suggested that “white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic” ethno-racial groups in the U.S. more or less do – that is, they cut out distinct genomic divisions. As the authors noted, though, the Hispanic group in their sample was based on a Mexican-American one. When using a more diverse Hispanic sample, another research group (Lao, et al., 2010) found that the Hispanic groups did not form a discrete cluster but rather overlapped with the other groups (in this case, Europeans, East Asians, and Africans). This is not unexpected since, across Latin America, there is substantial heterogeneity in historic continental-level racial admixture. Given the genomic heterogeneity in the region of origin, it is probably better to understand U.S. Hispanics as representing a cultural group. If they are called a “race”, they would be a non-biological sociological one. More generally, it is probably best to understand U.S. sociological races (and ethnic groups) as overlapping with -- to some degree or another – not constituting biological races."

13. Peter: “For example, an ethnic Hui individual might have a ratio of one South Asian to 511 Han ancestors. In pedigree, as in genotype, this Hui individual would be more related to Han than to South Asians.” (p. 54)

Again, you see genealogy as the only source of similarity or difference. The Hui may also have become different through a different set of selection pressures (because of their social position and submission to Islamic law."

Chuck: Nope. I explained this. Individual are arrange into races by pedigree alone. They must be because they do not have natural histories. Races, though, as populations, are differentiated on the basis of descent with modification (natural selection). However, following Darwin, the modification taken into account is the substantative type -- it has to be, essentially, correlated with whole genomic changes. I am sorry if you don't like this -- but this is what has been said to be.

14. Peter: ""The authors concluded that the rejection of the concept (as understood by the experts in question) “varies from high to low with highest rejection of race occurring amongst physical anthropologists in the United States, other English speaking nations (mostly Canada), and Poland..."

Chuck: Polish physical anthropologists versus Polish all anthropologists.

I'm extremely bothered, annoyed. Again, what's the use of this thread ? Think about how the journal will refer to the review thread. Usually, it's something like :

You asked me to post the full paper. I did.

I uploaded a new version (doc file and PDF.

Chuck,

Most of my criticisms are simply suggestions. Beyond a certain point, writers should be allowed to find their own voice and develop their own viewpoint. If I criticize you too much, and if you accept my criticisms, you will become an imitation of myself, and we will all be that much the poorer. So there will always be some disagreement between the two of us.

A. "Shades of Gobineau" - I don't like your correction to "Sociobiological Speculations." Very few of the people you mention (including myself) refer to themselves as sociobiologists. Sociobiology is one of four currents of thought where academics study human behavior from a Darwinian perspective:
- ethology (late 19th century to present)
- sociobiology (late 1970s to early 1990s)
- evolutionary psychology (early 1990s to present)
- human biodiversity (late 1990s to present, although one might include the short-lived interest in gene-culture co-evolution of the 1980s)

Human biodiversity is the only one of the four that accepts the existence of mental and behavioral differences among human populations (although most of these differences would be weakly statistical). The other three generally assume that human nature acquired its current characteristics during the Pleistocene on the African savannah. Since then, there has only been "fine-tuning" that may or may not be observable between human populations. There has been some disagreement with that position by some academics in the first three currents of thought, but those academics are outliers.

As for the second word, "Speculations", please be a bit more charitable . A speculation is not even a half-baked idea. It's just an idea and is often not meant to be taken seriously.

B. It would be nice to include a quote from the young Franz Boas, given his iconic status in anthropology.

C. There are plenty of nutty antiracists, but the average antiracist isn't nutty. Well, alright, the average antiracist is a dumb conformist. There are, however, thoughtful antiracists, and they are the ones who are most susceptible to being won over. Stephen J. Gould pointed out that racial variation is absent in many non-human species, and for the same presumed reason: there has not been enough time for significant intra-species variation to develop, especially in complex behavioral traits.

"I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research." "Why We Should Not Name Human Races—A Biological View", p. 231

D. I think you should write a preface where you explain why you are writing this book and to whom it is addressed.

E. "Modification on the higher category levels is strongly related to overall DNA similarity." No I can't agree. Look at a map of genome similarity for all forms of life, like this one:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Phylogenetic_tree.svg/450px-Phylogenetic_tree.svg.png

You'll see that most of the genetic variation is among different forms of bacteria. The genetic differences among all animals, plants, and fungi are confined to the top right corner. Yet that is where we see the most diversity in functional characteristics.

F. "one wonders if the authors themselves know." - you're being catty.

G. The term "inbred" is derogatory? Perhaps in some contexts, but it's often used in biology and anthropology.

H. I'm aware of the Tang et al. study, but it refers only to Mexican Americans. The term "Hispanic" is used to cover any person of Latin American origin in the U.S., including Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, etc. It's really a politically motivated term and has little value in this kind of discussion.

I. "Individual are arrange into races by pedigree alone" - I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Overall similarity is a result of interaction between common descent and common selection pressures. Conversely, overall difference is a result of interaction between differences in descent and differences in selection pressure.

