Talk:Race (human categorization)

Readdition of "as a social construct"

Everymorning, regarding this edit you made in July, I personally view race as a social construct, but I want to go ahead and note here again that we have had issues with the first sentence identifying it as a social construct. See Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#Social Concept?, Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#Lead sentence, Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#"Consensus" of social construction and Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#First sentence? Sources? and Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#Maunus suggestion for a new Lead for what I mean.

In terms of Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mikemikev Tiny Dancer now blocked for antisemitic attacks, the lead seemed to be doing fine without "social construct" in the first sentence. As I've stated before, we can include the "social construct" bit without it being in the first sentence. But then again, the lead already makes it clear that "there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable."

Anyway, if you and others want "social construct" to remain in the lead sentence, I won't object. It's just annoying to keep having editors (including one persistent WP:Sock) contesting the "social construct" bit, which takes us into yet another debate about the matter. And, yes, I'm aware that this thread may result in yet another debate about it. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:15, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

• I'm fine with it not being in the lead as clearly as it was when I added it, I guess. Everymorning (talk) 19:23, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
• I support removing it.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 21:19, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Sangdeboeuf removed it and a made a wording change to the lead. I'm not sure how I feel abut the wording change, but since the second sentence states "Although such groupings lack a firm basis in modern biology, they continue to have a strong influence over contemporary social relations.", I'm not strongly opposed to the new wording. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:02, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

There is WP:Citation overkill, though, which was there before Sangdeboeuf's edit. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:03, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Article move?

Sangdeboeuf, your move of the article seems okay, and it matches the lead previously stating "is a classification," but do you think it should perhaps have been discussed first? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:06, 22 August 2017 (UTC) Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:07, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. Several sources refer both to "classification" and "categorization" with respect to race, but "classification" is the more concise and elegant term, which seems to have a greater history; for instance, the 1950 UNESCO statement uses "classification". —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:12, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Template:Very long?

Regarding this, given what this topic is about, I don't view this article as too long. We have bigger Wikipedia articles than this. We can judge the article on WP:SIZE (with prose size being the main focus, rather than the references that have added to the article size), but we do not have to follow WP:SIZE. It's a guideline. If we do split the article, how many splits? And what should get split? A number of the sections are already designed with WP:Summary style in mind, pointing to the main articles for further detail. We can simply trim the existing sections. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:40, 23 August 2017 (UTC) Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:44, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that § Modern debate should be split off. Given that the modern consensus among scholars is pretty clear, I don't think the debate itself warrants taking up essentially half a third of the article – it would be better to summarize it. And yes, several other summary-style sections could also be condensed. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:26, 24 August 2017 (UTC) (updated 14:34, 24 August 2017 (UTC))

I think that the section can do with a trim, especially since it is pointing to sub-articles or main articles in different sections, but I don't think that the topic itself needs its own article. Modern debate among scholars is a pretty big aspect of this topic; so the section's current size is understandable. I don't even think it takes up that much of the article. But, again, I do think it can do with a trim. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 14:01, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

There's a lot of opinion surveys in this article; I think that a good chunk of it could be better made into part of Scientific opinion on race (parallel to Scientific opinion on climate change). Reading through this material isn't a basic part of understanding the concept.--Carwil (talk) 21:04, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

I still don't see a need for a split, though. And the scientific opinion is one of the essential aspects to understanding the concept, which is why we address the matter in the lead and is why so much about it is in the article now. Also, given that this article is already subject to contentious edits and POV editing, which takes consistent maintenance, as is also the case for the Scientific opinion on climate change article, do we really want to go through the same thing with a Scientific opinion on race article? I know I don't. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:42, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

My impression is that the article and any subpages will continue to be a magnet for contentious/POV editing regardless of its structuring into subpages. Given that, I'd prefer to make these decisions in terms of encyclopedic usefulness, not editorial maintenance.

So, the "Views across disciplines over time" segment really does seem overly detailed in terms of the density of contemporary material, and under-described in terms of its historical material. (Much of the older material would really be a WP:SUMMARY of Scientific racism). The role of an article on a scientific/social scientific topic is not to present opinion polls of scientists, but to use the scientific consensus as established through peer-reviewed articles and the scholarly literature. But on some issues, including this one and global warming, scientists' opinion on the topic has become a question of scholarly interest (hence all the polling, and even some books like Ann Morning's The Nature of Race).

