As I've been reading the discussion on this page, I was thinking that I'd like everyone involved in the mediation case to make an optional statement about the dispute, i.e. what the dispute is, their opinion, and ideas for a compromise. Hopefully this will help everyone begin to come to a solution. Neranei (talk) 23:03, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
This was my original comment on the article and I still stand by it. Aside from census data, this article is mostly about the relationship between certain genotypic and phenotypic features associated with "white people." I have two problems with this. First, it utterly ignores a vast literature in anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies on the social construction of whiteness, how the notion of "white" people has changed historically, and its cultural dimensions. I realize that to write about this someone would have to go through peer-reviewed journals (including interdisciplinary ones like Critical Inquiry, Representations and Public Culture) to find the important articles and look through book reviews to identify the important books (I provide a list of some of the most important such books above) - but hey, that is what you have to do if you want to write an encyclopedia article, right? Until someone does this, the article fails to live up to our NPOV standards by ignoring many important points of view. Second, the sections on genoytpe strike me as original research insofar as they are synthetic i.e. making claims about "White people" in general. All the scientific studies are on specific populations, and different populations will have diferent features and it is not scientific to take results from different populations and average them unless you have a good reason. Here is a good reason based on the article itself: country by country. When the US does a census to identify White people, and the Ecuadorian census identifies White people, they are NOT referring to members of the same race or ethnic group. Censuses reflect states' views of their citizenry, although the degree to which they reflect the interests of bureaucrats, social scientists, or political negotiations with representatives of ethnic groups varies. But often time within many countries (certainly the US and Brazil) the boundaries between ethnic groups and how people self identify may vary from what is recorded by the census ... which is why you really need to look at work by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists - otherwisewhat you have is at best a distortion, or at worst amounts to OR (in the form of synthesis.
Although I have presented my position in terms of compliance with NOR and NPOV, Fourdee and others have challenged me arguing not only that I am pushing a POV but that it is a fringe POV. Thee is no way to make sense of this dispute without my trying to understand Fourdee's position. Fourdee writes, "I have repeatedly said that the material that slrubenstein and others are promoting can be included in the article however it should not overwhelm a topic with criticisms rather than a discussion of the actual topic and that I will be watching for anything that is willfully misleading, improprerly paraphrased, and arrangements of material that give undue weight to tiny minority views." It is true that Fourdee has said this, and I believe that his formulation here may provide one possible starting point for mediation. I am sure that all agree in principal that we want to avoid "anything that is willfully misleading, improprerly paraphrased, and arrangements of material that give undue weight to tiny minority views" and another way to frame the dispute is that people disagree over what material fits this description. My statement above asserts that much of the material in the article, although sourced, was misleading. Perhaps when first added it was not "willfully" misleading, but a number of editors (notably Alun/Wobble) besides myself have since explained how and why it is misleading. Nevertheless, this remains a point of contention that may require/benefit from mediation. Another point for mediation involves Fourdee's sugestion that the views I wish included are "criticisms" of the topic; my position is that they express alternate views. At stake is where the material would go in the article: in a special "criticism" section at the end, or in the beginning as one of several major views. A linked issue is Fourdee's characterizing these views as fringe or minority. I contend that they represent major views within the academy. It is true that many people are ignorant of or reject scholarly research, but I do not believe that this renders scholarly research "fringe" or "minority." I believe that "fringe" or "minorty" can have meaning in an encyclopedia only in relation to a particular community or constituency (mass media, the scientific community, and so on) and are not meaningful in absolute terms. I believe Fourdee and others disagree - so this too would be an important area requiing mediation.
There is in fact a huge body of academic literature on who Whites are and what it means to be White. I list several such books above. Some have suggested that discussion of this literature belongs in Whiteness studies. But that article provides a general context for the academic trend - it does not provide a detailed account of thier findings. I think there is a place for a Wikipedia article on Whiteness, as long as it complies with NPOV and NOR; I believe the starting point for such an article would be to present the findings of this massive body of scholarly research on whites. I would further propose that such an article should absorb the article on Caucasian race (which needs to be updated to take into account current evolutionary science/physical anthropological research on race as a biological concept), but could be separate from an article on European peoples, which would be about ethnic groups in Europe. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Problems:
1) Afrocentricism by User:Muntuwandi :
2) Genetics and other population section is a POV fork. Either delete or add more arguments like this: [3].
3) Relations with blacks section is irrelevant. Again, it is afrocentricism by Muntuwandi. One drop rule may be mentioned with couple of words but a whole section is irrelevant.
4) This pic [4] should go because, for every 4 people whose skin color is similar like that, there may be 4000 with clear skin tone differences. Europeans are the lightest ethnic group (Spectrophotometry confirms that). That's why they are called white. And the pic is POV pushing. There seems to be no objective comparison, ie: suntanned Kerry vs other people in bright lightening. Also look at here: [5]. Thandie Newton's skin color is clearly non-white compared to Matt Dillon...
5) If there will be a gallery and Mid Easterners will be included, they should be in a seperate gallery because their whiteness seems to be a minority opinion, given the quotes in the article.
There have been some fairly polarised views as to what this article should be, never mind what it should contain. This has since developed into further evidence that there is disagreement as to whether this article should even exist. Should the article be based on the use of the term (broadly), on strictly ethnic interpretations, on particular ethnic interpretations, and so on.
My opinion is largely that there should be a compromise; I don't have a firm opinion beyond that the article should exist, should be more than disambiguation, and should cover the full range of (verifiable/notable) uses and meanings.
I would suggest that the page become a sort of enhanced disambiguation. Sections and subsections to cover the ways in which the term is used and what it is used to mean, with pretty brief coverage, and "main article" links to articles with fuller coverage where possible. Because of the controversy over images, I would suggest that no images be used in the article lead or otherwise prominently. Instead, images directly applicable to a section/subsection should be included there only, and based on their appropriateness to that section rather than based on any idea of what should be in the article overall. For example, if there is a section on "racial/ethnic usage", with subsections on specific interpretations within that usage, the section would potentially include an image indicating a range of ethnicities to put the concept in context. General examples, however, of who is/isn't white should not be included, largely because they would have to be variations of such for each section/subsection, as there is no overall consensus on or off wikipedia as to what constitutes a "white person".
I think that covers it. SamBC( talk) 00:13, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
My main concern is that the first photographs in this article be of the most widely understood concept conveyed by "white people" and that any photographs of "why other people aren't considered white" be located lower in the article and be tastefully selected, and should not overwhelm the article. How can there be more pictures of "people who aren't white" than "people who are white"? How can they appear first in the article? I also strongly object to any user-generated collages unless they are created by consensus.
Integration with or absorption of the caucasian race article doesn't make sense because "white" is used as exclusive of many caucasians in my understanding of the most common meaning. Perhaps some matters can be cross-referenced between the articles as appropriate.
As to alternate views I have zero objection to a fair treatment of all points of view on this. I do think that if we are going to include material from left-wing political agendas (such as Muntuwandi cites at times), it should be equally balanced with any opposing points of view. For example if someone is going to be introduced as a citation who is arguing white americans should be more inclusive of mulattos, equivalent counter arguments should be introduced, since the argument itself is not factual but is an appeal to belief or emotion.
-- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 05:40, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Muntuwandi 06:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I'll keep it brief as people have complained about overly long answers (a comment I find quite rude to be honest).
This is not an encyclopedic article. This is an attempt to write an article because "black people" exists as an article. There is no material in this article that isn't covered better elsewhere. Frankly this is a very subjective article with no focus and no point. This article has no place whatsoever in Wikipedia. I have never read a bigger collection of subjective POV tripe in my life. As one proceeds through the article it becomes clearer and clearer that the editors are simply grasping at straws to pad out an undeserving entry.
I have no idea why on Earth this survived a AfD as one read through it is enough to show that it is an irrelevance and an embarressment to the project. The article fails to state what "White People" are objectively, it strays into other subjects frequently and it is a magnet to racists and white supremisists (who no doubt have articles already).
What is a white person? Who cares? Everything that is relvant to this article is already contained in other article.
Speedily delete this embarressment and replace with a disambig page please. AlanD 08:29, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
On the whole I tend to agree with AlanD's position. There is nothing in this article that cannot be presented in a more complete and contextually more appropriate way in many other articles. SLR may well have a better idea of what this article should look like, but I think he has suggested on this talk page that any appropriate information for this article could be included in the article Whiteness studies. On the whole this dispute is really about which group of people the term White people applies to. I'd frame it in the context of an absolutist versus a generalist approach. The absolutists take the position that White people are only those people with an European ancestry who also "look European" (though in the USA this does not preclude people with a significant or even majority of non European ancestry [8] [9]). There is a tendency among the people supporting the absolutist position to state that although other points of view should be included, these should be presented as minority points of view, because the concept that White is synonymous with "looking European" is the most widely held view. On the other hand there seems to be little evidence that this view is held globally. In Brazil "'White' was (and continues to be) more an indicator of existence of a series of moral and cultural attributes than skin color" [10] [11] People who hold a more generalist view, as I do, tend not to distinguish between any "majority" or "minority" opinion, but think that we should treat all conceptions of White as equal and socially constructed. Personally I am of the opinion that the absolutist position is derived from systemic bias on the part of these good faith editors, after all we are all conditioned to think that our own world view is the norm. I support a situation where this article tries to disambiguate different meanings of the term White people and redirect users to articles where they can actually get detailed encyclopaedic information about what they are interested in. Cheers. Alun 10:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
When I stumbled upon it, this article struck me as a cross between Caucasian race and Europeans, with the strong implied suggestion that one wanted to equate Caucasian race==Europeans. While Europeans are possibly the one major population group who are likely to be included in all possible definitions of "white", this doesn't sum many of the more interesting aspects of "whiteness": its much more restrictive membership than all other major racial groupings (see the One-drop rule, for example), the debate aout which ethnic groups are to be considered "truly white", and so on. This article, by its very subject is bound to be controversial and to be a magnet for many extreme positions. Also, in all fairness much of its content can be merged into other articles (Caucasian Race, Europeans, Whitesness Studies), and would probably look more at home there. As I said earlier, this article looks like a cross between subjects, and by this very quality represents a tremendous potential for OR. Given all these factors, and the faqct that many positions around this mediation table are diametrally opposed to each other, I honestly think the best and simplest way to deal with this article and resolve the many issues its nature raises is to merge all relevant content to other, less controversial articles (see above for three prime candidates) and to turn this into some sort of disambiguation page, which would refer the reader to the appropriate subject they're looking for, whether the racial, ethnic or sociological aspects of the term. I wouldn't oppose and would even welcome the inclusion of brief, summary-style paragraphs to complement each redirection target and to give the reader finding this page a something akin to a preview of what each redirection target represents. I would also welcome some sort of general introduction which would state that the "white" epithet has many different meanings, both historically, geographically, socially and politically.-- Ramdrake 11:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
The white people article should only have definitions of white people. Since these definitions of white people do not agree with each other, it would violate the ideal neutral point of view of the article to have information about physical appearence, population numbers, genetics and galleries of people. These sections would have to take a point of view about the definition of white people, violating the neutral point of view policy. I think the whole dispute is due to these sections, since the editors do not agree on the definition of white people.---- Dark Tea © 20:49, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Section initially created to hold comments moved from section above to discourage dialogue in that section — SamBC( talk) 00:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Alan, just so you know: the one drop rule is found generally in New World societies which were based on slavery, in which slaves were mostly from Africa and masters mostly from Europe. It works in only one direction, because of its economic function (if a White master raped a slave, her child would be a slave not free. Since "black" and "white" largely functioned as code words for slave and master, the slave-child would be considered completely slave and thus completely black.) For very different reasons, the opposite occured in the Dominican republic where people with one drop of white blood were considered entirely white, but that is the only exception I know of in the New World. So the reason people in the UK are unfamiliar with the term is that the vast majority of slaves owned by British subjects were in the New World, not in the UK. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I highly recommend to you Marvin Harris's Patterns of Race in the Americas. It is dated and some things will irritate you (he uses caucasoid and negroid following the convention of the time and it irritates me it is so dated) but aside from being short, well-written, and available in cheap paperback, given your own interestes I think you will find it very fascinating and edifying. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:08, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
The Mariah Carey picture is suitable for the article, I think, but who is the very dark woman next to her and why is she there? I think her pic should be removed.
