quote:In 1956, evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane posed a question to anthropologists: “Are the biological differences between human groups comparable with those between groups of domestic animals such as greyhounds and bulldogs…?” It reads as if it were posted on social media today. The analogy comparing human races to dog breeds is not only widespread in history and pop culture, but also sounds like scientific justification for eschewing the social construction of race, or for holding racist beliefs about human nature. Here we answer Haldane’s question in an effort to improve the public understanding of human biological variation and “race”—two phenomena that are not synonymous. Speaking to everyone without expert levels of familiarity with this material, we investigate whether the dog breed analogy for human race stands up to biology. It does not. Groups of humans that are culturally labeled as “races” differ in population structure, genotype–phenotype relationships, and phenotypic diversity from breeds of dogs in unsurprising ways, given how artificial selection has shaped the evolution of dogs, not humans. Our demonstration complements the vast body of existing knowledge about how human “races” differ in fundamental sociocultural, historical, and political ways from categories of nonhuman animals. By the end of this paper, readers will understand how the assumption that human races are the same as dog breeds is a racist strategy for justifying social, political, and economic inequality.
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Someone who is familiar with genetics would know this already. Seriously, I thought these findings came out back over a decade ago when the human genome was mapped. They need another paper to reaffirm what was already known? Dog breeds are the result of selective breeding often times with individuals from a very small gene pool, while so-called 'races' are the result of populations randomly dispersed with local adaptation.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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The dog breed analogy and similar analogies were rather common in the old days. And some people involved in the breeding of domestic animals tried to transfer their knowledge in that field to humans. Thus SS-leader Heinrich Himmler during the time of the Third Reich tried to apply some of the experiences he once made as a chicken farmer on human beings. So he actually intended selective breeding on humans
quote:Obsessed with his experiments to breed 'pure white' chickens while running a poultry farm before World War II, Himmler was intent on doing the same with humans after rising to the very top of the Nazi hierarchy.
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^ The actual roots of Western eugenics is far more ancient than people realize. They go back to Classical Greece (along with ideas of socialism). The Spartans were exemplar par excellence of this. Spartan citizenship was based on pedigree with the elites coming from the "fittest" bloodlines. Any sign of weakness from an infant called for the immediate abandonment of that infant and exposure in the wilderness which was harsher than other Greek city-states which gave an infant a grace period of several days to a week to recover. The most beautiful and the most physically fit were selected for marriage (breeding). Sparta would hold athletic contests and beauty contests for both men and women. Also, a unique practice among Spartan wives was the right to take cicisbeos (male concubines) with permission from their husbands if those cicisbeos was of "hardy stock".
Many people don't realize that the Adolph Hitler and the Nazis modeled many of their institutions on the Spartans-- mandatory public education (agogee) for children, hyper-militarism of young men, extending women's roles outside of the home into industries and public roles, and selective breeding, as well as dysgenics-- euthanizing the sick and disabled including infants.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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One aspect of racism are the so-called anti-miscegenation laws. Attempts to hinder marriage or relationships between people of different religions, different caste or different social class, or people of a certain bloodline, have occurred in different cultures throughout the ages. In modern Western culture, Nazi Germany, USA and South Africa are known for having had race laws, which also included prohibitions against marriage or sexual relations across racial boundaries. Great Britain also had similar rules in e.g. India, but does not seem to have had it at home (although racial mixing was connected with a social stigma). Australia also had anti miscegenation laws which prohibited relationships between whites on the one hand and aboriginal Australians and Asians on the other. But the law also prohibited such relations between Asians and Aboriginal Australians.
An interesting example of differences in how one could look at interracial flirting in England versus the USA in the 1940s could be seen in the incident at Bamber bridge which was described in this thread:
The country I live in did not have any anti-miscegenation laws, but it happened at some occasion that a priest could refuse to marry an interracial couple which led to that the couple had to petition the Swedish king to be allowed to marry.
Here is an example from the 18th century:
quote:The legal status of the royal servants seems unclear. Slavery was not allowed under Swedish law, but it is not hard to imagine that these men had little or no control over their own lives. It is documented, among other things, that they sometimes needed royal permission to get married, which, of course, was not commonplace. One such example is Peter Watkins Montese, a black servant to Queen Dowager Lovisa Ulrika. In 1776 he wanted to marry the chimney sweep's daughter Lovisa Dorothea Sundberg. When the priests objected on a purely racist basis, the matter was sent all the way up to the King for a royal decision. King Gustav III decided that there was no impediment to the marriage. Hence, Peter and Lovisa were married on 28 March that same year.
