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Race, The Olympics, and queasiness resulting therefrom (self.SRSDiscussion)

gopiratesgo が 投稿

While I still enjoy watching The Olympics, the racial-makeup of various competitors is a hard topic to avoid. Yesterday this 2012 article regarding genetics and racial performance popped up in my feed numerous times.

How should we deal with discussions like this, that look very much like race essentialism?

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[–]therapy 9ポイント10ポイント  (0子コメント)

The way to handle them is with the truth, because the truth here is not worrying.

Yes, some subgroups of humans are better at some sports. Kenyans in long-distance running for example. But:

  • That's for "Kenyans", not "black people". The same statement is simply false about black people, as the genetic differences between black people is enormous. So our "intuitive" racial categories of "black", "white" simply don't well-represent the certain human groups that actually do have objective advantages in certain sports.
  • Yes, genetics make a lot of difference in sports. Having sporty parents helps you to be sporty. But that's no different that some people being more at risk of sunburn than others due to having less melanin. It's a human difference, that's just how we are.
  • All such differences are statistical. Not all Kenyans are good at long-distance running.
  • No such differences matter at all to the value of a human being. Even if Kenyans are better at a sport, they aren't better as humans in general. All humans are and will always be equal from a moral standpoint, even if some are better at some sports.
  • All these differences are simple physical ones. Humans are animals, and so it shouldn't surprise us that our physical bodies depend on genetics, and that groups of humans might have average differences in those genetics. But we do not have a good scientific basis for saying the same about mental differences. Things are far more complex there, while our brains are physical things, how they develop and operate is intertwined with our culture and surroundings. Perhaps a day will come when we do find a significant mental difference between human groups, but we haven't and it's not likely anyhow.

[–]AemondOneEye 19ポイント20ポイント  (11子コメント)

Admitting that genetics play an important role in sports doesn't have to lead us into believing that some human groups of are inherently better or worse than others.

[–]Pileus 4ポイント5ポイント  (10子コメント)

It's a tricky road to follow, because you are opening the door to racial essentialism. But I think the danger from that is vastly outweighed by the danger of denying what appears to be the reality (that there is a genetic component to athletics). Attempting to deny that just plays into the narrative the alt right churns out--that the stupid SJWs just operate off of feelings, not science.

[–]therapy 7ポイント8ポイント  (2子コメント)

I would say that it opens the door to racial essentialism only in the sense that denying biology makes racial essentialism impossible.

So I agree with you that there is a danger, in a sense, but we just have to face it. Denying science isn't a good option.

[–]Pileus 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's exactly what I was fumbling around with and trying to say, only much better said. I agree with you 100%.

[–]crumbedfish 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's an excellent response.

[–]BachiBaziGold2016 2ポイント3ポイント  (6子コメント)

danger of denying what appears to be the reality (that there is a genetic component to athletics)

Doesn't this open the door to all kinds of geneticist arguements such as:

there is a genetic component to intelligence

there is a genetic component to criminality

there is a genetic component to sexual attraction

there is a genetic component to gender identity

[–]Swaggyplol 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

There's genetic components to many things, but human variability negates the usefulness of genetic generalizing at individual and many group levels.

[–]burbet 10ポイント11ポイント  (3子コメント)

There likely is a genetic component to a lot of those things. Race however doesn't do a very good job of actually categorizing genetics. Race draws arbitrary lines.

[–]GreenBreenMachine 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

That doesn't make racial generalizations wrong, just imprecise. For instance, if I say there are more high school students among ages 16-19 than there are among ages 12-15, I'm correct but my age brackets could be a lot more precise.

What's your argument, that social boundaries disagree with biological boundaries? Okay, but what if social boundaries align themselves with biological boundaries?

[–]burbet 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

What's your argument, that social boundaries disagree with biological boundaries?

Many times yes. What people view as white or black may have little to do with their actual genetics. Genetic variance could be closer between a random white and black person than between two random black people and yet we would still group the two black people together. Culturally they would be black, as a scientific term what does it tell us?

[–]GreenBreenMachine 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah, blood quantum and all that. Someone could have more white ancestry than black ancestry and still be considered black.

[–]PinheadXXXXXX 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think there is more obviously a genetic component to how people are built than any of these other things.

[–]Memeonomist 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

While it's true that genetics results in certain racial groups performing better than others in certain sports, it's erroneous to conclude that race is biologically meaningful based on this fact. The advantageous traits that people bring up are often confined to specific populations. The race of these populations is just a coincidence, and the fact that a certain population exhibits a given trait does not imply that the entire racial group to which they belong also exhibits that trait.

[–]nitendofan1 7ポイント8ポイント  (2子コメント)

The way I think about it is that top-level Olympic athletes show off differences in human populations in ways that are completely irrelevant to 99+% of the population. A popular saying in the casual fitness world is that your physique is 99% a result of your own effort and 1% a result of your genetics. Genetics clearly becomes more and more of a factor the more elite of an athlete one is; the human body can only take so much, and each person's body has different limits in can achieve. It's no real surprise that some populations are better at different events.

The real key to note is that, as far as I know, this does not apply to mental skills. Like, at all. So when race essentialists try to boil down ex. black people to incredibly athletic idiots, it's important to understand that 1) most people aren't athletic in the first place, 2) most people who are athletes aren't at the caliber where genetics plays a large role, and 3) mental acuity in absence of mental disorders like dementia or autism is largely a product of nurture, not nature.

[–]GreenBreenMachine 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

this does not apply to mental skills

It doesn't seem peculiar that the brain would be the one organ immune to genetic variation between ethnic groups?

mental acuity in absence of mental disorders like dementia or autism is largely a product of nurture, not nature.

This doesn't seem accurate. Most research seems to indicate intelligence is very heritable.

[–]BachiBaziGold2016 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

It doesn't seem peculiar that the brain would be the one organ immune to genetic variation between ethnic groups?

What'll really bake your noodle is when you think about genetic variation between human subspecies. Some people can have up to 4% mixture of neanderthal DNA. Who knows what kinds of effects it might have?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_modern_humans

[–]burbet 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Race essentialism is weird because race isn't the most scientific term there is. That isn't to say that people from different regions can't have different characteristics. Iceland has some of the biggest and strongest men on earth, but that doesn't mean that white people are the strongest because white as a race is almost a useless as a term.