Also, Carey's name is misspelled in the picture caption as Maria. Victor Chmara 12:15, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I know I suggested waiting until everyone posted, but it looks like most people have, and most positions are represented.
Would people agree that there is a) direct support and b) distinct compromise arguments for largely merging content and creating the sort of 'enhanced disambiguation' that has been suggested? That is to say sections for each other article/group of articles and reasonably brief coverage of that subject to help people figure out what they're looking for and provide a general overview. This would seem to serve as a compromise between the most extreme views, as well as meeting some of the suggested compromises already suggested. SamBC( talk) 15:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Alun, you have said this before, several times, and Fourdee keeps and will continue to keep ignoring you. I know people will yell at me for not being constructive in seeking a mutually acceptable compromise - but the fact is, and yes it is a fact, Fourdee has (1) admitted to being a racist and (2) admitted that he intends to use this article to push his POV. Of course he is going to consistently ignore or misrepresent the science. Frankly, I doubt we will have a successful mediation unless we address these uncomfortable facts. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:29, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
1) What false authority? My sources are from peer reviewed journals. Indeed Nature Genetics had an
Impact factor of 26.494 in 2003 "first out of 120 journals in the field of genetics and heredity."
[18] This is the premiere publication for genetics and most post docs and research students would kill to get a paper published there. No one publishes in Nature Genetics without having produced top quality research. The claim of false authority follows your usual pattern of dismissing any academic work that does not support your personal opinion. While you can believe what you like, you cannot include your beliefs in Wikipedia article without providing citations from reliable sources.
2) What deception? I have been open about my sources and information. You have given personal opinion and speculation. Please remain civil and don't accuse other editors of deception. You have provided no evidence for your position, therefore it remains
unverified from any
reliable source.
3) What diatribes? You started to introduce Y chromosome and a wider genetic analysis into the debate, I am a geneticist, I am merely contributing to the discussion with my expertise. It is not a diatribe to point out that the comments you have made are unsupported by any research into the field. This work does not support the position you have outlined here, it is really only your own uninformed personal opinion. You are entitled to believe what you like, you are not entitled to claim on a Wikipedia article that research supports your personal beliefs when it demonstrably does not.
Alun
06:02, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Sam, as you are the one proposing this version, would you please write it out as you would like it? (I am taking a leaf out of the Mediation Committee's book here) Everyone else involved, please vote on your support (as is done in an RfA). If you have comments, please place them in the comments section. Thanks, Neranei (talk) 16:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Please create this on a subpage Talk:White_people/SamBC_version
Hard to have a vote on this when the people on one side have been canvassing heavily to bring in supporters. I certainly am not agreeing to abide by any votes in this circumstance but let's see what the compromise version ends up looking like. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 17:43, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I edited boldly and created the sandbox here [19].-- Ramdrake 18:24, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I've put in a very vague start of a structure at White people/Compromise version - the previous location got userfied and redirect deleted, so I've put a note in at the top. Please see above as to why it makes sense for the compromise to be on a main page and a seperate talk page to discuss. SamBC( talk) 18:54, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
For the record, and partly due to page moves, there are now three versions of the compromise page: [20], [21] and [22]. Can editors agree which version they will continue and which two other versions we can ask to be deleted? Thanks!-- Ramdrake 22:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I have put in a request for semi protection I know it is unusual for a talk page but it may give some respite from an IP block evading sock puppet. Muntuwandi 12:38, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree 100% with Theresa knott. Muntuwandi, I know it is hard ... but trolls really only have as much influence in this wikiworld as we care to give them. The winds blow, the tides ebb and flow, and everytime, people are left with trash to pick up and throw away. Don't give it a second thought. it is just trash to be thrown away. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:50, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
The proposed classification of living whites and near-whites, which is shown on the top of the chart, may be listed in more detailed form as follows:
A. LARGE-HEADED PALAEOLITHIC SURVIVORS
(1) Brünn: (Crô-Magnon, to some extent) found in solution with Borreby, Nordic, and other elements, mostly in Scandinavia and the British Isles, also in North Africa and Canary Islands. May appear in comparatively pure form among individuals although nowhere as a total population.
(2) Borreby: Large-headed brachycephals of Ofnet-Afalou type, the unreduced brachycephalic strain in Crô-Magnon; found in solution in peripheral regions of northwestern Europe, and as a major population element in most of northern and central Germany, and in Belgium. Like the Brünn race, with which it is often associated, it occurs also in North Africa and the Canary Islands.
B. PURE AND MIXED PALAEOLITHIC AND MESOLITHIC SURVIVORS OF MODERATE HEAD SIZE56
(3) Alpine: A reduced and somewhat foetalized survivor of the Upper Palaeolithic population in Late Pleistocene France, highly brachycephalized; seems to represent in a large measure the bearer of the brachycephalic factor in Crô-Magnon. Close approximations to this type appear also in the Balkans and in the highlands of western and central Asia, suggesting that its ancestral prototype was widespread in Late Pleistocene times. In modern races it sometimes appears in a relatively pure form, sometimes as an element in mixed brachycephalic populations of multiple origin. It may have served in both Pleistocene and modern times as a bearer of the tendency toward brachycephalization into various population.
(4) Ladogan: I propose to give this name to the descendants of the mesocephalic and brachycephalic forest-dwelling population of northern Europe east of the Baltic in Kammkeramik times. This type is a blend of a partly mongoloid brachycephalic element with a mesocephalic form of general Upper Palaeolithic aspect; these elements are seen in crania from Lake Ladoga and Salis Roje. (See Chapter IV, section 13, pp. 125-126.) Corded and/or Danubian elements are inextricably blended here, although the mongoloid and Upper Palaeolithic elements seem at present more important. In its present form this composite type shows two numerous variants:
(a) Neo-Danubian: Strongly mixed with the old Danubian, and to a lesser extent other elements, to form the common peasant type of eastern Europe, with many local variants.
(b) East Baltic: Strongly mixed with Corded, Iron Age Nordic, and western Palaeolithic survivors to form the predominant population of much of Finland and the Baltic States.
(5) Lappish: A stunted, highly brachycephalized, largely brunet relative of the Ladogan, originally living to the east of the Ladogan type area, in the Urals and western Siberia. Has probably assimilated some evolved mongoloid, but owes its partly mongoloid appearance more to the retention of an early intermediate evolutionary condition. In modern times much mixed with Ladogan and Nordic.
C. PURE AND MIXED UNBRACHYCEPHALIZED MEDITERRANEAN DERIVATIVES
(6) Mediterraneans: Within this general class, which still retains much of its original racial unity, the following sub-classes may at present be distinguished:
(a) Mediterranean Proper: Short-statured, dolicho- and mesocephalic form found in Spain, Portugal, the western Mediterranean islands, and to some extent in North Africa, southern Italy, and other Mediterranean borderlands. Its purest present-day racial nucleus is without doubt Arabia. Most of the Cappadocian, isolated in the skeletal material, seems to have been absorbed into the western Mediterranean variety after its early Metal Age migration, while that which remained in Asia Minor became assimilated into the Dinaric and Armenoid. It still appears, however, among individuals in its original form, and is particularly common among Oriental Jews.
(b) Atlanto-Mediterranean: The tall, straight-nosed Mediterranean, not mesocephalic, as Deniker erroneously stated, but strongly dolichocephalic. Today this race forms the principal element in the population of North Africa, and is strong in Iraq, Palestine, parts of Arabia, and the eastern Balkans; in solution with varying degrees of negroid it is also the principal race in the whole of East Africa. In Europe it is a minority element in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and the British Isles.
(c) Irano-Afghan: The long-faced, high-headed, hook-nosed type, usually of tall stature, which forms the principal element in the population of Iran, Afghanistan, and the Turkoman country, and which is also present in Palestine, parts of Arabia, and North Africa. It is probably related to the old Corded type of the Neolithic and Bronze Age.
(7) Nordics: The basic Nordic is the Corded-Danubian blend of the Aunjetitz and of the Early Iron Age in central Europe. This type includes some Bell Beaker Dinaric absorbed in early Metal Age times. Although Danubian and Corded types may appear as individuals, they may nowhere be isolated as populations. The most important living Nordic varieties are:
(a) Keltic Iron Age Type: The Keltic sub-type, mesocephalic and low-vaulted, with a prominent nose. Commonest in the British Isles where in places it forms the principal element in the population. Also a major element in Flanders and the Frankish country in southwestern Germany.
(b) Anglo-Saxon Type: The old Germanic Reihengräber type, a heavy-boned, rather high-headed Nordic variety, most prevalent in northern Germany and England.