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^ Endogamy (marriage within a group) and exogamy (marriage outside the group) should be decided by the groups or communities and particular individuals. The problem arises when it becomes a government policy which is always based on an agenda. So for example in the Americas especially 'the South' there were segregation laws like Jim Crow whose attempt was to preserve the 'integrity' of the white race in those areas. But the laws were hypocritical in that during slavery white masters had black concubines and mixed offspring and even after slavery white men could rape black women and impregnate them with impunity and that's no problem, but any black man dare look at a white woman could be killed! Therefore laws like the "One-Drop" policy came to play where anyone with a "drop of Negro blood" was automatically negro. The purpose again was to bastardize the mixed offspring and exclude them from the white community while forcibly injecting them into the black community. Meanwhile there were government policies in place pushing for whites, specifically men to intermarry with Indigenous Americans so as to acquire their lands and territories especially since American law allows 'First Nation Land Rights' but only to those people who have certain percentage of indigenous ancestry, anything less and the land is no longer part of tribal territory.
In North Africa it was the opposite of America where Arab men married African women and any drop of Arab blood made one 'Arab' and therefore African land gets appropriated by Arabs. In Australia there was a similar policy by the government to acquire aboriginal land by forced miscegenation and marriage. There was a movie that came out several years ago that documented this called Rabbit-Proof Fence.
So you see policies of segregation or miscegenation were ones decided by elites in power and were totally arbitrary.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Yes, in Australia anti miscegenation laws in the beginning especially targeted marriages between Asians and Aboriginal Australians. It was a part of the efforts of hindering Asians from getting a foothold in the country.
quote:In the late 19th century and early 20th century, laws called Half-Caste Acts which included anti-interracial marriage clauses were enacted in some of the Australian states, including the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland. From the start there was a widespread ideology in lawmaking of separating races due to inferiority. However, by the mid-1930s there was a shift in which they used the anti miscegenation clauses to control who specifically Aboriginal peoples can marry in order to promote "assimilation" but this did not change their views on their inferiority, just merely to improve them by "whitening". At the beginning when these acts were passed the biggest fear was not interracial aboriginal and white intermarriage, but aboriginal and Asian intermarriage, a reflection on Australia's extreme stance during the yellow peril era, but after the white Australia Policy which banned all Asian immigration from 1901 on, these fears subsided and their attention was put on aboriginal and white interracial marriages and sexual behavior
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In USA marriages between Whites and Native Americans came to be used as a means to get access to Native land. Right now there is a film (Killers of the Flower Moon) in the theaters based on real events, about how white people tried to get hold of Osage native land (where oil had been found) in Oklahoma by letting white men marry Osage women. If the woman (and other members in her family) died the land would fall into the hands of the white husband. So soon many members of the Osage people started to die mysterious and unnatural deaths. The situation in the end got so serious so the BOI (Bureau of Investigation) started an investigation headed by J Edgar Hoover.
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^ Exactly! That is why issues of miscegenation were totally subjective and depended on what 'race' and what gender all engineered for a certain agenda.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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2 more examples of state policies of miscegenation:
Immediately after the Gallic Wars when Gaul was defeated by Caesar and the Romans, there was an imperial policy of Roman men marrying Gaulish women, especially widows. Gaulish men could easily be charged with sedition and be arrested and enslaved or executed. Laws were passed that Gaulish men who were criminalized and separated from their wives was the same as divorce and a Roman citizen could pressure her into marriage. It's through this policy that Gaul was Romanized.
Another example is the Han Chinese whose nobles would marry barbarian elites to form alliances but to prime those foreign lands for Chinese colonization and eventual conquest. This was done to countless people like Xianbei, Yue, and Minnan. It happened more recently in Tibet.
Although these 2 examples were of dominant imperial people mixing with others of the same 'race' as we understand it today, in ancient times to those people a different ethnicity was the same as being of a different race. The word race coming from the Latin 'raza' meaning breed or strain.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Another example of where anti miscegenation laws and practice were adapted to political realities was Hitlers Germany. There Whites were mostly forbidden to marry people from other "races". But when concerned Japanese people the Germans must thread carefully. If they plainly forbade marriages between Japanese and Germans it would be considered an insult by Japanese authorities and risk to alienate an important ally. Thus German authorities in many cases permitted German - Japanese marriages. In other cases they did not right out forbade it but instead tried to delay a possible wedding, blaming the delay on all kinds of technicalities. So the Germans all the time had to navigate between uphelding racial "purity" and not offend their ally.
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Also the Germans views of and treatment of Black people where not always consistent. Black people were indeed discriminated against in Nazi Germany, they could not attend higher education, they were excluded from sport events and they could not marry white Germans. But at the same time they were allowed to live together with Whites and even get children. They were not harrassed in the same ways Jews were, their stores were not burned down or expropriated and their possesions were not taken from them.
In an interesting video African German Esther Anumu Fordham tells about how she grew up in Germany during the Nazi era and also how she and her family was affected by the war. After the war she married a Black Amercan soldier and later moved with him to USA. Seems she experienced, and heard about, more racism and hostility against Black people in USA than in Nazi Germany.
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