I would also go so far as to say that coverage of scientists' disagreement on this issue, as currently represented in this article, gives WP:UNDUE weight to the view of race as genuine biological classification, but regardless of whether this policy requires a split, I think that splitting out some of this material would be helpful to the encyclopedia.--Carwil (talk) 14:06, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Also, on reviewing the article, I agree with @Sangdeboeuf: that much of the "modern debate" material should be split off, though clearly not all of it. This article is just plain too long and intricate to be easily understood, and it's far too easy to get lost in irrelevant arguments with no contemporary proponents. For example, pace Sewall Wright, contemporary biologists see humans a belonging to a single subpecies Homo sapiens sapiens, yet we take five paragraphs to discuss the definition and applicability of subspecies.--Carwil (talk) 14:23, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

So you would be fine with splitting the material off into existing articles instead of a creating a Scientific opinion on race article? As for encyclopedic usefulness, with regard to size, I'm still of the opinion that all the article needs is some trimming and that we can regulate other stuff to existing articles if it needs to be retained (and is not already covered in other articles). If we truly do need a Scientific opinion on race article, I won't oppose. I'm just more of a WP:HASTE and WP:No split person; I usually feel that splits are not necessary; for example, they cause readers to leave the main article just to get more detail on a matter that is better served in the main article. Often, when our readers leave the main article, they don't return and instead get caught up in a link-like Wonderland. This is one reason that WP:Overlinking is cautioned against; readers can get overwhelmed by too many links, sometimes not knowing which ones are more relevant. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:56, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm up for a thorough but gradual culling of extra material from this article. I'd propose that Scientific opinion on race be drafted slowly and carefully in User- or Draft-space. Right now, most of the extra material seems to be about anthropology. It's not bad text, just text that is in too general of an article, since some kind of history of anthropological approaches to race is totally encyclopedic. But again, something that I don't have time to work on right this month.--Carwil (talk) 14:52, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Concur with Flyer22 Reborn. "Modern debate about [foo]" isn't a sensible stand-alone article for any topic, unless something is modern debate about an ancient abandoned idea that has surprisingly been un-abandoned recently, and that debate has become independently notable as a debate, per se. Like if a new debate about phlogiston were to dominate the headlines for a few years, maybe that would be a good topic for a "Modern debate about phlogiston" article. This article isn't in danger of violating any size limits, but I agree that some of the SUMMARY summaries can be compressed, otherwise they kind of defeat the purpose of spinning things out to side articles and doing summaries.

Maybe a "scientific views on race" piece could work, but I'm skeptical, because the entire history of the concept is people claiming that their ideas were scientific. We only recognize them as proto-scientific or pseudo-scientific in the rear view mirror. So, I would expect the articles to end up substantially duplicating each other.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:03, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

A related RM and RfD

FYI

 – Pointers to relevant discussions elsewhere.

Please see:

• Talk:Race and crime#Requested move 6 September 2017
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 September 6#Racial differences in crime

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:52, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

"Social construct" removed

I stopped watchlisting this on a daily basis some time ago, for blood pressure reasons. I note that now the well-sourced scientific consensus that race is primarily a social construct has been stripped not just from the lead but from the entire article. I don't think this is a consensus change.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  07:33, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Can you point to a previous page revision where the social construction of race was explained well? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 07:46, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Having it linked in the lead, a here was of value, though I'd have to dig around in history more to see if the article body got into it well. The talk page archives from around two year ago have a huge source dump I did, fully formatted in cite templates, for anyone who wanted material. I don't personally want to work on this article much because of the drama, but I did a whole lot of leg-work for people who want to.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  07:53, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

That material is at Talk:Race (human classification)/Archive 33#"Consensus" of social construction, ff.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  07:57, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

It looks like the first paragraph of the lead section was rewritten in this edit. I'm not sure it necessarily has the problems you say it does - the second sentence is "Although such groupings lack a firm basis in modern biology, they continue to have a strong influence over contemporary social relations", which seems pretty straightforward, and in my opinion gets the sources across more clearly than the previous version. I did just re-add a few words that got dropped without explanation, though (the part Maunus pointed out down below.) It's a bit of a run-on sentence, so I can see why SMcCandlish trimmed it down, but as far as I can tell every part of the list is important. --Aquillion (talk) 16:48, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with SMcCandlish, that the current version is not good - it is not based on the best available sources, and is consequently overly simplistic. For example racial groups are not only based on shared physical traits, genetics or ancestry - but also on shared cultural and social traits and assumptions about correlations between those and physical traits.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:36, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

• Per the #Readdition of "as a social construct" discussion above, "social construct" in the lead has repeatedly been an issue. The article has been fine without it. Aquillion recently re-added "or social relations, and the relations between those groups," but that's not the same as adding "social construct." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:12, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
  • It's repeatedly been an issue because WP suffers waves of racialist trolling and PoV pushing. It's pseudo-science, and the article has not "been fine" without leading with the real-world scientific consensus that race is primarily a social construct. The specific phrase "social construct" is sourced to the moon and back.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  09:52, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