(c) Trondelagen Type: A hybrid type of Nordic with Corded and Brünn elements, frequent in the central coastal provinces of Norway, north of the Dovre Mountains; the principal form in Iceland, and among the Frisians, and common in the British Isles. The Anglo-Saxon type lies between it and the true Nordic.
(d) Osterdal Type: The original Hallstatt Nordic, smaller-headed and finer boned than (b) or (c); occurs in many populations as individuals, typical only in Sweden and in the eastern valleys of Norway.
D. BRACHYCEPHALIZED MEDITERRANEAN DERIVATIVES, PROBABLY MIXED
(8) Dinarics: A tall, brachycephalic type of intermediate pigmentation, usually planoccipital, and showing the facial and nasal prominence of Near Eastern peoples. The basic population of the whole Dinaric-Alpine highlands from Switzerland to Epirus, also in the Carpathians and Caucasus, as well as Syria and Asia Minor. Apparently a brachycephalized blend in which Atlanto-Mediterranean and Cappadocian strains are important, with Alpine acting as the brachycephalizing agent in mixture. Borreby and Corded elements, also Nordic, appear to be involved in some regions.
(9) Armenoids: A similar brachycephalic composite type, with the same head form as the Dinaric, but a larger face and nose. The pigmentation is almost entirely brunet, the pilous development of beard and body abundant, the nose high rooted, convex, and the tip depressed, especially in advanced age. The difference between the Armenoid and the Dinaric is that here it is the Irano-Afghan race which furnishes the Mediterranean element, brachycephalized by Alpine mixture.
(10) Noric: A blond, planoccipital brachycephal frequently encountered in South Germany and elsewhere in central Europe. This is apparently an Iron Age Nordic brachycephalized by Dinaric mixture and seems in most respects to take the form of a blond Dinaric variant. Both Deniker and Czekanowski have recognized this type, and it is a standard race, under various names, in most Russian studies. The name Noric was gived it by Lebzelter. A brachycephalized Neo-Danubian, common in Jugoslavia, is a parallel or variant form.
Coon: The Races of Europe, (Chapter VIII, section 6)
This is the best definition physical anthropologists can give of white people and should be included to the article. The current definitions are completely inadequate and reeks of OR/bad science. MoritzB 15:12, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Moritz, all scientists post Mendel and the modern synthesis understand that phenotyipic adaptations to an environment that are common to a population over time are linked to genetics. Alun, Yes, Boas's work has stood the test of time and was just the tip of the iceberg of research that shows how even the most clearly heritable (although Boas did not use the word - this was before the rediscovery of Mendel's work and the development of the modern synthesis and population genetics) of human traits are environmentally plastic, which quickly led to the abandonment of "race" as a meaningful concept by evolutionary scientists and population geneticists as well as anthropologists more generally. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:31, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
All these voluminous claims that populations are not genetically distinct in some way, that genetics isn't the primary component of appearance, and such, are conjecture and not actually supported by any particular science. They are just conclusions in support of a political agenda. These are meaningless assertions based either on trivial facts or complete conjecture. Also part of the tactic here is to introduce excessive amounts of this material to make it look scientific. All this hinges on the fact that there are not discrete boundaries to ethnic groups. However we all know that different ethnic groups have different appearances and that this is inherited genetically. The fact that there may be some "cline" between groups is just a diversion from the fact the people we call white have different alleles than the people we don't call white. The details of the inheritance of these traits are sometimes mendelian and sometimes polygenic but almost everything that makes a person what he is comes from his parents. This is just a simple fact. All this other nonsense is lies piled up to hide that fact, or make it sound like the reasonable position is that race doesn't matter. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 17:20, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
@MoritzB: "The genes responsible for physical appearance are only a small part of the human genome. Thus, a German person who resembles Italians physically is still likely otherwise genetically typically German." This comment seems to assume non random assortment. Or are you arguing that these people look like Italians due to environmental selection, even though they are genetically more similar to German people? What is the difference between German people and Italian people? Indeed what has political geography got to do with it? I can see no reason why a modern political boundary would act as a barrier to gene flow in pre modern times. Besides what is the evidence that the so called differences between these people are the result of environmental selection? If one wants to posit that a particular phenotype is produced by selection rather than by random variation, then one needs to have a robust model. For example it is true that blue eye colour is common in the north of Europe, but no one knows why. We can theorise that this is due to environmental selection, but it's not good enough to claim that just because blue eyes are common in the north of Europe this must be due to environmental selection. I've noticed in the popular press that it is common to assume that when variation is noted they always attribute it to "evolution" (itself plain daft, evolution is not the same as natural selection). But variation exists due to all sorts of things, founder effects, genetic drift etc. Not all differences are due to selection. Besides if you look at my map based on Bauchet's European data it is apparent that northern Italians fall into the same genetic "cluster" as Germans ( Image:Bauchet European clusters.png), but that southern Italians do not. So actually northern Italians may be more like Germans that they are to southern Italians. Most geneticists seem to think this is due to demic diffusion of middle eastern farmers into Europe during the European neolithic and not due to selection. If I've missed your point then I appologise. I'm not looking for a confrontation, just an understanding of this point of view. All the best. Alun 19:45, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Wow. I've been away less than 24 hours and whole chapters of conversation have been written already. I won't comment much (don't have the time right now), but I can't help but notice that Fourdee's and MoritzB's allegations are strangely unsupported by evidence (except for some controversial science from 75 years ago which is now totally discredited). Furthermore, I'd just like to ask, for the record: this whole discussion about alleged European races strikes me as deviating from topic, namely the content of the article on "White people". Taking outdated, fringe viewpoints and personal POVs unsupported by the current body of science strikes me as unproductive. Fringe views (such as Coon's) are just that, and deserve little if any mention in the article (except for historical reasons) as these have long since been discredited. So, my question, I guess, with all due respect to all editors, is: why beat a dead horse? I think there was the beginning of a consensus around some sort of summary/disambi format for this page, and i think the most productive use of time for the editors might be to bring that back into focus rather than foray into loon --err, "Coon"-- territory. -- Ramdrake 23:15, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
MoritzB 23:57, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I think it is time to put this conversation to rest. Coon is at best at the outermost fringe of anthropology and virtully no one refers to him anymore for reasons I explained at the beginning of this discussion; Aln has already gone far beyond what should be necessary to explain why his claims do not have any meaning in light of current research in population or molecular genetics. Let's drop it and move on.
Slrubenstein |
Talk
21:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
I really think it is not as complex as all this. I'm just tossing this out there because it is the understanding I am working with right now: We see that R1a and b are the dominant male lineages in the heart of europe, and it doesn't really make sense that there was so much extinction of other male lines that this does not represent a real population group. We see a group labeled I which occurs all around the fringes of R1a and R1b, and (in modern populations at least) is mixed with them. While I and R1 don't have the same origins, they have been next to each other for some time and presumably interbreeding. They are fundamentally similar in basic facial features, although some metrics like cephalic index vary, even within subpopulations that should probably be classified together genetically. The facial features, body shape, etc. result from the exchange between R1a, R1b and I, a sort of market of genetic material which has made the white race. Some people of course have different lineages but still share this genetic material due to proximity, but it's clear what the core population responsible is. Does this mean no other lineages contributed to the pool of european alleles? Of course not - these are just the core groups we can make some generalizations about. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 09:52, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
other sources that provide good biological reasons for the non existence of race that has got nothing to do with "political" considerations.
It's got nothing to do with politics and everything to do with biolgy. Alun 18:15, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
The model of European genetic ancestry has recently shifted away from the Neolithic diffusion model towards an emphasis on autochthonous Paleolithic origins. However, this new paradigm utilizes genetic reconstructions based primarily on contemporary populations and, furthermore, is often promoted without regard to the findings of ancient DNA studies. These ancient DNA studies indicate that contemporary European ancestry is not a living fossil of the Paleolithic maternal deme; rather, demographic events during the Neolithic and post-Neolithic periods appear to have had substantial impact on the European genetic record. In addition, evolutionary processes, including genetic drift, adaptive selection and disease susceptibility, may have altered the patterns of maternal lineage frequency and distribution in existing populations. As a result, the genetic history of Europe has undergone significant transformation over time, resulting in genetic discontinuity between modern-day Europeans and their ancient maternal forbearers. [25]
fourdee you keep making claims without providing evidence to support these claims. This is not a chat room, what you seem to stating is your own opinion. You cannot include your own opinion in the article. If you can provide evidence from reliable sources that Y chromosomes lineages have not gone extinct then please do, but just saying "it doesn't make sense" is not an informed argument, you need to verify this by producing a reliable source that claims it doesn't make sense. Researcher in the field of mtDNA and Y chromosome research tell us that it does indeed make sense, can you find evidence that some of these researchers dispute this? You have also resorted to making personal comments about me when I have provided evidence that you are misunderstanding the science. I tend to think that when people need to resort to ad hominem comments then they have lost the argument. I suggest, with as much good faith as I can muster, that making the same claims over and over again does not make them any more legitimate than they were the first time you made them, unless you go and find some evidence to support your claims. I'm not asking much here, and I have repeatedly asked you to do this. All the best. Alun 11:29, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Muntuwandi 12:17, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Alun is still lecturing on things that are common knowledge and that nobody has misstated. How many times do I need to say that obviously traits are not inherited directly on the Y chromosome? Or that an individual's haplogroups don't directly indicate his features? Alun is adept at misconstruing and misrepresenting very fundamental facts about genetics and trying to work them into implying there is not a genetic difference between the people we call white and the people we don't (or people we call English and people we call Welsh), which is so obviously absurd I doubt even he believes it. It's obvious, given user boxes and "personal" talk page comments, that Alun is deeply disturbed by not only racial awareness and the notion of race, but ethnic awareness and any concepts of genetic difference. Much of the material that is pivotal to his position, if you look closely, is actually conjecture (what is possible or could've happened, what admixture is mathematically feasible in the most ideal scenario, etc.) but ignores the most basically obvious facts which are that people in Europe who are natives of the regions with the markedly dominant haplogroup distributions (R1b celt, R1a slav, I nordic) also have markedly unique appearance. Of course those groups don't form a strict boundary of whiteness as their traits have spread to and come from surrounding populations, and they are not absolutely pure groups by any measure. But we all know what they look like and that what a person looks like is mainly due to their ethnic group.
