Re: What Are the Race Deniers Denying?

Philip Deitiker (pdeitik@bcm.tmc.edu)
Sun, 06 Oct 1996 22:14:26 GMT

geroldf@sdd.hp.com (Gerold Firl) wrote:

>In article <52ppks$p9t@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>, pdeitik@bcm.tmc.edu (Philip Deitiker) writes:

>|> In the north part of japan
>|> one sees the presence of a group related to transcontinental eskimo.
>|> Thus it appears that several groups have interacted to form what
>|> japanese would almost consider a race to itself.

>Almost? Ha - for the japanese, their racial purity is a tenet of faith,
>and a pretty amusing one at that, given their hybrid origin.

As is also probably true for indoeuropeans

>There is no biological reason note to consider the japanese as a race,
>a human subspecies, unless you are an extreme lumper. Of course, there
>are political reasons for such denial, but that debate has gotten
>pretty boring by now.

>|> thus I send you back to my very simple bipartite classification with a
>|> little modification.
>|>
>|> Those descended very genetically diverse sub-saharan africans.
>|> - With alot of mixture of genetically diverse groups and some
>|> radiation, produced at least one single bud from an ancient
>|> regional population, then mixed some more (negro, asian,
>|> caucasion).

>Your use of the term "negro" could be more precise. Using the scheme
>of the _penguin atlas of african history_, subsaharan africa is home to
>5 races: the bushmen, pygmies, negroes, nilo-sudanese, and abysinnians.
>The negro homeland is in west africa. It's only in the last 2000 years,
>with the advent of metalworking and animal domestication technologies,
>that the negroes have broken out from their homeland and occupied huge
>areas of southern and eastern africa formerly inhabited by the bushmen
>and pygmies.

I'm using the term negro in the classical sense as one member of a
tripartite race system.

This has not been clearly defined. I've seen some very strong evidence
suggesting that amoung all humanity the bushmen/pygmies may be of
greatest distinction; however, the counterargument is that certain
'bush' specific traits are actually distributed in other SSA tribes
weakening that argument. I personally don't think that there is any
firm genetic foundation at yet, and until such a foundation is
provided I would pretty much leave the cataogorization of SSA types
alone

>|> The answer is that the racial subtype 'negro' or 'black' is a
>|> useless terminolgy since it does not reconcile the genetics of
>|> subsahran african diversity, or the fact that all are descended from
>|> this population. IOW one could argue that a european (caucasian) is
>|> 'genetically' of negro race and in genetic form be correct.

>Not exactly. The human family tree appears to have complicated branches
>and roots, and where and how negroes, indo-europeans, east asians etc
>all branched from the main stem, and what auxiliary roots fed into each
>particular stream, is not yet clear. However, the negro race is too
>recent to be the ancestor of the other old world peoples, even aside
>from the local roots into h. erectus and neandertal populations.

if your using as you defined yes, however, if negro = of (SSA) african
origin then, no, SSA HS origins point back to > 200,000 years while
proto eurasians (as we know them) left this african continent between
50 and 100 kYBP. Many would argue that signs of extraafrican HS
appeared first with cromagnon; however, the genetic data shows that
asians not europeans are more distinct from african lineages, the most
likely cause of this is gene transfer between africa and proximal
eurasion popoluations over the post exedos period. This certianly
seems to be the case in mediterranian and can be explained by
historical events as well as predicted in prehistorical periods based
on archeological finds. So as far as an absolute temporal separation
between africa and europe, there is some reason to believe that such a
firm separation has never occured and that the indoeuropean/SSA
lineages are best represented as step gradients of genetic traits.
This is not so true for asians, particularly because of the geographic
distances and barriers of movement. Again I have to emphasize the
point that although cromagnon was found in europe this does not mean
that europeans are direct descendants of cromagnon, its entiely
possible that descendants of these people are in asia, or indonesian
or the americas, or extinct.