Move it to trollville.  This dweeb is just another white supremacist asshat using a subject he has little command of to justify his pathetic little existence.

Trust me. That was my initial thought, but I force myself to maintain an open mind. Give 'em enough rope and they'll either lasso you in or hang themselves.

Two points:

Firstly -

'Race' is not a well defined concept when you want to get specific.

It over-emphasises visible differences such as body and hair type and skin color, whereas for many groups that have remained relatively genetically isolated for a long period, there are typically many other gene-frequency differences which are completely invisible, but are far more significant than than the often superficial differences traditionally used to distinguish 'races'.

There has been much more inter-mixing of people from different geographic and tribal backgrounds than was traditionally believed, which makes 'ethic' differences less useful than you might think.

Secondly -

In many significant attributes such as intelligence, the variation within typical 'racial' groups is often much greater than the aaverage differences between groups.

So these days, it makes much more sense to study the correlations and contributions of different genes to individual differences.

I would like an actual scientific study of difference between ethnic groups (White,Black, Asian, Arabic etc..) on cognition, problem solving etc... and see if there is a significant difference.

 Even though it is socially and politically incorrect, I actually agree with most of the OP. While it will seem offensive to many, BeachJustice's approach on the subject is interesting and appears to be quite objective, and it would be shameful for the RRS to send it trollville without contemplating it further. The clarification of "what is a race" needs to be answered, but it doesn't hurt the main message of the OP too much. Thus, if the OP accepts that we can't form conclusions for individuals by applying the stereotypes of the group, then I'm giving it a thumbs up. 

Considering natural selection, it seems reasonable that there would be minor differences in groups of homo sapiens that inhabited different areas of the world. 

BTW, I loved your perspective on why individual's of mixed race are typically sexier.

I think there are already studies that prove this one. 

'Created' is definitely a bad word to use around here.

All human races are human.

Only appearance. Certainly not 'every aspect of us'. Natural selection also holds that what you may see as ideal for mating is not endemic to even your own race.

You would lose that bet. Day traders don't run away from lions every day, but they might still be able to do just that.

You will probably be sued, fired, and won't work in human resources ever again. Qualifications are irrespective of race.

Here's where you fail. Necessity breeds invention, not race. There was no need for these allegedly great civilizations to exist.

No one that I know will argue about differences in physical appearance. It is this idea that ability is determinant upon race that is flawed.

Again. Physical appearance doesn't determine potential ability.

You say inadequate and I say unnecessary.

BZZZZT. Wrong again. Physical appearance is only one of many factors involved when checking for a mate.

Show an 'average white guy' a picture of Rihanna then show him a picture of Oprah. It is the beauty not the color.

Maybe by your parents, but not everyone's. Besides that, around here many of us had religion ingrained in our brains. Build a bridge and get over it. Without change from generation to generation means extinction when environment changes.

The next race to go extinct will be racists. lol.

Soooo, how much anecdotal evidence would you require to change this opinion. Last time I checked on Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, The Rock, Vin Diesel, Adrianna Lima were doing pretty well. Gosh! I didn't know that Tiger was only good at golf because he was of mixed ethnicity! Wow! When he and Elin have a baby then it might rule the world then!

And wow. Tiger is actually pretty hot (in a guy examining guy kind of way) I wonder what his parents looked like... Ummmm. Yeah. That argument falls apart, dude.

Sometimes I wonder why people think that these are their own thoughts instead of propagating parental prejudices by proxy.

Some questionable ideas, even within the dubious framework of 'race'.

The comment about some races whose "population enjoys relatively rapid growth", is neither well correlated with advanced civilization or 'whiteness'.

Certainly more enlightened attitudes should lead to a stable population well-matched to their resources, rather than rapid growth.

Africa is currently the main area where rapid population growth is still a major problem now. That doesn't fit into your assumptions in any obvious way. There is, BTW, evidence that Africa had some relatively advanced settlements and cities before they were overrun by slave traders, both black and white and oriental. A lot of these apparent correlations with 'race' are more closely explained by the history of the region they mainly originate from, which is the result of many complex interactions and conflicts with other groups more interested in exploiting other peoples, who may well be more cultured but also less practised in conquest.

