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

[Montjoy]

That was very confusing. The most recent studies on race do not support anything that you have suggested.

 

[Donjeta]

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

Maybe you can quote a relevant passage?

I looked up Humanscale on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Humanscale-1-9-Niels-Diffrient/dp/0262041235
and it appears to be a database published in 1991, for furniture designers and the like, so they can construct conveniently sized stuff for normal size humans.

Humanscale is a set of ready references (3 volumes, each furnished with 3 two-sided pictorial selectors with rotary dials and appropriate accompanying manuals) for use by designers in many fields. Engineers, architects, industrial designers, interior designers, furniture designers and craftsmen will find the concentrated information on human factors basic and easy to use for successful design.

Humanscale is dedicated to understanding people—their physical attributes, abilities, and limitations. It incorporates an extensive amount of human engineering data compiled and organized by Henry Dreyfuss Associates over a period of more than 35 years. Much time was consumed sifting through piles of books, pamphlets and clippings. For convenience, dimensioned charts of human figures were made and surrounded by factual data which showed body relationships not readily perceived through numbers alone. When research led to the fields of anthropology, biomechanics, psychology, sociology, physiology, orthopedics, geriatrics, pediatrics and others a decision was made to introduce rotating analog wheels full of data. Now a single face of graphics can easily show 20,000 bits of information.

Is there anything in these books about how to identify race from the dimensions of human remains?

Henry Dreyfuss Associates is an industrial design firm, not a group of forensic anthropologists.

 

[Donjeta]

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.

JMO I don't think the "race is a social construct" idea necessarily implies that anyone can be anything they choose to be if they feel like it. Yes, culturally you can identify with one group more than another, but no one is saying that it means that biological differences aren't real and people can just pick and choose what ethnic background they're from. Even if race is a social construct, Rachel Dolezal's biological heritage is still a mixture of Czech-Swedish-German with a trace of Native American ancestry, she can't choose to be descended from African American slaves in the deep south even if that's her cultural preference.

The idea that race is a social construct has to do with the fact that when people group and label human diversity in its various forms, they make choices. Those labels don't exist there in the raw data, they are a function of which traits are deemed significant in the grouping process. If we choose to label on the basis of skin color we get certain types of "races" but if we thought that tissue types and enzymes are more significant than skin color we might get a different set of races altogether. Even those anthropologists who thought that race was a scientifically valid category didn't agree amongst themselves about how many races there are and how they should be divided.

It doesn't change the facts about who your parents were and what kind of stories you grew up hearing about their history.

You are still the product of your particular set of circumstances and ancestry, the question is just that talking about it in terms of what race you belong to may not be biologically the most meaningful and valid way of describing those circumstances (although in some societies it may tell us a great deal about which social class people assign you to and which opportunities you are given or denied).

 

[Donjeta]

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

Lol.

Somewhat relevantly from Malcolm X:
http://www.newsweek.com/ive-grown-uncomfortable-about-curious-case-rachel-dolezal-345055

In his autobiography, as written by Alex Haley, Malcolm X expressed a similar opinion.

The noted black nationalist tells the story of a young white woman who approached him, wanting to know what she could do to aid the black movement. “Nothing,” he told her sharply and turned his back on her. Later in the book, he laments his harshness but not the sentiment:

I regret that I told her that. I wish that now I knew her name, or where I could telephone her, or write to her, and tell her what I tell white people now when they present themselves as being sincere, and ask me, one way or another, the same thing that she asked.

The first thing I tell them is that at least where my own particular Black Nationalist organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is concerned, they can’t join us. I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are “proving” that they are “with us.” But the hard truth is, this isn’t helping to solve America’s racist problem.

 

[Elley Mae]

Maybe you can quote a relevant passage?

I looked up Humanscale on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Humanscale-1-9-Niels-Diffrient/dp/0262041235
and it appears to be a database published in 1991, for furniture designers and the like, so they can construct conveniently sized stuff for normal size humans.



Is there anything in these books about how to identify race from the dimensions of human remains?

