It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by Astyanax
Culture is a product of biology only in that certain species of animal are genetically programmed to produce it, but cultures are far more the product of conditions and circumstances than of genes. They are locally adapted and change with time. My niece, born and brought up in the UK, is in all cultural respects English, though genetically she has very little English blood in her. Her father has rather more, but is in all important cultural respects a product of my homeland, though his habits and attitudes have been somewhat influenced by fourteen years of living in Switzerland, eleven of them married to a Swiss German.
Originally posted by Astyanax
Your musical example is false, I’m afraid. Try listening to the praise singers and griots of West Africa, or black American gospel music, or any record by Fela Kuti, or – crikey – just about any black music except bebop, before deciding that white folk like voices more than black folk do. I prefer white music myself – up to a point – but it has not escaped me, speaking as a musician, that the best-sounding natural voices nearly always seem to come from black throats.
Originally posted by Astyanax
In the sense that race is a set of categories into which humanity is sometimes divided, you are right. But that does not mean the division is based purely on genetics. That would be assuming what one sets out to prove, and besides it is not how racism works. Racism always includes cultural elements.
Originally posted by Astyanax
You disprove your own point. If culture is biologically derived, how can different races share the same culture? Massive Attack couldn’t possibly exist; they must be the invention of some conspiracy of media moguls.
Originally posted by Astyanax
There are no reasons for racism. It arises from an instinctive fear of the other. The reasons are all rationalizations after the fact.
Originally posted by Astyanax
Besides, do white men fear black women? Evidently not.
Originally posted by AstyanaxDo black men fear white men? You bet they do – and with ample reason, as history shows. But that’s not racism. A black person doesn't need reasons to be racist any more than a white person does, or a person of any other colour for that matter. Racists just are.
If you were black and English, you would be listening to, most probably, beat-oriented music.
There are no black heavy metal groups, why?
Black music is always based on drums. Even black American gospel.
One simple guideline for Christian music is NO DRUMS!
CHRISTIAN MUSIC SHOULD FEED THE SPIRIT — NOT THE FLESH!
CHRISTIAN MUSIC SHOULD EMPHAZIE THE MELODY — NOT THE BEAT!
*
Since culture is a product of biology, then the division based on culture is a division based on biology.
Biology is not entirely different between blacks, whites and asians. It's 99% the same.
I am explaining to you what you call "instinctive fear". Whites do not have this fear against Asians, for example.
"I'm not saying there aren't genetic differences among human populations," he cautioned. "There are differences, but they don't define historical lineages that have persisted for a long time, which is one criterion for race in a scientific sense."
Way to get all of your information from Wikipedia. You realize you just got the definition of race when applied to other species. Humans can't be categorized into various subspecies or races.
Humans are among the most similar of all species. That's because modern humans, all of us, evolved in Africa, and began leaving only about 70,000 years ago. As we migrated across the globe, populations bumped into one another, mixing their mates - and genes. Populations have just not been isolated long enough to evolve into separate races, or sub-species. In a "walk" from the equator to the North, we can see how visual characteristics vary gradually and continuously between populations. There are no boundaries.
"I'm not saying there aren't genetic differences among human populations," he cautioned. "There are differences, but they don't define historical lineages that have persisted for a long time, which is one criterion for race in a scientific sense."
Humans or Homo sapiens sapiens (subspecies) are synonymous! There are no subspecies left except for US. Homo sapiens idaltu which lived some 160,000 years ago is now extinct.
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Tribe: Hominini
Genus: Homo
Species: H. sapiens
In biology, races are distinct genetically divergent populations within the same species with relatively small morphological and genetic differences.
Familia: Hominidae
Subfamilia: Homininae
Tribus: Hominini
Subtribus: Hominina
Genus: Homo
Species: Homo sapiens
Subspecies: Homo sapiens sapiens
We also learn that most traits - be they skin color or hair texture or blood group - are influenced by separate genes and thus inherited independently one from the other. Having one trait does not necessarily imply the existence of others. Skin color really is only skin deep.
While biological scientists sometimes use the concept of race to make practical distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is often used by the general public[5] in a naive[6] or simplistic way. Among humans, race has no taxonomic significance; all people belong to the same hominid subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.[7][8][neutrality is disputed] Regardless of the extent to which race exists, the word "race" is problematic and may carry negative connotations.[9] Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies [10] that define essential types of individuals based on perceived sets of traits.
I clearly said "HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS", NOT "HOMO SAPIEN"; I know the difference between race & species.
RACE is a social construct with no biological backing.
I've already showed you two sources,by biological anthropologists/geneticists who say that there is no such thing as race and humans are all one species.
The last taxonomization is no longer used because there are no longer any other subspecies present.
Regarding skin color:
We also learn that most traits - be they skin color or hair texture or blood group - are influenced by separate genes and thus inherited independently one from the other. Having one trait does not necessarily imply the existence of others. Skin color really is only skin deep.
Plus humans are genetically 99.9% alike.
"Race divisions are the beginnings of speciation... and, if the populations were separated for enough time, they would eventually become different species (some million or so years)."
- your quote which made me laugh.
Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000. Plus the out of Africa migration is estimated to have occurred about 70,000 years BP. They inhabited Eurasia and Oceania by 40,000 years BP, and the Americas at least 14,500 years BP.
Some million or so years? Hardly.
And one more thing, while you were looking up the definition of 'Race' on wikipedia, you seemed to have overlooked this...
While biological scientists sometimes use the concept of race to make practical distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is often used by the general public[5] in a naive[6] or simplistic way. Among humans, race has no taxonomic significance; all people belong to the same hominid subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.[7][8][neutrality is disputed] Regardless of the extent to which race exists, the word "race" is problematic and may carry negative connotations.[9] Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies [10] that define essential types of individuals based on perceived sets of traits.