In terms of 'superiority' I think the assumption that the Caucusoids have the edge rather ignores the Oriental, especially the Chinese, who have a longer history of advanced civilization than the Europeans, and seem likely to be making a resurgence even now.

Then there is India, which is certainly not 'white', and also has a long history of civilization. The Indians and Chinese students and researchers are way over-represented in US University Science achievements.

Not to mention Japan. And so on.

Concerning the range of genetic variation in the African continent between populations of humans. I suppose this would likely be because humans originated in Africa. If Africans have all of the genetic variation seen in all other peoples, I suppose this would support the "Out of Africa" theory, right?

Then I suppose this is the killing blow to most of my arguments, which I had not given enough consideration. It does make sense I suppose to think it is not likely that significant differences between human breeding populations were due to differences in genotypic frequencies so much as the cultures that were adapted to allow communities to progress in their given niches.

So culture is  more influential than 'race', considering cultural evolution is clearly more rapid.

I'm willing to accept this.

Thank you.

In that case, feel free to ignore my last post. I only saw this after posting it.

I'm very impressed. The admission of defeat on a forum argument is rare indeed. Most people wouldn't do it.

Absolutely.

You're most certainly not the ignorant inbred redneck that first impression made with me.

I disclaimed the celebrities by noting the reference as anecdotal evidence.

Incidentally, how do 'rednecks' factor into the original idea since they are also a product of this allegedly advanced 'race'? lol.

In the yeear 2025 "Lou Dobs" will be the most racist comment one can make towards another individual

It is entirely possible that you are correct, that some races are 'superior' to other races, you just have a couple major stumbling blocks to overcome first.

Stumbling Block 1: (As pointed out by DeludedGod and others) Races need to actually exist. Currently the Genetic evidence points towards any variations being largely miniscule in a broad sense. Yes, If a White Man and a Black Man were plopped down in the Sahara, all other things being identical between them, the Black Man would have a greater chance of survival. On the other hand, if the two were plopped down in Siberia, the White Man would have a higher chance of survival. However both of their chances of survival in either situation would be damn near close to zero. This brings up an interesting point that most racists (which given your later responses I am unsure if this label can be adequately applied to you) don't seem to get, if we both get plopped down in either of those areas and instead of competing, we work together, we both have a much higher chance of survival in both situations. This leads to Stumbling Block 2.

SB 2: You need to create a fully capable system of assessing capability, covering all abilitiess and all possible scenarios. Have fun with this . To put it politely, this is impossible, it would require Omniscience. As such, although it is possible that one race could be 'superior' to another, we have literally no way of determining this, because even if we account for every possible scenario we can think of, we will still miss something. It is a product of supreme Arrogance to believe that we know what qualities will be needed by our species for all of its existence. This is where the Nazi idea of Eugenics failed(*1), because even if they had gotten the right race for the current age and bred them to perfection, they still don't know what the future might bring. Furthermore, each time you 'refine' something you remove variations, unfortunately for living things, those variations are what let the species as a whole survive things like climate shift and other environmental changes. The more variations you remove, the more possible scenarios you ensure we won't be able to adapt to.

Until we can determine what 'race' is best suited for every possible (and I mean this in the absolute infinite sense) scenario that it will have to experience, we should naturally assume that each 'race' will help with at least one scenario and the only way to maximize our species' chance of survival is to keep as many around as possible. We need to keep the Genetic Variation in our species alive and massive.

Minor Note;

So I'm guessing you've never heard of Mansa Musa and the Empire of Mali right? You know, the Empire so rich that its leader managed to lower the Global Price of Gold. Or how about These? As others have pointed out, the advent of Europe is still a relatively recent phenomenon, having begun in perhaps the 16th Century (when Spain started to really go after South and Central America). Before that point, if you wanted to go to the greatest Civilization in the world, you went to anywhere but Europe, which other than the breif periods of unity created by either the Roman or Alexandrian (really brief there) Empires, spent all of its time beating the shit out of itself (granted, this is pretty much how every area went). This further demonstrates my point. Those who are on top today may be at the bottom tomorrow.
Furthermore, lets see Europeans try and build an empire in Africa without their precious European Homes hmmm? Perhaps Africa didn't experience the largest population growth in the past, but that is hardly a valid way of measuring the potential of a Nation. After all, it was the Black Death killed perhaps 1/5th of Europe that the Kingdoms there were able to begin the transition to a modern society.
Also, let us not forget that Asian horse nomads made the Largest Land Empire in History with no mode of transportation faster than said horses, and that Britain, despite having modern technology, only barely beat them in terms of Land Area.