Henry Dreyfuss Associates is an industrial design firm, not a group of forensic anthropologists.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...ionid=011967F97EE89425E513CC5431BEB9A8.f01t02

 

[Donjeta]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...ionid=011967F97EE89425E513CC5431BEB9A8.f01t02

Isn't that the same story that was already quoted before?
The abstract says nothing about how useful the results are as a predictor in determining an UID's race.

Finding a difference in group averages isn't necessarily enough to make a reliable prediction if there is a lot of variation inside the groups and a lot of overlap between the groups.


If there are ten boys in the class whose heights range from 50 inches to 60 inches and they average 55 inches, and ten girls whose heights range from 47 inches to 57 inches and they average 52 inches, you will likely find significant differences between the groups, but if you have a child and you know that his or her height is 52 inches you can't tell if it's a boy or a girl based on that. Many so called racial differences are like that, they vary between groups but also a lot within the groups.

Anyway I think it's a bit beside the point. Any anthropologist will admit that it is possible to find statistical differences in biological traits between different populations of people and to some extent perhaps try to correlate people to their populations if you have enough information about variables to make an educated guess.

However, this is true even of some groups and populations that are considered the same race, and the ability to find differences between populations that are traditionally considered different races does not mean that these differences are caused by race or that race is a meaningful category.

MOO

 

[Elley Mae]

Anthropologists also attempt to identify ancestry as part of a biological profile. In our society, the term "race" is often used to refer to population differences. However, races do not exist in the biological sense and anthropologists prefer the term ancestry. To assess ancestry, anthropologists look for skeletal features that tend to be more common in some populations than others. They cannot determine skin or eye colour, but they may be able to place an individual into one of three broad geographic categories: European, African, or Asian. Importantly, while people with similar ancestry tend to share certain characteristics, humans vary more within populations than between them and there is a high degree of overlap. It is also important to remember that in forensic investigations, recognition and identification are the ultimate goals and ancestry often has more to do with a person's physical appearance than their biological heritage. Ancestry is estimated by measuring, observing and analyzing the bones of an individual's face and skull.

http://www.sfu.museum/forensics/eng/pg_media-media_pg/anthropologie-anthropology/

 

[Donjeta]

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

This article talks a bit about the definitions of species and race and speciation. Forget humans for a bit, this goes generally. In general biology race is a concept that has to do with speciation. Over long periods of time, distinct populations of the same species that have little to no genetic exchange may evolve in different pace or different directions and eventually lose the ability to interbreed. This requires a lot of time and there is a period when there are recognizable separate strains or subspecies that can still interbreed as speciation hasn't happened yet and possibly might never happen. Biologists may use the term race for these strains or subspecies that may be on the brink of becoming different species.

Thus, using this biological definition of race, we assume that races or subspecies are populations of a species that have genetic and morphological differences due to barriers to mating. Furthermore, little or no mating (or genetic exchange) between them has persisted for extremely long periods of time, thus giving the individuals within the population a common and separate evolutionary history.

The new molecular genetics advances have allowed biologists to measure genetic differences between and inside populations and define criteria for the amount of genetic differentiation that is required to recognize a population as a subspecies.

Now, back to humans:

Compared to other large mammals with wide geographic distributions, human populations do not reach this threshold. In fact, even though humans have the widest distribution, the measure of human genetic diversity (based on sixteen populations from Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Australia-Pacific region) falls well below the threshold used to recognize races for other species and is among the lowest value known for large mammalian species. This is true even if we compare humans to chimpanzees.

Using a number of molecular markers has shown that the degree of isolation among human populations that would have been necessary for the formation of biological subspecies or races never occurred during the 200,000 years of modern human evolution.

For the most part, human populations have been interbreeding as long as Sapiens has been around. There are populations such as Australian aborigines who have been geographically more isolated, but everyone still interbreeds.

Because of the extensive evidence for genetic interchange through population movements and recurrent gene flow going back at least hundreds of thousands of years ago, there is only one evolutionary lineage of humanity and there are no subspecies or races. . . . Human evolution and population structure has been and is characterized by many locally differentiated populations coexisting at any given time, but with sufficient contact to make all of humanity a single lineage sharing a common, long-term evolutionary fate.

 

[otto]

Maybe you can quote a relevant passage?

I looked up Humanscale on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Humanscale-1-9-Niels-Diffrient/dp/0262041235
and it appears to be a database published in 1991, for furniture designers and the like, so they can construct conveniently sized stuff for normal size humans.



