Black-Owned Businesses Are Quietly Powering Detroit's Resurgence, But No One's Talkin

[memph]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Because malaria never existed in Europe, lol. You are clearly the expert on everything so I will bow out of this discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...an_Renaissance

So maybe as Malaria was largely eradicated in Europe in the last couple hundred years, sickle cell anemia was lost?

Are there any examples of "whites" with skin even darker than the lighter skinned Ethopians?

Anyways, I'd agree categorizing people into races doesn't really make sense. Sure, people from near the equator are generally darker, but skin colour is just one characteristic, so how do you distinguish Tamils, Africans, Amazonians, Australian aborigines, Fijians, Melanesians?...

Not to mention Africans are very diverse, like Khoisans look pretty different from Bantus which look pretty different from Ethiopians, and then if you look at the Ethiopian soccer team for example, those guys look pretty different from each other to me.

And I'd agree that while it's a social construct, it still affects people's lives so it matters in that sense.

[Double L]

And I'd agree that while it's a social construct, it still affects people's lives so it matters in that sense.

...but in an ideal world it wouldn't matter and would not affect people's lives and we can't concede that loss. The only way we will end racism is if we stop making an issue out of it. Be careful, because if you treat a Minority different that a Caucasian person, well, that is just reverse racism.

[hudkina]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Because malaria never existed in Europe, lol. You are clearly the expert on everything so I will bow out of this discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...an_Renaissance

Malaria has been known to infect every continent, but was particularly widespread in equatorial areas. That's why sickle-cell disease is especially common in people who live in such environments. At some point in time a person was born with a genetic mutation that affected how red blood cells are created. It just so happened that this genetic abnormality also protected against the worst symptoms of Malaria. Because of this, the person's offspring became more genetically successful than the offspring of other people. His or her lineage was more likely to survive a Malaria infection while the lineage of his or her peers were more likely to die from a Malaria infection. This genetic success allowed his or her lineage to become more widespread, and in so doing, made the genetic mutation that causes sickle-cell disease to be more common within the population. There was a time when Malaria was endemic in many European countries, but the genetic abnormality likely wasn't present among the European population, meaning that a typical person wasn't any more or less likely to survive the disease based on such a factor. People in Europe got infected and died just as likely as the people in sub-Saharan Africa without the genetic abnormality.

The disease has nothing to do with the level of melanin in the skin (i.e. skin tone). It all has to do with whether you are a direct descendant of the person who was born with the original genetic abnormality.

[hudkina]

Originally Posted by memph

Are there any examples of "whites" with skin even darker than the lighter skinned Ethopians?

I think that's where his hang up lies. He links the word "race" with skin tone, and finds it silly that people would be categorized into a set of races based on their skin tone. The Census Bureau basically does this, by asking people if they categorize themselves as "white" or "black". It's an illogical concept. Particularly, like he said, when you have certain people who might be otherwise categorized as "black" that have a lighter skin tone than say someone of Middle-Eastern descent who are often categorized as being "white". Ultimately it doesn't make sense to draw a line between black and white and tell a person to "pick one" when there is such a diverse assortment of ethnicities in this world.

Science has moved beyond this concept, and now tends to categorize people into haplogroups, which have nothing to do with skin tone. For example, using the Y-chromosome to categorize people, someone can have the darkest skin-tone, but may have a Y-chromosome that falls into a traditionally European haplogroup. The likely reason being that at some point in the past, (as is common in the U.S.) he has an ancestor on his father's side that was likely of European ancestry.

[Insoluble]

The races we currently divide our society into may be socially constructed, but the act of classifying society into different racial groups largely is not. It is inherent in human nature to classify into in-group and out-groups (actually its inherent behavior in other social animal species as well.) While those groups may change and broaden over time, it is unlikely that we'll overcome the biological urge as a society, to classify people into racial groups any time soon.

The whole point of this though, is that while the current racial classifications may be socially constructed, that doesn't make them any less real. Recognizing that we as a society do this is an important step towards avoiding the negative consequences. To that effect, the article brings up an important point that we should be careful not to ignore the contribution of black business owners in Detroit to the revitalization that is beginning to take place.

[iheartthed]

Just gonna leave this here: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/ar...ngle_page=true

[hudkina]

There is a big difference between using skin pigmentation and genetic history in determining health risks. A certain group of people with a relatively close genetic history may indeed have a greater risk of developing certain diseases based on their genetic make-up. Whether you want to call these groups haplogroups, ethnicities, or races it doesn't ultimately matter. Obviously the word "race" has a strong history of being grouped by skin pigmentation, but using it doesn't necessarily have to imply skin pigmentation. While many people of Equatorial African descent may have a darker complexion than people of East Asian descent or European descent, ultimately any classification would be determined by genetic history and not skin pigmentation.