I think it was a good idea to remove the specific way the definition was worded "race, as a social construct, is" because this implied that this is only one potential way of understanding race, and that there is a parallel "race, as a biological grouping, is". When reality is that race is a socially constructed grouping of biological traits - i.e. a biocultural grouping. So while I do support removing the original wording, I do not support the current wording which simply took the article back to a previous racialist definition which is not current in any field of study.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:28, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, in the case of some editors, not seeing race as a social construct is not about those editors being racist and/or trolls. As has been noted before, there are anthropologists who disagree with simply defining race as a social construct. Maunus's point is valid. Per the continued debate about leading with "race is a social construct" or "race, as a social construct, is," I do think that the lead has been fine without it. The lead already makes it clear that "Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways, some of which have essentialist implications." We can also make it clearer in the lead what the scientific consensus is without beginning with "race is a social construct" or similar. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:39, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Only the tiniest minority of anthropologists would consider race to not be primarily a social construct.[1] "Our data indicate there has been a “dramatic rejection” of race concepts among professional anthropologists regardless of subfield. We observed consensus that there are no human biological races and recognition that race exists but as lived social experiences that can have important effects on health. As such, anthropologists agree that it is important to understand the relationships among race, genetics, and health."·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:44, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

My words were "there are anthropologists who disagree with simply defining race as a social construct." The keyword is simply. And I've read a number of sources showing some anthropologists not as willing to reduce race to simply a social construct. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:49, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

There is nothing simple about a social construct. Most of the things that matter most in human lives are social constructs. That something is a social construct does not mean that it is not also something else. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:37, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

That's a given. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:24, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

To elaborate on not everyone who refuses to accept that race is a social construct is a racist, look at some of the sources on the matter that make it clear that society in general is unlikely to view race as a social construct any time soon. The idea of human races is ingrained into society due to the social, political and economic meanings of race. Judging groups as a race based on the way they look is a part of that. Society doesn't seem to want to do away with the notion of race, no matter how many scientists state that it doesn't exist. I've tried to tell many people -- black, white, or other -- that race does not exist, and most are beyond skeptical when I state this. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:52, 4 October 2017 (UTC) Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:59, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Race exists, so don't tell anyone that it doesn't. It just doesn't exist independently of how human societies choose to construct it.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:11, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I tell them it doesn't exist based on what scientists state. And those scientists do indeed use the wording "doesn't exist." Of course, they clarify, like this source you cited does. So do I. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:49, 5 October 2017 (UTC) Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

You mean it doesn't exist according to those scientists selected by the newspaper editors you cite. Rupert the Frog (talk) 14:08, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Nope. But I see you have returned to WP:Sock yet again. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:37, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

But they are racialists, pursuing a set of ideas from the 1800s to the mid-20th century, and which has been debunked by genetics. It's all about haplogroups, when it comes to the biology side, and it's all about human perception and our innate need to categorize and label things on the social side. Race "exists" primarily as a set of social effects, not underlying facts. As I think I've noted here before, we know that, e.g., neighboring but endogamous peoples in Africa generally have more genetic diversity between then than is found between Spaniards and Okinawans. But human perception leads most of us to want to lump Africans together as all "the same thing", to call them all "black" or "African" as a type, a race, because of superficial similarities like dark skin (convergent evolution – there's strong pressure in the tropics to be darker, for multiple reasons covered in innumerable papers, but it hasn't been operating long enough on some populations, e.g. indigenous peoples of the tropical belt of the Americans, and various groups in India who've moved south within historical times, to have had much of an effect on them yet).

This article is always going to be difficult to maintain because it's always going to be edited sporadically by people who do not understand genetics. E.g. you'll find reasoning like "how can it be that all populations in this this particular cluster are not all one real race when they all have the same anti-malaria adaptation?", and you'll find that reasoning in various non-scientific publications, not just in editors' heads. This is the Dunning–Kruger effect at work; people figure out what a "sciencey" term means, in broad strokes, and think they understand the real-world mechanisms the term refers to, but they usually do not. People on and off WP engage in massive confirmation bias, seeking out sources that agree with their pre-conceived notions, and passing over any that give them a feeling of cognitive dissonance. This problem is compounded by social "science" being pretty much completely addicted to racialism, and various other disciplines (like psychology and psychiatry in the United States) using it as a convenient short-hand. What they're dealing with is the effects of racialist thinking in society over a long span of time – i.e. they're working with race as a social construct – not with whether the underlying Victorian-era idea behind race was sound to begin with. We have to distinguish these things better on Wikipedia, the way we distinguish between a religion's doctrine and the historicity of various claims the religion makes. The belief in race is very similar to religious faith.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  22:47, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

