Talk:Black people/Archive 9

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Archive 9
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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cranofacial differences

I went to the article Editingoprah suggested. What do I find, but the stalest old piece of trash from the history of science, 2 centuries ago. This is the same sort of stuff that the Nazis used when they were deciding who to send to the death camps. The Nazis bent it around to prove that the Japanese were some lost Aryan Race. It was soundly discredited and seen as the worst form of pseudoscience. For one thing, some of the people with dark skin that the Northern Europeans wanted to classify negatively (like the East Indians) had the wrong sorts of measurements. There were bad statistics used. The sampling was awful. I can hardly stand to look at anything that ludicrous. That is not of any interest scientifically except in a historical and sociological context. Sorry. That stuff is nonsense. And, as I said before, when they thought they might have some physical differences, it was used in the most negative way possible. Do you know that it was legal to hunt Aborigines in Australia as game until the 1920s when the law was finally taken off the books? There are probably still people alive today who did that !!! Wake up! Humans are an ugly disgusting species and we are terrible towards each other. We are tribal and we will use ANYTHING we can get our hands on to prove our group is superior to another group: skin color, language, eye color, hair color, height, weight, sex, profession, ancestry, religion, you name it. Human beings LOVE to hate others. It is in our nature.--Filll 05:20, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

You just contradicted yourself. First you said that we need more articles on race and that this should be expanded to a family of articles, and now you say race articles cause nothing but hate. Make up you mind. I personally would love to see anything race related removed from wikipedia because you can't find objective editors. Editingoprah 05:32, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I tried for months to get people to rename the article on Race to something like "The myth of race," but it was like fighting mosquitoes in a bog in August. P0M 09:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Well it depends on the KIND of articles you are going to have on race. If you have a whole raft of NEGATIVE articles then of course there will be problems. If you have just one or two negative articles you will have problems. If you have a balanced set of articles that depicts race more realistically, based on solid science, then it will not cause hate, just the opposite. It will make people examine their own internal hatreds they might be carrying around, their own biases etc and cause them to hold their tongues. I have to say, it is very very difficult for me to imagine that somehow scientists have been secretly withholding the real nature of race from the rest of society for decades just for political correctness, which did not even exist when they first started getting these results. I do not buy it. Believe me, there are PLENTY of bigoted scientists. I am a scientist and I know lots and lots. You are fooling yourself if you think otherwise. Even now. Even with political correctness. Even with Affirmative Action. I have had scientists tell me to my face how stupid I am because of my race and that my entire race is retarded and does not belong in science. And worse. Streams of invective and cursing and insults. You have no idea.==Filll 05:50, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

You're probably right. Scientists are just human beings like the rest of us so probably quite a few are racist. But at the same time, as you explained above, race has been used for really diabolical purposes and that has produced a strong back-lash against race, so many who study population genetics avoid using the word race for fear they will be branded as bigots. I must say I'm surprised that you have experienced so much racism to your face. What is your race if you don't mind me asking? My own view is that race gets way too much attention, and the way to move beyond it is to stop categorizing ourselves black, white, asian. Why do we need an article on black people? Are there articles called blond people, blue-eyed people? No, because hair and eye color are trivial. Race should be trivial too. I personally feel race does exist and it's perfectly natural and nothing to fear. What is scary is the amount of attention articles like this give it. Why give race any attention at all, and then maybe the next generation will relate to each other human to human Editingoprah 06:12, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I am from a tiny minority and I stand out quite a bit. I feel funny revealing it here since I sort of enjoy the semi anonymity online. But I am not in the dominant race, or even the 2nd or 3rd most dominant races in science. I could not believe that it was said to my face, and believe me I was shocked and stunned. I would sit in my car and scream until I could not talk I was so hoarse. I wanted to lash out in the worst way. But of course I could not, since the dominant groups held all the power. And no one would listen to me if I complained. Also, I will say that I also have a somewhat unusual eye color and in the last year or two, a woman who was my girlfriend's employer came up to me in a social situation and went on and on and on about how inferior I was because of my eye color and how all people like me with my eye color are inferior. Right to my face. I just stood there like an idiot smiling and nodding. My blood was boiling but I just had to swallow it, since it was her boss. I am still irritated about that. Part of me wishes I had slammed her with an insult or just excused myself and left. I am telling you, human beings are tribal. They will use ANY and I mean ANY excuse to divide each other into groups and attack each other (just like at the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda, or the Sunnis and the Shiites in Baghdad, or the Khymer Rouge and the people who knew how to read in Cambodia, etc). I think ignoring the problem will not make it go away. We have to expose it to sunlight. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If I could publicly embarass the scientists who said those things to me in private with video records of their brow beating, or the boss with a video record of her comments, and lambaste these people in public for their attitudes and what they said, it would do WAY more good than covering it up. And it would be even more powerful if I had real science behind me, not just political correctness. --Filll 06:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't have asked you to reveal your race if I thought it would jeopardize your anonymity but I suppose it could if you are an extreme minority in your field. I do agree humans are tribal, some say we are genetically predisposed to give preferential treatment to genetically similar others as a way of replicating our genes more efficiently in which case racism will always be a huge problem, however I assumed that scientists would tend to be less racist than most (studies show that racism is less common among the highly intelligent). I do agree that racism should be exposed and confronted everywhere it's found, but articles about blacks, whites, and asians, just seem to reinforce the idea that these are important and relevant categories. Editingoprah 07:02, 19 November 2006 (UTC)


I am impressed at how optimistic you are and what a favorable view you have of human nature. I am a bit more pessimistic after what I have seen. Maybe it is just after some bad experiences, I start to expect the worst out of people since I have seen it over and over. --Filll 06:35, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

You might find it, uh, interesting to learn what members of the dominant group in the USA can be like when there are no minorities to kick around. It's one of the reasons that I became interested in the Dao De Jing (or Tao Te Ching if you prefer the old-fashioned romanization) of Lao Zi (Lao Tzu), and why I went to Taiwan and spent 7 years there, and suffered reverse culture shock when I came back and had to learn the negative lessons I had kind of forgotten over the years.
I don't think the problem has anything to do with [race]. It has lots to do with culture. The culture I learned to love in Taiwan does not teach children that they are evil, like mine taught me (and that means my beloved grandmother, my mother, my father, my aunts and uncles, my neighbors, my teachers (save for one or two exceptions), etc.). My culture depends primarily on the inculcation of guilt feelings to get control of their children. (Thankfully there have been some improvements in childrearing ideology since the early years of the 20th century when my parents were taught how to be good parents.)
Think about it. If your self image depicts you as somewhat lower than an odiferous chunk of dog doo, how can you get on in life? There are three paths. One is to define and treat other people as worse than yourself, making yourself better, comparatively, that "those people." One is to kill yourself. And one is to transcend your conditioning. Oh, and one more: many of the young children of us dominant-group people self-medicate themselves with drugs, and sometimes kill themself in the process, too.
I much prefer the route of transcending. I admire people who transcend. I feel terrible for the ones who hate themselves so much that they try to dispose of what they see as a "botched project." I get an occasional ironic laugh out of the people who attack me for meaningless things like (1) the Thai who attacked me for being Jewish (because I like to play Shalom Chavarim on my recorder), and the guy who attacked me for having "little eyes." (He had large eyes, go figure.) But I try hard not to let any of them put me into their boxes.
What goes around comes around. The woman who attacked you for your eye color was displaying her pathology for all to see. Sad to say, her pathology was not initially her fault. Too bad that she has been too weak or too lazy to do anything about it.
What is the way forward? Not refusing to address issues. There has been entirely too much of that already, e.g., clergy people who will not stand up and denounce the claim that Allah is a false god as being one based on a stunning combination of ignorance and bad theology. If people talk nonsense and the people who ought to know the right story just stand silently by, then the followers will follow the only ones with their mouths open giving directions. (Like, why are we in denial in a quagmire?) (There should be a song in that line. It might get me sent to Antarctica, however.) P0M 09:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Another example of this female boss and her ludicrous statements was what she said to my girlfriend (ex girlfriend now I am afraid). My girlfriend is quite well endowed, but had always been a bit on the heavy-set side. She lost a lot of weight, and this showed her figure off to much more advantage. The boss obvious felt threatened, because she would constantly tell my girlfriend how unnatural it was to have large breasts and how she needed to have a breast reduction and how "all" doctors agreed that it was very bad for women to have large breasts and on and on. Every day she would make one or two of these comments. Just laughable. My girlfriend was always irritated and frustrated, because of course she could not talk back to her boss. I was able to calm her down and point out that in fact the opposite was true; her breasts were that size because of nature, and in fact a serious operation requiring anesthesia was dangerous to her health. As long as she had no other health concerns from them, she was under no obligation to get rid of them, especially to make her boss feel more comfortable. It is amazing how ludicrous people can be sometimes.--Filll 15:52, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
You remind me of the one of the two cases (aside to personal references to my being a small-eyed quasi-albino person of Jewish origins ;-) when I have been able to directly confront a racist. I was at a university that did not have any good space available to do martial arts, so I made use of a room that was primarily intended for weight lifting. I came there at a regular time of day, and usually when I got there I found three other people, two individuals with a rather unusual skin color (more gray than brown as I recall) and one typical Anglo type. The Anglo was always razzing the other two, having lots to say about Mexicans. The two darker brothers did not seem put out by it and I did not feel particularly inclined to jump in if this was the kind of razzing they typically engated in. Did the Mexicans have lots of "dumb blond" jokes to run on the other guy that they held back on because of my presence? One day "Blondie" was not there and I asked them, "Where's your friend?" "He's not our friend," was the reply. I had just read the July (?) issue of Scientific American for that year (1976?), which reported on a study that had traced genetic characteristics present in Europe to see where they came from and had discovered that about half of them had come from Africa and the other half had come from (the direction of?) China. So the next time "Blondie" started in on the Mexicans I told him he should pick up the current issue of Scientific American and inform himself of the fact that he was half African and half Chinese in genetic constitution. He was speechless and soon left. He never came back. I hope he wasn't too much discombobulated by cognitive dissonance as he sorted out the implications of his "impure" genetic constitution.
I was reminded of this incident again just a few minutes ago when I tracked down a supposed allegation by Cavalli-Sforza that Europeans are "half black and half Asian" or some such. Having read a sizable portion of his magnum opus I didn't think he could have made such a gross over-simplification. (Such over-simplifications are the forte of nasty debaters like myself. ;-) I checked out the article mentioned in the footnote and found a delightfully acerbic and accurate blast-apart by Jonathan Marks. I tried to fix the note to a photo in the gallery that had made the strange claim about Cavalli-Sforza in the first place, but it probably still needs work. For one thing I ought to try to find out what Cavalli-Sforza actually said to Time that let them come to their twisted conclusion. Anyway, I have the feeling that I should look for books by Marks. He seems professionally indignant about all the BS that is involved in scientific racism, and he seems to have the academic chops to tear it apart. P0M 06:26, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

We will remove cited information if its long winded and off topic

WE huh? I see. And who is this we and how did they come to be in charge?--Filll 05:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

A question on authorities quoted

Why is so much prominence given to Rushton and Coon? They are both important in terms of the support their works have given to those who favor the view that the [race] of an individual is predictive of that individual's most salient characteristics, true. But if they are to be given their present degree of prevalance it is important to balance them in two ways:

  • temporally. Both of these individuals are dated. It appears form his biography that Coon did his serious work in the first half of the 20th century.
  • attitudinally. Both of these individuals expressed ideas that give comfort to those who regard blacks as inferior.

If someone were to go the the biology professors of major universities and asked them for a short list of people whose work on [race] issues they would recommend as objective and worthy of study, I very much doubt that these names would appear on the lists of very many people. P0M 11:45, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Coon is given prominence because he is the most influential anthropologist of the 20th century. His typology is still very commonly used. Yes, his ideas are obsolete, but they are still part of popular discourse on race and they have been important in creating historically influential definitions. As for Rushton, he is very fringe. He should be discussed in the "original race" section because his views are essentialy a modernised version of common Victorian ideas (I have just tried to put him in context). I think that essentially, this section works around two opposite "myths" - the myth of progress and the myth of degeneration, which might be summarised as follows:
1. Race A (black/white, whatever) is the "original race" therefore it is the best, because others have deviated from the "original" (on the analogy of corruption, or loss of quality over time).
2. Race A (black/white, whatever) is the "earliest race" therefore it is the most primitive and unsophisticated (on the analogy of an early design replaced by more up-to-date ones)
Both these arguments are illogical since all humans are equally distant from the earliest humans, but essentially Rushton and earlier anthropologists are adopting argument 2. while Hare and the NOI is adopting argument 1. I think this essentially mythic model is important because it's influential on popular value-judgements about race. Coon's typology of races is also still in wide circulation. Paul B 12:00, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Since they are both cited and used now, they should be mentioned. However, they probably are mainly of historical interest. I think that we do need to talk about current science as much as possible. A revolution has happened in ALL biologicially-related fields since the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. This was a quantum leap forward, similar to the introduction of calculus in physics. Everything done in anthropology and race before 1953 is basically crap, to be totally frank. And sure it still has an effect, but it is utter nonsense and we should not feature all this obsolete stuff so prominently to the exclusion of the most modern science we have. In fact, I suspect strongly that a lot of stuff done after 1953 is also garbage. I have taken a quick look at "the bell curve" and the book by Rushton, and in terms of statistical analyses (one of the areas I am qualified to talk at a professional level), these two works are pretty sad excuses for scholarship, frankly. However, it is not our purpose in an encyclopedia to judge these references, but to report on them if they are influential.--Filll 17:14, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Rushton is cited because his research and theories are very up to date (based on the African Eve theory) and of all the racialist theories, Rushton's is the most formidable because he uses DNA evidence and draws on the r/K reproductive theory. Everything Coon had to say has now been discredited (with the possible exception of Ethiopians being Caucasoid). Rushton and Coon are actually opposites, with Coon arguing that Whites were superior because they are the first human race, and Rushton arguing that blacks are most primitive because they are the first race tto split off, and that Orientals, not Whites, are the advanced race because humans branched into North East Asia very recently. Rushton argues that all life on Earth can be ranked based on the time period it branched off from the main trunk of the evolutionary tree. Many biologists would argue that this is not logical because all life on Earth are equivalent examples of time tested evolutionary success, however others argue that more recently emerged life forms are by definition more highly evolved because their branch literally started higher on the evolutionary tree when you draw it out. Rushton of course is not saying that blacks today are the same as the earliest modern humans, but rather he's saying, that the branch that lead to today's blacks was the most archaic branch on the human tree, and the branch that lead to today's Orientals is the most recent branch. Timelist 21:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I am not aware of any passage in Coon in which he claims that "Whites were superior because they are the first human race". In fact in the Origin of Races he gives an East Asian as his illustration of the "highest" form of human. Coon claims that the major races evolved independently from one another from a common ancestor, but maintained sufficient contact that they did nt separate into distinct species. I have not read Rushton, but the claim that some branches of humanity "started literally higher on on the evolutionary tree" makes little sense, though it's perfectly reasonable to argue that different branches may develop different characteristics.Paul B 00:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
No Rushton's arguing that since the first split in the evolutionary tree was between Afrcans and non-Africans, blacks are the most primitive race, and since the last race to diverge from the mainstream of human evolution was Orientals, they are the most advanced. I suppose the logic is that every time an ancestral population splits into separate races, that represents an evolutionary change, so if you're the first branch, and you don't do anymore branching, then according to Rushton, you're less evolved than higher branches. Timelist 02:26, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't know why you begin with "no", since nothing you say contradicts what I say. I fact you just repeat the same illogical argument, which, frankly, I have difficulty believing is what Ruston actually says. He's a racist, but he's not stupid, and this argument is just stupid! Every time a branch splits, then obviously they both split at the same point (assuming that the modelling of the "branches" is correct, which is a big "if"), so it is meaningless to say that one splits "lower" than the other or that there is a "mainstream of human evolution" from which the branches split. There are only branches. There is no mainstream independent of the branches, otherwise there would be some non-race distinct from raciaslised "branches". Paul B 08:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Not to defend this because it does sound incredibley ludicrous and racist, but I assume the mainstream of evolution is whatever direction most of the branches are splitting. For example if branch A splits into branch B and C, and then branch C goes on to split in to branch D and E, then D & E would technically be more evolved than branch B because they're descended from 2 splits, where B is descended from only 1 split. It is true that the most primitive life forms (plants, bacteria, reptiles) all diverged very early in evolution, but applying the same logic to humans races seems like quite a stretch. Kobrakid 02:23, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
The most recent mutation is not necessarily the best mutation. Quite the contrary, the majority of mutations are unfavorable. They may be deadly to the embryo that carries them, or they may produce a viable individual who does not thrive because s/he is not adapted to the environment. The mutation that produced less heavily pigmented skins made the individuals that possess this characteristic less adapted to life at life closer to the equator and/or at higher altitudes. A plateau at the altitude of 10000 feet or higher right at the Equator would be a great place to get skin cancer. Even if you don't get skin cancer you will suffer from bad sunburns unless you cover yourself all over with protective clothing. (I once walked along a highway in southern Thailand for a few hours in August and discovered that night that I was sunburned on the underside of my jaw.)
The mutations that would make us better adapted to survive in this world would not be superficial characteristics such as skin color, nose shape, etc. (A possible exception would be something like nictitating membranes that could protect our eyes against transient assaults like smoke, dust storms, etc.) The mutations that would advance humans might include improvements in the immune system, improvements in visual acuity, improvements in intelligence (whatever that is), etc.
Most of the problems that surround the idea of "race" depend on the unstated belief that superficial marker characteristics predict the presence of otherwise difficult to assess characteristics like intelligence, temperament, morality, etc., etc. A trivial example would be the popular belief that red-haired people are extremely prone to angry outbursts. (Red = fire = angry attack, get it?)
Races are categories without defining characteristics, possessing only the ontological status of social constructs -- assertions linked to a few scattered empirical observations. P0M 20:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

And btw Coon's typology is not widely used: The most popular race model is the 3 race model: negroid, caucasoid, monologoid (aka blacks, whites, East Asians), not Coon's congoid, capoid, australoid, caucasoid, mongoloid, 5 race model. Considering how offensive his ideas are, and considering the limited impact of his typology was, and considering that his cauasoid supremacy theory has been destroyed by the African Eve model, I have no idea why everyone on wikipedia thinks Coon was some kind of God, Timelist 22:08, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

It would seem to me that it is "everyone" minus at least two of us. P0M 20:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I think that both Coon and Rushton should be cited and their claims summarized. It is not up to me to review the quality of their work for the encyclopedia article. That is not the point. If someone else has reviewed it, and it seems relevant, we can include the published review if we want. I am not so sure it is necessary or important. What do you think? I am just saying here, parenthetically on the talk page, that I think Rushton is a bit weak in a few respects. That does not mean it should not be included however. Since it is apparently very influential, it definitely should be included in fact. That is my two cents.--Filll 22:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
He would find his place in the Race article. I guess his claims about "black people" should be included here. Then the question would be, which black people did he make assertions about? All the Africans, but nobody who evolved to live outside of Africa? The black-colored people of Africa and the black-colored people who migrated from Africa but stayed close to the Equator and retained at least the dark pigmentation (despite winding up with different nose shapes or whatever)? Any black-colored people anywhere in the world (even any that may turn out to have very remote connections to Africans via a long period of accumulated genetic variations not shared with the original African populations? People who have done a reverse Michael Jackson and have made themselves black by genetic engineering or other technological means? Then the question would be, "What difference, if any, would anything he said make if it turned out to be true?" P0M 20:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Rushton's certainly influential. All the popular stereotypes about different penis sizes of blacks vs Asians. All of that started with Rushton. Whether his theory is nutty or not is not relevant, since virtually all the opinions quoted in the artcle are nutty. Timelist 22:20, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
There are things that are interesting and true that can be said about "Black people" just as there are similar things that can be said about Irish, black Irish, etc. It may have all the practical relevance of whether one braids one's hair starting with the left hand bunch or the right hand bunch, but I find it kind of interesting to know where the majority of my ancestors lived before they got to Ireland. I find it kind of interesting to know whether my ancestors were more closely related to people from somewhere in the Mediterranean, to Celts from across the Irish sea, or people from the north-west coast of Spain, or whether the great majority of the genetic constitution of people now living on that island have a heritage that dates back to prehistoric times. The people who have come down generation after generation from ancestors who all along have mostly been born in Africa has a different history and a different appearance from the people who came down in a similar line of development from the time of the retreat of the ice age in some degree of geographic isolation.
That being said, a stew was started over 100,000 years ago. A whole elephant went into the stew a long time ago, and any derivative pot of stew has lots of elephant meat in it. From time to time somebody takes a dipper from the African pot and deposits it in the Irish pot. From time to time somebody else takes a dipper from the Irish pot and puts it into the African pot. So the current flavor of the Irish pot has lots of the underlying elephant meat, more recent additions of Irish Wolfhound, a dash of turmeric from some pot in India, and a little of the recent spices that signal the recent African additions. The current African pot has lots of the underlying elephant meat, and a tiny touch, pretty well diluted (it's a huge pot compared to ours), of the flavor of Irish Wolfhound, Ainu ginger shoots, Amerind parched maize, etc. I suppose that it is possible that an unknown stew maker on Antarctica brought early elephant stew straight from Africa and has added only penguin meat from then until now, but nobody has ever found such a "race of hermits." Maybe it is because, being Antarcticans, they are whiter than white and dress in white and even their eyes are white, so they are virtually snowpeople. ;-)
Anyway, nutty examples aside, the real families history of the people with darker skins should be emphasized over the nutty theories of racists and people who can't understand what an operational definition is. P0M 20:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely (although I am not so sure about the penis size part but whatever). I just think that there should be no objection to seasoning it with some more balanced scientific material as well.--Filll 23:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Rushton's theory actually is based on mainstream scientific data. But the conclusions he draws from mainstream theories (i.e. African Eve) are very controversial. But the huge genetic section that others were trying to add does not refute Rushton, because Rushton cites the exact same data. Timelist 23:27, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Well it will slowly get filled out with a diversity of material, as long as it is permitted by the other editors.--Filll 23:41, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I wonder whether Rushton and Coon are important because they have done good science or because their work can be used to support the opinions of those who want to settle valuations on people according to their [race]. The "big is primitive" argument sounds like "sour grapes" to me. :-) Anyway, if we were to pick two scientists' scientists in the field, and then give their explanations equal prominence, I would be much more comfortable about the educational impact of the article. When I asked my biology professor friend what to read to understand the contentious issue of [race] (which I called a myth) he pulled the name Luca Cavalli-Sforza out of his memory and acted like I ought to already recognize it and know how to spell it. His huge book (with Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza) is published by Princeton University Press. P0M 04:13, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


Unjustified reversion

After correcting one comment on a photograph that alleged that Cavalli-Sforza said something about Europeans being half black and half Asian (see above), the correction was reverted by User:Kobrakid with a rather derogatory edit summary. Kobrakid wrote in the edit summary: "(revert POV pushing by Patrick to last version by Halaqah, "I've read Sforza & know what he said. Sigh, this was a good article a week ago)" The article that is linked to the text that is not in the article again certainly does not quote Cavalli-Sforza, but let us give Kobrakid the benefit of the doubt. Provide a valid citation. P0M 02:21, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Removing valid changes with only an emotionally charged edit summary is not the way to make progress in an article. If you can come up with evidence for what you have said then we can deal with the dispute in an objective way. I did read the materials cited as the justification for the material Kobrakid reverted to. It appears that Kobrakid did not read the cited materials. I invite everyone to check out the objective evidence. I repeat my request to Kobrakid to substantiate his claim to "know what Cavalli-Sforza said." P0M 05:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
For starts, here is something that Cavalli-Sforza actually did say:

The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise for reasons that were already clar to Darwin. Human races are still extremely unstable entities in the hands of modern taxonomists, who define from 3 to 60 or more races (Garn 1971). To some extend, this latitude depends on the personal preferences of taxonomists, who may chose to be "lumpers" or "splitters." Although there is no doubt that there is only one human species, there are clearly no objective reasons for stopping at any particular level of taxonomic splitting. In fact, the analysis we carry out in chapter 2 for purposes of evolutionary study shows that the level at which we stop our classification is completely arbitrary. Explanations are statistical, geographic, and historical. Statistically, genetic variation within clusters is large compared with that between clusters (Lewontin 1972; Nei and Roychoudhury 1974). All populations or population clusters overlap when single genes are considered, and in almost all populations, all alleles are present but in different frequencies. No single gene is therefore sufficient for classifying human opulations into systematic categories.

As one goes down the scale of the taxonomic hierarchy toward the lower and lower partitions, the boundaries between clusters become even less clear....

The current text cites Jonathan Marks:

Interestingly, shortly after Moore's article invoking Boas was published, Time magazine published an article featuring the HGDP and its leading spokesman, geneticist Luca Cavalli-Sforza (Jan 16, 1995:54-55). Time reported in passing that "All Europeans are thought to be a hybrid population, with 65% Asian and 35% African genes.

For those who care to view scientific statements as texts, there's one for the books. It is not even false; it is simply ridiculous as articulated -- as if Asians and Africans were opposites, homogeneous and pure, and Europeans were less so.