It's kind of difficult to assume any degree of honesty, expertise or neutrality on the part of Alun given his obvious personal opinions he has stated many times, and emotional investment in the topic, since the raw conjecture that he states is "science" so closely matches these heart-felt personal beliefs and has little or nothing to do with the scientific-looking material he cites so prolificly. If forced into a corner he and others will admit that obviously there are genetic differences between people. The typical strategy here of overloading an article with more material questioning the topic than about the topic is quite effective. However the material is largely nonsense, or hinges on straw men like whether a group is absolutely distinct or would be classified as a monophyletic clade or subspecies in biology. These are not the important categorizations for humans - we look at people much more specifically, and primarily at traits related to appearance (alleles, not "phenotypes" for the most part, another red herring on their part). -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 18:17, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
[27] , Race_and_genetics#Recent_studies Muntuwandi 06:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Alun you commie hypocrite, you wrote, "Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA genealogies are especially interesting because they demonstrate the lack of concordance of lineages with morphology" which proves what I have been saying all along. The quote itself SAYS "genealogies!" Don't you even understand English? A "genealogy" is "ge·ne·al·o·gy (jē′nē-ŏlə-jē, -ăl-, jĕn′ē-) n. pl. ge·ne·al·o·gies 1. A record or table of the descent of a person, family, or group from an ancestor or ancestors; a family tree. 2. Direct descent from an ancestor; lineage or pedigree. 3. The study or investigation of ancestry and family histories. [4] so it is VERY clear that they are talking about groups of people related by decent from a common ancester and guess what, that is RACE. Your own quote says that these DNA geneologies are interesting, can't you even read, yet you keep saying that they mean nothing at all which just shows how ignorant you are. No wonder you are so ignorant you spend all your time with your anarchist communist friends reading Three steps forward two steps back probably I am sure. And can't you read what you wrote, there is a lack of concordance between geneaology and morphology which is what MoritzB has been saying all along which proves that Carleton Coon is still the most important physical anthropologist writing about White races. You know you just keep spinning your liberal propaganda when it is obviously you do not know anything about genetics or even science. I on the other hand spend hours citing at a cafe with my other really smart buddies smoking and talking about people who were real experts on race (and some of you out there know exactly who I mean) so don't tell me I don't know what I am talking about when I talk about this stuff all the time. Next time you want to argue a point maybe you should read a dictionary first. Pfft! Slrubenstein | Talk 09:41, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Hints! Do I have to spell everything out? You are being just like my mother! How DARE you accuse me of not being me! You know, I bet you are all sockpuppets. In fact, I bet aside from a handful of sane people everyone at Wikipedia is a sockpuppet. In fact, you can't even be sockpuppets ... Everybody knows that races are real, and that White people are White people, that is just common sense. And since everyone knows, and you are everyone, you know it too. So you can't even be disagreeing with me! All this moronic wasted talk is just your disagreeing with yourself, because you (not you, the other you) know I am right! So stop interfering with this article. The introduction should simply begin with a definition of "white" and then a definition of "people." Stop wasting tme with fringe views. Pfft! Do i have to repeat myself, are you that incapable of understanding me? Pfft - pfft!!! Slrubenstein | Talk 12:59, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Hey guys! Watcha all been up to? Hmmmm ... maybe it is time to get back to work? Slrubenstein | Talk 13:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
"We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population. Implications of this genetic structure for case-control association studies are discussed." Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies Hua Tang,1 Tom Quertermous,2 Beatriz Rodriguez,4 Sharon L. R. Kardia,5 Xiaofeng Zhu,6 Andrew Brown,7 James S. Pankow,8 Michael A. Province,9 Steven C. Hunt,10 Eric Boerwinkle,11 Nicholas J. Schork,12 and Neil J. Risch3,13 http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1196372 —Preceding unsigned comment added by MoritzB ( talk • contribs) 06:53, August 27, 2007 (UTC)
Isolation by distance can be portrayed in more realistic, continuous map-based fashion than tree-diagrams provide, which helps clarify why classification is so difficult (Figure 2) (Figure 3). The Big Few races can seem real in samples of size N (Norway, Nigeria, Nippon, Navajo). That is, if one examines only the geographic extremes, differences appear large because they can be seen in comparisons between graphic and tree-like presentations of the same data in Figure 3A,B. In that sense it is sometimes said that there are only four or five major patterns of variation. But if we look at geographically closer or intermediate populations, differences diminish roughly proportionately (Figure 3C) (176). Even our view of the Big Few might change were it not for our curious convenience of overlooking places such as India. Who are those pesky billion? One race? A mix of the other already-sampled races? A multiplicity of races, as has often been suggested? [28]
You can believe what you like, but your argument seems generally to be based on your own opinion. I can provide several sources that all support what Ossorio and Duster say and what Kittles and Weiss say, most of the articles in the Nature Genetics supplement I link to above also say the same thing. Even if you are correct about most groups belonging to clusters this does not either support the existence of only 5 or 6 clusters (as opposed to say 63 in the case of the time of Darwin) and neither does it address the problem of a lack of discrete boundaries between these clusters. So essentially it is an arbitrary distinction. Alun 17:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)Assumptions about natural, essential boundaries among races are contradicted by the findings that allele frequency comparisons among human populations rarely show discontinuities that map onto racial boundaries (Marks, 2002; Molnar, 1998). Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans’ physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 30s and 50s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races (Marks, 2002). Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people. [29]
That is incorrect, the three race model basically fails to properly account for at least 20% of the worlds population. In other words many people do not have a race. The indian subcontinent with over 1.3 billion people is an intermeadiate population between Europe, south east asia, east asia and oceania. What race are people in the Indian subcontinent?.
Muntuwandi
15:02, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
This is getting ridiculous. As Alun put it, "It would be absurd to claim there are no genetic differences between say Africans and Europeans. The problem is that there are no discrete boundaries" - and the quote from Kittles and Weiss makes the point quite clear. MoritzB does not understand or care about the science, and Muntuwandi, while consistently correct, is nevertheless just basically repeating the same point over and over. Let's move on. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:06, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
An editor has inserted false material / original research to the article and attributes his opinions to Cavalli-Sforza who certainly does not even talk about "race mixing". The version endorsed by Muntuwandi is POV-pushing nonsense and completely misrepresents Cavalli-Sforza's position taking quotes out of context.
I have rewritten the section but unfortunately Muntuwandi is so proud of his own edits that he keeps making reverts.
I summarized Cavalli-Sforza's findings after reading the paper:
"According to the study all non-African populations are more closely related to each other than to Africans. Europeans are most closely related to East Asians and least related to Africans. As the genetic distance from Africa to Europe (16.6) is shorter than the genetic distance from Africa to East Asia (20.6) Cavalli-Sforza proposes that both Asian and African populations contributed to the settlement of Europe which began 40 000 years ago. The overall contributions from Asia and Africa were estimated to be around two-thirds and one-third, respectively. Europe has a genetic variation in general about three times less than that of other continents. [5] [6]" MoritzB 06:03, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
One reasonable hypothesis is that the genetic distance between Asia and Africa is shorter than that between Africa and the other continents in Table 1 because both Africans and Asians contributed to the settlement of Europe, which began about 40,000 years ago. It seems very reasonable to assume that both continents nearest to Europe contributed to its settlement, even if perhaps at different times and maybe repeatedly. It is reassuring that the analysis of other markers also consistently gives the same results in this case. Moreover, a specific evolutionary model tested, i.e., that Europe is formed by contributions from Asia and Africa, fits the distance matrix perfectly (6). In this simplified model, the migrations postulated to have populated Europe are estimated to have occurred at an early date (30,000 years ago), but it is impossible to distinguish, on the basis of these data, this model from that of several migrations at different times. The overall contributions from Asia and Africa were estimated to be around two-thirds and one-third, respectively. Simulations have shown (7) that this hypothesis explains quite well the discrepancy between trees obtained by maximum likelihood and neighbor joining.
Thus, the gene flow happened before modern races hadn't even evolved.
Muntuwandi's version filled with POV and misrepresentation:
"According to the study all non African populations are more closely related to each other than to Africans. This is consistent with the view that all non-Africans are descended from a single population that lived in Africa. What is interesting is the two most genetically divergent groups are those that are defined as Black, that is Africans and Oceanians with a genetic distance of 24.7. (So the similarities between blacks are interesting in the article about white people)
Cavalli contends that if evolution of the races had proceeded independently without race mixing then the minimum genetic distance to Africa should at least be 24.7 as with Australia. (Cavalli does not talk about the evolution of races or race mixing)
The most striking discovery is that the shortest genetic distance from Africa is to Europe at 16.6. (Cavalli-Sforza does not call it his most "striking discovery" in the article)
This is counterintuitive since blacks and whites have the most divergent skin colors. (Does Cavalli-Sforza talk about skin color,no. OR and POV)
Cavalli contends that the only reason for this short distance is significant gene exchange between Africa and Europe. (Cavalli really says that Africans were in a role in founding the original population of Europe 30000-40000 years ago)
And the irrelevant "quotes" he inserted aren't even in the article.
Shriver's study was methodologically flawed and Shriver himself has retracted his claims. Shriver now says that only about 10 percent of European-American population has some African ancestry. Shriver was interviewed by Nicholas Wade. See: "For Sale: A DNA Test to Measure Racial Mix" by Nicholas Wade, New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/health/genetics/01RACE.html?ex=1188446400&en=55b928e33c2dfa94&ei=5070 To my knowledge Shriver has no study to confirm even that result, though. MoritzB 12:29, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
This is cavalli's quote: In order to examine the problem of the constancy of evolutionary rates, we can look at the distances between Africa and the other continents: 24.7 with Oceania, 20.6 with Asia, 16.6 with Europe, and 22.6 with America. It is clear that the shortest distance is between Africa and Europe, followed by that between Africa and Asia. If the rate of evolution were truly constant, the four values would be identical (within the limits of statistical error due to small sample size)
The distance from Europe is anomalously low. North Africa is populated with Caucasoid people like Europeans, but we have made sure to eliminate these populations and are restricting ourselves to Sub-Saharan Africa. The simplest explanation is that substantial exchange has taken place between nearby continents. Genes peoples and languages page 52 Muntuwandi 07:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
"One reasonable hypothesis is that the genetic distance between Asia and Africa is shorter than that between Africa and the other continents in Table 1 because both Africans and Asians contributed to the settlement of Europe, which began about 40,000 years ago. It seems very reasonable to assume that both continents nearest to Europe contributed to its settlement, even if perhaps at different times and maybe repeatedly. It is reassuring that the analysis of other markers also consistently gives the same results in this case. Moreover, a specific evolutionary model tested, i.e., that Europe is formed by contributions from Asia and Africa, fits the distance matrix perfectly (6). In this simplified model, the migrations postulated to have populated Europe are estimated to have occurred at an early date (30,000 years ago), but it is impossible to distinguish, on the basis of these data, this model from that of several migrations at different times. The overall contributions from Asia and Africa were estimated to be around two-thirds and one-third, respectively. Simulations have shown (7) that this hypothesis explains quite well the discrepancy between trees obtained by maximum likelihood and neighbor joining." http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/15/7719
The problem is you are just reading the pnas article. That article is an excerpt from the book. The book has the full details. What is well established is that there have been several migrations between Europe and Africa during the paleolithic and the Neolithic. It is not rocket science that europeans are closely related to africans because they are right next door to each other. If you put aside skin color there will be many similarities beneath the skin. You can see that haplogroup E3b originated in Africa but is found at moderate frequencies in various parts of Europe for example.