J. Are you saying that Polish physical anthropologists have become similar to American physical anthropologists in rejection of the race concept? Or are they poles apart? I'm not sure when I read that sentence.

Peter: "A. "Shades of Gobineau" - I don't like your correction to "Sociobiological Speculations."

Chuck: What would you suggest?

Peter: "It would be nice to include a quote from the young Franz Boas, given his iconic status in anthropology."

Chuck: I will try to fit something in. It would find a place in the section prior, since the early Boas's modus ponens was Lewontin's modus tollens:

Magnitude of overall phenotype/genetic differences ~ probability of behavioral differences.

Peter: "Stephen J. Gould pointed out that racial variation is absent in many non-human species, and for the same presumed reason: there has not been enough time for significant intra-species variation to develop, especially in complex behavioral traits."

Chuck: Could you point me to species without races? Recall that I distinguish between races and taxonomic category subspecies (i.e., formally recognized races). If's hard for me to believe that many species lack e.g., microgeographic races. In your quote, Gould said:

"I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research."

I call that an equivocation. For the explanation why, reread sections I-G, II-A, IV-B/H, and V-B.

Peter: "I think you should write a preface where you explain why you are writing this book and to whom it is addressed."

Chuck: If I go to publish it as a book I will.

Peter: "Modification on the higher category levels is strongly related to overall DNA similarity." No I can't agree. Look at a map of genome similarity for all forms of life, like this one:

Chuck: This is the only substantive disagreement. Unfortunately it's a big one. One could classify based on overall phenotype (Pheneticism) overall genotype (which is what Mayr seemed to imply Evolutionary taxonomy does) or descent alone (which is what cladists do). If you are right, these classification produce substantively discordant results. And one must choose between them or some mix of them. My solution for this paper was to define race as a "genetic" concept -- after all it was originally a genealogical concept which become genotypic in the mid 1900s -- and it was never principally a phenotypic concept -- to note the conflicting understandings of genetic (genealogy, genotype), and to not commit myself to one or the other interpretation. Thus I included an obscure section called:

II-G. Genotype-Genealogical Complications

"....Since we are advancing a general race concept, we will not decide which is the better method of delineating "overall" genetic similarity in the case of genotypic and genealogical discordance. We would suggest going with genotype. If two horses begat, in the natural way, a genotypic and phenotypic human, most people would probably classify the genealogical horse-genotypic human as a human. That is, we imagine that most people would classify by genotypic-phenotypic similarity, and not pedigree, in case of gross discordance. So, when it comes to racial groups, doing the same would not seem to us to be unreasonable."

I purposely omitted the issue of genotypic phenotypic discordance. But this is what you are trying to tease out. Ya, I get the problem. I just don't want to go there. Maybe you could write a critique or something and articulate the race concept differently.

Peter: "I'm aware of the Tang et al. study, but it refers only to Mexican Americans. The term "Hispanic" is used to cover any person of Latin American origin in the U.S., including Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, etc. It's really a politically motivated term and has little value in this kind of discussion."

In the rewrite I did say:

"As the authors noted, though, the Hispanic group in their sample was based on a Mexican-American one. When using a more diverse Hispanic sample, another research group (Lao et al., 2010) found that the Hispanic ethnic groups did not form a discrete cluster but rather overlapped with the other groups (in this case, Europeans, East Asians, and Africans). This is not unexpected since, across Latin America, there is substantial heterogeneity in historic continental-level racial admixture. Given the genomic heterogeneity in their region of origin, it is probably better to understand U.S. Hispanics as representing a cultural group. If they are called a “race”, they would be a non-biological, sociological one. More generally, it is probably best to understand U.S. sociological races (and ethnic groups) as overlapping with -- to some degree or another – not constituting biological races."

Peter: "Are you saying that Polish physical anthropologists have become similar to American physical anthropologists in rejection of the race concept? Or are they poles apart? I'm not sure when I read that sentence."

Paper -- just control F search for the passage. Page 917, discussion.

Anyways, thanks for the helpful comments.

Chuck,

1. I would suggest the title: "Small differences ... and large cumulative effects"

2. "I call that an equivocation." Chuck, what matters is whether any antiracists would call that an equivocation. (They're the people you're trying to convince). I doubt any would.

This is why I feel uncomfortable with your legalistic approach. Perhaps Gould was trying to leave open an escape hatch in the event he would be confronted on that point. But he never was. Today, most people see Gould as a reasonable scientist who drew on his expertise in comparative biology to show the absurdity of the race concept. They will say, a la Gould, that human races don't exist for the same reason that snail races don't exist.

I agree that many antiracists are incoherent twits, but there is a mainstream tradition of antiracism that is not so incoherent.

This is why I feel uncomfortable with your legalistic approach.

As for legalism, you can compare it to: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/EvSy/PDF/Bock-2002-class-Mayr.pdf
I would call both "systematic", not "legalistic".

But I see what you are saying.

Posted a new update.

Thanks, Emil.

Yes, could you condense the threads?