Whether or not you like Cavalli-Sforza, and it appears from other references that Jonathan Marks does not favor his analyses, or at least the conceptual scheme into which they are cast, to be responsible what the article should not do is to create the impression that the idea of race is supported by the prestige and authority of either Cavalli-Sforza or Jonathan Marks. Marks's objection to the Time article that reports on Cavali-Sforza is that it creates the impression that there are "Asian genes" and "African genes" when in fact (to quote Cavalli-Sforza himself) "in almost all populations, all alleles are present but in different frequencies." So among members of the population found in Asia one will find all the genes that are to be found in Africa (but in different proportions), and in Africa one will find all the geners that are to be found in Asia. It is possible that the very recent mutation in the United States that has produced blue-skinned humans is not yet represented in any members of the populations found in Africa or Asia, but that mutation occurred within the last hundred years or so perhaps not many individuals carrying that mutation have moved outside their original state or nation.
What is the lesson that we should take away from the points brought forward by Cavalli-Sforza and Jonathan Marks? The photo is described as a "Blasian." What was it put there to illustrate? That a "Blasian" is a "mixed [race] person", half of whose [racial] identity is "black" and half of whose [racial] identity is "Asian?" But that is the position that Jonathan Marks opposes. Or is the point that the white [race] is a mixed race, composed of approximately half Asian [race] and approximately half African [race]? That assertion also depends on the position that Marks is attacking. P0M 07:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


This whole thing is outdated and this must be pointed out. The article in question was published in 1995, before the completion of human genome project and some recent important genetic studies. Thulean 16:58, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

i THINK I have to agree with Thlean and i think this issue has caused enough problems the coon stuff should be removed Thlean is absolutly correct, every debate seems to rearticulate this feeling. And if many agree something is misleading then we have to go with it.---Halaqah 18:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

A bit of modern science

It will not hurt the article to allow in a bit of modern science. Let's not aggressively revert every attempt to put in some diversity here, including the most accurate, most modern information we have. The tools we now have for understanding race make a lot of previous work obsolete. Sure, the previous work still has an influence of course, and it is of historical interest as well. However, an encyclopedia needs to have balance, and it needs to have currency. The advantage of Wikipedia is that it can be very current. Before you aggressively revert huge chunks of modern material, let's discuss it here on the talk page. This article is not the province of one individual, one particular group or one particular viewpoint.--Filll 15:58, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

But FIll at the same time if someone had a big opinion on black people come from mars (with the science to prove it) would we add it here too? Even accommodating different points of view must meet an accepted standard. so arguments within some sort of understandable context, not outlandish statements. I am so opposed 2 the Ethiopian thing even though you guys show balance it puts to much attention on something that i would say is exotic. Which is a funny issue. and very hard to prove but i think it puts too much weight on Ethiopian people, it isolates them. because of one little oxford study., anyway.--Halaqah 18:49, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
The accepted standard (for those of us who are not doing original research and trying to get it published in peer-reviewed journals) is evidence and analysis. So of course we would have to add something that meets those standards even if the findings were unexpected and even displeasing to all of us.
I'm not sure what the original writers of this article set out to do. Was it really, as Editingoprah seems to believe, an attempt to depict the social construction of the black identity? That might be an interesting article if it could clearly show how "big opinions" can be blown out of a little soapy water and lots of air. Such an article could fulfill a useful function by showing how people can lose their autonomy by letting themselves be influenced by stuff with an ideological undertext. Or was the intent to give a "family history" of the people who, in the world of today, have darker skins? That approach would be interesting too, and it would serve many of the same functions although from a different line of attack. We've seen in this discussion how some people who have inheritied their darker skins from somewhere intensely resist the idea that they might have inheritied their coloration from Africans -- because they do not want to be heir to the racist baggage that attribution would rope in. So the second approach to this kind of article can also encourage people to examine their preconceptions.
The Coon-Rushton stuff seems more relevant to the "construction of a dumb myth" approach. P0M 20:35, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


I agree that all viewpoints should not have equal weight. I would favor more modern views based on better data. However, with conflicting "agendas" to contend with, I think that we can either settle on one particular agenda and irritate a bunch of others, or have two or three agendas shoved into the same article, or farm out agenda-rich material into neighboring articles. I do not care about which model is taken, but I do want to know, even if it is parenthetically, about various theories and black agenda that exist. If there is a theory of black unity, I want to know that it exists. I might not put any credence in it, but I want to know. If there were stories of discrimination based on darker skin color from around the world, I want to know those too. If there is science that shows where black skin comes from, I want to know that theory. And so on...--Filll 23:52, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Editors in over their head

Please cool it with the genetics discussion. If Time magazine claims Cavali-Sforza said something, that's not good enough for us. Please refrain from putting your own interpretations of complex science into the article. Gottoupload 23:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Your statement above is exactly correct. I agree with you. Magazine writers frequently oversimply or misinterpret things without intending to do so. What should go into the article are statements by people such as Jonathan Marks and Cavalli-Sforza. P0M 00:28, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Why do you keep changing my edits? The first change is about misdefinition of a genetic study, the second changes "in addition" with "in 1963" and the third reflects alleged source...Thulean 23:44, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Because you are placing inaccurate information in the article. You do not understand what Cavali-Sforza was trying to say. Just stop editing for a while. Please! Gottoupload 23:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Are you reading what you are editing? My edits arent only about Cavali-Sforza. Do your own advice and read before you revert. Thulean 23:49, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

You added the following nonsensical statement: "Recent genetic studies which clusters populations on the basis of genetic similarity does not support such a conclusion". What prey tell are the recent genetic studies that contradict the idea that Europeans are closer to Africans than East Asians are? Every geneticist would love to know! Gottoupload 23:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

If Europeans were to be intermediate between Africans and East Asians, they would cluster with either groups. However, they form their own distinctive cluster. For someone commenting on "Editors in over their head", you are making ridiculous comments. Thulean 00:01, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh I see. You're obsessed with the purity of the White race. Don't worry. Sforza's data needn't apply that Whites aren't pure, but rather it shows that caucasians branched off of Africans and East Asians branched off of caucasians. And of course they are their own distinctive cluster, but that cluster is in between the African and East Asian cluster when scaled by genetic distance. I could fill a book with all the misconceptions on this talk page. Gottoupload 00:09, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Cavalli-Sforza blasts the idea that any [race] is pure. Where does he say that "East Asians branched off of caucasians"? Let bring this matter down to quotations and citations, not assertions. P0M 00:25, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
What does purity have to do with it? Of course no race is pure. That's not what we're talking about. Kobrakid 18:53, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

And I'll remove "outdated" this time but read the above discussion about what Cavalli-Sforza really said. Therefore we have to use the term "alleges"...Thulean 00:04, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Gottoupload, remain civil. Dont speculate about other peoples' "obsession". And back your claims. Thulean 01:18, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I am completely confused. What the heck? I feel like we are looking at a tiny fraction of the available references, some decades or centuries out of date, and arguing about what they may or may not see, often with no references or quotes or without having read them. This is not good.--Filll 01:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
The picture in the gallery ahows a "Blasian," and originally asserted things with references given to an magazine article that tried to represent what Marks said about Cavalli-Sforza. It's like parlor game where person one tells person two, etc., and by the time you get to the end of the chain of recitation the story is that the tar baby jumped out into the middle of the road and wrestled B'er Rabbit to the ground.
The photograph originally had nothing to do with the Time article, the Time article had little to do with what Jonathan Marks actually said, and he was (IMHO) taking an unfair crack at Cavalli-Sforza--which just proves that it is easy to find something that you can twist even in a relatively careful writer like C-F.
The way long-terms genetic mixing shows up vs. the way short-term genetic mixing appears is actually sort of an interesting point, but I don't think it can be effectively sorted out in the caption to a photograph.
Is this conjoint twin of an article really worth saving? Half of it pertains to the working out in history of genetics and evolution, and half of it pertains to the social constructions of [races] that are specific to each individual (or at least each small group of like-minded individuals) who constructs a set of [races]. I don't see any good way to put those two together. P0M 02:02, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Speaking as a quantitative scientist, the idea of "distance" or "genetic distance" or some other sort of metric in this complicated high dimensional space is quite complicated. We need to use some sort of modified information theory to get a handle on this, but that probably veers into the forbidden "no new research" territory. But it is a very interesting question. However, having us argue it about it with no facts or other information or a good literature survey is just hopeless.--Filll 02:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. If Dr. Splavendorst of Princeton says "huge genetic distance" and Dr. Splivengates of Harvard says "trivial genetic distance" we can put both assertions in (with citations of course), but we cannot make these things up for ourselves and we can't support assertions with quotations that fail to say what we claim to be true but only have some tangential application to our assertions. P0M 08:13, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Removed one line for study

I fixed the following line grammatically and was going to leave it at that, but then I realized that we can leave the implication that other people have made (if it is really true that they have done so), and avoid judging the validity of their claims.

To establish that somebody said something we have to have the citation, the original quotation, and then if we are not to quote the whole thing we need to be sure that our paraphrase accurately reflects the original.

We are not permitted to do "original research" and that involves putting ourselves in the position of professional geneticists. Even a professional geneticist cannot just plop his own judgments into an article. S/he must quote and cite something in a peer-reviewed journal.

Here is the statement that I have removed:

Recent genetic studies which cluster populations on the basis of genetic similarity do not support such a conclusion.

Was there a citation provided for this assertion? Everything was jammed up together on the editing screen and I wasn't sure what was intended to go with what. Even if we had a set of genetic studies that all showed populations and how their genetic characteristics cluster, those studies along would not make the above statement valid. We would still need an authority saying, "These studies do not support the conclusion quoted above."

I have several other things that I could add, but let's take this a step or two at a time. P0M 02:26, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, I've already quoted Marks verbatim above. Paraphrased for brevity here is what he says:

Time implied that Luca Cavalli-Sforza claims that all Europeans are a hybrid population, with 65% Asian and 35% African genes. As stated, this statement is simply ridiculous. It makes it seem that Asians and Africans are opposite "types," homogeneous and pure [races], and that Europeans are an impure, mixed race.

Now, please tell me, what does this statement have to do with a photograph of the child of two (by Marks's account) not-pure, not-homogeneous [races]? It seems to give the lie to what Marks, the one whom Time purportedly quoted, said. It seems to show two opposite types mixing and the resultant mixture showing obvious traits from each type. (Samples taken of a mixture at equilibrium and samples taken of a mixture that has not reached equilibrium can look quite different. Explaining why Marks is right would take lots of space -- space not appropriate to a photo caption. P0M 03:14, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it had a source. [1] The source says:

"Other studies have produced comparable results. Noah A. Rosenberg and Jonathan K. Pritchard, geneticists formerly in the laboratory of Marcus W. Feldman of Stanford University, assayed approximately 375 polymorphisms called short tandem repeats in more than 1,000 people from 52 ethnic groups in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. By looking at the varying frequencies of these polymorphisms, they were able to distinguish five different groups of people whose ancestors were typically isolated by oceans, deserts or mountains: sub-Saharan Africans; Europeans and Asians west of the Himalayas; East Asians; inhabitants of New Guinea and Melanesia; and Native Americans. They were also able to identify subgroups within each region that usually corresponded with each member's self-reported ethnicity."

If Europeans were to be genetically intermediate between Asians and Blacks, they wouldnt form a distinctive cluster but some Europeans would cluster with Asians while some would cluster with Blacks. If you are satisfied, reverse your changes...Thulean 13:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

If the source was there originally then it got lost. Sorry about that. The problem is how to get this very abstract information across in the tiny space of a picture caption. If your assertion goes back then it has to go back with a footnote.
Another problem is that Marks is not being fair to Cavalli-Sforza, so I don't think it would be right to change the part that makes it clear that it's Marks's (to be non-judgmental about it) interpretation of what C-V says.
One of the things that made me decide to take out the (then) unsourced final assertion was that if you look at the picture it already makes it clear that the "Blasian" individual looks nothing like the composite picture of a European woman. The picture is making the point that the (then) unsourced statement was making, and it is immediately obvious that there is something wrong with what C-S is alleged to have said. Is there some way to say what you want to say that will reinforce the visual lesson? P0M 20:28, 22 November 2006 (UTC)


1) What footnote? 2) Currently it still says "According to Cavalli-Sforza", I was the one who changed it to "An article in Time (1995) alleges that Cavalli-Sforza... " 3) Again: "Recent genetic studies which clusters populations on the basis of genetic similarity does not support such a conclusion. [1]" Thulean 19:34, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Warren Harding

The article currently says that Harding was the first U.S. President with "negro blood". Negro blood? What century is this? How about "with black ancestory" or "with at least one black ancestor" or something like that instead? Michael.passman 23:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Please sign your postings.
I agree that the language used is offensive. Maybe that was part of the ironic intent of the person who wrote this caption -- turning the language against the dominant majority that created the language and the ideology of [race].
Be bold. Edit it yourself. You are not less qualified than others. P0M 00:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Ok. I fixed it myself and changed it to "Warren Harding may have had at least one black ancestor...". I also signed my last posting.

Michael.passman 23:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Another problem passage

The article currently says:

While mainstream scientists would agree that humans evolved in Africa, Hare's assumption that Black people are closer to the first Homo sapiens sapiens is false, since by definition all humans are equally related to the African eve.[27]

The trouble with this evaluation of Hare's assumption is that it is not contained in the article cited. The article is a recapitulation of recent history pertaining to human genetic history, and that is all.

It is true, according to the article cited (and many other published works), that we are all descended from the same ancestral female. But some of us have picked up only two Y-chromosome mutation markers and some of us have picked up five. Work has thusfar not been done, as far as I know, to map out changes on all the other chromosomes. But just from this one study it is already clear that even though we are all related to the African Eve (and all living humans are descended from a later single male, too), we are not equally in possession of the same genes that these two early humans possessed. The reason is that individual descendents pick up all sorts of mutations, some good and some bad, along the way. Some of these mutations are clearly good and aid in the survival of their possessors, some are so bad that they are lethal and are so not passed down, and some fall somewhere in the middle. The mutation for sickle-cell anemia is a good example since it imposes a high price on individuals yet it allows them to survive to sexual maturity and reproduction in areas where malaria is prevalent. My ancestral line might show a mutation accumulation rate of 1.03 per thousand years, and they might have all been mutations of trivial importance. In all important respects I might not be either better or worse than somebody who lived 150,000 years ago. Your ancestral line might show a mutation accumulation rate of 1.001 per thousand years, but your line may have won the lottery and may have picked up a dozen highly favorable mutations.

So there is no proof given in the article cited either that accumulated mutations have accrued at the same rate or that they have on average been equally good or bad. There is certainly nothing in the article cited that says that we all have equally preserved the genetic constitution of the African Eve, nor does the article say that Africans have as many significant mutations carrying them away from African Even as does any other group. Moreover, the author of the material cited in an M.D., not a geneticist. P0M 09:01, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Please tell me you're not agreeing with Rushton. Your arguments sure sound just like his. Bluescientist 22:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
All I'm saying is that the article cited does not prove the assertions in our article. Do we have a citation to show that black people are not closer to the first Homo sapiens sapiens? I don't see one. Do we have a citation to show the contrary? Again, I don't think so.
I certainly do not agree with Rushton. I don't even agree that any of the mutations among humans that I have ever heard about are necessarily better than others. Most mutations that survive don't make any difference (look at all the different blood "types" -- not Type A, Type O, etc. but the picky little differences--the ones that show up in different frequencies in different populations but don't have any known dimpact on health or function). Some mutations survive and make individuals better suited to one environment and less suited to another environment. The mutation that makes us different from Neanderthals might (according to something I heard on NPR within the last few days) have involved the length of time that we can remember things like complicated sequences of words. That would presumably have been the point where the genetic tree forked and the side-shoot was Homo sapiens sapiens. But if we look at the human branch we don't see any real forking because the smaller branches all cross and "auto-graft" all the time. The trunk of this quasi-tree is constituted by the original African population and its descendants who do not carry any of the mutations like those that differentiate Africans (statistically speaking) from the aboriginal population of Australia. That population looked like it could be a discrete side-shoot for a few tens of thousands of years,since it was quite well geographically isolated, but probably all along shipwrecked sailors made it to Australian shores and changed the palette of available genes. Then, when long-distance sea travel arrived. even that degree of isolation was ended. If you drew it all out in detail you wouldn't see something like an oak tree in the middle of winter with a main trunk, maybe two main forks, and then individual branches. You would see something more like an oak tree festooned with Spanish moss--where the Spanish moss represents cross-connections made when the Norse raider shipwrecks in North America, the Chinese junk beaches in South America, the Fiji sailor get blown to New Zealand or Australia by a typhoon, etc., etc. If a Chinese child in Hunan province is born with red hair, do we know whether the red-haired ancestor arrived in Chinese a year or so before or whether it was some wanderer from the time of the kahns? Does it really make any difference? Maybe that's not a good example, but I think you will get the idea. P0M 23:45, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

re: deletion of analysis by Nirmala Rajasingam

Someone new (?) with username Camelback99954 deleted material and left the edit message: "Delete Rajasingam comment- Nirmala Rajasingam is an unknown obviously biased activist. Why not give the opinion of an activist KKK member?" Nirmala Rajasingam is a person with an international reputation (even if she has not made a big splash in USA mass media). She is a Tamil who opposes anti-black activities in her home, Sri Lanka, and she is someone who opposes the Tamil Tigers.

As Samuel R. Delany says, politics is what you have to deal with. One of the things that people with darker skin have to deal with is "doing xyz while black." Anybody, be s/he Tamil, Shan, San. or a student from Malawi is a school in a small town in Iowa, must deal with abuse and the ever-present possibility of abuse because of his/her skin color.

Why would someone suggest giving the KKK perspective on this problem in preference to the perspective of someone who has commented on the American experience (as well as the Tamil experience) from the standpoint of someone who has a measure of acquired sensitivity to the problem and a measure of distance and objectivity regarding those manifestations of the problem that do not directly bear on her and her family members?

On top of that, her analysis of the functional reason originally in play when the idea of creating a positive black identity is (IMHO) penetrating and relevant to solving the social problems (racism) faced by black people the world over. P0M 18:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)


You're not deleting anything. Just chill. Kobrakid 18:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I did not delete. Camelback99954 deleted and I put it back. P0M 19:54, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

what do you mean by Nirmala Rajasingam fighting against anti-black activities back at home?.Do you mean to say there is problem in srilanka because of Colour of the skin???.There is no such problem there.Tamils and Singalese do look alike and they dont have any problem based on skin color.The division is based on the language they speak!!!!. I am a srilankan and she is not considered to be a notable personality within our community.What do you know about Srilankan problem to talk about it here?.If you dont know anything then its better for you to keep quiet..This black people article has become crap just beating around the bush.By the way who on earth told you that tamils are having problems based on colour???.Why are you people picking up tamils only.The whole Indian sub continent has some dark skinned people belonging to various groups like Telugu,malayalee,Kannada ,Singalese,rajastani ,bengali etc etc. This shows your damn ignorance.No one considers themselves black and all will be shocked if you say so!!!except some out of moon people like Nirmala Rajasingam!!!!! Sria

Sria 04:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Recent flurry of changes -- please look carefully before you act

I originally objected to a line in the caption to "Blasian" because it was unsourced.

Thulean replaced the line with a valid citation. Unfortunately he didn't mention the addition of the citation in the edit summary, refering to mention of the citation in this talk page. (I had to reasssure myself that he had put the footnote into the caption, since it wasn't clear to me from what he said in the discussion that he'd actually done that.)

Other people have come along and argued about whether it's a statement with a citation. Check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Black_people&oldid=89498137

The citation is there, and it is valid. P0M 20:49, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry but I fail to understand what the citation has to do with Blasians? Bluescientist 22:23, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I can well understand why it isn't obvious. The citation originally involved two parts. The first part was flaky because it was about what somebody claimed Luca Cavalli-Sforza said. The second part, assuming that C-S had really said it, maintained that it was obviously wrong because of the way the data would have to cluster to make C-S right vs. the way the data actually cluster.
I was the one who (1) made it clear that we were dealing with hearsay about C-S's position, and (2) deleted the stuff about clustering because I couldn't see any evidence cited. (It's possible that the citation was there and I wiped it out with the first edit, somehow.) Thulean then replaced what I had deleted and added the citation to show that it is correct.
I think it is obvious from the photo that the mixture of genetic characteristics present in the statistically average N. European is different from the mixture of genetic characteristics that is most likely to be present when you combine genetic characteristics from two typical individuals from each group. Thulean wants to be explicit about it.
If anybody could give a quotation from C-S that says what the caption now claims, then it would not be so bad. The current text starts out: "According to Cavalli-Sforza, Europeans are genetically intermediate between Africans and East Asians..." But the citation is to Jonathan Marks, and he doesn't cite C-F, he just tears into him. That's rather like listening to Bill Clinton tell you what George Bush thinks about national defense, or vice-versa. P0M 00:17, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Bluescientist, why did you change the text to attribute the nonsense to Cavelli-Sforza. You need a citation to C-S, not to somebody who is out to score debating points against him. P0M 00:25, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


Why is Rushton's wingnut idea given space?

I don't understand why Rushton's daft idea is given space in the "are Africans the first humans" section. Firstly it is not relevant to the section, his ideas about evolution being progressive are far far from mainstream and are irrelevant to the section. Secondly his ideas can not even be called marginal, let alone a significant minority POV, it seems to be the pov of a single rather confused and certainly biased fascist academic. Including this pov is a clear breach of the WP:NPOV policy, which doesn't allow the inclusion of all points of view, only significant minority points of view. Besides which no other pov is given, if we want to claim that evolution is progressive then we need to state categorically that most biologists don't agree. This guy, Rushton is neither a biologist nor an anthropologist, he's a psychologist and so does not count as an expert on evolution. It is clearly biased and POV to include his ravings. The whole article is a mess with various bits cobbled together with no consistency, for someone to claim that it is "stable" is ludicrous, how can it be stable when there are so many edits being made to it. I also received a warning against vandalism for some good faith edits I made to this article. I stand by my edits, and if someone else wants to accuse me of vandalism I'll be happy for them to take their spurious allegations further. By accusing other good faith editors of vandalism you damage your own credibility and the community as a whole. NO one "owns" this article, and attempted intimidation of other editors will not succeed. Alun 03:59, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I have objected to both Rushton and to Carleton Coon. P0M 04:41, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes you make a good point about Coon. Indeed the whole section on Ethiopians is extremely poorly written. I suggest that if it needs to be there at all then it should reflect the fact that humans do not live in "exclusive populations" and that attempts to categorise them as such lead people living in certain geographical regions not corresponding to any of the defined "populations" (or more prosaically "races"), this is true for Coon's attempts at categorisation and for more recent genetic attempts. It should be noted that many researchers maintain that this is because humans do not actually live in descrete genetically isolated "populations" but form a global population continuum, with genetic (and therefore physical) variation being geographically variable on a clinal basis, rather than a discrete basis. It is therefore true that people living in east Africa, and indeed people living on the Indian subcontinent do not "fit" into the arbitrary and "exclusive pigeonholes" of "population/race".

Genetic variation in humans is sometimes described as being discontinuous among continents or among groups of individuals, and by some this has been interpreted as genetic support for "races." A recent study in which >350 microsatellites were studied in a global sample of humans showed that they could be grouped according to their continental origin, and this was widely interpreted as evidence for a discrete distribution of human genetic diversity. Here, we investigate how study design can influence such conclusions. Our results show that when individuals are sampled homogeneously from around the globe, the pattern seen is one of gradients of allele frequencies that extend over the entire world, rather than discrete clusters. Therefore, there is no reason to assume that major genetic discontinuities exist between different continents or "races."....The absence of strong continental clustering in the human gene pool is of practical importance. It has recently been claimed that "the greatest genetic structure that exists in the human population occurs at the racial level" (Risch et al. 2002). Our results show that this is not the case, and we see no reason to assume that "races" represent any units of relevance for understanding human genetic history.[2]

Alun 07:17, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Has this quotation been worked into the race article? I spent hours trying to get the point across but didn't have this neat quotation to use. P0M 03:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Looking at the article in more detail, quite frankly it's bloody awful from start to finnish. The photographs at the end have some very offensive and antiquated phrases associated with them. The section on Black people being the first humans is awful, basically the following entire section:

However, creationist views were still dominant at the start of the enlightenment. Blumenbach believed that humans were originally white, having populated the world after the Biblical flood from Mount Ararat (at the modern Turkey/Iran border). The white race, characteristic of this locale, was thus the closest to the original type, central to humanity. He believed that hot climates subsequently degraded some whites into browns who degraded into blacks at one extreme, and other whites were degraded into reds who degraded into yellows at the other extreme[2]. In the post-Darwin era, Carleton Coon believed that different races evolved into modern humans independently and that Caucasoids were the most advanced because they were the first to become modern humans.

does not belong in this section. The section should be devoted to an analysis of whether the proposition is supported by modern science, not a potted history of what people used to believe, or what some wingnut racist psychologist believes about "progressive evolution". I think there is a section in the Human skin colour article about this, where they say something along the lines that one of our pre human ancestors probably had pale skin colour like chimps, but that when they/we lost their/our body hair, selection due to strong sunlight probably lead to an increase in protective pigmentation. This is a reasonable comment about skin pigmentation and the African ancestors of us all. All the other stuff there seems like little more than the gratuitous inclusion of irrelevant and deliberately offensive material. Alun 18:20, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I tried to put in a section on up-to-date science, and it was promptly reverted. I think Filll saved it somewhere. You are working on the basis of someone who keeps current with the professional literature whereas I have just tried to accumulate the best current books. The problem is that there are many people operating on an emotional level and few people who want to look at the science. 加油! (Put the pedal to the metal!) P0M 03:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Pictures at the end

What in particular about the pictures at the end offend (Wobble =) you? Some people worked very hard on making that display.--Filll 18:54, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Well the fact that it's there a all is a bit odd. It's like one of those old Victorian books with lots of pictures of "natives" so people could "see how they look", all put nicely into their little "groups" so we can gawk at them and classify them as this or that, 83% this 10% that, conforming to this dictionary definition or that census definition. Then there's the text:

  • Oprah Winfrey is considered black by all definitions of the term. According to genetic tests done by PBS' African lives, she is 89% Sub-Saharan, 8% Native American, 3% East Asian. which means that most of her ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa. On average African-Americans are about 83% African genetically.
How can they possibly know all this stuff? There is no genetic basis for race, how can African-Americans be 83% genetically African? Human genetic variation is distributed globally.
And that is one of the things that C-S makes clear when he sets out to tear down the idea of race. I've already cited that passage once, but other editors seem to regard the facts an irrelevancy.P0M 04:12, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Barack Obama self-identifies as black and could identify as black or multi-racial on the U.S. census and by many dictionaries, though the British census would classify him as mixed and some biological definitions would claim he's not black because only half of his ancestors are from sub-Saharan Africa instead of most.
The British census would not classify him as anything, he would be free to classify himself in any way he saw fit in the census. Who gives a toss what dictionaries say?
Obama certainly does nothing to disown the fact that his mother is "white." I suspect that he is just getting out ahead of the racists who would otherwise deride him as someone who is clearly [black] but trying to make himself look [white].
  • Although Ethiopians was once a synonym for Negro and Ethiopians are classified as black by the U.S. and British census, a 2001 Oxford genetic cluster study called this into question, and anthropologist Carleton Coon classified them as a Mediterranean type of Caucasoid. Such views however are not mainstream.
That bloke Coon again, he has no accademic credibility, I'm amazed any person in the modern world would cite him seriously. No oxford genetic study called this into question, many studies dispute that "race" can be defined biologically at all. Who the hell says "Negro" these days except racist wingnuts?
  • The term aeta comes from a word for "black" in tagalog, but aetas would be Asian or South Asian on the U.S. and British census respectively. They're also not classified as black by any biological definition or dictionary definitions that emphasize African ancestry, though Afrocentric scholars argue that all dark-skinned people are Africoid. However they are part of Johann Blumenbach's brown race.
All of this is racist claptrap. Not black by biological definition? Who's biological definition? British census again, they are free to describe themselves as they like.
  • Although Australoids are frequently called black in Australia, this Tasmanian aboriginal would not be classified as black by the U.S. or British census. She would also not be classified as black by any biological definition or dictionary definitions that emphasize African ancestry, except by Afrocentric scholars who argue that all dark-skinned people are Africoid. Johann Blumenbach would have classified her as a member of the brown race.
As above. And Native Australians may well self identify as Black, they are usually considered Black people in Commonwealth countries.
  • Although some Dalits called themselves black to show solidarity with African-Americans in the civil rights movement, this Dalit man would not be classified as black by the U.S. or British census, which would classify him as Asian or South Asian respectively. Anthropologists however have typically classified Indians as Caucasoid, Australoid and mixes of both [46]corresponding to the white and brown races of Johann Blumenbach's model
Blah blah blah, census stuff ad nauseum nothing new to say so let's repeat ourselves.
  • Tiger Woods coined the term Cablinasian to describe his ethnicity and could identify as black, Asian, Native American, White, or multi-racial on the U.S. census and by many dictionaries, though the British census would classify him as mixed and some biological definitions would claim he's not black because only a quarter of his ancestors are from sub-Saharan Africa instead of most.
Blah blah, can't think of anything original to say.
  • John Beddoe, the founder and president of the British Anthropological Institute, developed in his book "The Races of Man" (1862), an "Index of Nigressence", from which he argued that the Irish had craniofacial features close to Cro-Magnon man and thus had links with the "Africinoid" races
I'm speechless that drivel like this is in an article about Black people. How is this remotely relevant?
  • As an adult, Michael Jackson's ancestors still come from Africa, but he is no longer dark skinned and thus does not meet the first requirement in Dictionary.com's definition.
Racist and offensive.
  • Bill Clinton is not considered black by any definition of the term, however Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison metaphorically described him as the first black president because of his dysfunctional background
Like this is relevant to the article.
  • According to Cavalli-Sforza, Europeans are genetically intermediate between Africans and East Asians[49] making many Blasians no more black on the genetic level than whites are.
This is OR unless I'm very much mistaken, as well as being pure fronteer gibberish
It is factually incorrect. There is no text cited that proves that C-S actually uttered or wrote those words. Click through to the cited text. It is one of C-S's competitors claiming that C-S said it, but himself giving no citation. We don't accept hearsay evidence in court even when it is given by people who clearly have no dog in the fight. Frankly, it is intelledtually dishonest to claim the person X wrote something on the evidence of what person Y said (or at least was quoted as saying by person Z) in a magazine article. P0M 04:26, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Afrocentrists caused controversy by arguing that Jesus may have been black
So what, it's irrelevant to the article.
  • Warren Harding may have some negro blood making him the first black president to those who cite the one drop rule.
More racism (what's the "one drop" rule?) that obnoxious "Negro" word again.
  • Recent genetic tests found that Whoopi Goldberg is of 92% sub-Saharan ancestry.
Who gives a toss?