These facts may seem absurd to you right now but in future studies may just reveal them to be so. I think there is a little misunderstanding regarding admixture. The ancestry informative markers used to determine admixture are based on polymorphisms that are known to be divergent between the populations. for example a gene found in 98% of blacks and only found in 1% of whites can be used to give a rough estimate of admixture of a multiracial population or individual. A gene that is found at 50% among whites and 50% among blacks would not be a good candidate for an admixture estimate. But the problem is that gene could have entered either one population at a time much earlier via admixture and spread quickly. There would be no way of telling that such a gene entered the population through admixture. Consequently the lack of admixture only refers to more recent mixing. In the past admixture could have taken place. An ancestors tale by Richard Dawkins for example states that every one alive 2000 years ago regardless of their race is an ancestor of everyone alive today [32]. With regard to height once again if two populations share a similar characteristic, it could arise by three mechanisms
So it is either that Northern Europeans either converged on height, but seeing that other populations did not converge on height as well and that evolution favors shorter bodies in colder climates, it is highly possible that Northern Europeans gained their height through African Admixture in the past. Muntuwandi 13:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
This push by Alun, ramdrake, muntuwandi and slr is completely absurd. Any genetics section in this article should be primarily focused on alleles and lineages strongly associated with the core groups we call white, not arguments about where the distributions of those lineages and alleles end. Alun is focusing on very minor issues that nobody denies or misunderstands, and is using false conclusions (his and own and by intermediary parties), misphrasings and cherry picking to give the impression that there is no genetic or scientific basis for the differences we observe between populations. We all know that there is a genetic difference between the groups that appear to be different. Whether we would be better served by looking at "ethnic" groups, "racial" groups, haplogroups, or allele clusters is completely outside the topic of this article. "Science" isn't objective either. The decision on what makes a subspecies is something man created, not nature. Fine - humans groups don't look like subspecies. Our terms for these classes of people are "ethnic" or "racial" groups and maybe today these terms should be revised in light of analysis of population history, genetic lineage and dominant lineages, and clusters of alleles important to sexual selection. This is a worthwhile topic but is largely tangental to this article. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 12:56, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
STOP THE PRESSES! Hold Everything! ohmygod! Fourdee, you have a time-travelling mind-reading machine? Can I borrow it, pleeeeaaase??!? I want to know what Hitler was thinking just before he killed himself. (I actually have a pretty good idea but as you know, Wikipedia is all about verifiability!) Slrubenstein | Talk 18:08, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
This is not an article on genetics, so lets stop debating genetics. This is an article on White people, so lets start discussing the literature on White people. Yes, there is a real body of literatur ethat is explicitly about "white people" so there will be no doubt about appropriateness of sources or NOR, these works direcly address the subject of this artilce. Let's see who has read the, or divide up the readings, and discuss how to improve the article:
Perhaps the single most important reader
Both are law professors and it is published by Temple University Press, so it is quite reputable. As an edited volume it contains essays by a plethora of authors and thus represents a wide range if views - helpful for complying with NPOV, and all in one easy source. I think this is generally considered the best collection of diverse essays. But to help you guys out some more, here are some other books directly relevant to this article:
This is only a partial sampling of the amount written by scholars on the concept of "White people" - there is much more than the very length of the list reveals just how inadequate this article is, how much it is leaving out. Now, some of the above books are absolue classics. But for more cutting-edge research, your best bet is journals (it takes less time to write and publish a journal article than to write and publish a book, so rejecnt journal articles are more likely to be "state of the art." Of course, journal articles are also shorter which is a mixed blessing: obviously, they take less time to read, but they are much more focused. Still, good articles review the literature and thus provide handy summaries of the range of views. They can also provide great little case-studies that illustrate specific aspects of the concept "White people."
Any major library will have subscriptions to at least a few of these journals. In hard-copies, one could look at the index at the back of any given volume; if one has J-Stor or another electronic version of the journal once can do a boolean search. It woul dnot take long to search for "Whiteness," "White+Race" and "White+Ethnicity." You will not come up with an overhwlming number of articles, but what you do come up with will represent the best scholarship (these are all top-ranked peer-reviewed journals; the authors of the articles did all the complex hard work, we just need to benefit from their labor). You will also come up with book reviews and if the review is positive, it is probably worth reading the book. In the end, you will know a lot more about White people (which presumably is what you want, if this article interests you) and you will be able to improve this article by ensuring it complies with NPOV and by ensuring that you are not violating NOR. Like I said (I think!) above - good luck! No article in Wikipedia is ever perfect - after all, by its very Wiki nature, all articles are perpetual works in progress. But obviously this article can be much, much better. That's pretty exciting! Slrubenstein | Talk 21:43, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not following your logic. Above you imply that variation in alleles is described or caused only by geography (obviously false). So I accept that there is a component of this and say that doesn't change anything about "race". Then your retort is to attack the plausibility of your own idea that geography explains variation? When do we get to the part where you admit there are factual biological differences between groups of people. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 08:12, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
1) My response was sarcastic, I thought this was obvious. You claim "Races are geographical". Well the USA is a geographical region, therefore by your own statement all Americans belong to the same "race". This is clearly nonsense, so your comment is clearly nonsense.
2) Natural human genetic and physical variation is distributed by geography. This is a fact apparent even to very small children, people from different parts of the world tend to look a little different to each other, they also tend to be somewhat genetically different to each other. This is not disputed by anyone. The question is this, does human physical and genetic diversity allow the classification of the human species into a few discrete "races". The evidence from physical anthropology and genetics tend not to support the existence of a few races. The evidence, such as it is tends to support a nonconcordant distribution of diversity between human groups. For example Europeans may not be particularly like west Africans, but Europeans are much more like east Africans. This makes sense from the perspective of the RAO model of human dispersion throughout the globe. We would expect Europeans to be more like some African populations and less like others. A little bit nearer Europe again and we get to the Near East, where people are even more similar to Europeans. When we get to south east Europe we find Europeans that are similar to Near Eastern populations but who are also similar to northern Europeans, finally we get to north west Europe and these Europeans are somewhat different again. When we go to north east Europe we find that Europeans there are somewhat more like people from central and northern Asia, but are still most like Europeans, as we progress to central Asia we get people who look somewhat east Asian to the European eye, but who look somewhat European to the east Asian eye. This pattern of diversity does not support the existence of a few distinct "races". Rather it supports either a model of isolation by distance, with populations that are closer being more similar to each other and populations that are more distant being more different. Or it supports a small island model where there are populations of people with large amounts of gene flow between these populations. Isolation by distance would lead to a very gradual clinal change, a small island model would lead to a more clustering pattern. Actually we find both types of patterns when we look at human genetics. Probably this indicates that neither model is perfect. Human dispersal throughout the world is imperfectly understood, and the patterns of difference we see are very complex, no model that we currently have accurately reflects the sort of diversity that is observed.[see Long and Kittles 2003] This is a long post, but this is a complex subject. Current work tends to indicate that there are not a few large groups of human races, what diversity there is (and we are a very homogeneous population relative to other mammals) cannot be distributed neatly into five or six well defined groups. I have addressed this issue at least twice before on this talk page over the last few days. You asked me to provide direct quotes because you think I am lying for political reasons, I provided at least two direct quotes on this page that specifically address this problem. Human genetic and physical diversity is complicated, simplistic classifications do not represent good models for explaining this diversity. This problem has been noted since the time of Darwin, and was the main reason why Darwin rejected the concept of human classification into a few discrete "races". In 1864
Alfred Russell Wallace (co author with Darwin) wrote "...there are no races without transitions to others; that every race exhibits within itself variations of colour, of hair, of feature, and of form, to such a degree as to bridge over to a large extent the gap that separates it from other races. It is asserted that no race is homogeneous; that there is a tendency to vary....”
Charles Darwin himself stated "all naturalists have learnt by dearly bought experience, how rash it is to attempt to define species by the aid of inconstant characters....[The characters of races] “graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed.”
[33]
3) The question is not what you personally believe is a "White person" and it is not what you claim most people believe is a "White person", it is not whether you believe that "races" are real. The question is that you do not appear to either understand this subject very well at all and that you do not seem to have any sources to support what you are saying. Indeed you seem to be more interested in 1) Having a general discussion about "race" rather than contributing constructively to the article and 2) Trolling on this talk page looking to have an argument. None of what you have said is supported, most of what you have said displays a certain ignorance in this subject, much of what you have said is personal opinion and not least, a great deal of what you have said appears to be little more than an expression of a personal antipathy towards me. This is the last time I will ask you, please stop making personal comments about my motives and politics.
Alun
08:58, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
The list of literature SIRubenstein posted represents the Neo-Marxist school of thought. There are legions of Marxist scholars who have written about almost every topic imaginable, including white people. See: Frankfurt school and Critical theory
However, it is not appropriate that articles which are not related to Marxism include the Marxist point of view. Historical materialism is today discredited with the exception of Communist countries like China.
