<story><title>Neanderthals were people too</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/magazine/neanderthals-were-people-too.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hasenj</author><text>Honestly, I think calling something &amp;quot;a social construct&amp;quot; is meaningless political rhetoric.&lt;p&gt;If humans and Neanderthals interbreed for a long enough period without annhiliating each other through war, wouldn&amp;#x27;t their offspring converge over time?&lt;p&gt;Some ethnicities are more susceptible to certain diseases. Is that a social construct?</text></item><item><author>lucasnemeth</author><text>Race is a social construct, there&amp;#x27;s no biological explanation for race. The set of characteristics that are identified with different races are social constructs, those clusters of features does not correlate to a significant difference in biological terms.  Genetic methods do not support or explain the classification of humans into discrete races. Races are not genetically homogenous and lack clear-cut genetic boundaries.&lt;p&gt;Two people from different races can be way more similar genetically than two people from the same race. The concept of race was built over a long story of separating humanity in different ethnic groups, and then physical characteristics of some of those ethnic groups started slowing being adopted as a mean to show that those people are intrinsically different, but they are just an unimportant set of characteristics that does not convey important information from a genetic perspective, they gained social meaning through culture. The modern concept of race took form in the enlightenment, &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;Limerick1914&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;757227361582608384&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;Limerick1914&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;757227361582608384&lt;/a&gt;, when the original western notion of which ethnic groups exists in the world was built into a racist anthropology.&lt;p&gt;That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that &amp;quot;all lives matter&amp;quot; or we shouldn&amp;#x27;t talk about race. Race is a social construct, and as a social construct, it exists. Money is also a social construct. But, the concept of race makes no sense besides the social structure that was built on. That why different countries consider that the set of existing races is different, for instance, the only country that really considers &amp;quot;latino&amp;quot; a race is the US.&lt;p&gt;Going back to your question, the extinct humans actually had important biological differences, the different races have not.</text></item><item><author>hasenj</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know if this is appropriate, but why are extinct humans classified as different species while the still alive humans are all considered the same species?&lt;p&gt;It seems political. Either some of the current races are different species, or the so called extinct human species are just different races.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mikeash</author><text>Our standard conceptions of race are &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; meaningless political rhetoric, so calling race a social construct seems entirely appropriate then.&lt;p&gt;We still, at least subconsciously, apply the &amp;quot;one drop rule&amp;quot; in all sorts of situations, including describing the race of the current US president. Sub-saharan Africa contains more genetic diversity than everyone else, yet we lump them all together in one &amp;quot;race.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are distinct genetic differences between various groups of people, and many of those differences have real-world consequences. But the relation of those groups with what we call &amp;quot;race&amp;quot; is almost zero.</text></comment>
<story><title>Neanderthals were people too</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/magazine/neanderthals-were-people-too.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hasenj</author><text>Honestly, I think calling something &amp;quot;a social construct&amp;quot; is meaningless political rhetoric.&lt;p&gt;If humans and Neanderthals interbreed for a long enough period without annhiliating each other through war, wouldn&amp;#x27;t their offspring converge over time?&lt;p&gt;Some ethnicities are more susceptible to certain diseases. Is that a social construct?</text></item><item><author>lucasnemeth</author><text>Race is a social construct, there&amp;#x27;s no biological explanation for race. The set of characteristics that are identified with different races are social constructs, those clusters of features does not correlate to a significant difference in biological terms.  Genetic methods do not support or explain the classification of humans into discrete races. Races are not genetically homogenous and lack clear-cut genetic boundaries.&lt;p&gt;Two people from different races can be way more similar genetically than two people from the same race. The concept of race was built over a long story of separating humanity in different ethnic groups, and then physical characteristics of some of those ethnic groups started slowing being adopted as a mean to show that those people are intrinsically different, but they are just an unimportant set of characteristics that does not convey important information from a genetic perspective, they gained social meaning through culture. The modern concept of race took form in the enlightenment, &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;Limerick1914&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;757227361582608384&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;Limerick1914&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;757227361582608384&lt;/a&gt;, when the original western notion of which ethnic groups exists in the world was built into a racist anthropology.&lt;p&gt;That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that &amp;quot;all lives matter&amp;quot; or we shouldn&amp;#x27;t talk about race. Race is a social construct, and as a social construct, it exists. Money is also a social construct. But, the concept of race makes no sense besides the social structure that was built on. That why different countries consider that the set of existing races is different, for instance, the only country that really considers &amp;quot;latino&amp;quot; a race is the US.&lt;p&gt;Going back to your question, the extinct humans actually had important biological differences, the different races have not.</text></item><item><author>hasenj</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know if this is appropriate, but why are extinct humans classified as different species while the still alive humans are all considered the same species?&lt;p&gt;It seems political. Either some of the current races are different species, or the so called extinct human species are just different races.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cygx</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Some ethnicities are more susceptible to certain diseases. Is that a social construct?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obviously not. But quoting Wikipedia[1], &lt;i&gt;an average of 85% of genetic variation exists within local populations, ~7% is between local populations within the same continent, and ~8% of variation occurs between large groups living on different continents&lt;/i&gt;, whereas &lt;i&gt;[a]pproximately 10% of the variance in skin color occurs within groups, and ~90% occurs between groups&lt;/i&gt;, which indicates &lt;i&gt;that this attribute has been under strong selective pressure&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;When defining human race, we hone in on a few easily identifiable characteristics that have remained stable due to selective pressure (eg skin colour) and overblow their significance. Eg we suspect that humanity went through a genetic bottleneck when it left Africa, decreasing diversity. And yet, we generally lump the rather diverse African population that did not go through it into a single race.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s probably more useful to just look at specific genetic traits of interest instead of drawing somewhat arbitrary boundaries.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Human_genetic_variation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Human_genetic_variation&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>