The point is that many of these people are Black people (bizarely some are not, and others who clearly are are claimed not to be) who have achieved great things, but all you seem to be interested in is defining them by the various "categories" white racist anthropologists or white authoritarian governments or white writers of dictionaries have decided to put them in. Come on, have pictures of well known Black people by all means, but define them by their achievements as individuals, not by dubious and often offensive "racial" epithets. I'm not a Black person myself, but I find this really offensive, and about 50 years out of date. Alun 21:14, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Response

Before we get too upset, you have to realize that these pictures and their captions were chosen by black people. So as strange as they seem, you might want to consider them carefully and the reasoning behind them. I will make comments on each one:

  • Oprah Winfrey is considered black by all definitions of the term. According to genetic tests done by PBS' African lives, she is 89% Sub-Saharan, 8% Native American, 3% East Asian. which means that most of her ancestors were born in sub-Saharan Africa. On average African-Americans are about 83% African genetically.
How can they possibly know all this stuff? There is no genetic basis for race, how can African-Americans be 83% genetically African? Human genetic variation is distributed globally.
She volunteered to have her genetic background studied, as far as I know (you can find the details in the talk history). And as arbitrary as it sounds, this was the result. Check at the PBS site.
  • Barack Obama self-identifies as black and could identify as black or multi-racial on the U.S. census and by many dictionaries, though the British census would classify him as mixed and some biological definitions would claim he's not black because only half of his ancestors are from sub-Saharan Africa instead of most.
The British census would not classify him as anything, he would be free to classify himself in any way he saw fit in the census. Who gives a toss what dictionaries say?
The point is that they do not agree and there is a diversity of opinion. And so that is interesting.
  • Although Ethiopians was once a synonym for Negro and Ethiopians are classified as black by the U.S. and British census, a 2001 Oxford genetic cluster study called this into question, and anthropologist Carleton Coon classified them as a Mediterranean type of Caucasoid. Such views however are not mainstream.
That bloke Coon again, he has no accademic credibility, I'm amazed any person in the modern world would cite him seriously. No oxford genetic study called this into question, many studies dispute that "race" can be defined biologically at all. Who the hell says "Negro" these days except racist wingnuts?
The black person who wrote this used the word negro, so I would not question it. I agree with the comment about the Oxford study. That might need rewording a bit. Coon is of interest historically and he had a lot of social impact. That is why he is mentioned.
  • The term aeta comes from a word for "black" in tagalog, but aetas would be Asian or South Asian on the U.S. and British census respectively. They're also not classified as black by any biological definition or dictionary definitions that emphasize African ancestry, though Afrocentric scholars argue that all dark-skinned people are Africoid. However they are part of Johann Blumenbach's brown race.
All of this is racist claptrap. Not black by biological definition? Who's biological definition? British census again, they are free to describe themselves as they like.
I agree it is sort of stupid, but there is a HUGE segment of the black community (especially in the USA) that wants to claim that everyone with dark skin everywhere, or who had ancestors with dark skin, is part of a global black consciousness. This again is sort of historical interest, and it is also of interest for "black movement" people. Look in the talk history when this was argued for months on end.
  • Although Australoids are frequently called black in Australia, this Tasmanian aboriginal would not be classified as black by the U.S. or British census. She would also not be classified as black by any biological definition or dictionary definitions that emphasize African ancestry, except by Afrocentric scholars who argue that all dark-skinned people are Africoid. Johann Blumenbach would have classified her as a member of the brown race.
As above. And Native Australians may well self identify as Black, they are usually considered Black people in Commonwealth countries.
This again points out that the definitions are not agreed on by all.
  • Although some Dalits called themselves black to show solidarity with African-Americans in the civil rights movement, this Dalit man would not be classified as black by the U.S. or British census, which would classify him as Asian or South Asian respectively. Anthropologists however have typically classified Indians as Caucasoid, Australoid and mixes of both [46]corresponding to the white and brown races of Johann Blumenbach's model
Blah blah blah, census stuff ad nauseum nothing new to say so let's repeat ourselves.
Again this was a source of huge arguments in the talk page history. Blacks were ready to tear each other to pieces over this issue. I say leave it be.
  • Tiger Woods coined the term Cablinasian to describe his ethnicity and could identify as black, Asian, Native American, White, or multi-racial on the U.S. census and by many dictionaries, though the British census would classify him as mixed and some biological definitions would claim he's not black because only a quarter of his ancestors are from sub-Saharan Africa instead of most.
Blah blah, can't think of anything original to say.
Fair enough. Again of historical and social interest mainly.
  • John Beddoe, the founder and president of the British Anthropological Institute, developed in his book "The Races of Man" (1862), an "Index of Nigressence", from which he argued that the Irish had craniofacial features close to Cro-Magnon man and thus had links with the "Africinoid" races
I'm speechless that drivel like this is in an article about Black people. How is this remotely relevant?
Historical interest. This article is about everyone who called himself or herself black or was called black. Period.
  • As an adult, Michael Jackson's ancestors still come from Africa, but he is no longer dark skinned and thus does not meet the first requirement in Dictionary.com's definition.
Racist and offensive.
But put in a black person. Some think he is still black and some do not.
  • Bill Clinton is not considered black by any definition of the term, however Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison metaphorically described him as the first black president because of his dysfunctional background
Like this is relevant to the article.
Of historical and social interest.
  • According to Cavalli-Sforza, Europeans are genetically intermediate between Africans and East Asians[49] making many Blasians no more black on the genetic level than whites are.
This is OR unless I'm very much mistaken, as well as being pure fronteer gibberish
I do not like the term blasian which I am not familiar with. I guess Cavalli-Sforza did not say this?
  • Afrocentrists caused controversy by arguing that Jesus may have been black
So what, it's irrelevant to the article.
But of phenomenal interest to black people and they want it in here. Also of social interest.
  • Warren Harding may have some negro blood making him the first black president to those who cite the one drop rule.
More racism (what's the "one drop" rule?) that obnoxious "Negro" word again.
Again huge historical and social significance.
  • Recent genetic tests found that Whoopi Goldberg is of 92% sub-Saharan ancestry.
Who gives a toss?
Black people wrote this. Remember that.

The point is that many of these people are Black people (bizarely some are not, and others who clearly are are claimed not to be) who have achieved great things, but all you seem to be interested in is defining them by the various "categories" white racist anthropologists or white authoritarian governments or white writers of dictionaries have decided to put them in. Come on, have pictures of well known Black people by all means, but define them by their achievements as individuals, not by dubious and often offensive "racial" epithets. I'm not a Black person myself, but I find this really offensive, and about 50 years out of date.

It is out of date. That is why I want it balanced with modern science as well. But many black people are actually pretty racist. This was not written by whites, but by blacks. So ....--Filll 21:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Some of them still have to be challenged on grounds of their factuality. If the assertion about Cavalli-Sforza saying some nonsense is not fixed I'll have to flag the article. Sorry, I've given the interested parties a chance to fix it. The missing citation to the "clustering" argument has been supplied, but the main error of attribution is still present.
How do we know that all these beautifully ironic captions were written by "black" people?
Here is what I think about them. To give them their due, their very lack of intellectual rigor and resulting self-destruct button (just waiting for the individual capable of reading and reasoning to push) makes an important point:
The one justification I can see for this section is its ironical function. It may educate those who can see the nuttiness of a "black" who is all of 89% of having all the "requisite black genes," a "black" who is presumably only 50% "black", a population of modern Africans whom the facts of population dynamics an propinquity would suggest might be something less than 100% "black" and who display some characteristics that might be "backwash" of genetic material from the boonies across the pond and who are not to be regarded as "black", a group whose Y-chromosome data indicates are members of the first wave of migration out of Africa and appear to have retained many of the early characteristics of their ancestors without admixture of mutated lines of development but are not to be regarded as "black", something that confuses census takers (who want the fast pigeon hole) with geneticists and therefore would seem to ignore both the evidence of their senses and the growing knowledge of the genetic history of a group of dark-skinned people, a Tiger Woods (who is black when caught driving an expensive car in what somebody regards as "the wrong part of town" but who has vociferously objected to the Thai side of his family being treated as nonexistent by those who want to claim him in a positive way as "black," Irish who are regarded as "black" despite being so lacking in pigment that you can see their capillary systems if you look at them on the streets of Dublin where the sun apparently never shines much brighter than the moon shines at the Equator (sorry for the hyperbole, but the sun is weak and the pigment is not called forth by what little there is there, go see for yourselves), Michael Jackson and Michael Jackson bleached (does that need comment?), Bill Clinton, like Michael Jackson 2, white on the outside but "black" on the inside, and truly black by somebody's standard, a citations regarding Blasians that makes the same ironic point by being somebody "half black" and equated to N. Europeans (who were "white" in earlier captions but now "half black and half white"--so two "half black and half white" individuals should resemble each other but the photographed individual obviously who not be mistaken for one of the "black Irish" or even a "dark Italian," the assertion that Jesus was black when if his alleged genetic history is correct he was half Jewish and half divine (and the Jewish part would have looked more like the Arabs of the day just as Jesus's language was Aramaic and maybe a little closer to Arabic than to Hebrew but anyway you look at it he would have been closer to Ethiopians than to "real Africans" (see the drivel about the un-African Ethiopians above), Warren Harding, a white conservative Republican hoist by the petard of the "one drop rule" (Surely he would have felt crushed to be U.S. President but not white. Sure he would...). The only virtual fly in my ointment is Whoopie Goldberg, who would probably find this series of malapropisms hilarious. She is just a bit more than a "drop" from being "black," but she is "black." Every one of these little captions is ironic. Every one of these captions says that [race] is a word without an agreed-upon definition, a word so characterless that it does not mean anything.

P0M 04:12, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

That is the point of the captions: to demonstrate that the word has a wide variety of meanings. I agree that possibly some of the captions should be slightly altered. The reason I am defending them however is I was here when they were created. Of course I do not know for SURE that the individuals who created them or wrote most of the article were black. But one has to only look at the talk history and archives to get an idea about what went on. We had all kinds of discussions and charges and countercharges about who was black enough to write the article. White people or asian people who were here were disinvited to edit the article so that only black people could edit it, since it was "their" page. We had several factions:
  • One group pushing for a "black unity" theme who wanted the page to be a rallying point for all dark-skinned people from around the whole world. These were mainly politically active American blacks who want to see the entire world through the lens of American racial politics. They want to claim Dalits are black, Tamils are black, Aeta are black and Shan are black etc.
  • One group that hates the word black being applied to them since they feel it has negative connotations and wanted to limit its use as much as possible.
  • One group that thought black was an evil label white people had used against them and wanted to use the article to prove white racism
  • Some groups who argued about whether "black" was synonymous with "african" or "sub Saharan african" or not
  • Some individuals who had substantial amounts of training in "black studies", a sort of pseudo science taught at politically correct American universities
  • Groups who believed that humans had originated in Africa
  • groups that did not believe that humans had originated in Africa
  • groups that believed whites had evolved from lower primates first and were therefore inferior to blacks whose skin is darker than primates and whites, and have less hair than whites and primates
  • groups that believed that blacks had separated first from lower primates because they are from Africa, and were therefore the first men and superior to mutations that came later like whites and asians
and several other groups. These groups fought and the discussions were pretty viscious. Really viscious. I have seen them over and over and many people were banned from the site over it. I have not seen any of them here for the last few days, but I am not sure they are gone so the page can be safely edited at will. I fear that big changes will result in big fights. That is all. I am not in love with the way the page is right now. Far from it.--Filll 15:12, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Implications and interpretations

This article serves or can serve two purposes. It can describe black people, in terms of what is known about them. Like, they have dark skin (no surprise here!) and distinctive facial feautures, etc.

It can also talk about how people have regarded blacks - in terms of "race" or even just "skin color". For example, "light-skinned blacks" are often more popular (as entertainers or sports celebrities) than darker skinned ones. Is that too much for the present article to handle?

I hesitate to go over to Race because it's filled with discontent and fights over whether there even *is* such a thing a race, a dispute which drowns out every calmly-voiced attempt to describe the general *attitude* toward black people.

Both whites and blacks have a "concept" of who black people are, and what their "value" is. Is this something Wikipedia can handle?--unsigned contribution by Ed Poor

I hope that we can present a diversity of opinions here. I will point out that only some blacks have distinctive facial features. I will also point out that "black" is often not about "skin color" even. Many people classified as "black" actually have paler skin than many caucasians and east asians. It is true that there is a bit of bias within communities of black people as well of course. I hope that this can be mentioned in the article. I also would like to see material that supports the notion that there is a black race, and all the disagreements about who is in that black race. I also would like to see scientific material that counters this viewpoint. What is wrong with having ALL of these in the article? Because a reader will want to have access to it all. --Filll 19:43, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

What is an article about "Black people" really about?

Here is a graph, a family tree. It is accurate (scientific, done with the best technology), but it is flawed because it is abstract. It abstracts from all the adventuresome individuals going around like honeybees from branch to branch of the flowering tree, carrying pollen among all the branches.

Abstract family tree of humankind
Enlarge
Abstract family tree of humankind

It does not draw in the connections that occur in the real world, e.g., the children of my friends. One family has a Chinese father and a N. European mother, another has a N. European father and a Japanese mother. And then there is my friend Syrtiller, whose family connections go off in all sorts of directions. The Australian group stayed relatively unconnected by any great number of those little lines for several tens of thousands of years. But now the same filigree of colored lines from all the other endpoints would have to be drawn in to show all the real-world complexity that such abstract charts conceal.

According to this chart, nobody has a straight-line shot at the original branching off point where Homo sapiens departed from all the other Homo species. And another important point: If I understand it correctly this chart was built up by a systematic process of determining who is most similar to whom. The mutations that produced the differences would have to be inferred as far as this chart goes. The argument would be, e.g., that you cannot get a group of people that resemble each other by virtue of being redheads unless a mutations occurred that is responsible for this relatively new hair color. But we knew that there were redheads long before we knew about genes, and we knew that red hair color it heritable.

There are rare cases (involving relatively recent mutations) where a genetic characteristic has not spread all over the globe. One instance would probably be the blue skin color mutation found in the United States. It is only a few generations old, and it appears to carry some health risks along with it, so it may not spread far and fast. But for the most part you will find somebody with a certain characteristic in any population group.

So, what does it mean to be African, and what does it mean to be black? Not quite the same thing because "blackness" only refers to a subset of the characteristics of people found in Africa. And what it means to "be black" depends on which individual is deciding on the subset of characteristics. As Sria has pointed out, not everybody wants to define the subset so that it would include people who inherited the dark skin color but who did not inherit the nose structure or the tightly curled hair.

All of this stuff is a good lesson in how human beings use their minds to reach out and organize perceptions (data) into "things." "Black people," as has been shown right here on this discussion page, means different things to different people. So how should we structure any article about an undefined or a contestedly defined subject?P0M 07:09, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the idea was to state that black means many different things, and that there is no uniformly accepted definition of what the term "black" means. Some self-identify as black, some have been called black by others, some reject the label of black. There are social aspects to it and historical science associated with the label. However, our best modern science demonstrates that there is no "black race" from a genetic point of view, as hard as some people might want to make that case for social reasons etc.--Filll 18:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Sound good to me. P0M

Here is another way to organize the information about the diversification of the human race during the last 50,000 years or so. Note that all humans alive today trace their descent back to a single "ur-father" who lived sometime around 50,000 years ago. The other male lines of descent have died out in the intervening years, or at least nobody has found a living human who doesn't fit on this chart somewhere.

The discoveries of Spencer Wells and his associates. The markers are not significant mutations. It's just that, e.g., M3 carriers are all of Amerind descent.
Enlarge
The discoveries of Spencer Wells and his associates. The markers are not significant mutations. It's just that, e.g., M3 carriers are all of Amerind descent.

Little mutations occur all the way along all of these temporal tracings. (See Wells's book, p. 182f if you want to see where each of these migration trails ended. I put M130 down twice simply because the trail split somewhere around Malaysia and one group went up and around into N. America while the other group went to Australia.

Some of the mutations have been good, some of the mutations have been bad (killing their possessors off in the embryonic stage or later in some cases), and some have mixed evaluations (for instance, the mutation that protects against malaria but gives people sickle cell anemia). It's hard to come up with examples of good mutations. Maybe it is a mutation that gives Amerinds native to the high mountains of S. America a much better ability to survive at high altitudes. But the idea that one is better either because one is on the M168 path that is drawn straight-line from the bottom to the top or because or because one is on the M3 path that diverged from the M242 path that diverged from the M43 path that diverged from M9 that split from M168 makes as much sense as saying that the person who started on Interstate 40 at one end and got off Interstate 40 on the other coast is in a better place than one who traveled from coast to coast by side roads, county and state highways, and segments of a number of other Interstates. Thus far nobody has discovered a path that takes them to the land of $0.25 gasoline or billion-mile automobile engines, just as Olaf Stapledon's Odd John' is still science fiction. P0M 22:30, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

The chart you show [first] above is by Cavalli-Sforza and it clearly shows that Caucasians branched off of Africans and that North East Asians branched off of Caucasians. Since you are the one who posted this chart, I am wondering why you are also the one disputing the fact that Caucasians are genetic intermediates between Africans and East Asians since it's clearly demonstrated by that chart. True, the chart is misleading because it doesn't show all the mixing that occurs between the different branches (aka races)however mixed races simply attach to whatever branch the preponderance of their ancestors come from and almost everyone can be assigned to a race that way. I just think you're making things more complicated than they need to be. Bluescientist 22:38, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
No, it shows nothing about "branching." The "branching" idea has to be inferred because C-S was looking at characteristics in situ, and C-S is not a second-rate scientist. It is not an unreasonable hypothesis to make, and in fact it is a hypothesis that has been born out by mitochondrial DNA research, tracing back to African Eve, but that research doesn't show up on the chart. (I'd like to supply such a chart too, but I haven't found one yet, nor have I found the data to use to make my own chart.)
No, I am not disputing (or supporting for that matter) the idea that Caucasians are genetic intermediates between Africans and East Asians. That's an oversimplification, for one thing, as the second chart shows. (It may be clearer in Wells's diagram, which shows the paths through space on a map of the world.) But that's not been what I have been trying to point out. Let me be very clear about that one thing:
We as yet have no evidence that C-S said what the caption claims he said. Click through and read the purported evidence. If somebody wrote that Blue Scientist said that the moon is made of blue cheese and offered as proof the unevidenced claim that P0M said so in an interview with that somebody, would you like it if there was a claim somewhere: "Bluescientist claims moon made of blue cheese."* and when you looked down at the * it said, "In an interview with Blookie Tarr given this day in Peru, Nebraska to the food editor of the Peruvian Depression, noted scientist P0M informed this reporter that Bluescientist thinks the moon is made of blue cheese..." Do I need to draw this charade out any farther. We aren't even sure that Marks really said what Time claimed he said, much less that it reflects anything that C-S would have said.
Good grief. Evidence and analysis. Evidence and analysis. If C-S were as dumb as he is being represented he probably was dumb enough to say the same dumb thing more than once. It oughtn't be difficult to find one certifiable instance. And while people were reading his magnum opus they might educate themselves about what he really does have to say--among other things that [race] is not a useful concept. (I've cited that passage somewhere above and will retrieve that information and put it here.) P0M 04:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that [the stuff somewhere before P0M's long rant just above ;-) ] is a good short hand way for the average person to think about it. The truth is far more complicated, since it involves a complicated metric in a high dimensional space which is impossible to visualize.--Filll 22:56, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I just found an early map by C-S that parallels fairly well what Wells found later on the basis of other evidence. FWIW, it doesn't show any back-channeling from Asia to Europe at all. It shows one arrow going out of the general area of Ethiopia to Great Britain and another arrow going from the Middle East up to Scandinavia. Another arrow heads out of Ethiopia, Branches somewhere around Afghanistan, and one path goes to India while another path heads off to just north of Korea, and so forth. It's highly stylized, so I'm not too dismayed that one arrow ends up on an island in the Arctic Ocean. I don't think I can display the data on a time line since that part of the story appears to have been left blank.
One thing to keep in mind in all of this is that if there is a successful mutation, something that keeps everybody safe from a prime environmental threat, and it gets carried by one intrepid and amorous soul half the way across the world, the gene can prosper and spread without necessarily being linked to the original carrier's red hair, violet eyes, and blue skin (or whatever other extraneous characteristics he may have carried). One nice thing about males, they can really get around. P0M 05:17, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

What is wrong with this deleted section?

Scientists believe that consumers of primarily vegetarian diets found insufficient dietary sources of vitamin D in Northern climates, which were therefore unavailable for agricultural colonization until a mutation developed that limited skin pigmentation and thereby promoted vitamin-D synthesis.[2]

I am not claiming the article is so great, but chopping it up so much will cause trouble, I promise you. Just look back in the talk history.--Filll 21:56, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

People are making all kind s of rapid fire changes with little or no justification. Don't be afraid to revert changes you feel are unjustified before they accumulate. The more slowly the article changes, the more opportunity to reach consensus. Bluescientist 22:31, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
This was removed for the simple reason it has nothing to do with Black people whatsoever. It's about what might have caused a selection for loss of pigment in human skin. And it's not a universally accepted theory. Still it has absolutely nothing to do with Black people, so why is it in the article? There's loads of irrelevant stuff like this in the article that has nothing to do with Black people. Indeed the article is primarily a collection of relatively unrelated "factoids", some of which may have some relevance to Black people, many of which don't. Alun 22:42, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
First of all you removed all sorts of things. Second of all, who are you to decide what is and isn't relevant. This article has been stable for a while now. Bluescientist 22:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Stable? I don't think so, it is not up to you to decide when it is finished and when it is not. I did remove all sorts of things, mainly because they were totally irrelevant, broke wikipedia rules regarding neutrality, original research or were just plain wrong. For example if you had bothered to read the section about Africa, you would have percieved that I had linked to the Multiregional hypothesis article, as for some strange reason the hypothesis was alluded to in the article, but not actually mentioned. Indeed the mention it did get was in fact a misrepresentation of the hypothesis. I also changed the bizarre reference to African Eve to a proper link to the Recent single-origin hypothesis, which is a far more appropriate article to link to. Indeed the section was far superior after my edits than before, it read better, there were more relevant articles linked to, and much of the irrelevant stuff had been removed. For example how is the racist ravings of a non-expert in evolution and his theories about Africans at all relevant to whether the first humans were Black people or not?

After Darwin this view was adapted to claim that blacks were at a lower stage of evolution. In recent times this view that blacks are more primitive has been revived by J. Phillipe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario, who argues that because blacks were indeed the first race to branch off to from the human evolutionary tree, they are primarily superior in primitive traits like size of genitalia, salience of muscles and buttocks, and reproductive output, but lag behind when it comes to more evolved traits like brain size and social organization, especially when compared to orientals, whom Rushton believes evolved most recently in a challenging ice age environment. "One theoretical possibility," said Rushton, "is that evolution is progressive and that some populations are more advanced than others."[25]

Well it's not, it seemed little more than a thinly veiled way to introduce racist pseudo-science that does not even conform to the NPOV policy, this dingbat is so far from mainstream science that he should set up his offices on Pluto. But somehow his ravings get squeezed in here, even though they are totally irrelevant to the article and the section in the article. How is this relevant to human origins? How can he conclude that there is a "progressive" branch in human history but that the African one is "static? The section was about whether Black people were the original humans, so how does his neo-nazi ideas fit in to that? How can Black people be the first to branch from the "human evolutionary tree"? Humans have evolved (speciated) once, and only once. If there was a branch then how can one be progressive and the other not? This is not science it is nazism. This is a clear braeach of wikipedia policy on neutrality. Your choice of what to include is indicative of a very narrow and essentially biased and racist attitude. This article, at present, seems to serve no purpose than to demean and humiliate Black people by only representing the views of racist pseudo-scientists who have an axe to grind. Alun 23:12, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Some scientist Rushton is. He should visit the "large" primates building in his local zoo and do some actual science with a tape measure. P0M 06:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I am again warning you. Black people wrote those sections. Several groups of blacks just about tore each other to shreds arguing about what agenda they wanted to push. If you change this too much they will be on the warpath. I am sure of it. I think that Rushton is sort of second rate, but it has had a huge influence and so should be mentioned. It should be balanced with real science, but there is no reason to throw out material which has been very important historically, and socially and in terms of social impact. This is not a paper about just what is known about black people based on current genetic knowledge. It is far broader than that.--Filll 23:20, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Why do you keep "warning me" what you going to do? Throw your dolly out of the pram? I don't care who wrote it or why, it's wrong, Rushton is not a credible scientist, this article is im breach of wikipedia neutrality policy. Rushton is not "second rate" he's a joke, and any article that cites him has no credibility. but it has had a huge influence Where exactly would that be? I've never heared of him, and when I looked him up I found an article he had published and it was bloody rubbish. He's not a biologist or an anthropologist, and he seems not to understand even the fundamentals of evolution. Besides which Rushton's "work" is irrelevant to the section, it has no bearng on whether Black people were the first humans because his work doesn't have anything to do with this theory. Alun 23:30, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
You obviously have not gone head to head with a black person with a huge amount of "black pride" that will use the race card and charge you with racism and threaten you up one side and down the other. Just wait and see. I do think Rushton sounds marginal from what I have read. However, his books have sold a lot. They have penetrated into black studies in the universities. They have decided that genetics is crap and science is crap and what they say go since they are black and they get to decide what is said about black people. So you are getting a little bit of a whiff in this article about what is taught in black studies programs in American Universities. I just do not want this page and article to descend into another huge fight.--Filll 23:53, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


A huge amount of material was removed or unilaterially rewritten. I would again caution you. The text you see now was arrived at by really vicious debate over a long period of time with many inputs. Do not summarily change it drastically and remove big pieces. I think that a section about the vitamin D theory is interesting and useful, for example. Some of our more combative contributors here would have a tantrum at what you have done. This has to be debated and discussed carefully before more is done. I would not be surprised if someone revered everything that wobble did. Sorry, but I have seen it before many times here.--Filll 22:54, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Caution me? Who are you "the wiki police". Removing pseudo-scientific racist tripe improved the article. If you want to keep the crud you started with, then so be it, but this article is extremely poor, very biased and essentially racist and wrong. You give credance only to far right extremist views and opinions, and seem to have no regard for neutrality. There's even some original research in there. This doesn't resemble an encyclopaedia article so much as something written by a schoolchild in a rush as part of their homework. Badly written with atrocious and biased research. Alun 23:23, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I am going to do nothing of course. I just have been witness to unbelievable fights here and many many people banned over this article. And I am afraid some of what you are doing might be like throwing gasoline on a fire. I do not want to keep the crud we started with, or at least in unaltered form. Far from it. I want it to be more balanced with science, but it has to be done in a gradual way without trodding on too many toes. Otherwise there will be hell to pay. And NOT from me. I have just seen it before.--Filll 23:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Look if you only want to include politically correct science in the article then you might as well delete the whole thing, because the politically correct view is that race can't possibly exist because that leads to racism. Well if there's no such thing as race, then black people don't actually exist and are little more than a social illusion. If that's your position then nominate the article for deletion, because if race is pseudoscience, then by definition, so are black people. Gottoupload 00:25, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

How illogical is that? Quite frankly it is nonsense. I only want to include reliable science, calling the gibberish spouted by loons like Rushton "science" is a massive distortion, apparently borne of your desire only to include "white supremacist" offensive material here. It is clearly nonsense to claim that we canot have a discussion about racism without being offensive. It is clearly nonsense to claim that we "must" include offensive material in order to have a proper article. It is clear that this article only includes extremist points of view. Indeed your claim that the politically correct view is that race can't possibly exist because that leads to racism is facile, and either a deliberate distortion of the debate, so you can "gain a quick put down" or you just don't have a clue what you are talking about. Race is very real, but it is a disputed concept, there is no genetic or biologically accepted definition of race, it is a social concept. We can include facts about racism against black people, slavery and segregation in the USA, appartheid in SA even the nutters who try to give their nazism an academic veneer, but this article doesn't even attempt to portray these in anything like a neutral way, and gives these pseudo-scientists a free pass, with no mention of the controversy they have created, or indeed of the fact that they are far from mainstream science. You have failed to address any of my concerns, claiming that my insistence upon neutrality is nothing more than "political correctness" is tantamount to claiming that the policy itself is "political correctness", and therefore I suggest you read the policy carefully. Why are you distorting what I am saying? I never said "race is a pseudoscience", "race" is not a science at all, and if you think it is then you really should not be editing here. What I said was that the gibberish that people like "Rushton" produce is pseudo-science. You appear not to understand the simplest of concepts. Race is a "social" concept, some scientists like Coon and more recently some geneticists have tried, and notably failed to show that people fit into discreet "biological races". These ideas belong in the "race" article, not here. The ramblings of morons like Rushton belong on the "Racism" article and not here. This article is about Black people, not about racism. Do we talk about who Black people are and what their contribution is to humanity? Sports, Music, Politics, Entertainment. Or do we just have an article that gives credibility to extremist nutters who have no academic credentials? When I see a page about Black people I want to see their contributions to humanity, not a justification for racism. I never said we shouldn't include a section on racism, but this whole article is a justification for racism, and gives the impression that biologists accept that racial categories exist. If you want to include science as you claim (which I doubt because despite your claims you seem to have included zero science at the moment) then you need to state that some scientists have tried and failed to classify Homo sapiens on a subspecific racial level. Start by explaining why people looked for differences between slave owners and slaves in North America, (they wanted to "justify" slavery in the 18th-19th century because the more different they could show people to be the better their case for enslaving people), this was based on physical difference, if these "differences" were recorded and claimed to be large (the bigger the differences the better for their cause) and scientific then it proved that "races" had very different origins. When slavery was abolished people like Coon did a lot of detailed work on differences in human anatomy between people, but they had the same basic agenda, to try to "prove" as big a difference as possible, Coon was very close to a great deal of segregationists, and he tried to use his work to support his Multiregional hypothesis, which was little more than an attempt to exagerate the differences between what he now tried to identify as seperate, discrete and non mixing "races" (but even Coons found that he could not show that these "populations" were discreet). How you can claim to want to discuss this without including the massive distortion that slavery and segregation had on the interpretation of results from American physical anthropologists is beyond me, you just seem to accept that Coon's conclusions were unbiased, and how can you include this information without including the Multiregional hypothesis and the fact that it is basically wrong? We then need to deconstruct the genetic evidence, which shows us that even at the molecular level we cannot show that humans are "segregated" into "discrete populations". This indicates that "race" ia a cultural and not a biological phenomenon. So if you want to include science, then please do, but include the whole history of science form the point of view of "white" North Americans having a biased and vested interest in distorting their findings to support their political points of view. Then include some objective modern science, and I mean genetics, there are papers that both support and dismiss the idea that genetics can be used to "racially" categorise people. Ten there is scope for a section about perceptions of Blackness, including equal rights in the US in the 60s and 70s and in South Africa in the post war period up untill the fall of the nazi appartheid regime. These are Black issues, equality, freedom, access to education, equal opportunities (what Americans call "affirmative action"), and these all pertain to Black people. What of Martin Luther King? He's not mentioned, neither is Nelson Mandela. I am not supprised that two of the most important Black people, who really did express the important issues for Black people are not included in this article, you'd rather include "pseudo scientist nazis" like Rushton than real science, and you want to define Black people according to how their oppressors, or would be oppressors want to define them, than how their most accomplished representatives define them. What happened to