Please add the material to whiteness studies if you wish, SI. MoritzB 14:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
The books are written by mainstream scholars in mainstream disciplines at mainstream universities so obviously it is mainstream. It is you who are fringe, so of course you call anything mainstream fringe. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:37, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Boo-hoo! I am scared of different ideas! Please make them go away! Slrubenstein | Talk 16:45, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
So MoritzB's position seems to be that only sources vetted by him should be allowed? Is this a rational interpretation of the NPOV policy? Accusations of political bias by certain people with an apparently racialist agenda are getting out of hand on this talk page. Indeed it seems to be the norm to accuse mainstream academia of being wrong, or fringe, and then attacking the editors who want to cite mainstream academic sources. This really does smack of desperation. commie scum 17:21, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
~Boo-hooh! Stop bringing in views I do not like! NPOV is supposed to be about prohibiting any view that frightens me! I am scared by those big professors at Berkeley and UCLA and Yale and McGill! They think they know so much just because they have PhD.s and have jobs at major universities and spend their time researching topics and get published, those know-it-alls? What about me! Why should I have to go to school and study hard to get some stoopid degree? Make those people go away! i just want to see MY views in print! This is my article, you can't come here with your knowledge and stuff like that! go away! Slrubenstein | Talk 18:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Fourdee's right! how DARE we let scholarship into this article! I've said it before and I ill say it again, those damn scholars think they know so much just because they have been trained to do research and spend their lives doing it! Wikipedia should not be tainted with research. WE know what we think, and what is important is that our views be expressed fully here! Slrubenstein | Talk 18:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Theologists are trained scholars as well - but may recite things that are complete mistruths or lies, depending on one's perspective. Sociology is much like theology, its assumptions on often completely nonfactual and reflect a significant bias. In the case of sociology, its assumptions reflect probably the only idea so bad that I would call it evil - they seek to attack and take from the best, strongest (etc.) people by describing their dominance as something other than natural. Again, the core motivation here is to take what whites have: land, resources, genetic material, women, cultural identity - take or destroy it. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 19:07, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
re are at least
- In what way is this discusion going to help improve the article? Slrubenstein | Talk 20:16, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
This has really gotten out of hand. The mudslinging needs to stop, if you want to come to a compromise. Can you please discuss this issue like the civilized people you are? If not, I would recommend taking this to formal mediation, as informal discussion/mediation is not working very well. Thank you. Neranei (talk) 21:35, 29 August 2007 (UTC) Slrubenstein suggested that I take a poll of the participants to see if anyone has had their mind changed by this discussion, and if so, where? Thanks, Neranei (talk) 23:12, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Since Neranei's last resquest on August 23:
Well, I'm going to put forth an idea. As the majority of you can agree on one thing, and, if I'm not mistaken, MoritzB is in the minority here. As Phral, Karen, and Fourdee are all indef-blocked, I think that as the majority of you agree with one position, you should go from that opinion. Neranei (talk) 22:58, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
The mediator made a suggestion yesterday, I do not see why we don't follow it. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:34, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) I've been watching this for days and I am really surprised at the tolerance shown to soapboxers here. Wikipedia is not a soapbox what your issues with "neo-marxism" or critical theory are MoritzB - this is not the place for them, wikipedia is not a forum. This behaviour is tendentious and could be considered disruptive. You are being advised to stop this and reacquaint your self with the 5 pillars of wikipedia-- Cailil talk 20:58, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Because the article had no pictures I have now added a gallery. I took it from European people. MoritzB 00:08, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I propose two galleries. European people should be in one gallery and non-European "white" people in another gallery. Cf. Black people. We can add people like Zinedine Zidane and Ralph Nader to the second gallery. It is crucial that there are reliable sources which state that they are white. MoritzB 16:35, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
CavalliSforza
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).As I've been reading the discussion on this page, I was thinking that I'd like everyone involved in the mediation case to make an optional statement about the dispute, i.e. what the dispute is, their opinion, and ideas for a compromise. Hopefully this will help everyone begin to come to a solution. Neranei (talk) 23:03, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
This was my original comment on the article and I still stand by it. Aside from census data, this article is mostly about the relationship between certain genotypic and phenotypic features associated with "white people." I have two problems with this. First, it utterly ignores a vast literature in anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies on the social construction of whiteness, how the notion of "white" people has changed historically, and its cultural dimensions. I realize that to write about this someone would have to go through peer-reviewed journals (including interdisciplinary ones like Critical Inquiry, Representations and Public Culture) to find the important articles and look through book reviews to identify the important books (I provide a list of some of the most important such books above) - but hey, that is what you have to do if you want to write an encyclopedia article, right? Until someone does this, the article fails to live up to our NPOV standards by ignoring many important points of view. Second, the sections on genoytpe strike me as original research insofar as they are synthetic i.e. making claims about "White people" in general. All the scientific studies are on specific populations, and different populations will have diferent features and it is not scientific to take results from different populations and average them unless you have a good reason. Here is a good reason based on the article itself: country by country. When the US does a census to identify White people, and the Ecuadorian census identifies White people, they are NOT referring to members of the same race or ethnic group. Censuses reflect states' views of their citizenry, although the degree to which they reflect the interests of bureaucrats, social scientists, or political negotiations with representatives of ethnic groups varies. But often time within many countries (certainly the US and Brazil) the boundaries between ethnic groups and how people self identify may vary from what is recorded by the census ... which is why you really need to look at work by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists - otherwisewhat you have is at best a distortion, or at worst amounts to OR (in the form of synthesis.
Although I have presented my position in terms of compliance with NOR and NPOV, Fourdee and others have challenged me arguing not only that I am pushing a POV but that it is a fringe POV. Thee is no way to make sense of this dispute without my trying to understand Fourdee's position. Fourdee writes, "I have repeatedly said that the material that slrubenstein and others are promoting can be included in the article however it should not overwhelm a topic with criticisms rather than a discussion of the actual topic and that I will be watching for anything that is willfully misleading, improprerly paraphrased, and arrangements of material that give undue weight to tiny minority views." It is true that Fourdee has said this, and I believe that his formulation here may provide one possible starting point for mediation. I am sure that all agree in principal that we want to avoid "anything that is willfully misleading, improprerly paraphrased, and arrangements of material that give undue weight to tiny minority views" and another way to frame the dispute is that people disagree over what material fits this description. My statement above asserts that much of the material in the article, although sourced, was misleading. Perhaps when first added it was not "willfully" misleading, but a number of editors (notably Alun/Wobble) besides myself have since explained how and why it is misleading. Nevertheless, this remains a point of contention that may require/benefit from mediation. Another point for mediation involves Fourdee's sugestion that the views I wish included are "criticisms" of the topic; my position is that they express alternate views. At stake is where the material would go in the article: in a special "criticism" section at the end, or in the beginning as one of several major views. A linked issue is Fourdee's characterizing these views as fringe or minority. I contend that they represent major views within the academy. It is true that many people are ignorant of or reject scholarly research, but I do not believe that this renders scholarly research "fringe" or "minority." I believe that "fringe" or "minorty" can have meaning in an encyclopedia only in relation to a particular community or constituency (mass media, the scientific community, and so on) and are not meaningful in absolute terms. I believe Fourdee and others disagree - so this too would be an important area requiing mediation.
There is in fact a huge body of academic literature on who Whites are and what it means to be White. I list several such books above. Some have suggested that discussion of this literature belongs in Whiteness studies. But that article provides a general context for the academic trend - it does not provide a detailed account of thier findings. I think there is a place for a Wikipedia article on Whiteness, as long as it complies with NPOV and NOR; I believe the starting point for such an article would be to present the findings of this massive body of scholarly research on whites. I would further propose that such an article should absorb the article on Caucasian race (which needs to be updated to take into account current evolutionary science/physical anthropological research on race as a biological concept), but could be separate from an article on European peoples, which would be about ethnic groups in Europe. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Problems:
1) Afrocentricism by User:Muntuwandi :
2) Genetics and other population section is a POV fork. Either delete or add more arguments like this: [3].
3) Relations with blacks section is irrelevant. Again, it is afrocentricism by Muntuwandi. One drop rule may be mentioned with couple of words but a whole section is irrelevant.
4) This pic [4] should go because, for every 4 people whose skin color is similar like that, there may be 4000 with clear skin tone differences. Europeans are the lightest ethnic group (Spectrophotometry confirms that). That's why they are called white. And the pic is POV pushing. There seems to be no objective comparison, ie: suntanned Kerry vs other people in bright lightening. Also look at here: [5]. Thandie Newton's skin color is clearly non-white compared to Matt Dillon...
5) If there will be a gallery and Mid Easterners will be included, they should be in a seperate gallery because their whiteness seems to be a minority opinion, given the quotes in the article.
There have been some fairly polarised views as to what this article should be, never mind what it should contain. This has since developed into further evidence that there is disagreement as to whether this article should even exist. Should the article be based on the use of the term (broadly), on strictly ethnic interpretations, on particular ethnic interpretations, and so on.
My opinion is largely that there should be a compromise; I don't have a firm opinion beyond that the article should exist, should be more than disambiguation, and should cover the full range of (verifiable/notable) uses and meanings.
I would suggest that the page become a sort of enhanced disambiguation. Sections and subsections to cover the ways in which the term is used and what it is used to mean, with pretty brief coverage, and "main article" links to articles with fuller coverage where possible. Because of the controversy over images, I would suggest that no images be used in the article lead or otherwise prominently. Instead, images directly applicable to a section/subsection should be included there only, and based on their appropriateness to that section rather than based on any idea of what should be in the article overall. For example, if there is a section on "racial/ethnic usage", with subsections on specific interpretations within that usage, the section would potentially include an image indicating a range of ethnicities to put the concept in context. General examples, however, of who is/isn't white should not be included, largely because they would have to be variations of such for each section/subsection, as there is no overall consensus on or off wikipedia as to what constitutes a "white person".
I think that covers it. SamBC( talk) 00:13, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
My main concern is that the first photographs in this article be of the most widely understood concept conveyed by "white people" and that any photographs of "why other people aren't considered white" be located lower in the article and be tastefully selected, and should not overwhelm the article. How can there be more pictures of "people who aren't white" than "people who are white"? How can they appear first in the article? I also strongly object to any user-generated collages unless they are created by consensus.
Integration with or absorption of the caucasian race article doesn't make sense because "white" is used as exclusive of many caucasians in my understanding of the most common meaning. Perhaps some matters can be cross-referenced between the articles as appropriate.
As to alternate views I have zero objection to a fair treatment of all points of view on this. I do think that if we are going to include material from left-wing political agendas (such as Muntuwandi cites at times), it should be equally balanced with any opposing points of view. For example if someone is going to be introduced as a citation who is arguing white americans should be more inclusive of mulattos, equivalent counter arguments should be introduced, since the argument itself is not factual but is an appeal to belief or emotion.
-- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 05:40, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Muntuwandi 06:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I'll keep it brief as people have complained about overly long answers (a comment I find quite rude to be honest).
This is not an encyclopedic article. This is an attempt to write an article because "black people" exists as an article. There is no material in this article that isn't covered better elsewhere. Frankly this is a very subjective article with no focus and no point. This article has no place whatsoever in Wikipedia. I have never read a bigger collection of subjective POV tripe in my life. As one proceeds through the article it becomes clearer and clearer that the editors are simply grasping at straws to pad out an undeserving entry.
I have no idea why on Earth this survived a AfD as one read through it is enough to show that it is an irrelevance and an embarressment to the project. The article fails to state what "White People" are objectively, it strays into other subjects frequently and it is a magnet to racists and white supremisists (who no doubt have articles already).
What is a white person? Who cares? Everything that is relvant to this article is already contained in other article.
Speedily delete this embarressment and replace with a disambig page please. AlanD 08:29, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
On the whole I tend to agree with AlanD's position. There is nothing in this article that cannot be presented in a more complete and contextually more appropriate way in many other articles. SLR may well have a better idea of what this article should look like, but I think he has suggested on this talk page that any appropriate information for this article could be included in the article Whiteness studies. On the whole this dispute is really about which group of people the term White people applies to. I'd frame it in the context of an absolutist versus a generalist approach. The absolutists take the position that White people are only those people with an European ancestry who also "look European" (though in the USA this does not preclude people with a significant or even majority of non European ancestry [8] [9]). There is a tendency among the people supporting the absolutist position to state that although other points of view should be included, these should be presented as minority points of view, because the concept that White is synonymous with "looking European" is the most widely held view. On the other hand there seems to be little evidence that this view is held globally. In Brazil "'White' was (and continues to be) more an indicator of existence of a series of moral and cultural attributes than skin color" [10] [11] People who hold a more generalist view, as I do, tend not to distinguish between any "majority" or "minority" opinion, but think that we should treat all conceptions of White as equal and socially constructed. Personally I am of the opinion that the absolutist position is derived from systemic bias on the part of these good faith editors, after all we are all conditioned to think that our own world view is the norm. I support a situation where this article tries to disambiguate different meanings of the term White people and redirect users to articles where they can actually get detailed encyclopaedic information about what they are interested in. Cheers. Alun 10:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
When I stumbled upon it, this article struck me as a cross between Caucasian race and Europeans, with the strong implied suggestion that one wanted to equate Caucasian race==Europeans. While Europeans are possibly the one major population group who are likely to be included in all possible definitions of "white", this doesn't sum many of the more interesting aspects of "whiteness": its much more restrictive membership than all other major racial groupings (see the One-drop rule, for example), the debate aout which ethnic groups are to be considered "truly white", and so on. This article, by its very subject is bound to be controversial and to be a magnet for many extreme positions. Also, in all fairness much of its content can be merged into other articles (Caucasian Race, Europeans, Whitesness Studies), and would probably look more at home there. As I said earlier, this article looks like a cross between subjects, and by this very quality represents a tremendous potential for OR. Given all these factors, and the faqct that many positions around this mediation table are diametrally opposed to each other, I honestly think the best and simplest way to deal with this article and resolve the many issues its nature raises is to merge all relevant content to other, less controversial articles (see above for three prime candidates) and to turn this into some sort of disambiguation page, which would refer the reader to the appropriate subject they're looking for, whether the racial, ethnic or sociological aspects of the term. I wouldn't oppose and would even welcome the inclusion of brief, summary-style paragraphs to complement each redirection target and to give the reader finding this page a something akin to a preview of what each redirection target represents. I would also welcome some sort of general introduction which would state that the "white" epithet has many different meanings, both historically, geographically, socially and politically.-- Ramdrake 11:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
The white people article should only have definitions of white people. Since these definitions of white people do not agree with each other, it would violate the ideal neutral point of view of the article to have information about physical appearence, population numbers, genetics and galleries of people. These sections would have to take a point of view about the definition of white people, violating the neutral point of view policy. I think the whole dispute is due to these sections, since the editors do not agree on the definition of white people.---- Dark Tea © 20:49, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Section initially created to hold comments moved from section above to discourage dialogue in that section — SamBC( talk) 00:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Alan, just so you know: the one drop rule is found generally in New World societies which were based on slavery, in which slaves were mostly from Africa and masters mostly from Europe. It works in only one direction, because of its economic function (if a White master raped a slave, her child would be a slave not free. Since "black" and "white" largely functioned as code words for slave and master, the slave-child would be considered completely slave and thus completely black.) For very different reasons, the opposite occured in the Dominican republic where people with one drop of white blood were considered entirely white, but that is the only exception I know of in the New World. So the reason people in the UK are unfamiliar with the term is that the vast majority of slaves owned by British subjects were in the New World, not in the UK. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I highly recommend to you Marvin Harris's Patterns of Race in the Americas. It is dated and some things will irritate you (he uses caucasoid and negroid following the convention of the time and it irritates me it is so dated) but aside from being short, well-written, and available in cheap paperback, given your own interestes I think you will find it very fascinating and edifying. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:08, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
The Mariah Carey picture is suitable for the article, I think, but who is the very dark woman next to her and why is she there? I think her pic should be removed.
Also, Carey's name is misspelled in the picture caption as Maria. Victor Chmara 12:15, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I know I suggested waiting until everyone posted, but it looks like most people have, and most positions are represented.
Would people agree that there is a) direct support and b) distinct compromise arguments for largely merging content and creating the sort of 'enhanced disambiguation' that has been suggested? That is to say sections for each other article/group of articles and reasonably brief coverage of that subject to help people figure out what they're looking for and provide a general overview. This would seem to serve as a compromise between the most extreme views, as well as meeting some of the suggested compromises already suggested. SamBC( talk) 15:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Alun, you have said this before, several times, and Fourdee keeps and will continue to keep ignoring you. I know people will yell at me for not being constructive in seeking a mutually acceptable compromise - but the fact is, and yes it is a fact, Fourdee has (1) admitted to being a racist and (2) admitted that he intends to use this article to push his POV. Of course he is going to consistently ignore or misrepresent the science. Frankly, I doubt we will have a successful mediation unless we address these uncomfortable facts. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:29, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
1) What false authority? My sources are from peer reviewed journals. Indeed Nature Genetics had an
Impact factor of 26.494 in 2003 "first out of 120 journals in the field of genetics and heredity."
[18] This is the premiere publication for genetics and most post docs and research students would kill to get a paper published there. No one publishes in Nature Genetics without having produced top quality research. The claim of false authority follows your usual pattern of dismissing any academic work that does not support your personal opinion. While you can believe what you like, you cannot include your beliefs in Wikipedia article without providing citations from reliable sources.
2) What deception? I have been open about my sources and information. You have given personal opinion and speculation. Please remain civil and don't accuse other editors of deception. You have provided no evidence for your position, therefore it remains
unverified from any
reliable source.
3) What diatribes? You started to introduce Y chromosome and a wider genetic analysis into the debate, I am a geneticist, I am merely contributing to the discussion with my expertise. It is not a diatribe to point out that the comments you have made are unsupported by any research into the field. This work does not support the position you have outlined here, it is really only your own uninformed personal opinion. You are entitled to believe what you like, you are not entitled to claim on a Wikipedia article that research supports your personal beliefs when it demonstrably does not.
Alun
06:02, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Sam, as you are the one proposing this version, would you please write it out as you would like it? (I am taking a leaf out of the Mediation Committee's book here) Everyone else involved, please vote on your support (as is done in an RfA). If you have comments, please place them in the comments section. Thanks, Neranei (talk) 16:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Please create this on a subpage Talk:White_people/SamBC_version
Hard to have a vote on this when the people on one side have been canvassing heavily to bring in supporters. I certainly am not agreeing to abide by any votes in this circumstance but let's see what the compromise version ends up looking like. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 17:43, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I edited boldly and created the sandbox here [19].-- Ramdrake 18:24, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I've put in a very vague start of a structure at White people/Compromise version - the previous location got userfied and redirect deleted, so I've put a note in at the top. Please see above as to why it makes sense for the compromise to be on a main page and a seperate talk page to discuss. SamBC( talk) 18:54, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
For the record, and partly due to page moves, there are now three versions of the compromise page: [20], [21] and [22]. Can editors agree which version they will continue and which two other versions we can ask to be deleted? Thanks!-- Ramdrake 22:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I have put in a request for semi protection I know it is unusual for a talk page but it may give some respite from an IP block evading sock puppet. Muntuwandi 12:38, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree 100% with Theresa knott. Muntuwandi, I know it is hard ... but trolls really only have as much influence in this wikiworld as we care to give them. The winds blow, the tides ebb and flow, and everytime, people are left with trash to pick up and throw away. Don't give it a second thought. it is just trash to be thrown away. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:50, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
The proposed classification of living whites and near-whites, which is shown on the top of the chart, may be listed in more detailed form as follows:
A. LARGE-HEADED PALAEOLITHIC SURVIVORS
(1) Brünn: (Crô-Magnon, to some extent) found in solution with Borreby, Nordic, and other elements, mostly in Scandinavia and the British Isles, also in North Africa and Canary Islands. May appear in comparatively pure form among individuals although nowhere as a total population.
(2) Borreby: Large-headed brachycephals of Ofnet-Afalou type, the unreduced brachycephalic strain in Crô-Magnon; found in solution in peripheral regions of northwestern Europe, and as a major population element in most of northern and central Germany, and in Belgium. Like the Brünn race, with which it is often associated, it occurs also in North Africa and the Canary Islands.
B. PURE AND MIXED PALAEOLITHIC AND MESOLITHIC SURVIVORS OF MODERATE HEAD SIZE56
(3) Alpine: A reduced and somewhat foetalized survivor of the Upper Palaeolithic population in Late Pleistocene France, highly brachycephalized; seems to represent in a large measure the bearer of the brachycephalic factor in Crô-Magnon. Close approximations to this type appear also in the Balkans and in the highlands of western and central Asia, suggesting that its ancestral prototype was widespread in Late Pleistocene times. In modern races it sometimes appears in a relatively pure form, sometimes as an element in mixed brachycephalic populations of multiple origin. It may have served in both Pleistocene and modern times as a bearer of the tendency toward brachycephalization into various population.