"It's current year" isn't an argument. The concept is about shared ancestry causing shared genetics, it's standard biological classification. Nobody claims it "pinpoints haplogroups" or whatever strawman nonsense you want to apply only to humans because it's fashionable to pretend we're "the same". Gurdasani et al. (2014) found higher diversity in Africa is both intragroup rather than intergroup (I'm sure you understand the significance of that right? Show off your understanding and go through it) and largely due to migrations into Africa. Where is your data? Even if that wasn't the case Africans would simply be several races vis a vis Eurasians. I think biologists and geneticists understand that. The survey of cultural anthropologists you guys reference not so much, especially American ones. Then skin color? Really? Your segway into invoking Dunning-Kruger really made me laugh out loud, so thanks for that. Rupert the Frog (talk) 12:59, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

It is not a survey of cultural biologists but of all types of anthropologists who work with race, including biological and forensic anthropologists who are members of the AAA.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:34, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

The string "it's current year" doesn't appear anywhere on this page other than your own post, so it's not clear what you're talking about. You also made incorrect changes to Race (biology), which two editors have reverted. Do you have some reliable sources to present, for particular wording changes in the article you'd like to see? This is not a debate forum.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  22:52, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

"Scare quotes". Specifically the notion that "Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed". A section does, notably American social anthropologists. A survey of international biologists would find something quite different, especially one where they could respond anonymously to avoid harassment from Marxist activists, such as happened with James Watson, who was the subject of harassment from Marxist activists, and is not himself a Marxist activist, as far as I know. Also I would put a semi-colon after "social relations" in the first sentence, and change the "and" following to "or". Also it seems to be you debating, at length, and entirely incompetently. Rupert the Frog (talk) 07:00, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Repeat: Do you have some reliable sources to present, for particular wording changes in the article you'd like to see? This is not a debate forum.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  16:38, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

You don't know sources supporting the biological race concept outside American sociology? Rupert the Frog (talk) 17:42, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

We're all volunteers here with limited time, and most of us work on hundreds+ articles in many topics. If you have an issue with something on this page, it's up to you to source the matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  18:46, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

There are very few scholars today in any discipline, biology, genetics or anthropology, who consider a biological race concept to be useful or empirically supported. Those who do are using the concept in a fairly novel way that means any population that can be defined as having a discernible genetic profile - which is a kind of microracial that is completely different from how the concept has been traditionally used about broad continental groupings. You will have a very hard time to find major mainstream sources in any discipline today that simply assert the existence of biological race - even forensic anthropology textbooks are tedning to take a more nuanced stance today. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:53, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Nonsense. E.g.

We performed a genome wide meta-analysis of 16 independent cohorts totaling 279,930 participants of European ancestry and 9,398,186 genetic variants passing quality control[2]

That's a Darwinian ancestry based race construct. Take a look at the scholars responsible for that paper. Apparently people who actually do useful science don't agree with regular Wikipedia editors, or nonsense babbling American sociologists, between which there may be some overlap. Rupert the Frog (talk) 19:03, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

It's also not a racial classification, but a geographic one. The "white" or "Caucasian" racial classification extends way beyond Europe to Central Asia. Peer-unreviewed, unpublished papers at arXiv are self-published, primary sources, and are thus not reliable sources, anyway. Nothing in that paper is about race, and European subjects are not being compared to non-Europeans; it's a study of factors within a European sample. So, you're barking in entirely the wrong forest.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  20:47, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Lol, you're very cocky. Perhaps you know more than Deary, Plomin and Visscher. They specifically used European, not White or Caucasian so you are creating dishonest strawmen. No it's not a geographic classification. That would be "European location". European ancestry is something different. It's going to be published. If you understood anything apart from being obnoxiously contrary on a disreputable website you'd have more respect. Rupert the Frog (talk) 20:51, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

See WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOR. See also WP:CIVIL. The fact that we have sourcing policies and some of us actually follow them doesn't make us "cocky", it makes you wrong about how Wikipedia works.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  20:59, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

See WP:HAVING A LIFE OFF WIKIPEDIA Rupert the Frog (talk) 21:08, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

What insanse nonsense is this?

Your article which blames racial classification on White people contains the sentence "Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created to establish meaning in a social context." This is referenced to an article which contains sentences like "Bodies are reflections of social norms". What does this mean? Rupert the Frog (talk) 11:44, 14 October 2017 (UTC)