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free....This note was a promise that all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.....I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state, sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. Martin Luther King

This is what you should be including. How can you include Rushton, and exclude Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, slavery, segregation, apartheid and the social and cultural revolutions of the past fifty years? Where's Kirk and Uhura's first interracial kiss? Where's the civil rights movement? You guys are so far from a good article. I could go on and on and on and on and on. Oh and please try to actually address my concerns rather than distorting what I say. Alun 06:52, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


I would agree with this. Just even mentioning the phrase "black people" is politically incorrect. A lot of what went on in the past was racist. Own to it. Admit it. Come clean.--Filll 00:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Why am I not supprised? We can mention it without giving it credibility. We can talk of race and racism and indeed the ideas of those who are racist, but we do not present only their point of view, and we do not present it as if it is accepted orthodox science, which is what this article does. Race is very real, but it is not defined biologically, and probably never will be. Some scientists have tried to do it, and have basically failed. Your are giving pseudo-science and racism credibility by presenting it as mainstream. Alun 06:52, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Race is a myth, racism is real. Dig it. P0M 06:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Sometimes it is best to consider the spirit in which things are said. Sometimes it is well to heed the example of Liang Qi-qiao who pointed out that anybody who nailed him on something he had said or had done that was wrong was in fact his teacher and so deserved his thanks. (He was tacitly admitting, I suspect, that sometimes he hated to hear a correct criticism given by somebody who was, shall we say, not exactly a friend of his.)
Wikipedia sets people up sometimes by advising: "Edit boldly!" So the person new to Wikipedia edits something that is obviously wrong, the idealogue who wrote the original thing instantly reverts with an edit message something like, "This is a stable article. We don't need any more evidence from the likes of you telling us that race is a myth. We want to keep the article balanced with content that shows that race is a reality." (I could look up the original edit summary, which was a bit more pithy than that, but you get the idea.) In that case I tried the discussion page route and got a very snide response from somebody who appears to have thought little of my knowledge or intellectual ability. I retreated, dropped editing the article and went back to dealing with venomous spiders, which seemed the prudent course of action. Later another editor made similar changes and received the same kind of a flip-pant response. I joined the fray, but this time I was a bit smarter. It took a long time to prevail, and it is somewhat a losing battle or at least somewhat like a battle against malaria. It always keeps coming back. But at least I have learned what does not work.
Writing something and having it reverted does not accomplish much. The person who reverts can do so as a knee-jerk reaction. What has been effective in the past is to absolutely nail the evidence and analysis on the discussion page first and then warn people that you are going to edit accordingly if they can't show anything wrong with what you have put up.
There can evolve among the editors a spirit of common purpose to get the correct story out. When a group like that achieves a kind of critical mass then it becomes difficult for idealogues to make any headway. They can be disruptive. I've seen disruptive activities by editors to the articles on DNA and on Race that have driven away or nearly driven away serious scientists who have tried to get the simple objective truth out and have been harrassed by individuals who have immense conviction that they are correct but who can offer no evidence or analysis that appeals to anyone else.
Whenever I've changed something that seemed so obviously wrong that it must be a typo or something like that and have then gotten an angry reaction I've always wished with the wisdom of hindsight that I'd saved myself some grief by taking it to the talk page first. P0M 06:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Very true, especially with this topic. There are so many with special agendas here of various sorts. So they want to push certain points of view. And I have seen a lot of changes to the article as some editors resist any changes at all and it sits stagnant for weeks on end while people fight about nonsense. See the history and/or archive.--Filll 06:10, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

tell me what is wrong with this introduction

The term "black people" is used, or has been used, to refer to many different groups. Unfortunately, there is no uniformly accepted definition of who is a "black person". Therefore, this article describes several different perspectives on the word "black" (and its equivalents in other languages) when this word is used to describe people. This word is used currently and it has also been used this way in the past. There are a variety of definitions of "black people" that are based on racial, socio-political, lexical, biological, and other factors.

The concept of "black" people has been traced to the ancient Greeks and Romans who labelled dark skinned peoples from North East Africa as "Kushite", "Nubian", and "Ethiopian"...

I think it is clearer English and simpler. What is wrong with it?--Filll 23:01, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

If no one objects. I will put it in the article.--Filll 01:15, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
What's wrong with the intro we've always had? It summarizes the whole article. Gottoupload 01:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


Well first the intro you have right now is about the 100th that existed. So there is nothing special about the current intro. However, in the current intro the English stinks and it is not easy to read. My proposed change does not remove any information, just makes the english cleaner.--Filll 02:47, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Racism

To ignore the fact that the term black people is and has been intimiately connected with racism is to whitewash and ignore an ignominious history most Europeans would rather forget. I say keep the records of European past racism in the article. Expose it to the light of day. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.--Filll 23:05, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

You don't have to include racist images or give credibility to racists to include racism into the article. For a start you don't even talk about racism in the article, you present the racism of Rushton and others as if it is a sound scientific theory from a reputable scintist that is held in some respect by proper scientists. Well he's not, he's a maverick and respectable scientists would have nothing to do with him or his ilk, but you give him a voice here, and you give him credibility by not producing any counter arguments against him. I'm sure there must be many reputable scientists that have disputed his work. But there's not a peep out of them from the authors of this article. See WP:NPOV Alun 23:36, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that this article and Rushton should be leavened with other references and with science. I think you are playing with fire if you want to remove him and go against the "black pride" perspective that is widely taught in US universities.--Filll 23:55, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Well then the solution is to add a quote from someone criticising Rushton. Deleting cited material only causes edit wars and robs the reader of the chance to see all sides. Removing Rushton from the article is wrong for 2 reasons. A) If we limit the artilce to only "credible" sources, there will be nothing left, as few mainstream scientists openly admit to believing in race (and thus have nothing to say about black people) and none of the Afrocentric views in the article are by mainstream sources, and B) As disturbing as Rushton's views are, he is a credible source. His entire theory is based on the work of Cavalli-Sforza, he's a professor at a prestigous university, and he's a member of the prestigous American Association of Advancement of Science. Gottoupload 00:32, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Again, I agree completely.--Filll 00:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
The term "black people" is what we have, we have to live with it. I prefer African people, but "black" or "African" is not a major issue. An article about Black People that portrays black people as "original man" contra whites as "modern humans" is stupid. Making it that the identity of black people depends solely on the comparison to other peoples, or how blacks are perceived by other people is annoying – as if "Black People" cannot be described without contrasting them to others. Furthermore, the fixation to, and the misrepresentation of evolutionary theory is disturbing. Darwinists claim that early humans evolved in Africa, not that Africans are early humans. I am not entirely sure that the distinction is clear to everyone here. I have pointed this out before, but abuse is all I've gotten. I refuse to sit back and be equalled to early man. --Ezeu 00:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
You are entirely right. Sorry if you've gotten abuse in the past, but both the Wells diagram and the Cavalli-Sforza diagram that I'm going to have to re-draw and post indicate that the people who remained in Africa have continued to change. The C-S map is actually superior in this regard simply because Wells set out to discover the migration paths that people followed after they left Africa. The C-S map shows several hereditary/evolutionary trails within Africa. And it should be obvious by investigating even the superficial characteristics like skin color, hair texture, epicanthal folds, etc., etc., that Africa was not somehow preserved from the cosmic rays or whatever that make the little changes (usually so trivial that they wouldn't be noticed) that we call mutations. For one thing, the skin colors of people in Africa are generally pretty well adjusted to UV radiation (corrected for natural shielding such as heavy jungle cover). When the skin colors aren't well adjusted it appears to be because of recent migrations (warfare, conquest, encroachment of one population upon another due to crowding, etc., etc.). It is always important to try to look at populations that are in equilibrium, but humans being what they are they keep getting themselves all stirred up. P0M 09:00, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Ezeu I respect and understand what you're saying. But Rushton is using the recent discovery that humans started in Africa to argue that blacks are in fact less evolved then caucasians who are less evolved than Orientals. I guess it would be like saying that because the earliest life started in the ocean, those organisms that never left the ocean are less evolved, than organsims who crawled out into the land to become mammals and primates. Gottoupload 00:45, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Rushton is trying to operate at above his pay grade as far as I can tell. No humans living today possess even subspecies differentiation from other humans. The Neanderthals were members of a separate subspecies. That means that while they could breed successfully with members of Homo sapiens sapiens the interbreeding was at a sufficiently low rate that the two groups, had they persisted and continued to diverge, might have created sufficient differences to make interbreeding impossible. The midway point is reached when you get a situation such as we see the horses and donkeys. They can get each other pregnant, but the offspring are so rarely fertile that they never constitute a third breeding population. The boundaries between subspecies are remarkably imprecise and one of the scientists who keeps us from making horrible errors on the Spider article has told me that, to paraphrase, it's a crock. The one good thing about spiders is that if they differentiate to form separate species what seems always to happen is that the genitals go together like lock and key, and when they split they change both the locks and the keys. Mammals are more flexible. Wolves are supposedly of a different species from dogs, but they interbreed quite successfully. It's evidently social features that keep them pretty well isolated genetically.
I have to agree with this as well--Filll 15:27, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
If humans living today don't even have differentiation to the level of subspecies, exactly what are the big differences that everybody is so up-tight about? Nothing as far as I can tell. Name one successful mutation that puts [race] (sub-subspecies) A above [race] B. Name one.
BTW I just had an epithany as a result of the "gallery" controversy. I may be as black as Michael Jackson. P0M 07:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Ugh...Are you sure that is what Rushton is claiming? Ugh.--Filll 00:51, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I exact understand Rushton's logic, but he seems to be saying that blacks and orientals are opposites in every way: Penis size, brain size, personality, testoerone, rate of mental hospitalization, twinning frequency, rate of maturation, gestation period, musical rhythm, and that Whites are always in the middle. He says this is partly caused by the time period when each of the 3 races branched off of the main trunk of the human evolutionary tree. Africans branched off first. Caucasoids branched off second. And Orientals branched off last. He seems to be saying that blacks are the cool race (small brain but large penis and lots of rhythm) and Orientals are the nerd race (big brain but small penis and no rhythm) and that whites are just in the middle in every way Gottoupload 01:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I have not read Rushtons research, I will if it is available. In the mean time, allow me to seriously doubt his science. Anyway, "most evolved" and "highest intelligence" usually correspond, and we all know that humans are equally intelligent (albiet not equally educated). --Ezeu 01:06, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Well Rushton argues that the races are not equally intelligent. He says that blacks have an average IQ of 85, whites have an average IQ of 100, and Orientals have an average IQ of 106. However Rushton is quick to point out that these are only average differences and that there are some blacks who score much much higher than even most Orientals. Gottoupload 01:10, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
The answer is to find someone credible who reviews Rushton and thinks he is full of nonsense and put that in.--Filll 01:19, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
So you didn't even bother before you put this claptrap in the article? You obviously have no regard for neutrality or for reliable sources.
  • Psychologist and Peace Studies Researcher David P. Barash wrote in a scholarly review of Race, Evolution and Behavior "I don't know which is worse, Rushton's scientific failings or his blatant racism. [...] At least Rushton has a theory, namely, r- and K-selection. In brief, he argues that `Negroids' are relatively r-selected, `Mongoloids' K-selected, and `Caucasoids' in between. All racial distinctions are then seen to derive from this grand pattern, from differences in genital anatomy, to reproductive regimes, to IQ, etc. He even points to the higher frequency of low birth weight babies among black Americans, data that are undeniably consistent with an r-selection regime, but which might also be attributed to poor nutrition and insufficient prenatal care, and which, not coincidentally, have other implications for behaviour, IQ not the least. [...] I suspect that r- and K-selection does in fact have some relevance to variations in human behaviour, notably the so-called demographic transition, whereby economic development characteristically leads to reduced family size, and, moreover, a greater reliance on a variety of `K-type' traits. But this is a pan-human phenomenon, a flexible, adaptive response to changed environmental conditions of lowered mortality and greater pay-off attendant upon concentrating parental investment in a smaller number of offspring [...] Rushton wields r- and K-selection as a Procrustean bed, doing what he can to make the available data fit[...]. Bad science and virulent racial prejudice drip like pus from nearly every page of this despicable book"(Barash D.P (1995) Book review: Race, Evolution, and Behavior. Animal Behaviour 49:1131-1133.)
  • Humanities educator Dr. Barry Mehler at Ferris State University,[3] wrote critically of Rushton's book, stating "Rushton's theories are a bizarre mélange of nineteenth century anthro-pometrism and twentieth century eugenics. Although there is no evidence showing different cranial sizes between races, Rushton has cited the genetic distance studies of Allen Wilson of the University of California to claim that Africans have smaller brains and are more primitive than whites and orientals, who evolved to cope with the more demanding northern climes. Wilson commented: 'He is misrepresenting our findings'. These 'show that Asians are as closely related to modern Africans as Europeans are'. When asked if he was aware of any anthropological evidence at all that might support Rushton's claim, he replied, 'I'm not aware of any such evidence. The claim shocks and dismays me."Foundation for Fascism: the New Eugenics Movement in the United States, Patterns of Prejudice by Dr. Barry Mehler
  • Dr. Marcus W. Feldman, [4] Stanford University Population Biologist and recognized authority on r/K selection theory, claims that r/K is "absolutely inapplicable" to differences between humans.
  • Leonard Lieberman, professor of Anthropology at Central Michigan University wrote regarding Rushton's book "Rushton seldom carries out direct measurements and does not adequately explain his selective use of the research and writing of others."[5]
These were easy to find at Race, Evolution and Behavior. But we have an article about his book. I see no need to peddle this demented claptrap on an article that is abput Black people. Maybe you think we should quote "Mein Kampf" as well? Alun 11:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I am not going to defend Rushton. My only goal is to avoid upsetting some of the groups that have expressed such huge investment in the article and are hyper sensitive about what it says. I am arguing for compromise and balance. If we summarily remove all the stuff one person or another deems "racist", I fear that the article will again end up frozen and uneditable for months on end while editors curse at each other and charge each other with stupidity and racism and get themselves banned. Just look at the history. I would humbly suggest you put in those references and the quotes into the text to start to balance out Rushton. I found several similar reviews myself that confirm my intuition that Rushton is a fringe element at best. However, many African Americans and other blacks have seized on Rushton for their own purposes and defend its inclusion. And attempts to introduce more science are met with hostility. When I tried repeatedly to tell them that there was no scientific evidence for race, they were furious and I almost started a riot here.--Filll 15:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I am arguing for compromise and balance.
This comment is ludicrous. How can you be arguing for "ballance" when you want to include a neo-nazi racist like Rushton as if it were respectable science. If you want to include this as evidence of racial prejudice against Black people then I would accept it. But it's not presented in this way, it's presented as if it were mainstream academic opinion. This is dishonest, and is a diservice to the subject of the article. This is no where near ballanced. Just who exactly are you "compromising" with? I wonder if I should start to include quotes from the Nation of Islam in the White people article? I wonder how people would react to that. Alun 07:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  • If we summarily remove all the stuff one person or another deems "racist", I fear that the article will again end up frozen and uneditable for months
We remove any information that is offensive, or that is innapropriate. If we want to include certain racist points of view, we express them as a point of view, not as a fact. If we want to include claptrap like Rushton's we present it in its proper context, ie that of a maverick "pseudo-academic" "pseudo-scientist" with a racist agenda who is nowhere near the mainstream academic consensus. By not including this in it's correct context it is distorting science, and presenting science sa if this is mainstream and is the "consensus" scientific opinion. We also need to include mainstream scientific opinion in a proper section, which would not include Rushton. We also need to include a section on discrimination, racism, apartheid, segregation, socio economic problems steming from the continued disenfranchisement of Black people. These are relevant and important issues. To concentrate on a few ancient and modern neo-nazis deviates significantly from the actual subject of the article. You are not being anywhere near neutral in this, and you are no where near as impartial in you claim to be.
  • I would humbly suggest you put in those references and the quotes into the text to start to balance out Rushton.
I suggest we create a section about discrimination and bias against Black people, and include Rushton there. This Whole Rushton section is completelly irrelevant to the section of the article anyway, which should be a discussion about whether the first humans were Black, Rushton has nothing to say on this subject. Alun 07:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  • However, many African Americans and other blacks have seized on Rushton for their own purposes and defend its inclusion. And attempts to introduce more science are met with hostility. When I tried repeatedly to tell them that there was no scientific evidence for race, they were furious and I almost started a riot here.
Yeah, right. I think I know what you are trying to imply. You are giving your own agenda away, By their own words shall you know them. Alun 07:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I have read a little of Rushton's assertions. He is a nutcase scientist. His theories are not generally accepted. This, thank God, is Wikipedia, so we can disregard him. --Ezeu 01:24, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Well you're right, his views are not generally accepted. His theory is extremely controversial. However most of the people quoted in the article are nutcases. I thought Rushton was good in the original race section because we have one person arguing that blacks are superior because they're the first race, so it makes sense to balance this with an equally fringe view that blacks are more primitive because they are the first race. Gottoupload 01:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
When someone puts forth a silly assertion, you remove it – instead of putting forth an equally silly assertion.--Ezeu 01:34, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Rushton's "thesis" is based on flawed logic and an incorrect/distorted understanding of natural selection and evolution, neither of these things are progressive, it implies that "evolution" was being "directed" towards a specific goal. But selection/evolution are the products of random events. He seems to be asserting that humans form a progressive linear contunuum, with African people "branching off at an earlier time, and therefore represent a less "developed" people. This is nonsense, people evolved once, we are a species. Since the speciation event that resulted in anatomically modern people there has been little change in human biology, but we are all at an equal distance from the first AMH population, ther ehave been some addaptive changes in certain geographica locations, like thalasemia and sickle cell anaemia, which are selected for in malarial regions, but we are as "evolved" as each other, because when "branching" occurs it is equal, one cannot assume a "progressive" branch and a "regressive" branch, it doesn't make adaptive sense. Selection is adaptive, but generally keeps species that are well adapted constant, speciation events are usually associated with dramatic environmental events, like the collapse of an ecosystem. One theory is that Humans are the product of a "nuclear winter" which occured due to the erruption of a supervolcano, see Toba catastrophe theory. But to claim that African people "branched" from a progressive "trunk" and themselves did not adapt or develope in the interim (while the other branch or teunk did) is not only unsound reasoning, it goes against all correct evolutionary and selective theory. Rushton's "science" is politically and racially motivated, giving it credibility here betrays a lack of understanding of both human people as a species and al lack of undedrstanding about what this article should include. If Rushton's "theory" deserves any place on wikipedia it should be in the "racism" article. Alun 09:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't see any reason for keeping Rushton just because somebody with racist tendencies likes what he has to say. Who supports the retention of this stuff on any grounds other than that there is a threat of virtual violence if somebody tries to ax it? I would be deeply troubled, and also confused, if it turned out to be an African or an African-American. P0M 11:34, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Then remove the whole artilce. They're all silly assertions. It's silly to try to divide the world into black people, white people, yellow people, brown people. It's silly to self-identify based on color. But that's the subject of the article and we're either going to write it, or we should just delete it. Gottoupload 01:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I have to agree with you on this point. Except-- I for one would like to understand better the whole of the history of the human race, and starting with the process from the time and place where it started is appealing to me. From all that I have seen, the outlines of the story are that part of the original group moved into ranges where UV and heat were both higher and a darker skin better suited them for that environment. (I had a friend when I was in Taiwan, and I clearly remember what happened when she and my Chinese surrogate mother (from southern China) and I went to put me on the tramp steamer back to the U.S. I was sweating gallons. My surrogate mother was sweating at least quarts. My lady from from S.F. with ancestors in Africa was dry and comfortable. So much for white superiority. I'll bet neither one of them got skin cancer and actinic keratosis either...)
I would also like to follow this group of people as they migrated out along the edges of the Indian Ocean around to the area of Thailand, down the peninsula, across to Indonesia, and on to Australia. The history explains so much. It explains my almost black as coal Shan acquaintance I met in northern Thailand, for instance. What happened to these people as they encountered new environments? If I brought that Shan man to San Francisco, would anybody be able to tell he was Shan unless he informed them? Did they actually change? Some people who have written on this discussion group seem to reject the idea that they could be more closely related to Africans than , e.g., an aboriginal from South America. Why, for heaven's sake? Has something happened genetically to make people more racist and hateful the farther they get from Africa? Has something happened to make people more immune to diseases the farther they get from Africa? Has something happened to make people less capable of constructing concentration camps and conducting genocide the lighter their skins have become? When I was spending lots of time editing the Race article, I used to challenge people: Show me one positive trait, one positive mutation, that differentiates these [races] is some meaningful way. All sorts of mutations got mentioned, one way or another, but generally they were mutations that produced diseases, changes that were relatively trivial (like red hair), or minor improvements like a better ability to metabolize alcohol (and there is no way I know of to be sure that this trait is not present in groups that only recently encountered distilled alcohol, just waiting for the mill of selection to work its magic and promote the reproductive fortunes of those who can drink hard liquor and not suffer too greatly from it).
If there are indeed any really positive mutations, then some of them have surely shown up in Africa. For one thing, the higher the ambient temperature the faster the mutation rate. If anything especially good has turned up in Africa then let's hear about it. P0M 07:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Its not up to me, but if it were, I'd delete the article and rewrite it. It does not take excessive cleverness to figure out your motives for wanting the article deleted.--Ezeu 01:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
What's your motive for wanting to keep it? Gottoupload 02:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Gottoupload, read the first sentence of my previous message. --Ezeu 02:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I did read the first sentence, but rewriting the article will only cause new problems. Gottoupload 02:25, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

The reason for keeping it is that

  1. it includes historically important material
  2. it includes material that is in many black studies programs
  3. it includes material that had a substantial social impact

and most important is that there would be an immense uproar if you removed it, and it would not stay removed very long. If you removed it, you would start World War III. Just look at the history here.--Filll 02:09, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it would start World War III. I've seen a few attempts to get articles deleted, and as long as they have some content that it seems can be salvaged there is generally a flurry of stern advice about what is crap and then everybody goes home.
Even if it did get deleted, and even if I did get delighted, somebody would just start another article and call it "Black humans" or something that would be a bit better disguise.
It is worth carefully delineating the problems surrounding this term. As Ed Poor pointed out above, people are talking about "black people this" and "black people that" all the time -- but in ignorance. They think they know what "black people" means. "I know one when I see one." Many of these people would probably attack a visiting Shan with the same gusto they employ to attack visiting Kenyans.
Imagine a conversation with somebody with somebody who has bad feelings for black people. Imagine asking him to specify in what ways the black person differs from him. Most people get stuck after they mention skin color, hair texture, nose shape, lip shape. To each of these characteristics you say, "So what?!" At about this point the average racist will start shaking his fist at you because you've pushed his back up against the wall. He has no response left.
It would be better to make everybody whom we can reach that all the differences we can find are quite literally superficial, i.e., that they involve features or traits that are "on the surface," or, somewhat more precisely, "on the interface of the organism with the environment." Skin color matters. If you have already invented clothing and the synthesis of vitamin D, then it matters a lot less. Nose shape matters. Don't believe it? Ask the camel. There is a reason for people who evolved before space heating and breathing devides that heat and humidify incoming air were invented to favor big, long noses. Genital size? If you stick very much out of your trousers up north, uh, your dipstick may fall off. Body type? Same general argument. If you are long and lanky like I am a brief exposure to cold can drop your core body temperature like a brick. Hair texture matters. When I was driving through a desert area in my short sleeves, short pants, etc., a local contemptuously told me to get dressed. You want something to sop up sweat, let it evaporate where it will cool your body. You don't want to waste it cooling the desert sands. Sickle cell anemia is another one. It's not [race] linked, by the way. It shows up where malaria is prevalent.
Most people don't have a clue about these things. They confuse learned behaviors with innate differences. "I can't stand those people. They can't talk right. Why are they always gesticulating that way? Normal people don't act that way. Only the grub people hunch their shoulders. And look at them trying to dance! They can't move their asses. Must be something frozen up in their getaways."
So I think it is a good idea to keep the article, but with a firm grasp on "word and object" as Quine (?) captioned it. P0M 07:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

To put my money where my mouth is

I am thinking about compiling a list of academic books and peer-reviewed papers that show Rushton is full of nonsense. However, the viciousness is so deep surrounding this article that I do not think I could get any scientific or contrary content into the article. It would get reverted immediately since we are basically in a logjam, once again.--Filll 03:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that somebody who is editing had to be emotionally committed enough to put the Rushton stuff in to begin with. My experience has been that when colleagues in somebody's field do not deign to take the responsibility to challenge biased and unscientific writing, then the rest of us are going to be powerless. There will always be someone willing to say that Rushton's conclusions are academically respectable enough. Better to bare your incisors at the great apes in the zoo. P0M 09:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

An example of Rushton's problems: <bar> Rushton claims there is more AIDS in Africa because blacks are more oversexed and have more sex as a result. However, there are many alternate theories:

  1. There is plenty of evidence that Caucasians do not get AIDS as easily as Africans because of genes conferred by survival through various plagues
  2. Condoms are not as prevalent in Africa for cultural and economic reasons so this might contribute to the spread of AIDS
Might? I don't see how there could be any question. P0M 09:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  1. There is a much higher incidence of rape in Africa because of political conditions
  2. AIDS is more likely to be passed around in certain kinds of sex, such as anal sex. It is possible that anal sex is more common in Africa.
Pure speculation as you've stated it. Not so speculative when homosexual intercourse is factored in. Larger penis size will influence frequency of lesions, and lesions are good entry point for STDs.
  1. Because of the similarity of AIDS to simian AIDS in the African green monkey, AIDS might have emerged first in Africa
How is that fact relevant? It is generally accepted now that the disease has been traced back in time and space and the trail ends in Africa. But it seems to have really taken off first among homosexuals in Europe and the U.S. because of the promiscuous nature of a large percentage of homosexuals, the frequency of drug use among members of the same population that may have decreased attention to simple matters of hygiene. Moreover, HIV mutates rapidly and may have become more virulent before being re-introduced to Africa. Presence of simian AIDS may actually have been beneficial to Africans if some of them have developed antibodies to the SIV. There may have been some crossover immunity. There is a population of people who are remarkable HIV resistant, and if I remember correctly it is in Africa. I don't think any of this stuff has really been sorted out, however.
  1. Reuse of vaccination needles in Africa might have spread AIDS there more easily to cause there to be more AIDS
Right. If you give HIV to loads of people via dirty needles then it will be bad enough if only they suffer. However, most of them will have sexual partners, and some of them will have multiple sexual partners and not use condoms.
  1. Lower sanitation standards in Africa might contribute to the prevalence of AIDS
HIV is a difficult disease to catch. Almost the only way to contract it is to cut yourself somehow and then rub in some blood or semen. The one exception is that certain immune system cells can actually pass through the body/skin barrier and enter the space protected by the foreskin. Ordinarily that's good because these cells mop up disease microbes before they can find a scratch in that area and gain entry to the body. Unfortunately, HIV can hijack these immune cells and travel into the body when they go back inside to do whatever they do after they make their patrols.
  1. Social structures due to economic forces, necessitating long separations for families might contribute to AIDS
Definitely. Men isolated from families frequently take advantage of available opportunities for sexual intercourse, and many of these contacts involve people who accept multiple sexual encounters.
  1. Greater prevalence of prostitutes in Africa might contribute to spread of AIDS
That statement presumes that there are more prostitutes in Africa than elsewhere. How would one know for sure? Even where prostitution is legal, there are often reasons for hiding its presence. For instance, the number of licensed prostitutes in Taiwan is surely known, but many prostitutes operate outside the legal houses of prostitution, and they may well not want the government to know about them.
  1. The existence of socially-accepted polygamy in Africa might contribute to the spread of AIDS
Only to the extent that the man of the family has sex with diseased individuals.
  1. The larger penis sizes found among African men might mean they use condoms less often because they do not fit European-sized condoms as well.
That's pretty speculative. What is known about condom supply there? What do large individuals in Europe and America do? If larger sizes are available in one place and there is a market in Africa, what would be the problem?
Of course these are all highly speculative objections or alternative explanations. They need to be tested and one needs more data etc. I am not serious about any of them particularly. I just think that pulling one explanation out of thin air like Rushton does, and declaring that he has the definitive explanation when there are many others, and he has no particularly good one to differentiate these explanations from each other demonstrates one thing. Rushton is not much of a scientist.--Filll 14:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I could probably come up with another 50 alternative explanations with no effort at all. That I can dredge up so many alternative theories off the top of my head, and the fact that Rushton just blithely proposes his theory with no proof or testing demonstrates that Rushton is really no scientist. In fact he is basically a pseudoscientific flake. But then he has a degree in psychology, so I would not expect anything different. So how much credence should I put in all his other claims? I know his statistics is pure crap.--Filll 04:09, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

