About human racesClassificationBlumenbach’s racesBlumenbach’s race mapTypological thinkingSlide 6Population thinkingCreating complexitySlide 9We impose typologiesRace is a social conceptRace is a folkloric conceptEstablishing the social concept of raceSocial race becomes lawScience ratifies social raceSlide 16Sophisticated typological thinkingA typology by any other name …Race as a sociopolitical conceptRace is ephemeralRace, language, classSlide 22Ear wax does very wellSlide 24Duffy factorMelanin and skin ColorSlide 27Slide 28Skin color and malariaSlide 30Slide 31Slide 32Slide 33Balanced polymorphismSlide 35Slide 36Slide 37Slide 38PTC tastingSlide 40Lactase deficiency – Lactose intoleranceSlide 42Slide 43Out of Africa and lactose toleranceRecent micro-evolutionary eventsSlide 46Slide 47Slide 48Slide 49Some perspective …Genes and intelligenceSlide 52Slide 53Slide 54Why does the race-and-intelligence issue keep coming up?Kleinberg’s studiesAssociation is not causeSlide 58Flynn effectSlide 60Gender and cultureSlide 62Slide 63Margaret Mead's study of gender roles in New GuineaIntracultural variationHousehold work and agricultureComplexity and statusAbout human racesThere are obvious biological differences in human beings. Two important questions about this fact are:1) which criteria, which measurable differences, shall we use to set up a typology of races? and 2) Assuming we can accurately measure human phenotypical physical variation, does this have anything to do with variation in features of human thought or behavior?ClassificationOn the question of classification, there are historically two very different modes of thinking: (1) typological thinking and(2) population thinkingBlumenbach’s races1775: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach used the term “race” to define divisions of the human species. He classified humans into five races Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach held that there was but one species of human, but he concluded that humans from the Caucasus region of Asia Minor were aesthetically pleasing.Blumenbach’s race maphttp://tinyurl.com/oz3h9Typological thinkingBlumenbach classified skulls from around the world by studying detail and selecting a type specimen. Typological thinking is still with us today.The logical fallacy in typological thinking is a general problem, not confined to the labeling of so-called races. We see it in the labeling of particular dialects as typical of a language.Population thinkingThe remedy for typological studies about races of humans appeared to be population studies. Measure a large numbers of individuals, and produce means and distributions. This creates ideal types, the features of which are found in no individual. And the more precise the measures, the more categories are proliferated.Creating complexityIf there are four races based on color (black, white, yellow, red) and we add one binary feature (like hair texture – wavy and straight) then there are eight races.Now add two kinds of crania (wide and narrow): there are 16 types. Sweden, 1898: of 45,000 people, 11% had all the traits usually included in the so-called Nordic race: blond hair, blue eyes, low skin pigmentation, dolicocephaly, and so on.Suppose 20 traits and a criterion that 75% of people have each one. By trait 2: 75% of 75% is 56%By trait 10: 1.34% have 75% of the traits.By trait 20: 317 people out of 100,000 have all the traits. Those are the ideal candidates.We impose typologies All typologies are arbitrary in some sense. We impose them on nature to make sense out of a welter of information. Here are seven historical typologies of humans: 1) cephalic index, or the ratio between the width and the length of the head; 2) the facial index, or the ratio of the length to the width of the face; 3) the nasal index; 4) eye, lip, and ear shape; 5) eye, hair, and skin color and hair texture; 6) stature, weight, and build; and 7) blood groups.Race is a social conceptBut every morphological characteristic has a range of variation – a distribution – even within so-called races. Look, for example, at skin color in the U.S.Historically, the one-drop rule defined what it meant to be black for many people. Many Mediterranean people have more melanin in their skin than do many American blacks.Race is a folkloric conceptRace is a folkloric idea that developed in the U.S. out of the debate over slavery. 17th century, British used Indian slaves on plantations in Barbados and Jamaica. By the late 17th century, the Indians had died and Britain began bringing slaves from Africa to the plantations in their Caribbean colonies.Recall: in the early 18th century, the anti-slavery movement in Britain was underway.Establishing the social concept of race1854: Types of Mankind published by Josiah Nott (a Southern physician) and George Glidden (the U.S. consul in Cairo). Nine editions before 1900 helped establish the social concept of race.Social race becomes lawRoger Taney, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1859 in the Dred Scott case:“Negroes were seen only as property; they were never thought of or spoken of except as property” and thus “were not intended by the framers of the Constitution to be accorded citizenship rights.” “The Negro,” Taney said, “is a different order of being.”Science ratifies social raceIn the 18th and 19th century, the folk idea of race was ratified by science.In the 20th century, population thinking and genetics seemed to be the answer: We would recognize that races are not merely ideal types, based on measurements of phenotypic differences, but are populations that are identified by a common gene pool and that tend to preserve that gene pool over time.Genes are distributed across populations, but there are concentrations – that is, the frequency of particular genes varies greatly and it is this fact which changed thinking about races. Just as everyone is unique phenotypically, so we are all unique genetically, but there are clumps of traits based on genetic frequencies.Sophisticated typological thinkingAnd so we wound up with a definition of race that was more sophisticated than those of earlier times, but just as flawed. Here is the scientific definition of race, based on population thinking:A race is a human population that is sufficiently inbred to