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How Should Human Subspecies Be Classified?; A discussion about human subspecies.
Topic Started: Apr 18 2016, 02:05 AM (4,107 Views)
maker
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Fireflight
Apr 24 2016, 06:04 AM
There is a fact to be discovered. Is it useful? Discover it, announce it. If it's not useful, does the discovery enforce harmful things, such as discrimination? If not, discover it, announce it. If yes, then it is not needed and we can go on without it, and we're good without it too.

Get what I'm saying? I'm not against "useless" discoveries, I'm against discoveries that do no good, but enforce harm.
How in the world does human classification "enforce" discrimination? It's just saying in a neutral way that "humans can divided into x subspecies around the world and are descended from x" not that "x subspecies are inferior". It's up to racists to use that information negatively, and when they do, they'll be arrested and tried, just like in any other normal society. It's not as if the scientific community and the government endorses discrimination.
Edited by maker, Apr 24 2016, 07:50 AM.
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Fireflight
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Jinfengopteryx
Apr 24 2016, 06:29 AM
To be fair, I admit that we can maybe talk about races (of course not when we are supposed to be politically correct) if we stick to sociology rather than biology, as it undeniably exists as a social construct.
I know, but saying ethnicity is no harder and can, in a way, help when you have racists around.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Ethnicity is a bit ambiguous, as it is commonly used as a smaller unit and sometimes as a synonym for nationality (at least in Europe this is commonly done).
I was not saying "race" is the best term, just that I'm not wholly opposed to it.
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Fireflight
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maker
Apr 24 2016, 07:46 AM
Fireflight
Apr 24 2016, 06:04 AM
There is a fact to be discovered. Is it useful? Discover it, announce it. If it's not useful, does the discovery enforce harmful things, such as discrimination? If not, discover it, announce it. If yes, then it is not needed and we can go on without it, and we're good without it too.

Get what I'm saying? I'm not against "useless" discoveries, I'm against discoveries that do no good, but enforce harm.
How in the world does human classification "enforce" discrimination? It's just saying in a neutral way that "humans can divided into x subspecies around the world and are descended from x" not that "x subspecies are inferior". It's up to racists to use that information negatively, and when they do, they'll be arrested and tried, just like in any other normal society. It's not as if the scientific community and the government endorses discrimination.
It does "enforce" it. We already have discrimination based solely on skin colour - if science backed up such a thing, such people would see even more reason in not hiring people based on their "subspecies". It would happen, and it's very predictable. There are people who would find that a reason to discriminate someone, some people who weren't racist before would quite obviously become racist. It's quite obvious if you ask me. If such a discovery is made, it not only is useless, it also has more disadvantages than advantages. We don't need nor want that.

It's great that you know what a subspecies means, but a lot of people don't and teaching them all about it is just too troublesome, if you compare such efforts to the real outcome of separating people in subspecies, you would see that it isn't worth it.

Also, I know, they'll be arrested and tried, just like today. And today's methods of punishing racists are working... not. You can arrest racists, you arrest them all. People will still be racist, many will discriminate an asian because they think asians are different. They'll discriminate blacks, latinos, it will keep going on. Think of a tree: if you want to stop it from growing, actually not just growing - you want it to die. Do you cut off the leaves from the top, or do you kill it from its roots? Arresting people for their crimes does the former. Sure, it keeps the population safe from those who have been arrested, but it doesn't change much because if a person wasn't killed by A, because A was arrested, the person will be killed by B. B will be arrested, and C will kill someone else. It goes on. Arresting works in its own way, but if we went deeper into issues we'd probably find better solutions.
Jinfengopteryx
Apr 24 2016, 07:52 AM
Ethnicity is a bit ambiguous, as it is commonly used as a smaller unit and sometimes as a synonym for nationality (at least in Europe this is commonly done).
I was not saying "race" is the best term, just that I'm not wholly opposed to it.
True, I was just saying that "race" sounds quite raw and some people do take it the wrong way, and it's easier to just use a synonymous word instead of trying to explain things to some people.
Edited by Fireflight, Apr 24 2016, 08:07 AM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Just started watching Black Lighting's series on racialism/race realism:

I have so far only watched this first video, but I think this is the only really relevant video to the thread, since most of the others are not so much about the existence of races (i.e. the topic of the thread), but about all that IQ stuff.
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Claudiu Constantin Nicolaescu
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I believe that the modern humans are classified as a single subspecies (Homo sapiens sapiens) because of fear of racism. Otherwise, the physical, mental, and cultural differences between modern humans could easely be described at the subspecific or specific level. But the political corectness will require perhaps in the future that even the great ape genus Pan (which includes the two living species of chimpanzees) to be synonymized with the genus Homo.
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LeopardNimr
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i am agianst racism in all costs
but in second thought why there are indian leopards and javan leopards
and no arabian or asiatic subspecies for humans
(i am a mix of two :P )
african people are diffrent from native americans in size weight apperance
and way of living like leopard subspecies that are different from each other
if they were human subspecies that will cost as in many bad things
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Wyvax
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And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, Acts 17:26. Anything that promotes racism is contrary to my faith based upon this, and scientifically speaking there is no reason to group human kind into different subspecies (which is really just a more scientific sounding equivalent of race). Imagine how well the term breed would go over!! Not well at all. Anyway, the differences between say people of northern European, Amazonian, and Aussie Aboriginal descent is really only surface deep, with perhaps only meaningful differences being what diseases and vitamin deficiencies they're susceptible to, and that's purely due to genetic isolation. I will go so far as to say that Neanderthals don't qualify outside of Homo sapiens as there are no anatomical or genetic structures in them that cannot be found within the rest of the human race. So if you want to say that there is a subspecies of mankind, I could go with it assuming it includes 100% of mankind.
Edit: Now if we had bona fide dwarfs and elfs and orcs etc, we might have different story.
PS. I'm actually not opposed to referring to and even catagorizing people by ethnicity or even such broad terms as black and white, but that's mostly for clarity's sake when speaking historically and culturally, and I suppose genetically but it should be a social nonissue. Isn't, but should be.
Edited by Wyvax, Jan 24 2017, 05:34 PM.
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Finderskeepers
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I just view different ethnicities like different breeds of dog; on the surface we look different but the DNA is almost identical with very little genetic drift.
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Grazier
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Jan 24 2017, 05:48 PM
I just view different ethnicities like different breeds of dog; on the surface we look different but the DNA is almost identical with very little genetic drift.
It's pretty similar, very little genetic variation, but significant actual variation. Dogs more so, but humans too. If you take away the dramatically different breeds that have been artificially created, the variation in dog and human "land races" is pretty similar.

A very taboo subject ofcourse, because of the insecure bad apples out there that will take it as an opportunity to say their breed is superior and other breeds are inferior (and the long gross history of such mindsets getting out of control), none of this hush hush denial stuff would be necessary if we were wise enough to celebrate differences and know the different races are all amazingly perfectly adapted to their respective lifestyles, cultures and geographical conditions, just perfect as they are, none better or worse.

There's the other issue of recent findings discovering that different ethnicities are different cocktails of hybridisation between different hominid species, which really throws a spanner in the works for race deniers (which generally aren't bad people, they mean well) and racists a like.
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Wyvax
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Finderskeepers
Jan 24 2017, 05:48 PM
I just view different ethnicities like different breeds of dog; on the surface we look different but the DNA is almost identical with very little genetic drift.
Exactly! A dissimilar phenotype does not always equate to a dissimilar genotype.
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