It's very easy to throw ideas in the air without any kind of empirical verification. You could refute any established theory using this kind of speculation. I'm the last person to defend Rushton, however just because he's politically incorrect does not mean his stats are crap or that his theory is not logical. Timelist 21:11, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Well speaking on something I do have some expertise in, I have read some abridged versions of his text and some reviews. And I am very doubtful about his data analysis and conclusions. But I will not fight it. It is not worth it.--Filll 21:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
The viciousness is a problem. Since I first edited this article I have seen thick-skinned editors give up, and some even get banned – meanwhile the article is deteriorating into a sorry state. Yes, unfortunately, you'd be reverted immediately. The problem is that most editors here do not understand Wikipedia's three basics policies: neutral point of view, verifiability and no original research --Ezeu 04:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I am not super interested in race issues myself. Otherwise I would just write a parallel article and link it in. Just do it by fiat. Or create another better article and then propose this one be deleted. I am just not that interested. My main goal here is to try to help fights get resolved so people can be productive.--Filll 04:27, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

If you edit this article you will get drawn into the race issue whether you want it or not. Also, there is a lobby (for loss of a better word) that is bound to involve the question evolution as well. --Ezeu 04:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I have edited it in small ways only. The tiny bit of improvement I proposed for the introduction was reverted immediately. I might try again I do not know. I have only seen one or two evolution types here. Evolution/Creationism is a hot button issue for me so I do not put up with much crap from them.--Filll 04:51, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Another example of a problem sentence

The term Black was soon replaced (in the U.S.) by Negro but by the 1970s African-Americans reclaimed the term Black.[3]

This sort of is a stupid statement, at least without careful scholarship to back it up. At least in the last 100+ years, the linguistic sequence in the US was colored (think NAACP) to Negro (think United Negro College Fund) to Black (think black is beautiful) to Afro American (think platform shoes and afro hair styles) to African American (think Jesse Jackson). I am not sure what was the politically correct term before colored, but this is an example of the linguistic process known as "pejorization". I know why it was said this way. This bears the fingerprints of the blacks writing the article who took black studies in college and want to scream about "black pride".--Filll 15:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Changes

As I had suggested before, it is almost impossible to "improve" this article. There are strong forces of various kinds that do not want the article changed, and any changes will be reverted, as we have just seen. I was amazed that it was claimed that the statement "The concept of "black" people has been traced to the ancient Greeks and Romans who labelled dark skinned peoples from North East Africa as "Kushite", "Nubian", and "Ethiopian"." which has a good reference associated with it, and I tried to retain through the edits, was just personal opinion. Efforts to clean up the English, or remove "racism" or put in other sources, or include science will fail. The only way to do this is to start fresh and write another article from scratch. Then at that point, invite scrutiny and potential merger or whatever. There are too many disparate points of view here and too many people believe their point of view is more important than anyone else. Which is exactly why I have done very little editing, but just tried to keep people calm if possible instead.--Filll 21:07, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem is too many people are trying to change so much so quickly. This article was very stable for a very long time, and suddenly there's a massive influx of new users who are trying to chnage everything all at once and there's so much activity on the talk page that no one has time to take it all in. Also the people who are trying to add real science to the article seem to be doing it incorrectly. In any even this is not a scientific article. It's simply an article about how the concept of black people was invented and defined through the ages. Timelist 21:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Sockpuppets

Please include who you think may be a puppet, so we can request checkuser. Thulean 21:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Statement unjustified by reference

Someone added the following nonsense to the article to contradict the well established fact that East Asians and blacks are genetic opposites: "Recent genetic studies which clusters populations on the basis of genetic similarity does not support such a conclusion" Please quote the section in the reference that refutes the idea that blacks and East Asians are genetic opposites. Don't go into a politically correct lecture about how there's no such thing as race (I'm black and I'm proud of my race and if another race is the genetic opposite of me I have a right to not have this information censored). Even if there were no such thing as race, there are humans from Africa and there are humans from East Asia, and Cavali Sforza clearly showed that humans from Africa fall in the bottom right of a genetioc quadrent and humans from East Asia fall in the top left. Editingoprah 21:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok this is when the scientifically based politically correct people who were attacking me for the last two days need to be here and to deal with you. They just about tore me to shreds for trying to caution them about changes to the article.--Filll 21:46, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Cavalli-Sforza et al. transformed the distance matrix to a correlation matrix consisting of 861 correlation coefficients among the forty-two populations, so they could apply principal components (PC) analysis on their genetic data...PC analysis is a wholly objective mathematical procedure. It requires no decisions or judgments on anyone's part and yields identical results for everyone who does the calculations correctly...The important point is that if various populations were fairly homogenous in genetic composition, differing no more genetically than could be attributable only to random variation, a PC analysis would not be able to cluster the populations into a number of groups according to their genetic propinquity. In fact, a PC analysis shows that most of the forty-two populations fall very distinctly into the quadrents formed by using the first and second principal component as axes...They form quite widely separated clusters of the various populations that resemble the "classic" major racial groups-Caucasoids in the upper right, Negroids in the lower right, North East Asians in the upper left, and South East Asians (including South Chinese) and Pacific Islanders in the lower left...I have tried other objective methods of clustering on the same data (varimax rotation of the principal components, common factor analysis, and hierarchical cluster analysis). All of these types of analysis yield essentially the same picture and identify the same major racial groupings.

Image:Fig.2.3.542pop.jpg

From History and Geography of Human Genes, Cavalli-Sforza et al., p. 82. (P0M 00:33, 25 November 2006 (UTC))

There you have Cavali-Sforza's very own genetic distance chart showing East Asians and Africans are genetic opposites. Editingoprah 21:47, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Editingoprah 21:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Since it is not up to us to do original research, I think this is a fine result. However, I might point out that from a research point of view, I find that material somewhat suspect. But then I have a PhD in the area. I have no problem with quoting this myself. But a lot of people do. --Filll 21:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC) +
C-S and his colleagues are highly respected in the field. It would be easy to pick something out of context and attack it, I suppose, but when you look at the huge amount of work they have done, and the fact that they give you a clear idea of the data they have collected, then a clear idea of how they have organized/conceptualized the data, it seems to me that they deserve great respect for their care and their responsible attitude toward this field of study.
One thing to remember about all of these abstract treatments is that they have statistical validity comparable to the validity of the studies from which the statistics are derived. If someone has done a good job of investigating the frequencies of all known human characteristics are represented in, e.g., the Basques, and then later on those studies are used to make predictions, the predictions have to be statistically valid. (If they aren't, then somebody has screwed up somewhere or else the original data has gone out of date because of some major convulsions of one kind or another.
What the above ideas mean, in practice, is that if (for instance) my boss orders me to round up a group of 100 people over 6' 5" tall within the next 48 hours, I definitely will not go back to my hometown because I knew perfectly well that people that tall are so rare in that population group that I would be lucky to find as many as 1 in 1000 of that height. I would instead dig out the chart of average heights in various population groups and cherry pick the ones where the average is maximum. Some African groups would fit the bill as would some northern European groups. Even so, it would not do for me to get off the airplane in Lithuania and push contracts for megabucks into the hands of the first 100 people I ran into. If I did I might get the one 5' 0" individual in the entire city.
On the flip side, if I were ordered to get anybody I could hire providing only that they did not have shovel-shaped incisors so I went to my home town and avoided anybody who looked even vaguely Asian, I still might get the one white person in all of the Midwest who happens to have that feature. If I asked a certain individual to bite down on a Mars bar so I could check the shape of the teeth I might get a diatribe about how the individuals ancestors all came over on the Mayflower, and even so I might find the dread shovel-shaped incisors.
The bottom line is that all of the predictions of what characteristics will be found have only statistical validity.

I dont see anything about Europeans being between Africans and Asians. Also see Talk:Black_people#Removed_one_line_for_study, as I pointed out in my edit summary. Thulean 21:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Look at the chart. Europeans and Caucasoids in general are in the top right quadrent. Top right is in between top left (Orientals) and bottom right (Africans). That's basic spatial reasoning. Populations are graphed based on genetic distance. Editingoprah 21:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, the middle part of top left and bottom right would be near origin. And bottom left contains lots of other Asians like Malaysians, S Chineese, etc...By your "logic" Asians are also intermediate between Asians and Africans. Thulean 21:57, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

That's right. South East Asians are also in between Africans and North East Asians but they are genetic opposites of the Caucasian cluster. Editingoprah 22:00, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

When one is in a high dimensional space, and has defined some sort of metric or distance measure that may or may not be reasonable, it is not too easy to talk about "between". Why not put this graph in the paper if it is available? or is it not public domain?--Filll 22:05, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

If it was scanned from C-S it is under copyright. If it is redrawn and a notation of "After Cavelli-Sforza et al." is added then I'm pretty sure it is in the clear. Generally people do not actually object to reproducing simple charts because there is no "art" involved. People who publish in the sciences do so in order that their data and their conclusions can be known. Other people can quote and comment on it, much as literary critics can quote a paragraph or so from somebody's novel and critique it in a newspaper article. The problem comes when (a) somebody copies out huge blocks of data and makes them available in a context that would kill sales and other compensation owed to the person or people who did all the work, and/or (b) somebody copies something and does not credit the original author.
I think there is are official "copyright police" somewhere in the Wikipedia organization, and they would be the ones to get a definitive opinion on this matter. P0M 00:33, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  • North East Asians? As in Japaneese and Korean? Besides Berber, lines containing all African population at one point and Japaneese and Koreans on the other would have a mid point in either top left or bottom right quadrant. Apply basic spatial logic and you'll see that your claims are absurd. Thulean 22:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not rocket science. Some races are simply more related to each other than other races are. I don't understand what all the controversy is about. Editingoprah 22:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
A better way to state your point would be as follows: If you count the number of individuals per thousand who possess each of a number of characteristics, and if you carry this procedure out for several different groups, and then you make some judgment of the relative weight to give to each of the measured characteristics (counting them equally would make for the easiest math). Assuming that we keep things simple and assume that eye color and height have equal importance, etc., then you can calculate the differences between the average height of group A and the average height of group B, the differences between the average weight of group A and the average weight of group B, etc. Then you can calculate the percentage equivalent for each of these measures, sum them over groups, divide by the number of categories, and get a couple of percentages for each of the two groups. Put in qualitative descriptions of fictitious studies (off the top of my head), Lithuanians and Tutsi individuals have almost identical heights, almost identical weights, very different average skin color, very different average radius of hair curl, etc., etc. So we score them as 65% similar. Tutsi and Maasai have similar heights, similar weights, very similar average skin color, very similar average radius of hair curl, etc., etc. So we score them as 95% similar.
What this kind of thing does not tell us are the actual height, weight, eye color, skin color, etc., etc. of any individual.
What studies of this type are likely to leave out are characteristics that are very similar among groups, e.g., the average number of adult teeth (before any are lost due to trauma). Which reminds me of another "racial" characteristic. People of Chinese ancestry have a high rate of agenesis, i.e., the congenital lack of wisdom teeth. A gambler could make good money by taking bets on whether a given individual in a mixed crowd of middle-aged adults had or had ever had wisdom teeth. He would always bet "yes" for people who appeared to be of Asian descent, and always bet "no" for the Anglo types. But he would be a disgrace to professional gambling if he risked his entire winnings on a single call. After a string of 99 Asians with no wisdom teeth, number 100 turns out to have four wisdom teeth and our master gambler turns his pockets inside out. P0M 01:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Turn this idea around. If 100 characteristics define a true Martian and I have only 97 of them, what does that make me? If I have only 3 characteristics then am I a Martian by the "three drops rule"? The only true thing to say is that I have characteristics 1,2,3,5,6,7....96,98,99,100. As Popeye said, "I yam what I yam 'cause I yam." P0M 01:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes it isnt. Try to back up your claims next time...Thulean 22:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Try to comprehend written text next time. Cavali-Sforza's chart clearly graphs the genetic distance of various ethnic groups along 2 genetic dimensions extracted by PC analysis. I'm not sure what part of opposite genetic quadrents you don't understand. Do you not understand that up is the opposite of down, or that left is the opposite of right? Now you put in the article a claim that recent genetic cluster studies do not support the idea that Europeans are genetically intermediate between Orientals and Blacks? But your own reference does not back you up. The assertion is based on your own nonsensical original statement that "If Europeans were to be genetically intermediate between Asians and Blacks, they wouldnt form a distinctive cluster but some Europeans would cluster with Asians while some would cluster with Blacks." But this is clearly nonsense as Cavali-Sforza's own chart shows that Caucasoids form a cluster, but that cluster is in between the black and oriental cluster, and forming a cluster in no way precludes Caucasoids from being in between blacks and orientals on a genetic continuum. Editingoprah 01:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

While I have it at hand, the place where C-S says that "the classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise," and then goes on to explain why, starts on p. 19 of History and Geography of Human Genes. P0M 00:33, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

You don't have to believe in race to see that the various ethnicities of sub-Saharan Africa (whether you want to define them as a race or not) are genetically opposite to the various ethnicities of North East Asia, as Sforza's own chart proves beyonmd a shadow of a doubt. This is likle arguing with people who believe the Earth is flat. Editingoprah 01:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Editingoprah, I do understand written text but your claims are absurd. By your "logic", Blacks are also genetically intermediate between South Asians and Europeans since Black quadrant is between those quadrants. Now can Whites be genetically intermediate between North Asians and Blacks while Blacks are intermediate between Whites and South Asians while South Asians are intermediate between North Asians and Blacks while North Asians are intermediate between Europeans and South Asians? Of course not. Especially considering the fact that from this sentence; "making many Blasians no more black on the genetic level than whites are.", the context of intermediate here is "mixing" as if there are black genes and asian genes and whites are mixture of those genes. So cluster studies DO PROVE here that such an assertion is silly.

Instead of accusing me of not understanding, trying to use simple logic, it's not hard. Lukas19 12:55, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Whites CAN be genetically intermediate between North Asians and Blacks while Blacks are intermediate between Whites and South Asians while South Asians are intermediate between North Asians and Blacks while North Asians are intermediate between Europeans and South Asians. There's no contadiction there, you just think there is because your reasoning in 1 dimensional genetics, when the cluster analysis is 2 dimensional. Now I'm not trying to argue that Blasians are genetically the same as whites. Whites and Blasians are completely different groups. What the article is saying however is that it's not scientific to call a blasian a black person because they are just as far removed from blacks as whites are. You may feel that the way things are currently stated is a bit misleading, but the additions you've tried to add to the caption make it even more misleading. Editingoprah 19:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Plea for science

These arguments are amazing in several ways. Wow. Let me ask:
  • Do we know what distance matrix CS used? Do we know their notion of distance? Does it make biological sense? I am quite suspicious of "genetic distance", frankly. Because any math done by a psychologist or a biologist or anthropologist is likely to be crap, frankly. People are attracted to those fields because they are math phobic and cannot cut the mustard in a real science.
  • Do we know how they "'transformed' the distance matrix"?
  • How did they compute the correlation coefficients, which are 2nd moments, and which are well known to be badly biased in many cases.
  • Does anyone here even know what PC analysis is?
  • And varimax analysis is more like black magic for the soft sciences, in my experience, I will note.
  • No discriminant analyses was done, which would have been far more appropriate. After all, you want to find some method for separating these groups as widely as possibly right? Passing some sort of plane through a high dimensional space optimally dividing different groups? Even if this was done, I would be highly suspicious of misspecification errors introduced. After all, there seems to be some huge effort to impose racial models on the data which does not appear to support it very well in many respects. So a scheme for testing for misspecification would have to be adopted. A bit past most biologist, geneticists, psychologists, anthropologists etc.
Let's try to calm down and relax a bit. There is nothing to fear from putting some science in here. It is a very strongly held position by most scientists that the concepts of race we are trying so frantically to push in this article are basically wrong and discredited. I see no harm in at least putting information in from these dissenting voices. Because they happen to be in the majority and have the science behind them at the moment. This is not political correctness. This is science.--Filll
This article is not about science. It's about various view points on what it means to be black. This whole discussion about genetics is off topic. Now if some scientists come up with a genetic defenition about what it means to be black that should be noted because the article is nothing but a laundry list of all the diverse ideas on what it means to be black. People are trying to transform the article into a debate over genetics, when genetics are just one of the many definitions of blacks that are mentioned in the article. Fill if you're a true scientist you should be open minded to the possibility that race exists instead of jumping to knee-jerk emotional conclusions that anything race related is automatically suspect and pseudoscientific. This idea that races does not exist is just a strange cultural fad. 50 from now we'll look back at this period as a stage of extreme denial of what's totally obvious. Editingoprah 05:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
As I have said over and over, I believe that the other material should be included because it is important historically, because it is useful socially, and it has had an impact. Certainly race currently appears to be a social construct with little basis in the data (although I will concede that in 50 years we might have better data and might have changed our minds). All I am arguing for are the inclusion of some contrary opinions, or at least references, to show that Rushton and Coon and even CS are disagreed with by many. --Filll 06:05, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually race is supported by tons of data, and I have no idea where you get this ridiculous idea that it's been discredited. Just because there are a few populations here and there who can't be easily pigeon-holed in no way contradicts the fact that broad genetic clusters exist and that they're correlated with geographic origin. We already have a sentence asserting that Rushton is wrong. The problem with adding more is that this article is not about the validity of race; such articles already exist. This article is simply a list of all known opinions about what it means to be black. People keep complaining that the articles isn't neutral. It's not supposed to be. It's about OPINIONS. It's not the job of the article to provide criticism of every nutty opinion we present. Rushton and Coon are cited because they have opinions on what it means to be black. If you want other opinions about black folks to be added then find them and quote them, but adding opinionions about the people being quoted or getting side tracked into a complex discussion about race is not wise. Editingoprah 06:21, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I get the ridiculous idea that race has been discredited from many respected studies by respected scientists at mainstream institutions. Not from groups that cannot be pigeon-holed. One sentence saying Rushton is wrong is not enough. I would say adding a nice 5 or 10 references that show he is a fruitcake and a fringe element would do the job I have in mind nicely. I have no problem with the fact that this is a nut with an opinion. He is a nut with an opinion that many people share. However, let's make sure we do not present him in an uncritical and unrealistic light. I do not want to get the article sidetracked. But I want us to not show ONLY the nonstandard nonmainstream material, and ignore the mainstream. Would you object to references that disagree with Rushton being included?--Filll 15:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Fill I too strongly disagree with Rushton's view but if we add criticism of him we have to add criticism of every nutty opinion in the article. What about all the ridiculous Afrocentric scholars who argue that Dravidians etc are black. It's much better to just show all opinions and keep our opinions about who's a nut and a fruitcake to ourselves. 19:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Afrocoids and apes

I really DO NOT mean to be racist in ANY WAY at all, but to me that picture of an Afrocoid looks more like an ape than a human being, was he of monkey-human heritage, some so-called humans are really monkies in my hypothesis, please be sensible and discuss this reasonably.

You really have to take this someplace else. And sign anything you write.--Filll 22:39, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Added critcism of Rushton from a respected scientist

[[6]] If you follow the link you can watch a brief clip of Rushton during his debate with David Suzuki Editingoprah 06:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

This article is all wrong

This is the sort of thing we should be aiming for Black British. Alun 14:01, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Editingoprah, meet Wobble/Alun and Ezeu. and vice versa

I am a bit tired of being in the middle. Do none of you read what the others write on the talk page? Wobble/Alun and Ezeu make the case that Rushton is a nut and a racist nonmainstream scientist whose views do not agree with those of most scientists. I think that there is evidence of this. Gottoupload and Editingoprah do not want more science in the article and does not want any references that dispute the existence of races. Editingoprah wants an article about differing opinions of black people, racist or not. I agree that they have a point, if it can be balanced to avoid giving misleading opinions.

Here is a cut and paste from above. My words are in italic. Wobble/Alun's are in plaintext:

  • I am arguing for compromise and balance.
This comment is ludicrous. How can you be arguing for "ballance" when you want to include a neo-nazi racist like Rushton as if it were respectable science. If you want to include this as evidence of racial prejudice against Black people then I would accept it. But it's not presented in this way, it's presented as if it were mainstream academic opinion. This is dishonest, and is a diservice to the subject of the article. This is no where near ballanced. Just who exactly are you "compromising" with? I wonder if I should start to include quotes from the Nation of Islam in the White people article? I wonder how people would react to that.

Alun 07:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

So I invite you to argue against editingoprah and gottoupload and Halaqah and timelist and other black editors here and see how far you get.--Filll 16:02, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  • If we summarily remove all the stuff one person or another deems "racist", I fear that the article will again end up frozen and uneditable for months
We remove any information that is offensive, or that is innapropriate. If we want to include certain racist points of view, we express them as a point of view, not as a fact. If we want to include claptrap like Rushton's we present it in its proper context, ie that of a maverick "pseudo-academic" "pseudo-scientist" with a racist agenda who is nowhere near the mainstream academic consensus. By not including this in it's correct context it is distorting science, and presenting science sa if this is mainstream and is the "consensus" scientific opinion. We also need to include mainstream scientific opinion in a proper section, which would not include Rushton. We also need to include a section on discrimination, racism, apartheid, segregation, socio economic problems steming from the continued disenfranchisement of Black people. These are relevant and important issues. To concentrate on a few ancient and modern neo-nazis deviates significantly from the actual subject of the article. You are not being anywhere near neutral in this, and you are no where near as impartial in you claim to be.
Ok I think you are not clear on the situation. I invite you to go ahead and see what happens when the racism card gets played against you by black people. In this case, it trumps everything you have to say no matter how reasonable or rational. Basically, what black people want, black people get, even if it is racist and stupid.--Filll 16:02, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I would humbly suggest you put in those references and the quotes into the text to start to balance out Rushton.
I suggest we create a section about discrimination and bias against Black people, and include Rushton there. This Whole Rushton section is completelly irrelevant to the section of the article anyway, which should be a discussion about whether the first humans were Black, Rushton has nothing to say on this subject. Alun 07:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree with this, if you could get away with it. But I think you have to discuss it first if it has a chance of succeeding.--Filll 16:02, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  • However, many African Americans and other blacks have seized on Rushton for their own purposes and defend its inclusion. And attempts to introduce more science are met with hostility. When I tried repeatedly to tell them that there was no scientific evidence for race, they were furious and I almost started a riot here.
Yeah, right. I think I know what you are trying to imply. You are giving your own agenda away, By their own words shall you know them. Alun 07:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Do you even read what is written on the talk page by others? I personally would like nothing better than to tear this article to shreds and replace it with something more reasonable. The reason this has not happened is that there are forces fighting frantically against it. Look at the talk page. Look at the archives. Look at the history. WAKE UP!!!!--Filll 16:02, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Fill, you're going to need to calm down. As one of the few editors who has never been banned or blocked, I can say this article is in excellent shape, it's just that a few politically correct extremists are upset that some controversial opinions are briefly mentioned. These people are used to having the politically correct opinion forced down everyone's throat so as soon as they see an article that presents views different from their own in a neutral way they go ballistic. Last night a couple of us worked hard trying to neutralize some of the more controversial ideas in the article and I simply removed the obsolete theory that blacks are monkeys because it didn't fit in with the modern discussion about whether blacks are the original race. Of course there are always going to people who are offended by some aspect of the article. As a hardcore black, I'm offended by the entire "other view points" section because it implies that all these dark skinned wannabes get to call themselves black too. But any person of note (nutty or sane, smart or stupid, mainstream or politically correct) are welcome in this article if they have something to say about what it means to be black. In fact if we limited the article to only mainstream opinions all that would be left are the dictionary definitions and the census. So I suggest everyone just calm down. If the biggest problem in your life is what you read in wikipedia, consider yourself damn lucky. Editingoprah 19:49, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Wobble/Alun and Ezeu, rather than argue with me, argue with Editingoprah who is convinced that the article is perfect as it is.--Filll 20:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
No article is ever perfect. Some articles can achieve Featured article status, but these are usually extremely good, and must conform to proper wikipedia policies like WP:NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:V. Featured article criteria are very strict, but essentially all articles should be aiming to be this good (see Single Transferable Vote for an example of a former featured article that I made some small contributions to some time ago). If anyone suspects that this article deserves to be judged as a good article, then it should be sent for peer review where the community as a whole can comment on it. Whatever Editingoprah thinks of political correctness it is irrelevant, political correctness is a valid point of view and should be included in the article as per WP:NPOV. Indeed 'political correctness' seems to be used generally as a pejorative term, but political correcness just means being inoffensive. What exactly is an absence of 'political correctness'? Oh yes, that would be deliberately offensive. I don't have a problem with Editingoprah's edits, and she seems to have accepted the few I have made, with some small changes, which I have accepted. This is how we work on wikipedia, we compromise and negotiate. I do not think we should take absolutist positions, this is not an all or nothing situation. I did quite a big copyedit of the section about Black people being the first anatomically modern humans [7] and Editingoprah made change to it that I am perfectly happy to accept. [8] Editingoprah objected to my inclusion of quotes abouyt the nonexistence of races in biology [9], this is fair enough, the article is not about "race" as a general concept. But I did think we needed to make some reference to this, so I changed my perspective and included the more ballanced view that oppinion is divided in the biology community. I provided both points of view and cites for both, and included them as a general comment at the start of the section, rather than long quotes.[10] Again Editingoprah made a small change that I am happy to accept.[11] We achieved both of these compromises without the "riot" you predicted, so where's the problem? Copy editing is important because often contributors add a sentence here and a comment there, and articles come to look like a collection of unrelated comments made by different people (which is exacly what they are). A copy edit by a user can make the section more coherent and provide a structure to the section/article. The way I see it it is a bad thing when a group of editors take possession of an article and then try to exclude any new editors from contributing at a later date. No one "owns" any article, and many people can come along at a later date and improve it, not all changes that have been made to the so called "stable" article have been bad, and many have improved the article. To accuse good faith editors of "vandalism" just because their edit did not conform to the point of view of a group of people that claim "ownership" of the article is a breach of correcrt wikipedia behaviour. Good faith edits should never be described as "vandalism". There are a group of editors here who appear to believe that they can intimidate other editors by making false claims of "vandalism" and "personal attacks". This intimidation should not be occuring, it is harmfull to the community and to the article. We all have valid contributions to make, and I think most of us are acting in good faith. Please report vandalism, that is important, but please remember that even if you disagree with another edit/editor it does not make them a vandal. Remember assume good faith. Alun 10:43, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

A promised map

As I mentioned above when I presented a chart of the inferred migration trails by which humans reached their "home countries" (until they messed it up by traveling everywhere and leaving babies behind everywhere ;-), there are picture of what these migration paths are that have been derived from looking at genes other than those on the Y-chromosome that Wells studied. Here is one that came out around 1995.

Starting from somewhere in Africa, humans fanned out all over the world.

