WA - Civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal pretending to be black, parents say #2

[otto]

We might find that different ethnic groups differ significantly along some characteristic when averaged, but you need to know the variability too to know how useful the measurement is in determining whether someone belongs to which group. There might be significantly different group averages if you take a group of black people and a group of white people. But if there is a lot of overlap in the range of individual values of the group members it's not going to be very helpful in reverse reasoning, trying to find out if an individual belongs in the white group or the black group.

I can't see the details, it's behind a paywall for me.

These are the conclusions:
(I can't add a complete link as it includes an elibrary identifier)

 

[zwiebel]

Black Verda Byrd of Texas discovered she was white after 70 years. The lady is fierce about any comparisons to Rachel Dolezal though, as Verda never lied - her true race was withheld from her by her adopted family. She seems to have coped well with the surprise and knows her white family now but considers herself African-American. Amazing story.

"My adoptive mother, Edwinna Wagner, never told me that she had adopted a white baby," she said. "She took it to her grave that she had a white daughter."

http://www.wusa9.com/story/news/loc...discovers-shes-white-after-70-years/29133703/

 

[otto]

What are the chances that Rachel will be charged with mail fraud? Are police interested in pursuing an investigation into the possibility that she is behind the 8-9 incidents of hate crime?

 

[EllieBee]

http://www.newsweek.com/there-no-such-thing-race-283123

In 1950, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued a statement asserting that all humans belong to the same species and that “race” is not a biological reality but a myth. This was a summary of the findings of an international panel of anthropologists, geneticists, sociologists, and psychologists.

 

[Nova]

otto, I'm not being flippant: if Brits require a separate anthropometric measure from Caucasoid Americans, why aren't the two considered different races? Or are they?

To my ear, this seems akin to the complaint raised by Blumenfeld: that the categories were created for ideological reasons and then the evidence for those categories was cherry-picked to prove the ideology.

I believe the point of the consensus among anthropologists has been described as follows: the differences between the average members of any two racial categories are less significant than the differences between any two members chosen at random, either from two races or from within one race--which means anthropometry doesn't tell us very much about any individual.

 

[EllieBee]

Indeed. Nothing better illustrates your point than the uniquely U.S. (as far as I know) racial category of "Hispanic". Hispanics/Latinos come in all skin colors and from all "racial" backgrounds. So when an ME or a witness says somebody is Hispanic, s/he could mean almost anything in terms of biology and even appearance.

Somebody above mentioned Amber alerts. Of course it's nice when TV shows a picture of the missing child, but as far as radio and text messages go, identifying a child as Caucasian or African-American is likely to prove problematic. Each listener or reader will construct his/her own concept of that race as s/he imagines the missing child; many if not most of those concepts will be inaccurate.

I worked with a woman who, I would have sworn (if asked), was Southeast Asian.

We worked together for 3 years before, in conversation, she mentioned she was of Mexican heritage on the sides of both parents. No Asian. At all. And I asked. She was not offended, and in fact, laughed.

"Race" is not only biologically not supportable, it is largely dependent on culture and societal strictures.

We are all people, biologically.

The other stuff is what makes us who we are.

 

[mikkismom]

People come in all sizes, shapes, colors and abilities... If we were all the same, We'd be Stormtroopers.

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111205022230/starwars/images/0/0d/Storm-CHRON.jpg

jmo, of course

 

[EllieBee]

otto, I'm not being flippant: if Brits require a separate anthropometric measure from Caucasoid Americans, why aren't the two considered different races? Or are they?

To my ear, this seems akin to the complaint raised by Blumenfeld: that the categories were created for ideological reasons and then the evidence for those categories was cherry-picked to prove the ideology.

I believe the point of the consensus among anthropologists has been described as follows: the differences between the average members of any two racial categories are less significant than the differences between any two members chosen at random, either from two races or from within one race--which means anthropometry doesn't tell us very much about any individual.

I think that if we are so hung up on finding ways to differentiate between disparate appearances in humans, we should use the term "breed" rather than "race".

We use "breeds" for cats and dogs, which are all one species with varying characteristics. So why not humans?

Not a social commentary, more of just a "huh? Wonder why...."

 

[Montjoy]

Race is an imaginary construct that, unfortunately, still has real consequences.

 

[EllieBee]

Facts are facts. Besides, "Caucasian" is a broad term that includes many people not considered "white". I'm half Spanish Gypsy -no, not those fake Irish travellers or watered-down "Gypsies" on reality t.v. - but real, dark-skinned, Gitanos, (although my family ranges in skin tones), persecuted by the Franco dictatorship (and all over Europe, now and throughout history), and not able to get work outside entertainment (which is a big reason my dad came here).

I'm sure there's even more diversity among the posters here.

Are "watered-down" people not as "authentic"?

I mean, if one is 1/8 black, but chooses to identify as black, would that person be "watered-down" and as such, not real, or as you said "fake"?

Little bit insulting to those who have a varied heritage. Which would be most everyone. Nobody is "pure" anything, except human. Geez.

 

[EllieBee]

Race is an imaginary construct that, unfortunately, still has real consequences.

I agree with that. But I see this divisive, "star-bellied Sneetches" dialogue being perpetuated even HERE.

The consequences are a result of people insisting that this person "is" some classification, and that person is another. While yet another person is trying to "pass" as spme classification, but they are not pure enough, so they are frauds.

It is ridiculous, and dangerous in that the wages of such thinking are often death. For those who aren't "pure".

Sickening.

 

[jjenny]

Rachel herself was pretending to be black, but it doesn't appear she believed that anybody else was allowed to.
There are plenty of examples of her hypocrisy.

 

[Donjeta]

These are the conclusions:
(I can't add a complete link as it includes an elibrary identifier)

Was there a chart comparing the range of values between the white group and the black group?

