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Re: BELL CURVE CRITIC EXPOSED?
Arun Gupta (gupta@mrspock.mt.att.com)
Wed, 1 Feb 1995 15:16:34 GMT
In article <31JAN199508463614@cc.weber.edu>,
Martin Hutchison <mhutchison@cc.weber.edu> wrote:
>So you don't believe in Affermative Action or minority scholorships then,
>since they are based on the foolish concept of racial differences.
>MKH
I'm not sure about what other people are arguing about; my point of view
is that "race" is too poorly defined to do any genetics. Even from the
viewpoint of ancestry : if we define "African" to be someone who was in
Africa in 1000 AD, or someone all of whose ancestors are "African" and
likewise for "European", then the group of people known as "African-
Americans" have an estimated 20-30% "European" ancestry on the average.
Likewise, the group of people known as "American whites" have, on the
average, about 5% "African" ancestry (this second I'd like to verify).
>From the viewpoint of the "obvious" differences in skin color, hair
texture, eye color : these traits form a tiny part of the entire human
genome, I believe around 10 genes out of 200,000. Moreover, other traits :
blood proteins, cell-surface proteins etc. etc. do not correlate with
skin color, etc. It would be something of a miracle if the unknown genes
for Spearman's g correlated with skin color.
On the other hand, the way people are treated in this society is very much
determined by skin color; and so politics will continue to be concerned with
issues of "race".
-arun gupta
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