There Is No Biological Basis for Different Races in Modern Humans

in #threespeak5 years ago (edited)

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Is there a biological basis for different races? We ask Dr. Hessam Nowzari. Dr. Hessam Nowzari graduated from the University of Brussels in Belgium, University of Rennes in France, and University of Southern California, Advanced Periodontics program. PhD in Biology & Health Sciences, Director of Advanced Periodontics at USC from 1995 to 2012 and a Diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology. He is the organizer of “Nowzari Symposiums” in Beverly Hills: nowzarisymposium.com. He has 150 publications, 82 on PubMed.

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1 race, the Human Race !

In the video @arminnavabi argued that in Social Sciences there is a such thing as more than one human race, even though the Biologist was stating the idea that based on Biology there isn't.

Well all humans are human so there's a fact but certain ethnic groups do you have different DNA patterns some have advantages some have mutations etc. People are known to appear physically different for no reason it's called EVOLUTION. Thinking from the scientific context, your statement sounds very poetic and blissful. Thank you.

It's genetics that make people look different from each other and social constructs that make us act a certain way because of those differences. If we ever get invaded by Alien civilization, pretty sure, they will kill us all equality, till then we won't understand racial equality.

So if the race is a social construct, can I identify as black to take advantage of affirmative action?
That Alian innovation thing is dope. hahahaha Good thinking @aceeca

In the video, the speaker was referring to biology and said that there is only a 0.1% difference between any given "race".

Because of that, he said there is no race according to biology since there isn't that much of a difference between "races" to call each one a separate race.

It's genetics that make people look different from each other and social constructs that make us act a certain way because of those differences.

You phrased that really well @aceeca thank you 😊

He's got brilliant stances to defend his point and believe me he's definitely one brilliant man there, truth is we can't say he's totally correct. In my opinion humans haven't even finished deducing medicine and biology and in the future there'll be more. I just can't get the answer for, why are Africans more impacted with some certain disease?

I actually don't really agree with him.

I agree with the science he references but I don't believe I should tell someone I am a "sapien" every time someone asks me what my race is.

Most people just want to discuss common sense and are not asking me for a lecture in biology when they ask me my race.. having said that, most people I know tend to say "Where are you from" or "What country are you from" instead of "What is your race".

Exactly we can't generalise these things and that's what makes us unique, he's brilliant no doubt, but I'll pass on this one

We cannot deny the fact that we are still in the process of Evolution and, the human race may or may not witness many more changes ahead in the future.

I don't really understand what you mean @josediccus?

Exactly we can't generalise these things

What things are you saying we can't generalize?

but I'll pass on this one

You'll pass on what?

I'm trying to say we just generalise humans by saying there's no race, the evidence that backs the fact that there's an existence of race is too huge so that's why I don't agree with the Man

I'm trying to say we just generalise humans by saying there's no race, the evidence that backs the fact that there's an existence of race is too huge so that's why I don't agree with the Man.

Ah okay, yeah.. I understand now.

I tend to agree that according to biology there is only one human race since there is only a 0.1% deviation between "races" but I think in terms of actual common sense and just everyday talk, there is actually a such thing as race since we use it to identify certain people from specific geographical locations like what @wayo said.

Living in the USA as a Some Particular Race, I always hesitate when I have to pick a race. Sometimes they make it easy for me and have "Hispanic/Latino" under race, but most of the time they ask first if you are Hispanic/Latino THEN they ask your race but you can only pick from White, Black, Asian, native Pacific Islander, etc. What am I supposed to pick? I'm basically mixed! Some people think I look Hispanic, others think I'm "Jewish", others think I'm "Balkan", while others think I'm mixed.

Anyway, it's not like I'm complaining, I just wonder what exactly I should say my race is in forms. Perhaps this isn't a big deal but I just have a little trouble and hesitation when I have to select my race.

Just to clear this up for those who find this sounds sort of ridiculous (which honestly is understandable): Nobody's saying skin colour is a social construct, only the transition between races is so smooth, that any hard distinction would be arbitrary.

It's not like with different animal species where you can clearly say "this is that species, this is that species, there's no in-between or transition".

Imagine all of your male ancestors standing in one line, back to the fish: Sure, you could put them into categories, and say "this here is a fish and this is a human". And there'd be genetic differences and commonalities, and you could clearly say there's a difference.

But it's completely arbitrary how we divide these ancestors up. We divide them up by how their appearance has changed, and that is, well: All very subjective. Scientifically, we can only say that there's a line of animals which have slowly transitioning differences, but there is no scientific way to clearly divide them up.