So that's where Rushton gets his data on the relative antiquity of the 3 main races. Crucial to Rushton's hypotheis is that archaic forms of the 3 main races branched off of the human evolutionary tree in nice, neat sequential order. Rushton claims that negroids branched off at a primitive stage (200,000 years ago), mongoloids branched off at an advanced staged (about 40,000 years ago) and caucasoids were in the middle (100,000 years ago). Rushton cites the date of the African Eve (200,000 years ago), the date when humans left Africa (100,000 years ago) and the date when East Asians and Europeans split (about 40,000 years ago) to argue that archaic Africans (later negroids) emerged 200,000 years ago, archaic non-Africans (later caucasoids) emerged about 100,000 years ago, and archaic non-caucasoids (later mongolids) emerged about 40,000 years ago. I've seen a map by Spencer Wells which appears to support this sequence, except all of Well's dates are much more recent. Wells seems to think that humans left Africa only 50,000 years ago. Timelist 21:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I put the Wells data into time sequence above. Well's data trace only one line of descent. One by one all the other genetic lines died out as the last male in that line failed to produce a living son. But prior to that time they were part of the family tree and all of them were marrying descendants of "African Eve." So we can trace her back farther or at least project the time she lived farther. (I forget how they do this. I think that the mitochondrial DNA accumulates little "typos" that don't make the ones who possess them die, and that they typos can be observed to occur at a certain rate, so if you know the rate and the number of changes then you can calculate the approximate start of the series of changes.)
Anyway, all these genetic results are confirming things that we have known before (or, occasionally, denying things some of us thought we knew). Even the ancient Hebrews had figured out that we all came from a single family somewhere. Even they had it figured out that the human family got too crowded to all live in one place and so migrated to different areas.
I like the map but I have no idea if the powers that be will allow it or not. It seems like they hate just about everything.--Filll 21:34, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Fill, why do you want to add more material that supports Rushton to the article? For starters, this article is about black people only, and that map shows the origins of all the major races, not black people only. Second, you can hardly see the dates on the map without clicking on the photo. Third, there are already articles devoted to the splitting of human races and ancient migrations pattern. Why are we trying to make this 1 article do the job of 10? Editingoprah 21:50, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think the map belongs in the article. I wanted to use it to try to get everybody clear about what is and is not known to us. Both the illustrations show, among other things, that black people did not embargo themselves to Africa. But those who are the descendants of those early people sometimes do not want to own their ancestors
The map does not support Rushton. All it shows is that we "multiplied and spread". After we spread, or maybe sometimes as a condition for being able to spread into some environments, we changed a tiny bit. Even if we had isolated ourselves we still wouldn't be different enough to matter, but the fact is that we have kept stirring the genetic stew pot.

Edit conflict. Continuing what I started above. (The part about Tavish is, shall we say, not documented in my family history. I may have gotten the generation wrong, but he's got to be there.)

The map in Wells's book is not that much different. The main new thing he adds is that the first wave of migration (that ends up in Australia in the map above) split somewhere around Thailand and one band made it into N. America. The map above shows only the second-wave migration path into the Americas.

What is shocking to people like "Son of Rolf" who thought he was better than Mexicans because he was pure is that my ancestors with translucent skin in Eire didn't just show up there one fine day when the cloud ceiling was down around 1000 feet and it was chilly and cold and say, "Perfect!" They actually came from some place. Everybody in my tow-headed family came from Africa, ultimately. But before that time around half of them had gotten themselves somewhere in Central Asia (around where the 6 in 60,000 is located on the map above) and then they headed back west where they met and enthusiastically coupled with members of anotgher migration path that had come by a rather more direct path from out of Africa. By this time our own relatives wouldn't have recognized us because we had changed color.

Whether we got there 35,000 years ago or 10,000 years ago, we have surely had time to make something "pure and noble" of ourselves. Surely we have evolved some stunning new capabilities. The trouble is nobody can say what they are. Since the Irish have been enthusiastically killling each other for generations, they can't claim to be so very noble, can they? And as for "pure"... If they would have stopped bringing exotic women back with them from wherever in the world they fought or traded we might have had a chance. But every family has a skeleton in the closet and every family has somebody in it that was from too far away, looked too different, spoke the wrong language, danced the wrong dances, looked the wrong way when they were being spoken to and again looked the wrong way when they were talking to somebody else.

And then we had to fight the British to try to maintain our self rule, and we lost, and so maybe some of us drank a little too much, and maybe the stress or whatever turned some of us a bit daft.

Now here's the rub: We're known as the Irish race, and the first thing that anybody knows about it is that we are alcoholics. The next thing they know is either that we are likely to turn schizophrenic. And some people are themselves so daft that they think all true Irish people must have red hair.

Truth to tell, if you want to find a redhead in a hurry then Ireland is one of your best bets. Out of a hundred people you might find nine or ten. You can't say that about China. (But you might seek among the Berbers, Kabylie, Tochar, Pashtun, Iranians, and even the Japanese.) But it's bloody stupid to say that we're not a one of us with yellow, brown, or black hair. And bald too, some of us.

When we came to the U.S. we were mistreated. So the question is, do we want to be judged as "the Irish race"? Or do we actually want people to look at us to decide whether we are red headed, have us walk a straight line if they think we might be driving drunk, etc.

Looking at what happened to our chilren in places like Boston during the 1800s (and later than that if the truth be known), I can't see why any of us would want to be identified as members of a race because the way people generally think about it, if you are of a certain race then you have a certain set of characteristics. So they don't hire you as a driver depending on whether you can drive well, they just don't hire you because you're a lousy Irish drunk. How else could you be other unless you aren't really Irish? It's bad enough for the adults, but look at what it does to child who is told to take the vocational track in high school because he is not suited to become an M.D.

It's not that we want to give up the celebration of our culture and our heritage, but if the "Irish race" is made up of "Irish people," then where does that leave me, with with great great great grandfather Basker Moor being a moor?

Nobody ought to doubt that our real family tree is as it is If we go back not so many generations we'll find that we're all related. The closer we get to the near end of our family trees the more we will look like that smaller set of relatives. I've got my grandfather's hay fever but not my grandmother's diabetes. People say I take after my mother and bear some vague resemblance to her brother, but I can't see it. People can hardly tell my brother and I apart even after 60 years, yet he's several inches taller than I am. We even tend to get the same diseases. So for all related people there are both resemblances and differences. Occasionally one may meet ones perfect double but find no known common relatives. All it takes is for the right selection of genes to pop up on the routlette wheel of reproduction.

Nobody ought to want to be treated, or to treat other people, as though they were not individuals. Even twins are different by reason of the programming, much of it prenatal, that turns on or shuts off genes according to environmental conditions.

Where would it be at if some guy could trace his ancestry back to Wellington and was all proud of being a lineal descendant of the great British leader, but at the same time wanted to deny that Fritz Wellington, who had the same great great grandfather, was a true Wellington? How would we explain that kind of reaction? Or, conversely, how would we understand it if a Czech community in the U.S. that had preserved its language and culture and had not brought back many husbands or brides from the "outside" wanted to deny that they were a Czech community?

How many branches lower in the family tree does it make sense to go before you say, "Those folks aren't in my family?!" Head backwards from any arrowheads on the chart and look for a place where a label should be inserted saying, "The line ends on the right side of this point and a new line begins on the other side," or, to put it in terms of family values, 'This child that I gave birth to is no child of mine and no child of my husband?" Or, "These parents from whom I sprung, and all their siblings, parents, and ancestors, are no parents of mine. I am the new human."

P0M 22:42, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Well one thing that's clear from the map is that race is real and that Johan Blumenback 5 color typology was more or less correct. Humans started in Africa as the black race. The maps then shows humans branching out of Africa in 2 directions about 100,000 years ago. The first direction is through Southeast Asia to Australia. Descendants of this migration formed Blumenbach's brown race and can be seen through the likes of Australian aboriginals, negritoes, aetas, etc. The next direction was up through the middle east and the descendants of this migration formed the white or caucasian race seen today in the form of Arabs, East Indians and Europeans. The map then shows that by 35,000 years ago, the white race divided into 2 groups. One that would colonize Europe, and the other that would head East and mutate into the yellow race (orientals). The yellow race headed about as far East as they could go, and then by 15,000 years ago, a few yellows crossed into the Americas where they mutated into the red race. So now do you at long last understand why whites are genetically intermediate between Africans and East Asians? Editingoprah 23:15, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean by "race." P0M 23:23, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
In biology we make divisions. There's the plant kingdom, and the animal kingdom. Within the animal kingdom, there are reptiles and there are primates. Within primates there are many species including gorillas, chimps, and humans. And within any species, there are races such as negroids, caucasoids, mongoloids, and australoids. Within the negroid race there are varieties and ethnic groups such as pygmies and watusis. Race is simply a human sub-species. An incipient species that would have divided into separate species of primates if not for all the inter-group breeding that occured after the major splits illustrated by Sforza's map. Editingoprah 23:41, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
You do not have to have the map. You do not have to have anything in the article in fact. I have no great investment in this article. I have resisted making edits for the most part. I have only been here to try to help it move forward and try to keep people from tearing each other to shreds if I can. However, I have learned a lot just watching the horrendous infighting and nastiness on the talk page. That has been most eye-opening indeed. I could write an article just on interblack attitudes and visciousness from what I have seen on the talk page. --Filll 00:23, 26 November 2006(UTC)
I also think if you want to believe that Arabs are a different race than Hutus which are a different race than Maoris which are a different race than Bantus which are a different race than Tutsis which are a different race from Bushmen etc, then be my guest. I reserve the right to subscribe to the dominant scientific theory rather than some tribal divisions, however.--Filll 00:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
There is no dominant scientific "theory of race." The problem is that [race] is one of those "isn't even wrong" things. The word "race" lacks an operational definition as I have pointed out to no avail many times. What that means is that it cannot be used to do any useful work. The big-endian view is that there is a single human race. The small-endian view is that I am a race in myself. A slightly less restrictive definition would be my parents plus all their children. I think we might even succeed in listing the characteristics of the members of this group. But as soon as marriage with people outside this family occurs, then things get very messy fast.
One of the requirements for subspecies is that there be a "clean margin" between them. The red salamanders in lake A can't mate with the black salamanders in lake B that are otherwise genetically identical. But there has been debate lately about whether Homo sapiens neanderthalis and Homo sapiens sapiens left each other alone. Maybe Homo sapiens neanderthalis had such greater rectitude than H. sapiens sapiens that their women always fought us off and their men were never to be tempted.
Humans just breed to avidly for the idea of there being anything more than fuzzy sets into which humans fit. If somebody seems to fit into the fuzzy set of Southern Chinese, then how many exceptions how many generations back will be sufficient to disqualify that person? Will a score of 13.47 result in a semi-fuzzy-disqualification?
Medically this kind of fuzzy set can be useful in an epidemic or some other circumstance when fast action may save lives. If people in the fuzzy set "native or family history = Africa" are little like to catch the new pandemic flu, and people in the "Maori" fuzzy set seem to get it at a high rate, then it may make sense for the public health services to put all their effort on New Zealand. But the prudent individual in Africa will realize that a 5% chance of getting a 78% fatal disease is not a free pass, and that individual will do the best possible for himself in terms of innoculation or isolation or whatever works. If, on the other hand, there is no rush, then it would be criminal to refuse innoculations to Africans because only x% of them were going to die of it. P0M 01:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

To Editingoprah (I'll respond to Filll in a minute):

What you have given above is one way of thinking about [race]. Humans do not have subspecies, at least not since the Neanderthals cycled off. The scientific nomenclature for humans is:

Homo sapiens sapiens, and another subspecies would be something like Homo sapiens neanderthalis, Homo sapiens whatever. The differences among humans are not sufficient to reach the level of subspecies. That's just the way we do things in biology. To the extent that "race" has any meaning, then, it has to be at the sub-subspecies level.

Homo
sapiens
neanderthalis
sapiens
sapiens
difference a
difference b
difference c

The trouble is that however you try to define the sub-subspecies level you end up including individuals that would make some people go ballistic. (We've seen people with black skins object to being called "blacks" right here on this talk page, and if you told some of the aryan supremecists that Ainu are "whites" they would react belligerantly, no?

The way you define a [race] in terms of family tree is to start with one individual, back down until you can't tolerate somebody sitting on the next twig, and then work forward, including all the stuff "above" that point on the branch your starting point is on. There are two problems with this approach. (1) It is entirely arbitrary what point you make your cut-off point. To take Africa as an example, what if the San (those earliest of all earliest peoples who have left traces in Africa) decide that they want to trace "Africans" back to the point where the so-called Bantu races diverged. In other words, what if the San don't want to be categorized with the other groups in Africa? They are, after all, on their own branch.

To use the analogy of a tree, it's a solid tree. It doesn't come apart like tinker toys. You can take pruning shears out or use a chain saw for bigger branches, but wherever you cut a certain amount of connected wood will fall from the tree and that is a "race." If somebody objects that you should have cut a couple feet away so as to include or exclude certain side branches, then they have as much right to their opinion as you have to yours.

The other problem with the idea of race you propose is that you don't know what to do when somebody has ancestors from two or more [races]. They do not fit the definition of any race. The only thing I can see to do is to define a new race (e.g., "Blasian"). But then the "Blasian" has children with an "Amerblanco." So we need yet another [race.] The more precise a definition of a [race] is, the fewer people that fit into it.

By the way, how do you understand the difference in appearance between the "Blasian" individual and an statistically average N. European "white" individual. On the surface of things, if N. Europeans are "intermediate between blacks and Asians, then why do they look so different from a person who is the product of one black and one Asian parent? P0M 00:40, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

POM, race is no more arbitrary than any other biological classification. If biologists can divide kingdoms into classes, classes into orders, orders into species, and species into sub-species, then why stop there? Why not divide sub-species into sub-sub species? Is not the decision that human variation doesn't rise to the level of sub-species also arbitrary? And yet you don't question that. You only question race because it's politically incorrect so you've been brainwashed into denying it. You can argue that all biological classifications are subjective. For example, based on DNA evidence, an increasing number of biologists have concluded that humans are actually apes because the genetic similarity between us and chimps is less than the genetic difference between chimps and other apes, hence it makes sense to lump humans in with apes genetically. There are mathematical procedures that allow us to divide correlated variables into groups and sub-groups. PC analysis is one such procedure. The best PC analysis of genetic data I have ever seen suggests that there are 6 races: A) Blacks, B)Caucasians, C)North East Asians, D) Amerindians, E)South East Asians and Pacific Islanders, and F) Australian/New Guinean aboriginals. Your point about hybrids is not all that relevant. Just because a minority of the population is too genetically mixed to fit neatly into broad category or another in no way negates said category's existence. For example, if genetic engineering progresses to the point where snakes and crocodiles can produce off-spring, we don't suddenly decide that species is not valid concept, simply because inter-species mating has occured. Editingoprah 01:16, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Without realizing it, perhaps, you are reiterating my argument. Dividing can continue until there is only one person in each sub-sub...sub-race. If people are assigned to each group arbitrarily then the end result is of course arbitrary in all respects. If people are assigned to each group according to some agreed-upon operational definition, then each division or subset is just as useful as the rule has made it to be. Even assuming that somebody has come up with a very satisfactory rule for making sets, sub-sets, etc., etc., then the question becomes, what level of aggregation is the real one? That is one of the main reservations that many people have about the idea of [races]. It doesn't say anything about the reality of the lives of the people who have been divided up in so many different ways.
Another problem: Let's pretend that you are a census keeper sent to work a valley that is inhabited in the east end by people who seem identical to Chinese people and in the west end by people with blond hair and blue eyes. You are told to identify those people as Uyghurs. The problem comes, however, because this is a peaceful valley and both groups have lived together and intermarried since sometime before 700 A.D. So it is actually rare for this census taker to find individuals that look like they are the kinds of picture provided of Uyghur and Han Chinese. Because they have been intermarrying over 1300 years all of their genetic material is so mixed up that it is even difficult to see the changes as features and skin colors gradually change from family farm to family farm across the 400 mile bredth of this long valley. All their features gradually change from place to place, but some features may change as you go from north to south, some features may follow the altitude (rim people handling low oxygen better than the center of the valley that is right at sea level, for instance). Wherever you might draw the figurative line between "races" in this valley, you would probably find a few people that would fall right on the line. Then the decision to call them race A or race B would have to be arbitrary. And of course the line, and the number of lines, are all done on the basis of what somebody decides would be a neat way to handle things.
You keep repeating your point that racial classifications are arbitrary. That's simply not true. Genetic distances can be transformed into correlational matrices and then subjected to PC analysis. Major factors can be identified such as "black", "caucasian", "North East Asian" etc. Specific ethnic groups, indeed specific individuals can have their DNA analyzed to determine which genetic factor they load most on, since the factors are not discrete categories, but central tendencies. Even without state of the art mathematical procedures, there's a right and a wrong way to classify. For example, if someone tried to classify people into races based only on height, that would be incorrect because your only considering one variable and you would end up combining certain African tribes with certain Northern European ethnicities. Classifying race by skin color is equally absurd, because Australian aboriginals and blacks are among the least related populations, yet both enjoy dark skin. But when you consider all the variables together (skin color, facial features, body type, hair texture) you can begin to conceptualize broad genetic patterns that run through the entire human population, and the number of patterns you can induce reveals the number of races that exist. You can begin to concieve of the protypical negroid, the protypical caucasoid, the protypical mongoloid, and the race you assign someone is based on the degree to which they fit one prototype or another. For example, West Africans were sometimes described as the classical negro, because they embodied all the traits that distinguished sub-Saharans (dark skin, broad features, tight curly hair, prognathous face) while Ethiopians were always harder to classify because they had skin and hair of negroids, but the features and orthognathous of caucasoids. But the point is biological traits vary as a function of geography, and there is a prototypical appearance associated with every major region of the world. I think its perfectly natural to believe in race. Editingoprah 07:53, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Well editingoprah, you seem to be in love with the discredited analyses that show there are races. What do you think of the conclusions of the same analyses that claim that blacks are stupid and oversexed and more prone to diseases and likely to die earlier and do not take care of their children because they do not care about children, being more like animals than humans? You probably like some of the analyses and statements, but not others. But the problem is, they come together. It is a bit hard to accept one without getting the others as well.--Filll 01:26, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
So you're saying I should deny the very existence of my race just because a few scientists have concluded that my race is inferior. You expect black people to be so weak and so insecure in our racial identity that we deny the existence of race, deny our very racial identity, simply because a few fringe scientists believe that we're more animalistic? Hell no. That's like telling a Jewish person to claim there is no such thing as being Jewish just because a few nazis are anti-semetic, or like telling women to believe there's no such thing as an xx chromosome because some men say sexist things, or like telling a a gay to deny the existence of sexual orientation because a few people are homophobic. When you say race doesn't exist you are saying I don't exist. When you say race doesn't exist, you are condescendingly patting blacks on the head and saying "don't worry, you're not a different race from us, because race is just a social construction." Well guess what, some of us actually enjoy our unique black identity, and have no intention of giving it up. And yes there are fringe scientists who use race to argue blacks are inferior, but there are also Afrocentric scholars who use race to argue that blacks are superior. But you assume that blacks have so little racial pride that we will surrender the idea of race, surrender our very racial identity, simply because a few scientists say that stupidity is a little more common among blacks. And by the way, that same scientist says that blacks have biggers breasts, bigger vaginas, bigger penises, bigger testes, more muscles, more rhythm, more orgasms, more outgoing personalities, more sex partners, more athletic talent. Remeber, evolution would never, could never, allow one race to be superior in all areas to another, because each race, indeed each living organism on Earth, by its very survival, has become perfectly adapted to the environment it evolved in. So no, I really couldn't care less if someone wants to claim my race is lower on the evolutionary tree. Of course each races wants to believe its superior to all others. That's human nature. Editingoprah 02:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi Editingoprah, I think it is true that all biological taxonomic classifications are arbitrary. Some scientists think there is a biological basis to "race", some think there is not. But we need to differentiate between biological and social "races". Just because a biologist doesn't think that scientific evidence supports the classification of humans on a subspecific (racial) level, it doesn't follow that they don't believe races exist, but "race" is more of a social construct than a biological one. I think the fairest way to treat this is to be inclusionist, this is the proper approach to wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. We should include both points of view with citations, that is that some scientists see it as a proper biological phenomenon, and other's don't. I'm not particularly bothered one way or another, if we have a link to the article about race and genetics then any reader can get the relevant information from that article anyway. I do think that at the moment the section reflects just a single point of view, and therefore is in breach of one of wikipedia's most important policies. Remember we include all significant minority and majority points of view and let anyone reading the article make their own mind up. This is how wikipedia is supposed to work, it is not supposed to reflect just a single point of view, however strongly a particular editor may feel about it. My edit was not actually from Cavali Sforza (and I don't understand why you made this claim) but form a paper by David Serre and Svante Pääbo (from the Max Plank Institute) in the peer reviewed journal Genome Research and from the US National Institute of Health website. These are nothing to do with "political correctness" as you seem to think, but considered scientific opinions, expressed by scintists in scientific journals. Alun 18:01, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I figured as much. I did not say I believed it. I just wondered about your response.--Filll 02:11, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Except for cases like that of Michael Jackson and of the author of Black Like Me (hope I have the title right, I'm talking about the white guy who dyed himself convincingly "black" and then went around getting maltreated by "nice white people" and wrote a book about it), hardly anybody doubts that traits like skin color are inherited. Suppose I took a month-long vacation among the aboriginal people of Taiwan living on Orchid Island and I got invited out of the tourist trap and into a remote fishing village. During a period of about a month that started nine months after I arrived on Orchid Island, four babies were born of four girls from different families. All of the babies had lighter skin than had ever been seen among that group and honking big noses. Before long I am getting legal demands for child support. I say that I had nothing to do with the sudden appearance of four anomalous-looking babies, and that it must be the result of mutations. I can't imagine any judge even bothering to get DNA evidence in the case providing that I was the only white man anywhere near those women during that period of time.

I don't know of any human group that fails to understand that many traits are inherited, and that the closer the relationship of individuals is the more likely it is that they will resemble each other. Were that all that people mean by the word "race," I'd say, "Fine, let them have their pet word." But that's not the only use that people make of the word.

Many people attach a whole rap sheet to the possession of a few marker characteristics, and then they act their fantasies out in the real world. In the Salen Witch Trial days some poor ten year old girl was killed. Reason? She had green eyes. Anybody who failed to have the normal eyes, blue, brown, or black, must be the spawn of the devil. We've all heard of the crime called "Driving while black." Many of the alleged correlations between [races] amd characteristics are false simply because they are assumed to correlate 100%. Other correlations are assumed to be higher or lower than they are, e.g., assuming that at least a quarter of the Irish have red hair, or assuming that no African people have epicanthic folds. So if by "race" somebody means that it is valid to declare the 100% probability of possession of a whole list of traits based on the individual's observed possession of a limited set of marker characteristics, then I will definitely reject the word.

The trouble with the word "race" is that it is so imprecise that it is worthless for rational discussion and so loaded with affect (connotations) that it has long been a source of great mischief. If we all spoke Loglan maybe we could limit the harm of words like "race" more easily. As things stand, however, it is acceptable to many people to reason as fantasized in the following examples: (1) General Whitehead: That person is Vietnamese, and life is cheap in the Orient, therefore that person doesn't care when his sibling is killed in one of our attacks. (2) Chief Redfeather: Never mind that she says the dam is breaking. All whites speak with a forked tongue. (3) Admiran Huang Aihua: I don't care how many people he says he has willing to pilot our ships through the shoals and let us escape, he's Japanese and all Japanese are treacherous. (4) James Bond: Of course it's not a security risk for me to go drinking with that stringer for the NKCIA. One shot of vodka and any Korean rolls under the table. (5) Basketball club owner: Who's that you say, Yao Ming? Look, sonny, we aren't playing midget league. Tell the little shrimp to get lost.

Probably these examples all look stupid. They should look stupid, because they are. But the terminology of "race" facilitates these invalid inferences. And that is why racists are called racists.

What I don't want to see are things like my students being scrutinized by some shopkeeper just because of the colors of their skins. P0M 08:33, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Madamwatson's edit

It appears to me that she added a reference, and did not remove a reference. And what is wrong with the part she added? Of course you can do whatever you want since you want to play the race card constantly and we all know that once someone has decided to call someone else racist, the person charging racism always wins. --Filll 00:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

She didn't add a damn thing. She removed content. Go back it check it agin, and stop posting nonsense. Editingoprah 01:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I got a little bit of an eye opener

When I went to the melanin theory part of the black supremacy article. It all becomes more clear.--Filll 05:58, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Can't we just get along?

I mean for real this is just crazy, can't black people have there own article and work on it in peace Whites seem to dominate just about every other article in wikipedia and now they want to control this one as well, call me paranoid but I think there's a conspiracy a foot to rob us of our right as afrowikipedians to present our racial and social povs which are in themselves informative and encyclopedic in a practical, street-smart sense.--OJPimp'son 11:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyone can contribute to any article. That's how it works here. If a Black person has contributions to make to the White people article, that would be great. Segregation is a bad thing, there's no ownership here. The biggest problem wikipedia has is systemic bias, but this affects us all. White North Americans are massively over represented on wikipedia, this is where the most internet connections are found, so this is the group that is most represented. North Americans contribute to articles about Welsh people and English people and all sorts, but we are all free to contribute to any article, no article is owned by any particular group. You are free to include any racial and social POVs in any article, no one will remove them unless they break content guidelines. Alun 11:53, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

So OJPimp'son, what is wrong with the black people article that has been done by white people, in your opinion? Do you think it has a white bias? Or a nonblack bias? --Filll 12:39, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

A root of the difficulty

Now that I am slowly starting to understand what is going on here, and at the white people article, I can see what to me is the underlying problem. Namely, metrics. When I looked up the Wikipedia article on genetic distance, it is an embarassment, but that is what everyone seems to be arguing about. Distance. And yet we have a very cursory treatment of this important concept. I guess people do not like math.--Filll 14:56, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

No, I'll tell you what the problem is this article should be written in the dialect that reflects the Black Man's historical and social reality, not in the dialect of the master. This article is perpetuating the white man's domination of the Black Man, right down to the linguistic level. It's a damn shame, have we learned nothing from Cosmo Kramer, racism is inseparable from the American consciousness and the American language. If your White in the US and you get mad at a Black Man you are linguistically irresistibly bound to respond with racial epithets, the history of American English compels you to it, so I say drop the language of the oppressor and take up the language of Black English and we'll all be free to write this article the only real and truthful way possible.--OJPimp'son 16:37, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

You mean ebonics? The only problem I have with that is that many other people do not understand it. I did not create the text in the article myself. My only edits to try to improve the grammar were reverted. You will have to take it up with other people. --Filll 17:19, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Take no notice of "OJPimp'son". He is just an invention designed to parody Deeceevoice. Paul B 12:57, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Picture removals

I've removed four non-free copyrighted pictures from this article, as they are being used on Wikipedia under fair-use provisions which do not permit their use in this article. Please do not add non-free pictures to this article. Please use some free ones. Thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 12:57, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

What is wrong with this?

Locale Usage
Australia Australian Aborigines are commonly called black.
Canada Canadians use the terms African American or Black Canadian to refer to people with dark or African skin.
France The French slang term black (pronounced the same as English, except in plural in which form the 's' is not pronounced) is a pseudo-anglicism, used only as a noun. In standard French, noir (literally, "black") is generally used.
Germany "Farbige", meaning "Coloured" in German.
Israel "Schwartze," (from 'schwarz', German for 'black'), was a derogatory term to describe Sephardi Jewish immigrants, particularly from North Africa. The term has diminished in use especially after the arrival of the Beta Israel from Ethiopia. Other terms used by the Hebrew speaking world are "Kushim", meaning that their origins are in Kush, or "Yemenites." These terms generally are not considered offensive in any way.
Italy Black people (usually African immigrants, many of which from Senegal), can be called neri, while the similar term negri is highly offensive. Another derogatory expression is vu' cumpra' ("wanna buy?"), referred especially to black immigrants selling on streets or beaches. A borderline term is extracomunitari, that refers to the fact that these people come often from outside the European Union (which used to be called the European Economic Community; since this is never used to indicate, say, Americans, Norwegians or Swiss, this term is often considered hypocritical.
Latin America A number of terms are used. The most politically correct form would be terms such as Afro-Mexican, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian, etc., or – on a continental basis – Afro-Latin American. Commonly used terms include negro (Sp. "Black"; note that this rarely carries a derogatory meaning in Latin America.) and moreno (in the distant etymological past, a reference to the blackness of "los moros," or "the Moors"). Derogatory terms do exist, however, such as chombo (used in South America).
The Netherlands The Dutch use negers (negroes). Zwart (black) is used as an adjective, though as a noun (zwarte) it may be intended in a (slightly) derogatory manner. However, it is common to refer to the country of origin instead, e.g. Somaliër, Senegalees, Nigeriaan, Antilliaan or Surinamer, though it should be noted that the latter two can also refer to whites from the Netherlands Antilles or Surinam. Nikker, roetmop and kaffer are offensive (kaffer comes from the arabic word kafir which means infidel and was used by Arabs for Africans). The antiquated word moor refers to Mauritania and was used for both black and muslims.
Norway In Norwegian the most common term is neger (negro) and negre (negroes). The adjective form is svart (black) and svarte (blacks). Some people find the term neger offensive, but this is a pretty new phenomena (from around 2000) and the term is usually not regarded as offensive.
Poland The neutral Polish term for a black person is Murzyn (plural: Murzyni). The term czarnuch (pl. czarnuchy, from czarny = "black") is considered offensive.
Romania Romanians use the term negri (blacks) to refer to African or African-American people, either in or outside Romania. Negri is not used to refer to other dark-skinned people, such as Pacific Islanders or Indians. The diminutive form negrotei might be occasionally considered offensive. The term cioroi or cioară, which also means crow is usually offensive.
Russia Russians today apply the name chornyye (чёрные, Blacks) mostly not to Africans, but to people from Caucasus, which quite naturally belong to the Caucasian race.  Africans are usually called negry (не́гры, Negroes).
South Africa The South Africans use the term blacks for the general black population, but since the country consists of different ethnic groups, they are often called by their ethnic names, e.g. Zulus, Xhosas, Basutos etc.
Turkey Zenci (Negro) is widely used for people of sub-Saharan ancestry. The once popular arap is now out of use and people who find Zenci derogatory prefer to use siyah (black) or more commonly, siyahi (black person) instead.
United Kingdom The term black Briton is sometimes used in the UK, but it is more common to use an adjectival rather than a noun term and write about black British people. Rarely the description is loosely used to also include what is actually a larger demographic, British people of south Asian descent. See also: British Afro-Caribbean community.
United States In the USA, African Americans are commonly called, and call themselves, black. They may also use the N-word.

