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Either way, to illustrate that one could be of any 'race' and still be part of Latin/Hispanic culture, we have here a very famous Asian Latino: Ana Gabriel - a very well respected, highly successful, Mexican singer throughout the Spanish speaking world. Also, in Mexico she isn't a Chinese-Mexican, she's just Mexican.. No hyphenation necessary.
To split hairs, the admixture tests quantify which populations your ancestors came from, not which races.
We also have to keep in mind that due to the PC nature of things, professionals couch traditional designations with new labels that can be quite general in order to avoid any possible problems or criticisms. This is why you will often hear them say that very small percentages of the human genome are actually different, but we are mostly the same. That is true, but the difference between a human and a chimpanzee is also small and yet look how big of an impact that small difference has. If there are enough markers to identify different population groups, that's because there are visible differences, otherwise it doesn't makes sense that those markers can be identified.
What ruined all of this is the history of institutionalized racism in the early to mid-20th century. Had the racists never taken hostage the whole race argument, today people wouldn't be so worried about not being PC when it comes to using certain terms and to make claims such as humans are 98% identical when, in fact, humans are also 96% identical to quite different animal species too.
The genomes of humans and chimpanzees is just 4% different, the remaining 96% is the same.
"New research shows that at least 10 percent of genes in the human population can vary in the number of copies of DNA sequences they contain--a finding that alters current thinking that the DNA of any two humans is 99.9 percent similar in content and identity." Genetic Variation Shows We're More Different Than We Thought
"People of European and Asian descent today retain Neanderthal DNA that may affect their hair, skin, fertility, predisposition to certain diseases and possibly other characteristics, a new study in the journal Nature suggests.
The genetic material inherited from Neanderthals combined with that of humans when the two species interbred 40,000 to 80,000 years ago, the study holds. The research further supports that indigenous Africans possess little or no Neanderthal DNA because their ancestors did not breed with Neanderthals, which lived in Europe and Asia." How Neanderthal DNA Changed Humans : Discovery News
The implications of these changes are still not fully understood, but I'm sure with the fast pace that technology and genetic deciphering has been going through its only a matter of time. What truly remains to be seen is if the scientists will be willing to 'make public' the results in the case they are socially controversial. I personally doubt it, but it remains to be seen.
Race has no scientific basis. It's a social construct started being used post-columbian. I or you can go from one society to another and how we are viewed changes depending on that society. across the human genome, racial "differences" make up less than 1% of our differences(I believe it's less than .0003% to be exact). Those differences are physical as I mentioned earlier. We're all the same for the rest of the 99.9 %. Genealogy test exploit that less than 1% variation.
That bold part is simply not true and even the scientists have corrected this. Read the link I posted in my previous post where it clearly shows that humans are not 99% the same as previously thought. In fact, the differences between humans and chimpanzee is just 4%, that means monkeys are 96% the same as us. Look how much of a difference that small percentage makes, enough to be not different races but different species!
That bold part is simply not true and even the scientists have corrected this. Read the link I posted in my previous post where it clearly shows that humans are not 99% the same as previously thought. In fact, the differences between humans and chimpanzee is just 4%, that means monkeys are 96% the same as us. Look how much of a difference that small percentage makes, enough to be not different races but different species!
As someone who has done research on the topic, I'll cite actual academic articles dealing with the subject when I get the the chance since you're pulling some gymnastics here. I currently do not have one of my sources with me.
To split hairs, the admixture tests quantify which populations your ancestors came from, not which races.
While technically this is true, it's generally much easier to detect the proportion of your ancestry attributable to continent-level population groups than say particular nationalities. With the exception of outlying groups which were known for some time (e.g., Khoisan and Pygmies in Africa not being the same race as black Africans, or Melenesians and Negritos in Asia and Oceania being closer related to Asians, despite looking like Africans), the largest population groups do align pretty well with "race" as has been classically understood.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucario
Again, you can't say genetically which portion of Irish or Portuguese a person comes from. You can only determine which markers a person has that occur often in a population. Genetic markers for Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, show up very strongly in any person who has this ancestry, no matter how remote. But a person from Ireland and a person from northern Spain or Galicia could show up as having very similar genetic background because each population came from Celtic origins.