Is there anything in these books about how to identify race from the dimensions of human remains?

Henry Dreyfuss Associates is an industrial design firm, not a group of forensic anthropologists.

Anthropometry was mentioned several pages back. The statement above the graphic is: "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:"

 

[otto]

JMO I don't think the "race is a social construct" idea necessarily implies that anyone can be anything they choose to be if they feel like it. Yes, culturally you can identify with one group more than another, but no one is saying that it means that biological differences aren't real and people can just pick and choose what ethnic background they're from. Even if race is a social construct, Rachel Dolezal's biological heritage is still a mixture of Czech-Swedish-German with a trace of Native American ancestry, she can't choose to be descended from African American slaves in the deep south even if that's her cultural preference.

The idea that race is a social construct has to do with the fact that when people group and label human diversity in its various forms, they make choices. Those labels don't exist there in the raw data, they are a function of which traits are deemed significant in the grouping process. If we choose to label on the basis of skin color we get certain types of "races" but if we thought that tissue types and enzymes are more significant than skin color we might get a different set of races altogether. Even those anthropologists who thought that race was a scientifically valid category didn't agree amongst themselves about how many races there are and how they should be divided.

It doesn't change the facts about who your parents were and what kind of stories you grew up hearing about their history.

You are still the product of your particular set of circumstances and ancestry, the question is just that talking about it in terms of what race you belong to may not be biologically the most meaningful and valid way of describing those circumstances (although in some societies it may tell us a great deal about which social class people assign you to and which opportunities you are given or denied).

Rachel is Caucasian, and there is some uncertainty whether there is aboriginal (Mongoloid) somewhere a few generations earlier.

Does it make sense that because people of different races have children together, race classification is no longer valid? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but that is what I'm hearing.

 

[Hope4More]

Somewhat relevantly from Malcolm X:
http://www.newsweek.com/ive-grown-uncomfortable-about-curious-case-rachel-dolezal-345055

Related to race as social construct, and to being rejected as a well meaning white: a blog post by a white ex-professor at Howard who sympathizes with RD more than not (heads up: he tries to downplay her lies, etc.).

www.washingtonian.com/blogs/bestbit...hel-dolezal-todd-kliman-howard-university.php

 

[Donjeta]

Anthropometry was mentioned several pages back. The statement above the graphic is: "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:"

So the chart had nothing to do with whether there are "races"?
That's what I thought too but I wanted to be sure.
Thanks.

Rachel is Caucasian, and there is some uncertainty whether there is aboriginal (Mongoloid) somewhere a few generations earlier.

Does it make sense that because people of different races have children together, race classification is no longer valid? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but that is what I'm hearing.

It's true that it's harder for anthropologists to determine the ethnicity of people with mixed ancestry. There was a link here earlier that discussed it, I think it was the Blumenfeldt article but not sure. But the current consensus seems to be that the race classification was never valid... it was always just a choice to label people according to prejudices.

But then again, suppose there are races, and that people of different races have children together - in time it will tend to mean that there are no different races any more... because little to no genetic exchange is a requisite for the differentiation of races. Several distinct races would be a kind of a half way station in the speciation process, going from one single species to two or more species that don't interbreed any longer. Somewhere in the middle of that process there are going to be separate, distinct races or subspecies that develop in different evolutionary directions, and generally you need to have separate populations that don't mix much in order to achieve that stage.

The genetic evidence indicates that in the history of Sapiens this hasn't happened. Populations mix and match and move and migrate, and the degree of genetic diversity among human populations currently doesn't rise to the level of there being a subspecies or race or anything that looks like it might be on the way of becoming a different species of humans (God forbid that never happens... if we don't even get along with slightly different looking people now, there would be bloody murder if there were people who are not people any longer...)

ETA:

Human genetic diversity is substantially lower than that of many other species, including our nearest volutionary relative, the chimpanzee. Genetic diversity is a function of a population's "age" (i.e., the amount of time during which mutations accumulate to generate diversity) and its size. Our genetic homogeneity implies that anatomically modern humans arose relatively recently (perhaps 200,000 years ago) and that our population size was quite small at one time (perhaps 10,000 breeding individuals).