1: Before anyone whines about this and starts chucking Godwin's Law at me, shut up. I am not comparing BeachJustice to Nazis, I am merely using them as an example. If you're going to use the law against me, at least read up on what it actually means.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent; it is the one most capable of change".
-Attributed to Charls Darwin, sources are lacking.

so if certain human genetic lines, cannot be called a "race" what am i supposed to call them?

Niger Species?

Cracker Species?

  But aren't  laws that protect persons based upon their "race" ( ie, their physical appearance, not just color ) basically validating the concept of race ? This puts legislators in conflict with the scientific community.

Also, the concept of "race" is demonstrated  by tangible characteristics that are observable in reality whereas the concept of god is not supported by such evidence ( or you and I would not be atheists )

  I can see, hear, observe and communicate with persons who are representative of differing "races". They are real.    Regardless of beliefs God does not lend himself,/ herself/ itself to such observation. 

In Canada, we have the concept of 'visible minorities', rather than race per se. It is illegal to discriminate based on visible minority status, for example. So-called race quite well fits under that umbrella.

Of course, the different sets of physical characteristics that you observe do exist, what is in question is whether those characteristics are a meaningful indication that the person is a member of some major sub-division of humanity which is more significant than, say, a group purely defined by hair color, eye color, or nose shape.

That is all generally true, I am not denying that differences do exist at all. Just that the traditional racial groupings are no longer necessarily the best way to categorize those differences, especially now that we have DNA analysis to trace inherited characteristics.

I guess my point is that we now have much better ways of grouping people according to significant genetic markers, which don't always correspond all that well with the traditional 'racial' groupings, which really were pretty much based exclusively based on 'superficial' characteristics.

The reality is that those 'real differences' are frequently found to be distributed in a more complex pattern, and lines of descent are not as pure as has often been assumed, based on those traditional markers of 'race'.

For example, people in England who appear to fit perfectly within the dominant Caucasian population profile, who have been found to have gene variants which strongly point to significant contributions from African ancestry, possibly dating from activities during earlier times when there were significant numbers of Africans in the society, either as slaves or members of visiting ship's crews. This can have implications as to susceptibility to certain diseases, among other things.

The traditional markers become ever less useful as the greatly increased movement of people around the world further blurs the distinctions and reduce the correlation between one inherited attribute and another.

As you asked for debate, not reading material, here goes.

Who concludes that all races are created equally? This is assumed by many people, particularly by persons with racist or christian proclivities. I'm not aware of a single scientific study on the subject since the collapse of phrenology type pseudo-sciences. There is much literature on the subject available, but the literature is based on either racist, religious or politically correct foundations and not on objective, evidence based inquiry.

It would seem inevitable, but there are problems.

1. The thousands of years that humans are 'separated' for is not very long at all for evolution to work. The genetic variation in the human race is tiny, in fact the variation between us and chimpanzees is also quite small. The two parts of our respective genomes that differ the most are the parts that influence the brain and the testicles. (The testicles are quite a lot more divergent than the brain is when you compare humans to chimps) Despite this, the DNA of human and chimpanzee sexual makeup is so close that it may still be possible for us to successfully interbreed (if you were willing to try long and hard enough), the offspring would probably be infertile though.

2. You need absolute separation and fairly small genepools for populations to significantly diverge, even given a timescale of several tens of thousands of years. Us humans (all of us, not just whites) tend to enjoy the raping and pillaging quite a lot and also take nice women as prizes after conquest or trade them with other populations. This severely limits human divergence. With large genepools, (i.e. lots of potential mates) The tiny advantage given to an individual by a genetic mutation almost always gets too diluted and swamped by the genes of others and cannot 'take over' the genepool.

3. Humans are communal animals, even our most remote, primitive cultures or ancestors banded together in groups. Because small groups work together for mutual advantage it significantly weakens the ability of tiny genetic differences to make a significant difference to the odds of an individuals' chance of passing their advantage on.