True. Genetic tests cannot pin this accurately. But the point remains that due to recombination portions of your ancestry can drift in reality to be a larger or smaller percentage of your genome.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucario
Each sibling may have inherited different proportions of genetic material from each grandparent (or set of grandparents), but the differences, no matter the phenotypes of the children, will still be slight. My two children come from parents who are mixed but mostly African, but one was born much lighter than both of us with blond hair and blue eyes, and the other much darker in skin color.
It really depends upon how far back the mixing is.
In a population that has mixed for 1,000 years, like the Uighur in China (who are roughly a 50/50 mix of West Eurasian and East Eurasian), there isn't an appreciable difference in the genetic test results for individuals who end up looking quite "white" versus those that look quite "Asian." This is because the genomes themselves are highly mixed, so there are many tiny chunks attributable to each continent, to the point where if you get say a gene for blue eyes, very little other genes will come along for the ride.
However, if you're dealing with more recent admixture, the chunks attributable to each population group get larger and larger. The extreme is, as I said, the child of two first-generation biracial parents. If they have a gene for blue eyes, for example, they also got a huge chunk of that chromosome most likely, meaning white phenotype and genotype align pretty well. Latinos are around in the middle, as they have been mixing for 500 years now, so phenotype often doesn't match genotype, as AntonioR notes.
Overall though, mixed people do distribute on a bell curve, with most of them fairly similar to their parents. Outliers do happen however. The British press seems to love stories about twins of biracial parents when one of them comes out "white."
Once upon a time Jews were not considered white, today they are. Same happened with Italians and I think with the Irish too, as hard as that is to believe.
Whoooaaaa no. You're thinking of either a bizarre period in US history where genealogy was pushed out the window in favour of an anti-Catholic agenda, or of the Irish Travellers mayyyybe.
Last edited by HansIsland; 06-06-2014 at 12:12 PM..
Whoooaaaa no. You're thinking of either a bizarre period in US history where genealogy was pushed out the window in favour of an anti-Catholic agenda, or of the Irish Travellers mayyyybe.
No. It is pretty well documented that people of Irish descent were highly looked down upon in the U.S. of A. When they arrived on the East Coast they were directed to live in the ghettos of the cities along with the free blacks. During that time many 'anthropologists' theorized that the black and Irish race would become one. Many who arrived during the time of the civil war were send directly into the battlefield, with little training. It was either fight or go back to Ireland. Basically, they were seen as disposable. Kennedy, in becoming president, broke a glass ceiling for Irish in much the same way Obama did for blacks/mixed people. The main difference is that blacks will never be accepted into the white majority, not even mulattoes (unlike in Latin America) due to the one drop rule. The question at hand is whether the same will happen with Hispanics as happened with the Irish and Italians.
A paragraph from that article: "Irish and Africans Americans had lots in common and lots of contact during this period; they lived side by side and shared work spaces. In the early years of immigration the poor Irish and blacks were thrown together, very much part of the same class competing for the same jobs. In the census of 1850, the term mulatto appears for the first time due primarily to inter-marriage between Irish and African Americans. The Irish were often referred to as "Negroes turned inside out and Negroes as smoked Irish." A famous quip of the time attributed to a black man went something like this: "My master is a great tyrant, he treats me like a common Irishman." Free blacks and Irish were viewed by the Nativists as related, somehow similar, performing the same tasks in society. It was felt that if amalgamation between the races was to happen, it would happen between Irish and blacks. But, ultimately, the Irish made the decision to embrace whiteness, thus becoming part of the system which dominated and oppressed blacks. Although it contradicted their experience back home, it meant freedom here since blackness meant slavery."
"White" is a social construct. Nothing genetic about it, like skin pigmentation.
Why did the English discriminate against the Irish here in America? It seems to me that the Irish are more lighter and tend to have more blond/red hair and lighter eyes. If the English discriminate against the Irish just because they looked at them as inferiors even though they are "lighter complexed" then they contraticted their own racial biased. Then Rudy is correct that racism was a social construct without any backing.
Why do some of the hispanics in this thread and on the site want to become white?
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