I found this in the past history of the page. It was removed. What was wrong with it?--Filll 23:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

It has no source. It's POV. What does it means to say Australian aboriginals are commonly called black in Australia? How common is common? It's not a factual statement. What does it mean to say Black Briton is sometimes used? Every term is used sometimes. Kobrakid 01:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

That is a good point. It would take a lot of effort to get sources for all these.--Filll 01:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
And even when sources for this type of information has been provided, it's only of an anecdotal nature. For example you can find quotes of people using the term black to refer to virtually any group, but in order to say the term actually refers to any particular group, I think you need a source that actually cites a formal definition of black that cites the group in question as an example of a black person. Kobrakid 02:15, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually it is not a good point. This is a list, in wikipedia when we make lists that point to other articles the cite only needs to be in the article the list points to. So if we claim that in Australia Indigenous Australians are called Black, then the citation should be in the article about Indigenous Australians. If it's not, then we need to find a cite. But it should be there. Let's stick to wikipedia policies and guidelines shall we. We need a cite from a reliable source. That's it. If, for example we find that on the ABC website they claim that Indigenous Australians are refered to as Black, then we can accept that. This article is very biased at the moment, it has a very US center of gravity. But there is already an African American article, this article is not just about people who are the descendants of African people that currently live in the USA and Canada. There are Afro-Carribean people in the UK, see Black British. The place that has the highest number of Black people is still Africa, but it's hardly mentioned in the article, how many non-American Black people are shown in the "mug shots" at the bottom? How can we not have the greatest living person, Nelson Mandela? And Indigenous Australians are mentioned only in the context of "not really being Black". Here are some sources using Black for Indigenous Australians.[12] [13] [14] [15] Most of the places in this list point to articles. It would be a piece of cake to find cites for these. As Wikipedians most of our time should be checking cites and sources anyway. See WP:FACT. Alun 05:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict)

As a list that purports to say what words pertain to black people, it runs afoul of self-reference. You can't ask the question without using the answer to the question.
You would like to back off of the word and look at the object or at least many samples of the object. One person says, "I know what I mean by black. I know a black person when I see one." When shown a Shan that person might say, "That person is black. No doubt about it." If we keep after this individual long enough we may be able to elicit a list of traits that he feels someone must have to be considered black. Somebody else comes along and rejects the Shan because he cannot trace his ancestry back to Africa. Now we have two definitions of "black person." Before long we decide that the more we ask the more definitions we get.
Then "What kinds of people are black people?" gets as many different answers are there are definitions of "black people."
When you ask, "What do they call black people in Chinese?" you have to know which the the 37 different kinds of "black people", as set out by 37 different definitions, corresponds with a definition of a term in Chinese. So it becomes possible to see a list of English words and definitions written side-by-side with Chinese words and definitions, and then you'd have to try to draw lines from words on one side to words on the other side.
We've seen examples of what can happen right here on this discussion page. Some people get a short distance outside of Africa and decide they do not want to be called by any name that indicates close relationship with Africans. Other people want a term that is inclusive of them. Both want to use the same word. It's as though somebody decided that American English should be called American and English spoken in Great Britain should be called English, giving us two languages, English and American, and somebody else used English to refer to both languages. Well and good. but try to find Chinese equivalents and you're in a bit of a bind because while they have two terms, the equivalent of "American language" is viewed as a subset of "English," and there is no specific way to mention the English spoken in Great Britain except by using longer phrases as I have just done in English.
If the comparison could actually be made so that it showed graphically the range (even just the geographical range) of speakers belonging to, e.g., blacks as defined to include only San, Blacks as defined to include all African aboriginal populations except San,...Blacks as defined to include all African aboriginal populations but none outside of Africa,...Blacks as defined to include all populations worldwide with a skin reflectance lower than x%. then maybe doing that job would aid in deconstructing the word "race."
Almost all human conceptualizations involve a subjective component. In physics one effort to get around some of the confusion that kind of thing can cause has been to insist on clear definitions (operational definitions). Another approach has been to use natural units (such as the speed of light) that don't depend on the length of some monarch's foot or other conventional standard of measure. If you look at humans on the genetic level, then the print-out of an individual's DNA is a natural standard. But whenever we zoom out and try to characterize the human in larger chunks of data, then the question becomes "How much difference makes two genetic chunks different?" Or, look at it this way: Suppose one definition of "white person" includes a reflectivity of 87.5% or higher. Then in one family some family members have 87.6% and some have 87.4%. Yet it seems crazy to say that they are members of two different races. Crazy or not, it is disturbingly arbitrary. P0M 03:17, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

copyedit

I'm going to do minor copyedit and grammar check. I just wanted to point out that I can't stop laughing about the template saying "To-do list for Black people" at the top. My dad would love it. Resonanteye 00:15, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Please be bold in making the necessary changes. In my brief time reading this article I've noticed many changes that should be made. The content is good but the presentation is lacking. --ElKevbo 02:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

A PC point

I don't know what was originally there, but someone glossed "yellow" as "Asian" and Kobrakid reverted it, writing: (revert, Asian is not a race.)" Even though "orient" just means "the East," Asian-Americans have taken great umbrage to the use of this word because (as Edward Said argued in his book Orientalism) so great a negative connotation has accreted to the word. Major universities have sometimes had to change department names because they originally contained the "O" word. Both "Asian" and "oriental" are flaky for another reason: Anything east of a certain north-south line a little to the east of Macedonia (forget whete the irrational thing is) fits into that category. People living in Afghanistan, for instance, would be "Asians" or "Orientals."

Maybe we should key [race] names to the map rather than to emotion-stained words. P0M 03:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Archive time

This discussion page is getting so it takes pretty long to download via a telephone modem. Any objection to archiving the top half or so? P0M 03:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes I strongly object. Please don't archive it. Kobrakid 04:18, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

It was definitely time to archive. Thanks for pointing that out, Patrick. I added what hadn't been discussed in over a week into Archive 8, making it about 120kb in length. That's standard with the other archives in this talk page. Please note that this is a standard housekeeping procedure and you don't have to ask permission, particularly if the convos are stale. --Strothra 05:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I've had people archive entire discussion pages just after I'd added something that the guy apparently thought was valueless, and I got rather irritated by his action, so I like to ask.
People who object to archiving for fear that content is lost can be assurred that unless high figures in Wikidom take a hand nothing will ever cease to be available. P0M 08:48, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

This is all very interesting and I encourage further eugenical(?) exploration, but there should indubitably be somewhere a section on the recent mass invasion of Maghrebans and Subsaharians to the Canary Islands for example, this is causing many problems in the islands in question. Thanks.--LaBotadeFranco 08:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Ethiopians

Though I'm happy to go along with consensus there seems to be a simple explanation for the longwinded section regarding East-Africans/Ethiopians. It is simply about how one defines Black people. When Black people are assumed to be those people mainly of sub-Saharan African origin, then East-Africans may not be included in this group. When a broader definition of Black people is included (for example Indigenous Australians and African people of dark skin colour), then East-Africans are considered to be Black people. Essentially both of these points of view are correct, it is very much a question of opinion as to whether Black people are defined as exclusively of sub-Saharan African ancestry. I think the section could be improved by including several different definitions of who constitutes a Black person. I also think the article needs to be more careful with language. If we mean people of sub-Saharan African descent, then we should say this. If we mean people of east African descent then we should say that. If we mean Black people, then it should be taken for granted that this may indeed include people who are Indigenous Australians or east Africans or African-Americans or Black British or anyone in the African diaspora. As I say this is just my thinking and I'm happy to go along with consensus if it's against my thinking. Alun 10:58, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I've been rereading The Forest People to see whether these smaller (more like the original residents of Ethiopia perhaps) people consider themselves groupsed with the larger so-called Bantu types, or consider themselves split from them.
What Alun says makes good sense to me. We cannot get one definition for "black people" because there are so many well-established way of conceptualizing things. And it would not be neutral of us to come out in favor of one definition. What if the San don't want to be grouped with the other Africans, but the other Africans want to be grouped with the San? San and non-San may be more different from siblings, but they are less different from each other than, e.g., Finns are from Japanese. Split or lump? The answer will determine the amount of granularity in the eventual picture of human genetic groups that could be formed. In reality the "scatter chart" has as many dots on it as there are humans in this world. For every scheme of organization there are different numbers of "dots." In some systems two individuals may be grouped together, and in some other system the same to individuals will be grouped separately. P0M 05:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually East Africa is in sub-Saharan Africa. All humans were originally black because humanity started in sub-Saharan Africa 200,000 years ago. The first people were negroid. But between 45,000 and 110,000 years ago, a mutation occured causing Ethiopians to have facial angles and facial feautres that were very caucasoid looking. This was the first step towards producing the caucasoid race. Now some of these pre-caucasoids left Africa and headed to the middle East, while others stayed in East Africa. When the pre-caucasoids arrived in the middle East,they morphed into full blown caucasoids known as Arabs, and then some of the Arabs went back to Ethiopia and mated with the Ethiopians who (like their Somalian neighbors) were already evolving into caucasoids any way. But the added gene flow from the Arab immigrants made Ethiopians in particular far more caucasoid then any other group in sub-Saharan Africa. If it hadn't been for the Arab immigrants, Ethiopians would be just like the rest of East Africa (negroids evolving into caucasoids, but still part of the same broad negroid race as the rest of sub-Saharan Africa) but because they had the added genetic influence of Arab immigrants (who contributed over a third of the Ethiopian gene pool), I would classify them as a caucasoid. They're more caucasoid than they are negroid Whatdoyou 19:37, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

You're absolutely wrong to assume that because humans originated in Africa the first group of humans was, in your sense of the word, "black." In fact, most recent research seems to indicate that the first modern humans were born only lightly pigmented, although they may have become significantly darker as a result of sun and element exposure by the time they reached adulthood. Recent research also suggests that these first groups of humans would have, in large part, faciologically (and not just melanistically) resembled modern Europeans much more than they would have modern Subsaharan Africans (i.e. blacks in your use of the term). The qualities that make many Subsaharan Africans "black" or "negroid" (robust facial features, one assumes you mean) are frequent (though not necessarily predominant) in many human populations and in no way imply a recent genetic connection with Africa's modern day "black" inhabitants, nor are they the result of "atavistic" mutations, although they may, roughly speaking, be akin to the foundational mutative processes that eventually led to the formation of durable clusters of typically "black" or "negroid" phenotypes across parts of the African continent. Also of note: light skin color will often have the classic "photogenic" effect of softening facial features, thus masking phenotypical qualities in groups that might otherwise resemble "blacks", the reverse phenomenon appears to be much less effective in influencing racializing perceptions (the Ethiopian case notwithstanding). On the other hand, that millions of people across the globe associate Africanicity simply with very dark-skin pigmentation is both a sociological fact and a biological falsehood, and should be carefully reported as such in this article.--Albinomite 21:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Forensic reconstruction of an African skeleton dated at 160,000 years ago, these are the oldest Homo sapiens remains ever discovered
Enlarge
Forensic reconstruction of an African skeleton dated at 160,000 years ago, these are the oldest Homo sapiens remains ever discovered

Does this man look lightly pigmented to you? This is the most up to date scientific imagery of what the earliest humans look like, and he is black in every sense of the word: African homeland, Dark skin, wooly hair, prognatheous face, athletic build. Blacks are the first truly human beings to ever walk the earth. Blacks are your parents. Whatdoyou 01:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

He appears to be gray. Talking about "blacks" as though there is some such transhistorical category is part of the problem. Paul B 15:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
This type of discussion is why I shake my head in amazement. Wow. No wonder we have awful fights here. Please, both of you try to step back and be reasonable if you can. --Filll 01:56, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Excerpted from The Biology of Skin Color, Black and White [[16]]: Jablonski, now chairman of the anthropology department at the California Academy of Sciences, begins by assuming that our earliest ancestors had fair skin just like chimpanzees, our closest biological relatives. Between 4.5 million and 2 million years ago, early humans moved from the rain forest and onto the East African savanna. Once on the savanna, they not only had to cope with more exposure to the sun, but they also had to work harder to gather food.

Not even if you produce a "dark" image of a million year old human will I be able to take your "mater nigra theory" seriously--Albinomite 05:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what you "take seriously" or not. We are making an encyclopaedia article. We use reliable sources to produce a neutral point of view, this means we include all significant majority and minority points of view. Take a look at Human skin colour. Before our common ancestors lost their body hair they probably did not have a dark skin colour. Dark human skin colour is strongly selected for in sunny environments because if confers protection. This is simple selective pressure. Here's the rub, Hominina lost their hair a long time before the first anatimically modern humans evolved. As far as I am aware archaic humans had lost their body hair. So if Homo erectus had no body hair, it is safe to assume that the first AMH had none, and therefore would probably have had a dark skin colour to protect them from the sun, they did evolve in Africa from pre-existing African homonids that were hairless after all. The "early humans" your quote refers to do not represent AMH, who evolved about 200,000 years ago (much more recently) but archaic hominid species, probably Australopithecus (~4 million to ~1.2 million years ago) and Homo erectus (~1.8 million years ago). Alun 06:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

"Race is as real as us and our ancestors, it's about family lineages stretching back many hundreds, in some cases, thousands of years. Race is also about settling down and forming immediate and extended families and webs of cousins and marrying within the radii of relations across a span of hundreds or thousands of years. It's about the same faces being "stamped" over and over again on succeeding generations of people and about the formation of "tribes" of eerily similarly faced people inhabiting easily demarkatable spaces over historically lengthy periods of time. The linking of races almost exclusively with skin-color traits demonstrates a terribly unfortunate lack of imagination and a profound ignorance of human as well as familial histories, especially on the part of the most technologically advanced societies. Needless to say, in demographic terms three thousand years ago Europe was radically different from what it is today or even from what it was in the time of the First Crusade or the Thirty Years War; pre-Roman Europe was a land of clans and tribes, many of whom lived sequestered in deep valleys surrounded by unarable hills which were in turn protected by steep mountains, the deeply stamped and strongly featured faces of the peoples that composed these closely knit, highly territorial groups would—if they were to somehow be revived—surely strike the modern European as strangely frightening and for this same reason enthralling, it would be akin to a European revisiting the "discovery" of America and its wonderously "exotic" panoply of peoples." This was originally posted by cupidon and merits reposting here I think.--Albinomite 05:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

There is a photograph somewhere of President Kennedy visiting his kin in Ireland. If you look at him as an individual you just see a different face. If you look at him and Bobby you see two people who seem pretty different at least in regard to how lean the face looks. But if you look at him in the company of "cousins" over in Ireland, he seems to fit right in. My initial reaction when I saw the picture was something like, "Where did they get so many people who look that much alike?"P0M 06:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
If you read Jablonski's work, it is true that she does not insist that humans originally had dark skin. However, it is also true that she is fairly certain that if humans spend very long at all in a sunny area, they will have to develop dark skin to protect their ability to breed. This might be worth noting in the article, but it certainly is not worth arguing about. Because no one really knows when the first creatures really became human. After all, if you think about it, the line is pretty arbitrary. And the first human had animal parents. If we posit that the first "humans" had light skin, then if they spent very many generations at all in Africa, they certainly developed dark skin in a very few generations. But this is all sort of arbitrary and unknowable past a certain point.--Filll 14:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I've not read the book, but the linked article refers only to "our earliest ancestors" having pale skin, which in context seems to mean pre-human hominids. All this is really rather absurd - as if the skin shade of early humans tells us anything at all about modern people of any race. Paul B 15:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
This is exactly the point I make above Paul. I am in complete agreement with you. Our "earliest" ancestors were the first lifeforms on the planet after all. If they mean aur direct ancestors from about 2 million years ago, then these apes weren't anatomically modern humans anyway. Alun 17:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Excerpted from The Paleo-Etiology of Human Skin Tone: "Of course, nothing above is meant to imply that pre-LGM Europeans were as dark as Africans. Evidence suggests that early modern humans had a medium complexion, like that of today’s Khoisan or Ethiopians. The very dark complexion of central Africans also seems to be a recent adaptation [italics post-placed] (Semino and others 2002). To be sure, prior studies had suggested Mbuti pygmies as most resembling the first moderns, but current molecular evidence points to the Khoisan and Ethiopians..."[[17]]. The Khoisan, it should be noted, do in no way consider themselves black, and if given a "carte" of choices from which to select racial affinities, will regularly pick examples representing South or Central Asian phenotypes. --Albinomite 23:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Quickly glancing at The Paleo-Etiology of Human Skin Tone, Mr. Sweet's opus, I have some issues with it. This is written by a PhD candidate at the University of Florida. Mr. Sweet's Masters degree is from something called "American Military University", an online university. The article is not peer-reviewed or published in a major journal. Mr. Sweet apparently has limited scientific training from the article and his background. If I had to choose someone to put much faith in, I would put it in Jablonski and her husband. Just "claiming" that the original humans were white, or that there is a problem with the "out of Africa" hypothesis does not make it so. It can be noted, but this is not what I would call mainstream research or a proper reference. Plus, I do not think we have good evidence of the original color of human skin, only a few theories that we can make predictions from. I guess I have to ask; what is your point here exactly? What do you want to prove and why?--Filll 23:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
When all somebody who has made some effort to determine early skin colors can say is prefaced by "evidence suggests," I think it is prudent for this article to point to the fact that skin tones in Africa are well adapted to the UV level and that the genetic connections among Africans are being worked out via DNA analysis, and let it go at that. That being said, I suspect that skin color changes are under a fair amount of pressure since some skin cancers kill quickly and even basal cell carcinoma can kill if it is not treated before cells proliferate into the brain. So if I had to make a bet I'd go with the current average skin tone of the area where the earlierst human traces are found. P0M 03:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Seems unlikely to me. Genetic diversity in humans is small, when traits are not under selection (and most aren't) there is no reason for there to be great variety beteen geographical regions. When traits are under strong selective pressure then the geographical distribution is observable. People living in very sunny environments have very dark skin, all over the world. Indigenous Australians and people living in the south of India also have very dark skin colour, but these people are no more closely related to Black Africans than are Europeans, the reason they have a very dark skin colour is due to the strong selection for this trait by high levels of UV light. If one wants to claim that pre-LGM (Last Glacial Maximum so a mere 20,000 years ago) anatomically modern humans (AMH) that lived in sub-Saharan Africa did not have a very dark skin colour then one would have to show that there were considerably lower levels of UV light there at this time. I don't think anyone knows the skin colour of the earliest anatomically modern humans, and in many ways it is unknowable, but we can make certain assumptions. Firstly if we assume that our pre-AMH were already hairless and that they evolved in Africa, then we can assume that they had a dark skin colour, or they would all have died out. This is natural selection, adapt or die, we're here, so our hairless pre-AMH ancestors must have had an adaptation that allowed them to survive the high levels of UV radiation. If we assume that the first AMH arrose in Africa from one of these hairless archaic humans, then we can assume that they also required protection from strong UV light. So I think the argument above has a deep flaw, how does it explain that modern Africans require protection from UV light, but a mere 20,000 years ago they didn't? Here's a good paper about how skin colour is selected strongly for in human populations (and therefore shows geographic variability) but how other genetic and physical traights are not, and therefore do not. Apportionment of global human genetic diversity based on craniometrics and skin color. Alun 06:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
As near as I can tell without digging into this extensively:
  • darker skin colors protect against skin cancer
  • lighter skin colors allow better absorption of vitamin D, preventing osteoporosis and rickets and also important for normal heart action, blood clotting, and a stable nervous system.
  • darker skin prevents breakdown of folic acid, protecting against anemia and preventing neural tube defects during pregnancy and aiding in the production of sperm cells.
  • there are some hints of connections between childhood sun exposure and skin color and multiple sclerosis, by some unknown mechanism.
The combined effects of these processes, particularly those that have effects at an early age, can create evolutionary processes that favor one skin color over another at various latitudes. The one exception is when diet can compensate for some of these effects.--Filll 06:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Exactly, but it's not an evolutionary process, it's a selective process. Natural selection and evolution are different concepts. Natural selection is the process whereby a traight (like skin colour) is selected for or against by environment. Evolution is how species evolve, it's about speciation. These concepts are related (evolution could not exist without selection) but not synonymous (selection alone can never lead to a speciation event). Alun 06:42, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I am confused. How is natural selection not part of evolution? And I do not think evolution is synonymous with speciation. --Filll 14:43, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

This is all very interesting and I encourage further eugenical(?) exploration, but there should indubitably be somewhere a section on the recent mass invasion of Maghrebans and Subsaharians to the Canary Islands for example, this is causing many problems in the islands in question. Thanks.--LaBotadeFranco 08:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

No offense, but why should something like this be shoved into an article on black people? If we included every migration of people to every place, then the article would be overwhelmed. If this is notable, put it in another article.--Filll 14:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm a bit confused. For instance, I read Alun's comment (Seems unlikely to me.) following my posting above, but I'm not sure whether it is directed to what I said or to the posting that I was commenting up.
Anyway, let's back up and go through what (I think) likely sequence of events is. Keep in mind that until we get genetic evidence we are doing guesswork. It may be known how many genes act together to determine skin color. How many genes define the difference between other primates and the genus Homo is unknown. Presumably these mutations did not all occur at the same time.
Whether there was a range of alleles influencing skin colors at the time some primate in our family tree lost fur and exposed bare skin to high levels of UV is unknown. Whether that primate was a dweller in the deep forests or on the plains is unknown. Whether primates with higher intelligence met and merged lines with primates with less fur, permitting them to move successfully into regions of higher UV is unknown.
How were the primates beneath us on our family tree getting their vitamin D? Something must have happened to make vitamin D synthesis *in the skin* utilizing UV a major opportunity for these organisms to fulfill their need for this substance.
It is possible, although not very likely, that the first members of the primates on our direct line of development to be hairless was already color adapted to direct exposure to UV at some level. Polar bears actually have an adaptation to direct UV into their skin (the individual hairs of their coats function as wave guides), so the presence of fur does not eliminate the possibility of other adaptations that relate to UV. Also, a prior change in skin color may have permitted the loss of fur rather than having things happen the other way around.
If the earliest primates on our direct line of descent to start losing fur were not adapted by skin color to the environment they found themselves in, they would have thrived in any environments they spread into that protected them from UV (deep forest cover, for instance). They would have been bottled up in the environments that permitted them to thrive with white skins and hair loss until such time as selection for existing "darker genes" occurred, or, if there were originally no genetic resources for skin pigmentation, until one or more mutations occurred that provided that resource.
By the time Homo sapiens sapiens came on the scene, that group should most likely already have been adapted to that area. However, being intelligent creatures they would have been able to find ways to increase their range into areas for which they were not best adapted. They would have quickly recognized, no matter what their skin color was, that sunburn is painful and can be avoided by seeking shade as the sun rises. Having moved into new areas they would have adapted over time to the new areas. Eventually they moved into northern Europe and one way or another they also adapted to that area. I believe that at least some scientists who specialize in this area think that one or more mutations were involved, but it is also possible that the "white genes" were present all along but hidden by the selection processes operating in areas to the south of them.
Homo sapiens sapiens in the region of Ethiopia, as a matter of probabilities at least, ought to have been adapted by skin color to that area. But I suspect that it will be very difficult to find any evidence one way or the other. P0M 16:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I was agreeing with you Patrick. What User:Albinomite says seems unlikely to me. Alun 17:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

This has been discussed and discredited ad nauseum. Ethiopeans are not white blacks. European colonial anthropologists made the same flawed claims in the 1800s (see Hamitic Myth), arguments that are entirely discredited by contemporary science. --Ezeu 17:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

If you think its been discredited by contemporay science then you obviously haven't been keeping up to date with all the advances in population genetics, such as the claims by Cavali-Sfroza, who described Ethiopians as "special Africans" with substantial West Asian admixture, or work on the Y chomosome, or mitochondial DNA. Also are you aware of the fact that the Eurasian Adam lived in Ethiopia. Look, if you want to define black people culturally you can make a case for Ethiopians being black, but the genetics suggest they are white. This is an issue I have specifically researched. Whatdoyou 17:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I do not doubt your understanding of Cavalli-Sforzas claims but, your own research notwithstanding, those claims are deviant at the very least, and mustn’t be put forth as a generally held view.--Ezeu 18:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I have been trying to get some sort of genetic information into this article, even if parenthetically. But we are mired in a malaise, and if anyone wants to try to get anything into the article suggesting that current scientific thought is that race is far more complicated than it appears, and might not even exist, they will get caught in a fight. But it is a good observation. Our cherished racial boundaries are sort of nonsense.--Filll 17:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I've recently been involved in a lengthy discussion on my talk page with an anonymous user about human evolution and "race". It was quite instructive and made me go and check quite a lot of literature in the field. As far as I can tell it is possible to categorise people into "races" only as long as the person's "population" of origin is known. It goes like this: If people are pre-divided into "populations" (or "races") it's easy to group them together, but there are certain geographical regions where the population's don't fit nicely into ant of the pre-determined "populations", these include the south of the Indian subcontinent and East Africa. In these regions people seem to "fall between" the pre-determined "races" or "populations". Other scientists consider that pre-determining "population of origin" is part of the problem, because "race" has been pre-determined. If people are taken at random and genetically grouped without prior "sorting" the results are far less convincing and the idea of discreet "races" breaks down, we see a far more clinal nature to the data. Indeed this would be expected given that genetic diversity is greatest within "population" ~90% than between population ~10% I have quite a long list of sources for this work and the conclusions I drew are available here with some additional sources here if anyone is interested. Here's some good sources. This paper Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease directly lead to the publication of this one Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity Within and Among Continents, which highlights some of the systemic problems with "population" (ie "race") based models (that is discrete non-overlapping "populations" of people), that "geographic" (ie identifying people by smaller regions of origin rather than clustering them into large pre-defined populations/races) models do not suffer from. These last two papers are well worth reading, though there are a couple of very good review articles that summarise the "state of play" in the area.[18][19][20] Of course to say that "race" is not a biological phenomenon is not the same as saying it doesn't exist, but that's a different story as they say. Alun 18:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The big picture is grey

Regardless of what our politics or who our friends are, I think we can all agree that what we're sorely missing is the "big picture." First: there are undoubtedly certain "sociological facts" regarding "race and space" which this article must both contend with and dutifully represent, these "facts" all relate to the long and widely held belief that to be African is to be black and that blackness is proof that one is African. To be sure, most of us here do not subscribe to the myth of African négritude, we know that Africa does not magically turn one black and yet we dispute among ourselves whether dark pigmentation was a necessary adaptation on the part of our first human ancestors to conditions in an African equatorial environment (so it seems that the myth does contain some truth after all), likewise we argue about whether Ethiopians, Khoisans, and Somalis are really black, yet I suspect that no one here would seriously consider not mentioning at least one of these three controversial groups in this an article on "black people." My point is this: our problem is not that we do not as a group know what to include or what the relevant "issues" are, it is that we can not seem to agree on how these "issues" should be presented, we do not seem to be willing to either make the effort or take the time to consider that "problems" which some see as "white" and others as "black" are in reality "grey," and should be depicted as such.--Albinomite 19:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. For example, I (and many with me) am of the view that black people are not necessarily Africans (I consider indigenous Australians and the people of New Guinea to be black), but I have abandonded my attempts at making that point because most people associate blacks to Africa – so even though I believe people are missinformed, I have to yield. Those pleading for (in my view) unreasonable ideas (ie. Ethiopeans are white) should likewise desist and allow the article to reflect generally held views. The main problem is that this article has become a referendum for promoting contentious beliefs, rather than a neutral encyclopedic description. Even the gagged up opinions can be mentioned in the article, but they should be done so without e.g. the prominence that this article gives to the Ethiopian issue. --Ezeu 20:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The article does reflect the fact that Ethiopians are considered black. For God's sake the first section is called THE ROLE OF ETHIOPIANS IN DEFINING ACIENT BLACK IDENTITY and the huge puicture of Ethiopian boys is one of the first things readers see in the black people article. That sends the message loud and clear that Ethiopians have been considered black. But in order to provide balance, as well as an interesting twist on the story, we should also mention that not everyone agrees Ethiopians are black. Unfortunately providing this bit of a balance has been controversial among 2 groups A) insecure blacks who feel they are nothing without being associated with the cultured and nice looking Ethiopians, and thus must resist any hint that Ethiopians might not be entirely black, and B) white supremacists who can't stand any suggestion that a dark skinned people, especially an African dark skinned people like Ethiopians might have some genetic links to the white race. I've seen both types of editors cause disruptions in this article, and to them I say "get a life". As for Asutralian aboriginals, they were once considered black and may still be identified as black in Australia, but because African American culture has been so influential, when most people think of blacks, African descended people are the first group that pops into mind. Add to that the fact that we no longer accept a close relationship, culturally or genetically, between Africans and Australoids, and it just creates confusion to call 2 different ethnicities by the same name and since Africans have monopolized the term, they've come to own the exclusive rights to it. Not sure why you wish to wish to lump Australian aboriginals and Africans into 1 category or why you wish to blur the distinction between them Timelist 22:36, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The good looks of Ethiopians is not, and has never been an issue (and neither have the good looks of Sudanese or Swedes), and I am not particularly impressed by the achivements of Ethiopians vis a vis other black people. Furthermore, I am not a white supremacist, and I have a life. --Ezeu 22:59, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Man this makes no sense. I am confused and I have no idea what the point of this is.--Filll 03:00, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Introduction

I hope we can at least get the convoluted language out of the article. I have made an effort to make the introduction a bit clearer with more straightforward language. It needs more effort however. Hopefully it will not all get nuked as it has the last several times I tried. --Filll 21:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the reference to "Negro", as this is too specifically an American (read USA) issue to be included in the introduction. Also removed the unnecessary and not so subtle attempt to equal ancient pre-humans to blacks. However, I do not harbour the illusion that the edit wont "get nuked", as attempts to bring balance to this article are almost always suppressed. --Ezeu 22:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Clarification: The issue of the birthplace of mankind belongs in the article named Africa. Black people are no more or less related to pre-human humanoids than any other people – unless one is suggesting that black people are a prior advancement of modern humans. I assume that is not what one wants to say, but if that is what one wants to say, then do not insinuate, say it out loud. --Ezeu 22:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
If you remove the discussion of "negro", I would suggest you include it someplace else in teh article. I am not sure it is only american, but even if it is, it is a very important word to discuss. --Filll 22:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't think that should be removed either. Just because its specific to America? The whole concept of being black is pretty much an American invention. People in other other countries are only black to the extent that Americans call them that. It's not like other countries used the term black to any great extent without American influence. Timelist 22:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Who said anything about pre-humans? The first fully modern humans were blacks. Keep in mind that modern humans only emerged 200,000 years ago. That's a blink of the eye in evolutionary terms. In the last 200,000 years there's been very little genetic evolution, hence the fully modern humans living in Africa 200,000 years ago, are pretty much the same as the modern humans that are living in Africa right now. The humans who left Africa as recently as 50,000 years ago to form other races are also pretty much the same as the first modern humans who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago. The only difference is they evolved trivial adaptations to different climates, creating the trivial racial variation we see today. But since everyone on Earth was black until as recently as 50,000 years ago, it makes sense to say blacks are the first race, and that all modern humans are essentially African under the skin. Timelist 22:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I have to admit that Timelist makes a lot of sense. We are all one species. The "races" are sort of trivial differences. And from what we know about biology, it is hard to avoid the claim that our ancestors a short time ago all had dark skin, or else they would not have survived in the African climate. Maybe if you go back further, our ancestor's skin was lighter. But were those light skinned creatures human? Of course we cannot know for sure. But probably as our forebearers lost their fur, they became darker skinned. And then when humans migrated to the higher latitudes, some light skinned mutations were able to survive. --Filll 22:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Black is an American invention?