4. As a species we are remarkably good at adapting our environment to suit ourselves instead of relying on genetic adaptation. An Eskimo that lives in the Arctic circle is no more genetically adapted to the Arctic than a Chinese man that happened to raised by said Eskimos. The ability to survive in this harsh environment has nothing whatsoever do with any 'natural genetic advantage' It is their intimate knowledge of the environment and ability to do things like kill polar bears and wear the skin.

Not as much as most people seem to think and certainly not in the way you are using it in your argument. When you apply the nature vs nurture debate to our modern societies, (modern being all human societies in the last 5,000-10,000 years) nurture almost completely drowns out nature. An example of this can be seen by comparing the murder and violent crime rates of the USA and Canada. (Please don't compare a trivial difference like eye colour with the ability of a population of millions to innovate or wage war)

Oh boy, so wrong on so many levels for so many reasons...

When humans were all hunter/gatherers it made sense to divide labour between men and women. Men would do the more physical work and the less physical work would be done by women. Men are significantly physically stronger than women on average and yes that is because of the genetic differences between men and women.

In both world war one and world war two, British men left to fight and die by their millions, but at the same time, the country needed to massively increase it's economic activity.

Think about it, millions of skilled workers were taken out of the economy to go fight.

The economy not only needed to carry on catering for it's population but it also had to massively increase production of war machinery and deal with massive amounts of infrastructure destruction.

How did it do this? Women took over ALL of the jobs previously exclusively done by men. Women en mass became miners, bricklayers, mechanics, technicians, accountants, lawyers, factory workers, welders etc etc

Despite being at a significant physical disadvantage, the women not only managed to do every single male job successfully, they managed to greatly increase the productivity by being very motivated (patriotic duty and all that) and basically, working their little arses off.

There is only one circumstance where your statement could be applicable and that is professional sport. An enormous amount of money is spent training Olympic medal winners and they are tested to the extreme of human performance. If you had a business that took children aged 5 and invested massively in them for 15 years to train runners with the intention of recouping your money when they get a gold, then yes if it was possible to do a genetic test of the children it would give you an indication of potential when recruiting. (Here's a hint too, you would have virtually no white people. Hitler tried it for the Berlin Olympics to prove white supremacy and was embarrassing shown to be wrong).
 

In any other circumstances, (i.e. any work that doesn't pit human individual against human individual in a physical test and filter them out to find the best in the world) your remark is null and void, genetics will play no part whatsoever in the ability of a person to do the job (excluding people with debilitating genetic defects obviously).

Fail. Fail. Fail. Total Fail.

Read some history of Africa, preferably history that isn't on the back of a KKK leaflet.

Africa has had many civilizations and did have many when Europe kindly took to slaughter and enslavement on a grand scale. In the southern parts of Africa, the iron working was the most advanced in the world until it was over taken in the British Industrial Revolution. Being slaughtered and enslaved does have a rather detrimental effect on your ability to advance technologically...

It is also worth pointing out that environmental conditions meant trying to live and progress in Africa was for the seriously hardcore, why do you think the rest of us wimps decided to run away to the beautiful, lush paradise of the Fertile Crescent?

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here, could you clarify it or explain it differently please?
 

Anyway If you are saying what I think you are saying - you can use nose size to determine phenotype and then classify human populations according to it, it wouldn't work.

Phenotype is the observable expression of genotype. This does not mean that everyone with a big nose has the same phenotype. Genetics textbooks get rewritten often, it is an easy model to say a single physical feature is due to a single gene variation but sadly it is a huge oversimplification and often wrong. The interplay and effects of your genes on your body is hugely complex, genes get turned on and off at different times affecting development radically, sometimes working alone and sometimes working in coordination with other genes to give different effects on different cell systems that also depend on the cell environment. To make matters even more complicated, genes aren't the only thing that effect phenotype, look up epigenetics and prepare to be confused.

However I think what you are trying to do is trace genetic differences or commonality through populations. There is no need to look at anything as messy as phenotype to do this, these days you just look at the DNA itself. This enables incredible accuracy and 100% certainty as to origins in certain cases.

Here are two cool examples:

1. Jewish high priests have passed their position on to their sons for many thousands of years, they are also very picky about who they breed with, as a result they have unique genetic markers. 1000 years ago, a number of these high priests left Israel, journeyed around a bit and finally settled down on the Zimbabwe/Botswana border. Today, thanks to our ability to look directly at an individual's DNA, we can still see those same markers present in the members of the Buba clan of the Lemba people. Despite this ancestry, the Buba themselves are completely indistinguishable (to the naked eye) from any of the other Bantu people (most Africans are of Bantu descent).