So you could say "This person is clearly of an African race, this person clearly of a European race", but what about the in-betweens? "Well", you might say, "the transition is the Arabs". 'But the Turks don't look very different from Eastern Europeans' I say, "So there's also a Balkanise race". And so on, and so on. But it's an infinitely smooth transition, and our DIVISION of races is arbitrary. Or in other words: Based on social concepts, such as the history of different groups (Wonder if Muhamad may be led to the idea of the "Arab" race).

So you could say "This person is clearly of an African race, this person clearly of a European race", but what about the in-betweens? "Well", you might say, "the transition is the Arabs". 'But the Turks don't look very different from Eastern Europeans' I say, "So there's also a Balkanise race". And so on, and so on. But it's an infinitely smooth transition, and our DIVISION of races is arbitrary.

Nice comment @yogiraj.gurunath I think you did great with this one 👍😊

If they ask for race it would probably be better for them to use checkboxes now where more than one can be checked.

Having to say either or is definitely making it difficult for people who have more than one ethnicity.. good point @donald.glover 👍

Fascinating. Obviously race has always been a political marker determined by those in a possition of power. Great guest; brilliant dissertation.
This is the kind of discussion school teachers should have. If kids were exposed to this kind of logical reasoning, we'd spare ourselves so much pain and conflicts.
Artists and philosophers discovered centuries ago that we cannot and should not trust our senses

I believe Race is Geographical (this is my belief), we find people change in their complexion, food habits, clothing, daily routine and much more. This can be seen on certain intervals (certain number of kilometer), at-least here in India , this surely is the case. Hence location where we belong has greater impact on what we are and thus that makes the race, I might even say Race = People at perticular Location.

I tend to agree with you @wayo, and if you noticed, @arminnavabi tried to tolerate the guest speakers exclusion of the word race and used "Populations" instead.

That's kind of similar to what you are saying, "Populations of certain people in certain places" 👍

@arminnavabi made very valid point there, Along with this there are Regional Dialect, that is undocumented part of the culture, there are "n" number of cultures and populations around world, we are yet to encounter. Some of the findings are very magical, like the island of Fiji (its an independent country) is 11,597 km away from India and still have very similar tradition and languages, with some variations. Same can be said with Arab countries, there a small variations but at core they are all same. Am I right ???

. Some of the findings are very magical, like the island of Fiji (its an independent country) is 11,597 km away from India and still have very similar tradition and languages, with some variations.

I'm not an expert in regards to cultures and countries but it would be interesting to see the differences AND similarities between Fiji & India.

I imagine that there is some sort of history and migration between India and Fiji that made their traditions and languages similar.. but I am just guessing 😊

Yes, some Indian in past, were forcefully migrated in an unfortunate historical era British India East India Company's trade known as Slave Trade, thus the culture and people are same as India.

There's segregation in almost every part of the world. Funny thing is, there's segregation in segregation and that has been one of the biggest problems man has ever faced.

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Very True, Segregation within Segregation is the real root cause of the problem.

@queeirisa,

Do you two mean to say that we are all segregated due to geography but that we are also segregated within our own countries?

Racism is pretty illogical. You cannot generalise about any group of people. As a white guy I can find plenty of white people I don't like for specific reasons. We cannot choose how we are born, but we can choose how we act.

I find it amazing and disappointing that so-called scientific Minds can't understand complex overlapping structures. They want to over simplify things into Oblivion.

I found it a little surprising that the guest speaker insisted that there was no race and that ot shouldn't be referred to ever 👍

The guest speaker wasn't exactly speaking of racism, he was actually saying that there is NO SUCH thing as race.

If a form asked you what your race was would you pencil in "Sapien" or would you just check the box assigned to your "race"?

This makes the racism we see even more meaningless. It is really more about culture, but skin colour is an easy way to pick out people as different. As is said in the video there are different meanings put to the word 'race', but he is talking about genetics. As I said I consider the actions of people more important than how they look.

Generally the options on a form will list different ethnicities. As long as there is discrimination there need to be efforts to reduce it.

This makes the racism we see even more meaningless.

I personally found it interesting that there is only a 0.1% deviation between so called "races".

Nice comment.. thank you @steevc.

Yes,its a true i think in recent time we are seeing every time we want to show up our empowerment in any perspective but we are not think its not logical also not fair.when we are not able to recognised properly our existence in this world not it come by right way for us...thanks for words.

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