Makes a lot of sense? How do his prior arguments correspond with your statement that "our cherished racial boundaries are sort of nonsense"? Where is the sense in his pronouncement that being black is an American invention? --Ezeu 23:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Blackness is an american invention? What on earth? Surely you are kidding me. You cannot be serious. And our racial boundaries ARE sort of nonsense. At least by our best biological data. People ARE far closer to grey. The races blend into each other. And races do not have the special traits that we like to think they do, or at least to the extent we think they do. --Filll 23:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Whew! Jeez. Thank God. For a moment I was really worried that Fill as well had lost his wits. Blackness, an American invention!? That is surely the strangest I've heard. --Ezeu 23:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The idea of calling certain groups black was popularized in America. If it weren't for African-Americans, very few people would use the term black and it would not be important enough to have an article about. Give credit or blame where it's due. Timelist 23:43, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

You are kidding me. That is a very strange perspective. And VERY centered on the US. I could give dozens of counter examples. That is just wrong, I believe. But americans always think they are most important people on the face of the earth. So it is typical. --Filll 23:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Let credit be given where credit is due, but Timlist's view is excessive and unreasonable. --Ezeu 23:57, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I do not believe that anyone seriously believes that the idea of calling certain groups black originated or was popularized in the US. I have to think it must be a joke. I do not think it is "excessive and unreasonable". It is more like a comical statement because it is so obviously bizarre and biased, and ignores a few thousand years of history, some of which is even referenced in the article at present. This HAS to be a joke.--00:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)--Filll 00:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I would consider it silly and humourous in any other context, but unfortunately I do not think Timelist is trying to be funny. "Excessive and unreasonable" is imo more correct than "comical" in this particular situation. Not only that, but it is also rather bothersome that someone seriously harbours such an idea. --Ezeu 00:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree, that's seriously not funny, and highly disturbing. --Strothra 00:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
It may be highly disturbing to you (I personally have more important things to be disturbed by like war, world hunger)but as someone who has travelled extensively all oever the world, I can tell you that labeling people by skin color is a very American thing to do. In other countries they seldom call Africans (or any other dark skinned group for that matter) black, they call them African. Only those with enormous exposure to American culture use terms like "black" to describe other human beings. Timelist 00:53, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Try reading early accounts of British and Portuguese expeditions into Africa during the Elizabethan Victorian period, particularly the diaries, the term black is used quite frequently. African in reference to people is only a contemporary usage. Before the twentieth century, African as a term throughout the world, was primarily used only to refer to geography and customs - not people. Also, humans have an infinite capacity to be disturbed - you act as if a person's ability to be disturbed by something is limited to only a few things. --Strothra 00:58, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Timelist, I have no idea where you travelled, but you certainly have not been listening to people in the UK, or in Australia, or in Peru, or in Holland, or Russia, or many other places. And as Strothra points out, this has been going on for thousands of years. Just read the article as it now stands. Read the article on negro. Remember what Aeta translates as, as well. And on and on. Black has been used for a long time. It was not particularly prevalent in the US until it was decided BY AFRICAN AMERICANS that it was more current and hip than an old fashioned word like "negro" or an even older word like "colored" in the 1960s, and chosen by African Americans themselves for this very reason !!! Remember Black Power, and Black is Beautiful and Black Muslims and Black Panthers? Who do you think made those phrases and slogans up? White people? You have got to be KIDDING me. African Americans chose them because they were tired of the older words which had developed negative connotations (a well-known process in linguistics called pejorization).--Filll 01:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Timelist in case you need any other examples of other places in the world that use the word "black" to refer to people with darker colored skin, I would direct to this chart above. I know that there are no references for this material, and you might claim it is suspect, but my own personal experience around the world in about 30 countries confirms that what is listed on this chart is not too far from the truth. People everywhere use the term black to refer to people with dark colored skin. They have done this for thousands of years in some cases. They did not just decide to do it because Americans were doing it. And the popularity of the term in the last 40 years in the US is MAINLY because of African Americans themselves, who would blow a gasket if anyone called them anything else!!!--Filll 01:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The reason this article is such a mess is that there have been many stripes of extremist involved, all fighting with each other, for months and months. So, not much gets done. And it ends up very one-sided, by whatever group manages to get the upper hand.--Filll 00:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

What about Scipio Africanus?--Balino-Antimod 01:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)--Balino-Antimod 01:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

  • I refer Timelist to 17th, 18th and 19th century texts available at Project Gutenberg, in the hope that he will broaden his understanding somewhat. --Ezeu 01:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Re this quote of Timelist:n other countries they seldom call Africans (or any other dark skinned group for that matter) black, they call them African. I noticed that we had some African editors here a few weeks back that got into a huge fight, because the dark skinned African did not want to admit that the light skinned African whose ancestors a few generations back were from Europe, was African. And sure enough the color part of it came out right away, with the white African claiming to be African, and the "black" African claiming that no whites could be African. All with no influence from Americans. They seemed to come by this disagreement quite naturally, frankly. Also, I will point out that there are plenty of light skinned Africans living in Morroco and Egypt etc. The Berbers are pretty light skinned. This is all so heated and ridiculous. African Americans need to just relax and realize that the entire world does not revolve around them. Living in a place that is about 70% African American, I see similar kinds of provincial and ignorant attitudes all the time around me. --Filll 01:42, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I think you guys are underestimating the influence of American media and culture on the rest of the world. For example, the untouchables of India only started calling themselves black to copy African-Americans and relate to the civil rights movement. Anyway, not sure why everyone's getting so emotional about who popularized the word black. It's just a word, who cares. Timelist 02:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Some comments:

  • I know that the US has a huge influence on the world. However, it did not have a huge influence on the world before it existed as a country. It did not have a huge influence on the world before Columbus. And there is no way to "measure" how much of the world is just aping the US, especially in the calling of some subset of their population "black". That is a completely unverifiable and highly suspect claim.
  • The entire article is about calling people black. So of course people are a little concerned with what it means and where it came from.
  • The general arrogance of Americans rubs most people the wrong way, and this might easily come off as another example of that. Remember there are plenty of people around the world prepared to kill you just because you are American.
  • People on Wikipedia, and particularly on a page as controversial as this one with so many angry exchanges, are a bit sensitive about what might appear like trolling or aggressive ludicrous claims.

So is it any wonder people are a bit concerned? Of course, who really cares about who uses or has used the word "black", or this article, or wikipedia in general? Obviously some people care, given the racial strife in many places and the arguments I have seen here on this page. --Filll 03:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Fill, all I can say is that if people are going to fly off the handle over an argument as trivial as "who popularized the term black?" then this article is doomed. Timelist 03:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The article is in trouble and it has been in trouble for months on end. And that is the reason that I am even here, because various groups with crazy agendas were fighting visciously here for months on end. So the call went out for assistance, and I among others answered. I came to try to smooth things out and help a more moderate inclusive perespective succeed rather than more extreme views of varous kinds. And I would definitely say that various black consciousness positions are extreme, or views that no one uses the term black and that it is a slur or positions that black is a racist term only used by white people to put down those with darker skin, or that black is synonymous with inferior and stupid and oversexed, or a position that Americans invented the word black, or a position that only white Americans are uniquely evil enough to use a color to refer to people. All of these positions are just not reasonable or supportable. I do not object to including those views that can be supported with good references, but most of these are really fringe extremist views. --Filll 03:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Somewhere in the Zhuang Zi (or Chuang Tzu for those who hold to the old romanization) the author advises us to not worry too much about what one gets called, not because it is not so bad, not because it isn't ill intentioned, but because people who use the term with ill intent will put the same emotional load on whatever term is offered as a substitute.
I have no idea what educated and cultured people in the 1700s called the people being imported as slaves. I am fairly sure that low lifes used the N word. The odd things is that the derivation of the N word is just a badly spelled and badly pronounced "cracker" version of the Latin word for black. Those people so greatly lacking in virtue could have spoiled the word "ebony" had they chosen it as a term for the people they had enslaved. Polite society up until the Civil Rights period used two terms, "negro," and "colored people." Ironically, it was people in the black power movements who parodied the white political people as pronouncing the as theough it was "knee grow," i.e., breaking it into two syllables. So what had been the attempt of people who wanted to avoid giving offense to use a neutral or positive term was seen as the insincere talk of people who were "liberals" but not real. About that time the leaders of the black power movement, and many civil rights leaders, chose the word "black" as being free of all of the old associations. Perhaps the very successful "Black is beautiful" movement may have saved that word from being laden with the same negative connotations as the "N" word. Let's hope so.
The term "black" is appropriate to some Africans and African-Americans--especially as it applies to the color of the eyes of some people. I remember having one of my students leaning too far back in his chair and falling over backwards in a huge crash. He appeared stunned, so I attempted to see whether his pupils were dilated. I made myself dizzy trying to distinguish the iris from the pupil in his eye. It seemed to me that they were equally black. Just as there are some people who really are very nearly black in skin color, there are extremes at the other end of the scale, people who seem to me to have no pigment in their skin. The result is not that they look paper white but that they have a rosy complection because their capillary systems are visible through the surface of their skins. So I guess one way to name groups would be by these extremes of presence and absense of pigmentation. It doesn't seem to me that there are any differences in denotation among the Latin niger, the Spanish (?) negro, the English "black," etc.
After Stokley Carmichael and others of that time came upon the scene, it would have been natural, I suppose, for the term "black" to be used in political discourse in other English speaking countries where there was an awareness of the same problems of abuse of civil rights. Does anyone know what the white people of South Africa called their subject peoples, and what those people called themselves? Does anybody know what the British people who were concerned with human rights would call these people in the 1950s?
I do know that in Taiwan the preferred term in polite society was 黑種人 and in mainland China it was 黑人, that's hei zhong ren and hei ren, the difference being that the first term means "people of the black kind/sort/variety" and the second term means "black people." I'm not sure about mainland China, but the Chinese in Taiwan had the "hei zhong ren" term long before "negro" lost currency in the U.S. How they got it, I have no idea. There must be records of the Ming dynasty flotillas that sailed midway up the western side of Africa. It would be interesting to know whether they coined a specific term for the native peoples they met there. The term in Japanese is kurojin, black person. In at least these two areas "black person" was the term of daily use, contrasted with "white person," "red person," etc., and "black person" was used long before it became common in the U.S. Then there is the term "blackamoor," that is so old that most Americans probably have never even heard it. Whether it retained any currency in Great Britain I don't know.
So, while I rather doubt that "black person" was a new term to speakers of English anywhere in the world, its coming to currency in certain areas after the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement may not be an accident. We also had some discussion earlier about people in Sri Lanka using the term in recent political discussion, if I remember correctly.
All in all, I don't think it is a very big deal. P0M 04:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

This is just provides good examples of pejorization. Colored was the preferred word 100+ years ago (think NAACP), and then when it fell out of favor, negro gained currency (think UNCF), which was replaced by black (think Black is Beautiful), which was replaced by Afro American and now African American. I would not be surprised if African American is eventually replaced as well. One can also look at the history of the two words "ass" and "arse", which were alternately the polite and the rude form of the same word for centuries. To blackamoor, I might also add the word Moor, which is somewhat ambiguous because to some it can also signify Arab or Muslim.--Filll 04:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Benevolent Spiral

One of the reasons that discussions about Black people are so heavily loaded with affect is that so much damage has been done to the natives of Africa by slavers and colonialists, people who had reasons to rationalize their taking advantage of other people and to discredit any indications that the people of Africa had their own culture.

Two things are missing in the education of most if not all of us.

One thing missing is a clear knowledge of the genetic history that relates all of us. Many people do not want to admit that some of their ancestors are also the ancestors of the people of Africa. Clarifying that picture can make it much clearer in what sense a Shan tribesman is black and in what sense his genetic heritage includes some wrinkles that (without saying whether they make him better or worse) differentiate him from the descendants of those same ancestors who remained in Africa.

The other thing missing is a clear knowledge of the cultural accomplishments of the black peoples of the world. Racists would like to make it appear that "culture" is something limited to European society, with, perhaps, a bow to ancient Chinese poetry, early Japanese novels, or whatever. But culture is, in essence, inventions that people make to smooth and regularize human interactions. All societies have a culture. In addition to the everyday institutions of culture, which may be the most important, it is important to understand the cultural features such as music that each group and each time contributes. The music of Africa is, to my ear, highly evolved. It may grow out of a continuous tradition reaching all the way back to the earliest Homo sapiens to rest around a campfire after the sun goes down.

What have been the civilizations of Africa? Most people, myself included, received no instruction in this matter at any time from kindergarten to graduate school. The time of human beings in China is not so long as that of humans in Africa, but I do not think that is the reason that one could fairly easily produce a series of maps at intervals of the centuries perhaps, showing the locations of human habitations, the character of architecture and cityscapes, etc. Starting from around 1000 B.C. information taken from written accounts could be added to this picture.

The maps that Cavalli-Sforza produced (see above) show some indications of migration paths in Africa, but that information is already pretty old. Perhaps there are more detailed accounts available now.

In my understanding, the development of cities of greater and greater size and having greater internal structure (e.g., areas for boat building, areas for markets, etc.) is a pretty good indication of the general level of civilization in the society of the time, the reason being simply that large city require not only large resources in the material sense but also large resources in management skills and thriving economies to support their existence.

Depicting the African peoples not only by their genetic (fuzzy) categories but also by their accomplishments would be a much more objective presentation. It is extremely reductionistic to limit the description of a group or an individual to inherited traits. P0M 03:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Was there a consensus for this move?

I can see no discussion for this move from Black people to "The Black race", and there was no consensus. People refer to themselves as Black, that's why it's Black people. I think a big change like this should never be done unilaterally by an editor, this needs to be agreed upon by at least a majority of editors and preferably a consensus. And what's the sarcastic remark about "heavily tan white people or coal miners". What do other editors think? Alun 06:20, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting the renaming. --Ezeu 06:52, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Should actors in black face be in some way classified as "black people?"--Balino-Antimod 06:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Are you just trying to be provocative? Maybe we should ask for the page to be semi-protected again? Alun 06:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I dont think he is trying to be provocative. He tried to be funny, but failed miserably at it. --Ezeu 07:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

No there was no consensus. Calling the article "black race" is POV because it assumes that race is a valid concept, and we've seen from this talk page, that's an enormously controversial issue. As Ezeu said, thaks for reverting the renaming Timelist 07:08, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Black race simply means rooted in black or very dark lineages, black people don't just spontaneously appear, they come from other black people. This, if I recall, was also Thulean's point.--Balino-Antimod 07:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Very dark lineages appear, albeit not spontaneously. Its that simple, eh? What does "rooted in black" mean? Please explain.--Ezeu 07:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
One of the things that is very much in question is how one can use the word "race" in a serious discussion when every party to the discussion most likely attaches a different (and probably equally vague) definition to the word. To put that "word without a referrent" into the title of an article creates the impression that [race] is a category or series of categories with definite criteria for membership. We've seen the whole range of possibilities on this talk page, from people who will include in the category "black race" people who have dyed their skin to people who have black skin naturally but claim exemption from the category "black race" because of the possession of one or more other equally superficial characteristics.
This article should not be about race. There is already an article on that topic. This article should be about the history of the people of Africa with dark skins, both as they were tens of thousands of years ago, as they lived their lives and formed their cultures over the intervening tens of thousands of years up to the present, and also the people who emigrated from Africa and gradually picked up some other characteristics while obviously displaying their kinship with those remaining in Africa. P0M 07:45, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you entirely, except for one thing: this article should be about black Africans AS WELL as other black peoples.--Ezeu 07:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Be careful Ezeu. A lot of people are very offended to hear the term black used to describe people of non-African descent. Your entitled to your opinion of course, but it's very politically incorrect. Timelist 10:00, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
So may be the case, but I stand fast my belief. I do not think "black" is a pejorative term, and I do not use it to offend. --Ezeu 10:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
No I wasn't implying it was a prejorative term. Just the opposite. It's a term people of African descent use to describe themselves and don't wish to see hijacked by other (non-African descended) ethnicities. But you of course are entitled to your opinion, as views such as yours are clearly and abundantly expressed in the article. Timelist 15:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I certainly never intended that any group should be left out, and, in fact, if I follow my own logic then I ought to extend the history of the black diaspora to include all the blacks who have lost most of their pigmentation, i.e., the story of black people when followed all the way through becomes the history of the human race.
The Ainu of Japan are "white people" with genetic connections to the "white people" of northern Europe only through their common remote ancestry, i.e., the African connection or maybe the Central Asian connection. I just added them to the White people article last night. Do you know of any instances where a black population has emerged from a non-black population? I suppose it would be difficult to tell whether such a change occured because of selection or because of mutation unless we had a very thorough genetic evaluation of the group before and after the change, and of course the time scale would make that kind of information out of the question. P0M 08:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I suppose it's a question of timing, but one might be able to argue that Indigenous Australians may be descended from non-Black people, but when they got to a continent where strong UV light selected for dark skin colour their regained their pigmentation. Don't know the timing or if it's a theory, but I suppose it might have happened. Same in southern India, where people have a dark skin colour due to strong selection, but in more northern areas people have a lighter skin colour. Don't know if any research has been done on this, but it's only natural selection after all, there's nothing magic in it. If Europe had strong UV light us Europeans would, probably quite quickly (a few generations), develope a dark skin colour, even without any significant population replacement. Selection is just selection after all.[21] Alun 11:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
This source claims that dark skin colour has evolved independently several times due to selection: The early members of the genus Homo, the ancestral stock from which all later humans evolved, were, thus, darkly pigmented (Jablonski & Chaplin 2000). This interpretation has recently been supported by genetic evidence demonstrating that strong levels of natural selection acted about 1.2 mya to produce darkly pigmented skin in early members of the genus Homo (Rogers et al. 2004).......Emerging genetic evidence indicates that the evolution of pigmentation genes has been driven by purifying and diversifying selection working to produce adaptive responses in different environments (Makova et al. 2001, Rogers et al. 2004, Sturm et al. 2001). This evidence indicates that similar skin colors have evolved independently in human populations inhabiting similar environments. Darkly or lightly pigmented skin, therefore, provides evidence only about the nature of the past environments in which people have lived, rendering skin pigmentation useless as a marker for membership in a unique group or "race.".......The apparent existence of a difference between so-called human races and subgroups is predicated on an exaggerated perception and heightened sensitivity to a visually obvious attribute of human appearance. The enormity of this bias is revealed when the small amounts of actual genetic variation within purported racial groups are revealed (Lewontin 1995, Marks 2002). Overall, human populations are remarkably similar to one another, with the greatest fraction of human variation being accounted for by differences between individuals (Lewontin 1972, 1995; Marks 2002). This collective evidence militates that the concept of biological race be abandoned and publicly disavowed (Lewontin 1995, Marks 2002, Muir 1993). Race thus emerges as a cultural construct devoid of explanatory power and destructive of human and social relations (Lewontin 1972, 1995; Muir 1993).[22] Alun 13:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I generally agree with Patrick. I do disagree about this article being about the history of the people of Africa with dark skins because in Australia there are Black people who are certainly not Africa, but they are still considered Black people in Australia, I gave some cites above on this page.[23] Also in the UK sometimes (though increasingly rarely) Black is used in an inclusive sense to mean "not white European", such that Indian and Pakistani people sometimes self identify as Black A person with African ancestral origins, who self identifies, or is identified, as Black, African or Afro-Caribbean (see, African and Afro-Caribbean). The word is capitalised to signify its specific use in this way. In some circumstances the word Black signifies all non-white minority populations, and in this use serves political purposes. While this term was widely supported in the late 20th century there are signs that such support is diminishing.[24] I think the article should reflect this as well, though these POVs need not have a prominent position in the article as per undue weight. Alun 08:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the definition. It fits in well with the article so I added it. Timelist 09:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

If the goal of this move was to create a family of articles with different viewpoints (which I suspect goes against Wikipedia rules), then it might have worked. However, my impression is that the point of the move was to try to bludgeon into submission people with contrary views.--Filll 14:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, the same editor also moved White people to The white race. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 15:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Appears to me to be a white supremacist type, if I had to guess.--Filll 15:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Possibly a Falangist judging by this, this and this. Oh and the spurious "warns" I got for auto-translating the French and Spanish into English on the talk page. Alun 16:08, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes I say with pride I am a Nuevo Falangista, ¡Arriba España!--Balino-Antimod 16:28, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Also there is nothing racist or communist about being a falangist and the very article you cite concedes it:Despite changing times, Falangism remains a living political philosophy. The Kataeb, a political party in Lebanon, also espouses a Falangist ideology, and is the most prominent nationalist organization in the region; in Bolivia there is a political party called Falange Socialista Boliviana. In America, one small group, the Christian Falangist Party of America, inspired by Kataeb, was formed in 1985. It is vehement in rejecting racism, antisemitism, and neo-nazism and espousing traditional National Syndicalism, which it claims is neither racist nor socialist in nature (see Falangist). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Balino-Antimod (talk • contribs).

No one said there was anything racist about Falangist ideology. But the page was moved to a more provocative title without any consensus, and with a very provocative edit summary. There was no discussion for a move and it was done unilaterally. This is a sensitive issue and it can be no surprise that other editors are questioning the motives behind the move. Even if Falangist ideology is not racist (and I'm sceptical) it does not preclude any individual Falangist from being a racist, any more than any other political ideology does. Alun 18:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I see. NOT.--Filll 16:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Filll, comment on content, not on editors...Lukas19 17:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Pardon me Lukas19, but I do not believe that my comment was directed towards any editor. I stated that I do not understand. And I do not. I do not understand what neo-Falangists are, and how this is relevant. I do not understand how neo-Falangists are supposedly not racist or anti-semitic. I do not know what National Syndicalism is and how this is relevant and what agendas are involved. What does it have to do or not do with neo-nazis? What is all this talk about racial purity on the editor's page and how is it relevant to the white people and black people pages, coupled with the editors comments? I have no idea who the kataeb is, or the Bolivian Falangists are and why this is important. Why is "arriba espana" relevant here? The statements and actions seem contradictory, but there are hints of attitudes that I am not sure we want to feature prominently in these articles. I do NOT object to including these attitudes at all, but properly presented with references and characterized appropriately. I would like to know more about them, even. However, I do not think I am making any comments about the editor in question. I am just confused about what his views are exactly and why they should be the dominant guiding light of our articles on racial issues?--Filll 17:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
National syndicalism is basically the economic system that the Fascists tried to set up under Benito Mussolini. Alun 18:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Also, let's look at a comment on Lukas19's page by the editor in question:
I think we have to break the impression of many people that the original humans were black when they were nothing of the sort, Ethiopes of course are not true blacks and the deniers know this secretly but won't admit to it. Cheers.--LaBotadeFranco 15:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
This comment from the editor in question to your page gives me pause as well. I do not understand. Do you agree with this Lukas19? Not? How do we know what the color of the "original humans" was? How do you know what an "original human" was? Where do you draw the line between human and animal?--Filll 18:07, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
The early members of the genus Homo, the ancestral stock from which all later humans evolved, were, thus, darkly pigmented (Jablonski & Chaplin 2000). This interpretation has recently been supported by genetic evidence demonstrating that strong levels of natural selection acted about 1.2 mya to produce darkly pigmented skin in early members of the genus Homo (Rogers et al. 2004)[25] Alun 18:15, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Jablonski and her husband might not be correct, but at least this statement is based on real science and real scientific reasoning, and was published in peer-reviewed journals--Filll 18:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Filll, I think you're reading way too much into Lukas's and Balino's comments. I think we should focus on article-building and not on editor-questioning. Let us all stick to the true task at hand, manos a la obra as they say in Spanish.--Albinomite 18:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Well albinomite, I have looked at your page and those of Balino and several others. And at a few of the edits these editors have done. I would invite you ALL to make your views clear, maybe in another article so we can understand who or what you represent. All kinds of messages in Spanish or French and secret warnings and vague statements are really not helpful. Just be clear. What is your agenda? Particularly when this agenda is being used as a guiding principle to edit other articles. We have had repeated "black supremacist" groups and attitudes here trying to hijack this article for their own purposes, and given what I have seen on the pages of you and some of your compatriots, i am wondering if we are also not seeing their white counterparts also trying to hijack these pages for their own purposes. Are we?--Filll 18:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Albinomite has put a great joke on my page about writing in German. However, I do not think that everyone finds these kinds of jokes funny.--Filll 18:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I know how you feel Filll, I believe not too long ago there was a Black Supremacist here by the name of OJPimps'on, where is he now I wonder?--Albinomite 19:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I do not know if OJPimps'on is or is not a black supremacist. I do not know where he or she is. --Filll 19:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
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