That explains the slightly strange thought that we all have identical ancestors. We'd have to have, really... as once we go back 30 generations every one of us has a billion ancestors but the population was not that big way back when. So we are descended from a small number of individuals along many lines of descent, and someone who is our greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat.....grandmother from our father's side might also be our greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat.....grandmother from our mother's side in several different branches of ancestry.

http://www.ashg.org/education/pdf/geneticvariation.pdf

Human populations can be defined along geographic, political, linguistic, religious, or ethnic boundaries. Using a common definition that groups populations into major
continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America), many studies have shown that approximately 90% of genetic variation can be found within these
populations, and only about 10% of genetic variation separates the populations. Thus, the great majority of genetic differences can be found between individuals from any one of the major continents, and, on average, only a small proportion of additional differences
will be found between individuals from two different continents.

Furthermore, because human history is a history of population movement, and because humans are
extraordinarily adept at sharing their DNA, the genetic boundaries between populations are typically indistinct. For any given DNA sequence or gene, two individuals from different populations are sometimes more similar to one another than are two individuals from the same population.
The fact that humans are relatively homogeneous at the DNA level, combined with the fact that between-population variation is modest, has significant social implications. Importantly, these patterns imply that the DNA differences between individuals, and between populations, are relatively scant and do not provide a biological basis for any form of discrimination.

http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04_a-godeeper.htm

Quiz: if a catastrophe wiped out everyone except the Swedes, how much of our genetic diversity would be left?

 

[wenwe4]

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?

Of those 8 - 9 incidents of alleged hate crimes, she reported 2 to LEO in idaho. The swastika sticker at the HRI where the camera was not working at the time of placement wherein Rachel claims to be the recipient of the "hate" though it never divulged as to why it would be just her targeted in this building of many other employees. The 2nd was finding the noose at her home, where it was determined had been there since before she moved in and the purpose was for he landlord to dress a deer.

The other incidents were reported to media in Coeur d'Alene, ID not LEO.

The incident of the "hate mail" being sent from Oakland,CA to the NAACP office was announced via RD on FB. LEO did get involved but since. There is no stamp cancellation on the envelope, nor no bar code to show it went through the postal service. We have heard that it could only get into the postal box via someone with a key (RD had 1 of 2 keys). However, I have received mail that did not get cancelled. It has happened less than a handful of times in my memory but I remember thinking I wonder if I could peel the stamp off and reuse it. The postmaster has stated it does happen that one piece of mail can get stuck behind another and slip through without being cancelled or barcoded. Interesting that this particular Envelope was thicker as there were a few pages in it, which I think makes it less likely to get stuck behind another - but that is just me.

The mail issue is difficult because RD's fingerprints or dna is expected as she opened the mail. There is also unknown male DNA.
The other incidents were reported by RD to media about her son, people who got lost and came into her home on accident (to care for a neighbors dog) and the wine bottle display at the local grocery store.

 

[Hope4More]

So the chart had nothing to do with whether there are "races"?
That's what I thought too but I wanted to be sure.
Thanks.




It's true that it's harder for anthropologists to determine the ethnicity of people with mixed ancestry. There was a link here earlier that discussed it, I think it was the Blumenfeldt article but not sure. But the current consensus seems to be that the race classification was never valid... it was always just a choice to label people according to prejudices.

But then again, suppose there are races, and that people of different races have children together - in time it will tend to mean that there are no different races any more... because little to no genetic exchange is a requisite for the differentiation of races. Several distinct races would be a kind of a half way station in the speciation process, going from one single species to two or more species that don't interbreed any longer. Somewhere in the middle of that process there are going to be separate, distinct races or subspecies that develop in different evolutionary directions, and generally you need to have separate populations that don't mix much in order to achieve that stage.

The genetic evidence indicates that in the history of Sapiens this hasn't happened. Populations mix and match and move and migrate, and the degree of genetic diversity among human populations currently doesn't rise to the level of there being a subspecies or race or anything that looks like it might be on the way of becoming a different species of humans (God forbid that never happens... if we don't even get along with slightly different looking people now, there would be bloody murder if there were people who are not people any longer...)