2. My sister (geneticist) and my father (history buff) have traced our genealogy back to the battle of Hastings in 1066AD when the nasty French invaded Britain. But when you look at our genetic history via my father's DNA, we have markers for English, French, Viking, Kazakh, Mongol and Jewish peoples.

As American white supremacists go, my family tree is a complete wet dream, 1000 traceable years of unbroken, whiter than white, christian, Anglo-Saxon heritage. But when you look at DNA a completely different pattern and mish-mash of cultures is revealed.

The idea of some pure, white, master race is a complete fantasy, when you analyse DNA the real picture emerges, we are all very 'multicultural' at a genetic level.

Again I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are trying to say, but if 'race' is defined as white, black, asian, sino-asian etc then yes, the relation between race and genetic makeup of any individual that is seen to belong to a defined race is hopelessly inadequate and pointless. Thinking in terms of race is only really useful when framing from a racist or anti-racist view point.

I am not a shepherd, so when I look at a flock of sheep, all I see is a bunch of sheep. If I spent the next few months/years being in constant day to day contact with that flock, I would gradually learn to distinguish individual sheep's faces. (But hopefully not find them attractive!)

 Your brain not 'engrained' as you put it to find certain racial features (like skin colour) attractive, quite the opposite in fact, it is purely a learned behaviour. For the first few years of your life you can't even recognise yourself in a mirror. The fight or flight, like me/not like me processing that your brain does depends on what people around you look like, not what you look like.

At one point in my life I was in a working environment that was 70-80% Indian, after a few months Indian women seemed a lot more attractive than white women.

Later on, different job, and 95+% of people I was working with were black. Again in a short period of time black women became very attractive to my eyes.

The only reason your brain can't distinguish levels of attractiveness accurately in other races is because you don't significantly mix or socialise with other races.

Assuming you are a heterosexual male, if you moved to China for a few years your brain would adapt to find Chinese women attractive. The biological urge to get laid is much, much stronger than you are giving it credit for.

Historically, neighbouring rival tribes would look identical to you, even in nomadic societies that moved around a lot. Tribes don't move from the depths of Africa to pop across to India for the summer...

Historically, racial mixing happened mostly in three ways, war, trade and exploration.

In war the victors would normally rape all the women or take them as wives/sex slaves.

In trade, women were often traded or arranged marriages to improve relations. The arrangement of marriage was based on the social position of the men involved, not the attractiveness of the women.

In exploration, a bunch of men would have just spent months at sea with only other men for company, they would shag any woman with a pulse as soon at every opportunity.

Apologies if that was 'too much', but please, continue the debate, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

 I wish I could find the chart I'm looking for.  When we look at humans after the migration from Africa, we find that genetic lineage has basically nothing to do with pigment.  In fact, some of the darkest "races" are the farthest removed from each other genetically.  It all has to do with the environment, like DG and others have said.  Furthermore, the traits most people would look for as evidence of "superiority" are the least heritable.  Take a group of kids, put them in a room with an abacus for twelve years of intensive training, and they become really damn good at math.  Take another group, put them in a room with an X-Box, ten cartons of Cheetos, and a TV locked on the Cartoon Network, and you get lots of Attention Deficit Disorder.

 That's nearly the sort of picture I was looking for.  The one I saw a few weeks ago had a reference table for broad ethnic groups which clearly showed that genetic descent is not racial, but environmental.  That is, races develop because the environment exerts selection pressure on existing alleles relating directly to the environment, like skin pigment.

 Heh.  Well, if you put the two together, that pretty much does it.  Thanks!

But is racism a meme in our species which essential speeds up the adaptation processes necessary for our species?

For example, when humans migrated to Northern Eurasia, the few light skinned people seems to be more healthy thereby being more attractive. So parents and society would develop a preference for whiteys, this preference was passed down the generations via racism. The dark skinned people were shunned via racism until their offspring became essentially extinct.

In Africa, did any light skinned offspring get shunned by society in a form a racism?

Has racism been a necessary evil for the rapid adaptation of humans to their environment? What role has Xenophobia played in our evolution?