 

[Donjeta]

I agree with that. But I see this divisive, "star-bellied Sneetches" dialogue being perpetuated even HERE.

The consequences are a result of people insisting that this person "is" some classification, and that person is another. While yet another person is trying to "pass" as spme classification, but they are not pure enough, so they are frauds.

It is ridiculous, and dangerous in that the wages of such thinking are often death. For those who aren't "pure".

Sickening.

JMO regardless of the purity of her blood, Rachel Dolezal seems like a fraud to me because she lies about a lot of other stuff besides the ethnicity of her parents.

She could be indisputably black and she'd still be a fraud if she said she was born in a teepee and lived in South Africa and got whipped like baboons if she wasn't. She could be the most pureblood anything and she'd still be a liar if she told people that she doesn't know who her biological parents are when she does and made up hate crimes that never happened. Did she really have cancer? Did she make up the civil lawsuit claims too? The court seemed to think they were unfounded.

To me the problem is not as much that she lacks purity in her blood but the way she lacks an unfabricated life story.

 

[Donjeta]

Anthropometry doesn't work with one number. For example, the height of a man from the US is not one number. Think back to babies. Doctors tell parents that their child is in the 3rd, 5th, 10th, 25th, 50, 75th, 90th, 97th, and 97th percentile in terms of height and weight - I think head circumference too? Those same percentiles are used for adults, with most of the population falling into the 50th percentile group. There is overlap in terms of height between Negroid and Caucasian, but Mongoloid is entirely different. In fact, there are separate anthropometric measurements for the British population because the Brits are typically shorter.

The differences between the three races identified in anthropology are more subtle than the length of a femur. For example, some differences are pelvic bone: "White women have a wider pelvic inlet, wider outlet, and shallower anteroposterior outlet than African-American women." (link; 2008), teeth, skull, bone density (link; 2002), etc.

To give you an idea about how anthropometry works, this is the standing height/sitting/reach dimension chart for a 75th percentile North American male:

Thanks, I have seen size charts before and know the basics of how they work but that chart doesn't seem very informative in terms of anthropological race identification. The information that you'd need would be the typical range of values in group A and the typical range of values in group B, C, D and the probability that an individual with values X, Y and Z can be reliably predicted to belong to one of the groups. If there is a lot of overlap in the group ranges knowing that the individual is in the 50th percentile for the general population may tell us little to nothing about his or her ethnic group.

 

[otto]

http://www.newsweek.com/there-no-such-thing-race-283123

Here's an interesting paper:

"More than ten years later, however, two highly respected journals have recently published work by sociologists that links races to biological groupings. These articles lend new scientific credence to ideas that were formerly lurking in the academic margins,and I suspect they are harbingers of more to come. Biological data and methods seem poised to play a growing role in the social sciences, and despite their proponents’ best intentions and fruitful contributions, they may bring some unwanted baggage with them. When the American Sociological Association (ASA) held a session on ‘Interrogating Contemporary Genetics and its Potential Contribution to Social Science’ at its 2013 meetings, for example, ‘race’ was in no way featured on the programme, yet every speaker brought it up. This suggests that as sociobiology gains a larger foothold in our discipline, it will usher in renewed debate about the relationship between race and biology. That is the American way, and given the predominance of the USA in scientific production worldwide, it will be a phenomenon that scholars well beyond North America will confront."

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2014.931992

 

[otto]

Was there a chart comparing the range of values between the white group and the black group?

Humanscale 1-9 are not size charts. I suggest you check the other links I provided for information about the race difference in bones.

 

[Donjeta]

Here's an interesting paper:

"More than ten years later, however, two highly respected journals have recently published work by sociologists that links races to biological groupings. These articles lend new scientific credence to ideas that were formerly lurking in the academic margins,and I suspect they are harbingers of more to come. Biological data and methods seem poised to play a growing role in the social sciences, and despite their proponents’ best intentions and fruitful contributions, they may bring some unwanted baggage with them. When the American Sociological Association (ASA) held a session on ‘Interrogating Contemporary Genetics and its Potential Contribution to Social Science’ at its 2013 meetings, for example, ‘race’ was in no way featured on the programme, yet every speaker brought it up. This suggests that as sociobiology gains a larger foothold in our discipline, it will usher in renewed debate about the relationship between race and biology. That is the American way, and given the predominance of the USA in scientific production worldwide, it will be a phenomenon that scholars well beyond North America will confront."

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2014.931992

Again, it's behind a paywall. But I can see the abstract that seems to reinforce the point that was being made about the race categories being socially constructed.

Recently, sociologists have argued in high-profile journals that racial categories are linked to genetically distinct clusters within the human population. They propose theorizing race as a socially constructed categorization system that is related to biological groupings within our species. This work overlooks, however, the extent to which statistically inferred genetic clusters are themselves socially constructed, making it impossible to juxtapose ‘subjective’ social categories with ‘objective’ biological ones. This editorial urges social scientists to take a critical look at claims about the genetic underpinnings of race, and to contribute their insights to ongoing debates about the nature of race.

 

[otto]

Again, it's behind a paywall. But I can see the abstract that seems to reinforce the point that was being made about the race categories being socially constructed.

It seems there are two schools of thought. One school of thought, which appears to originate in the US, is that race is a social phenomena. The other school of thought looks at the traditional definition of race, as defined by anthropologists, based on differences in bone shape, size, and composition. Based on what appears to be the US definition of race (what appears to be somewhat restricted to two of the anthropological race classifications), Rachel can be black if she feels like it. Based on the traditional definition of race, Rachel is Caucasian.

 

[DexterMorgan]

Malcom X would probably be laughing his butt off if he seen how she was able to circumvent and bamboozle the whole process.

Lol.