ETA:



That explains the slightly strange thought that we all have identical ancestors. We'd have to have, really... as once we go back 30 generations every one of us has a billion ancestors but the population was not that big way back when. So we are descended from a small number of individuals along many lines of descent, and someone who is our greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat.....grandmother from our father's side might also be our greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat.....grandmother from our mother's side in several different branches of ancestry.

http://www.ashg.org/education/pdf/geneticvariation.pdf


http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04_a-godeeper.htm

Quiz: if a catastrophe wiped out everyone except the Swedes, how much of our genetic diversity would be left?

I didn't study for this pop quiz, but am guessing.....90%.

 

[Queen Bee]

Variety ‏@Variety 9m9 minutes ago

Watch @MayaRudolph completely nail a #RachelDolezal impression http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/maya-rudolph-rachel-dolezal-impression-watch-late-night-1201526254/ …

this just came across my twitter feed and i haven't even watched so don't kill me if it's not worth posting LOL....

but if it's priceless, you're welcome

 

[jjenny]

Related to race as social construct, and to being rejected as a well meaning white: a blog post by a white ex-professor at Howard who sympathizes with RD more than not (heads up: he tries to downplay her lies, etc.).

www.washingtonian.com/blogs/bestbit...hel-dolezal-todd-kliman-howard-university.php

It could be the root of her behavior, but does it justify the things she has been saying and doing since? I think not.

 

[ZaZara]

Related to race as social construct, and to being rejected as a well meaning white: a blog post by a white ex-professor at Howard who sympathizes with RD more than not (heads up: he tries to downplay her lies, etc.).

www.washingtonian.com/blogs/bestbit...hel-dolezal-todd-kliman-howard-university.php

From the article:

White and black. My students were soaked through with it. (At least, my American students were; my foreign-born students were often dismayed at the totality of the race consciousness, the race obsession. A student from the Caribbean once confided in me, “I never thought of myself as black until I came to Howard.”)

My thoughts exactly.


And this one:

I locate the seed of her story in her parents’ decision to adopt four black children. The world she was born into, the world of her parents, was an evangelical world, and her parents’ decision seems to have been born of a desire to do good and spread their word. But four. And black.

Was this simply an adoption? Or was it a statement? I wonder whether the impulse to bring them into the family was not filtered through a particular white lens, that of seeing these children as representative of their race. A messianic impulse, in other words, in which it was established from the beginning that this arrangement, this new family order, was to be an embrace of the other.

To me, this statement of the author is profoundly racist and demeaning towards adoptive families and the fact that he does not hesitate to state this is astonishing.

:twocents:

 

[cocomod]

Well, here is another that "identifies" as something other than what he was born as...

http://dailysanctuary.com/o-medical..._medical_cond&utm_term=DS&utm_content=2685098

This guy truly believes he was born a dog in a mans body. So he has transformed himself into a purple puppy.



Should we accept this just because he said it and transformed himself to be it??

 

[Hope4More]

From the article:





My thoughts exactly.


And this one:




To me, this statement of the author is profoundly racist and demeaning towards adoptive families and the fact that he does not hesitate to state this is astonishing.

:twocents:

I was offended by a lot of what he wrote, including that uninformed slam about adoptions, his gratuitous mention of molestation charges against RD's brother, and most of all, his unspoken assertions that black racism explains why RD lied, and big deal anyway about those lies.

 

[jjenny]

I think it's pretty clear Howard believed that Dolezal was black when they gave her the scholarship. In addition to her portfolio, which had portraits of black people only, she also wrote an assay that made it sound as if she were black.
The attorneys for Howard even questioned if she was misleading Howard in her assay.
But when she showed up there, she wasn't black.
So it could be the idea to pretend to be black stemmed from that experience.
But I still don't see how it justifies all the things she said and done.
Even when she went to Baltimore fro Freddie Gray protests, she claimed she was getting death threats. She seems to be regularly making allegations of hate crimes. If she meant the material she supposedly got from somebody named "War Pig" my understanding is that there were no actual death threats in there. So even if one assumes that somebody who calls himself War Pig actually send her this material, it didn't have death threats. So why was she claiming she was getting death threats? Her whole charade came down because of various allegations she made over the years made reporter suspicious.