(4) Ladogan: I propose to give this name to the descendants of the mesocephalic and brachycephalic forest-dwelling population of northern Europe east of the Baltic in Kammkeramik times. This type is a blend of a partly mongoloid brachycephalic element with a mesocephalic form of general Upper Palaeolithic aspect; these elements are seen in crania from Lake Ladoga and Salis Roje. (See Chapter IV, section 13, pp. 125-126.) Corded and/or Danubian elements are inextricably blended here, although the mongoloid and Upper Palaeolithic elements seem at present more important. In its present form this composite type shows two numerous variants:
(a) Neo-Danubian: Strongly mixed with the old Danubian, and to a lesser extent other elements, to form the common peasant type of eastern Europe, with many local variants.
(b) East Baltic: Strongly mixed with Corded, Iron Age Nordic, and western Palaeolithic survivors to form the predominant population of much of Finland and the Baltic States.
(5) Lappish: A stunted, highly brachycephalized, largely brunet relative of the Ladogan, originally living to the east of the Ladogan type area, in the Urals and western Siberia. Has probably assimilated some evolved mongoloid, but owes its partly mongoloid appearance more to the retention of an early intermediate evolutionary condition. In modern times much mixed with Ladogan and Nordic.
C. PURE AND MIXED UNBRACHYCEPHALIZED MEDITERRANEAN DERIVATIVES
(6) Mediterraneans: Within this general class, which still retains much of its original racial unity, the following sub-classes may at present be distinguished:
(a) Mediterranean Proper: Short-statured, dolicho- and mesocephalic form found in Spain, Portugal, the western Mediterranean islands, and to some extent in North Africa, southern Italy, and other Mediterranean borderlands. Its purest present-day racial nucleus is without doubt Arabia. Most of the Cappadocian, isolated in the skeletal material, seems to have been absorbed into the western Mediterranean variety after its early Metal Age migration, while that which remained in Asia Minor became assimilated into the Dinaric and Armenoid. It still appears, however, among individuals in its original form, and is particularly common among Oriental Jews.
(b) Atlanto-Mediterranean: The tall, straight-nosed Mediterranean, not mesocephalic, as Deniker erroneously stated, but strongly dolichocephalic. Today this race forms the principal element in the population of North Africa, and is strong in Iraq, Palestine, parts of Arabia, and the eastern Balkans; in solution with varying degrees of negroid it is also the principal race in the whole of East Africa. In Europe it is a minority element in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and the British Isles.
(c) Irano-Afghan: The long-faced, high-headed, hook-nosed type, usually of tall stature, which forms the principal element in the population of Iran, Afghanistan, and the Turkoman country, and which is also present in Palestine, parts of Arabia, and North Africa. It is probably related to the old Corded type of the Neolithic and Bronze Age.
(7) Nordics: The basic Nordic is the Corded-Danubian blend of the Aunjetitz and of the Early Iron Age in central Europe. This type includes some Bell Beaker Dinaric absorbed in early Metal Age times. Although Danubian and Corded types may appear as individuals, they may nowhere be isolated as populations. The most important living Nordic varieties are:
(a) Keltic Iron Age Type: The Keltic sub-type, mesocephalic and low-vaulted, with a prominent nose. Commonest in the British Isles where in places it forms the principal element in the population. Also a major element in Flanders and the Frankish country in southwestern Germany.
(b) Anglo-Saxon Type: The old Germanic Reihengräber type, a heavy-boned, rather high-headed Nordic variety, most prevalent in northern Germany and England.
(c) Trondelagen Type: A hybrid type of Nordic with Corded and Brünn elements, frequent in the central coastal provinces of Norway, north of the Dovre Mountains; the principal form in Iceland, and among the Frisians, and common in the British Isles. The Anglo-Saxon type lies between it and the true Nordic.
(d) Osterdal Type: The original Hallstatt Nordic, smaller-headed and finer boned than (b) or (c); occurs in many populations as individuals, typical only in Sweden and in the eastern valleys of Norway.
D. BRACHYCEPHALIZED MEDITERRANEAN DERIVATIVES, PROBABLY MIXED
(8) Dinarics: A tall, brachycephalic type of intermediate pigmentation, usually planoccipital, and showing the facial and nasal prominence of Near Eastern peoples. The basic population of the whole Dinaric-Alpine highlands from Switzerland to Epirus, also in the Carpathians and Caucasus, as well as Syria and Asia Minor. Apparently a brachycephalized blend in which Atlanto-Mediterranean and Cappadocian strains are important, with Alpine acting as the brachycephalizing agent in mixture. Borreby and Corded elements, also Nordic, appear to be involved in some regions.
(9) Armenoids: A similar brachycephalic composite type, with the same head form as the Dinaric, but a larger face and nose. The pigmentation is almost entirely brunet, the pilous development of beard and body abundant, the nose high rooted, convex, and the tip depressed, especially in advanced age. The difference between the Armenoid and the Dinaric is that here it is the Irano-Afghan race which furnishes the Mediterranean element, brachycephalized by Alpine mixture.
(10) Noric: A blond, planoccipital brachycephal frequently encountered in South Germany and elsewhere in central Europe. This is apparently an Iron Age Nordic brachycephalized by Dinaric mixture and seems in most respects to take the form of a blond Dinaric variant. Both Deniker and Czekanowski have recognized this type, and it is a standard race, under various names, in most Russian studies. The name Noric was gived it by Lebzelter. A brachycephalized Neo-Danubian, common in Jugoslavia, is a parallel or variant form.
Coon: The Races of Europe, (Chapter VIII, section 6)
This is the best definition physical anthropologists can give of white people and should be included to the article. The current definitions are completely inadequate and reeks of OR/bad science. MoritzB 15:12, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Moritz, all scientists post Mendel and the modern synthesis understand that phenotyipic adaptations to an environment that are common to a population over time are linked to genetics. Alun, Yes, Boas's work has stood the test of time and was just the tip of the iceberg of research that shows how even the most clearly heritable (although Boas did not use the word - this was before the rediscovery of Mendel's work and the development of the modern synthesis and population genetics) of human traits are environmentally plastic, which quickly led to the abandonment of "race" as a meaningful concept by evolutionary scientists and population geneticists as well as anthropologists more generally. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:31, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
All these voluminous claims that populations are not genetically distinct in some way, that genetics isn't the primary component of appearance, and such, are conjecture and not actually supported by any particular science. They are just conclusions in support of a political agenda. These are meaningless assertions based either on trivial facts or complete conjecture. Also part of the tactic here is to introduce excessive amounts of this material to make it look scientific. All this hinges on the fact that there are not discrete boundaries to ethnic groups. However we all know that different ethnic groups have different appearances and that this is inherited genetically. The fact that there may be some "cline" between groups is just a diversion from the fact the people we call white have different alleles than the people we don't call white. The details of the inheritance of these traits are sometimes mendelian and sometimes polygenic but almost everything that makes a person what he is comes from his parents. This is just a simple fact. All this other nonsense is lies piled up to hide that fact, or make it sound like the reasonable position is that race doesn't matter. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 17:20, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
@MoritzB: "The genes responsible for physical appearance are only a small part of the human genome. Thus, a German person who resembles Italians physically is still likely otherwise genetically typically German." This comment seems to assume non random assortment. Or are you arguing that these people look like Italians due to environmental selection, even though they are genetically more similar to German people? What is the difference between German people and Italian people? Indeed what has political geography got to do with it? I can see no reason why a modern political boundary would act as a barrier to gene flow in pre modern times. Besides what is the evidence that the so called differences between these people are the result of environmental selection? If one wants to posit that a particular phenotype is produced by selection rather than by random variation, then one needs to have a robust model. For example it is true that blue eye colour is common in the north of Europe, but no one knows why. We can theorise that this is due to environmental selection, but it's not good enough to claim that just because blue eyes are common in the north of Europe this must be due to environmental selection. I've noticed in the popular press that it is common to assume that when variation is noted they always attribute it to "evolution" (itself plain daft, evolution is not the same as natural selection). But variation exists due to all sorts of things, founder effects, genetic drift etc. Not all differences are due to selection. Besides if you look at my map based on Bauchet's European data it is apparent that northern Italians fall into the same genetic "cluster" as Germans ( Image:Bauchet European clusters.png), but that southern Italians do not. So actually northern Italians may be more like Germans that they are to southern Italians. Most geneticists seem to think this is due to demic diffusion of middle eastern farmers into Europe during the European neolithic and not due to selection. If I've missed your point then I appologise. I'm not looking for a confrontation, just an understanding of this point of view. All the best. Alun 19:45, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Wow. I've been away less than 24 hours and whole chapters of conversation have been written already. I won't comment much (don't have the time right now), but I can't help but notice that Fourdee's and MoritzB's allegations are strangely unsupported by evidence (except for some controversial science from 75 years ago which is now totally discredited). Furthermore, I'd just like to ask, for the record: this whole discussion about alleged European races strikes me as deviating from topic, namely the content of the article on "White people". Taking outdated, fringe viewpoints and personal POVs unsupported by the current body of science strikes me as unproductive. Fringe views (such as Coon's) are just that, and deserve little if any mention in the article (except for historical reasons) as these have long since been discredited. So, my question, I guess, with all due respect to all editors, is: why beat a dead horse? I think there was the beginning of a consensus around some sort of summary/disambi format for this page, and i think the most productive use of time for the editors might be to bring that back into focus rather than foray into loon --err, "Coon"-- territory. -- Ramdrake 23:15, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
MoritzB 23:57, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I think it is time to put this conversation to rest. Coon is at best at the outermost fringe of anthropology and virtully no one refers to him anymore for reasons I explained at the beginning of this discussion; Aln has already gone far beyond what should be necessary to explain why his claims do not have any meaning in light of current research in population or molecular genetics. Let's drop it and move on.
Slrubenstein |
Talk
21:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
I really think it is not as complex as all this. I'm just tossing this out there because it is the understanding I am working with right now: We see that R1a and b are the dominant male lineages in the heart of europe, and it doesn't really make sense that there was so much extinction of other male lines that this does not represent a real population group. We see a group labeled I which occurs all around the fringes of R1a and R1b, and (in modern populations at least) is mixed with them. While I and R1 don't have the same origins, they have been next to each other for some time and presumably interbreeding. They are fundamentally similar in basic facial features, although some metrics like cephalic index vary, even within subpopulations that should probably be classified together genetically. The facial features, body shape, etc. result from the exchange between R1a, R1b and I, a sort of market of genetic material which has made the white race. Some people of course have different lineages but still share this genetic material due to proximity, but it's clear what the core population responsible is. Does this mean no other lineages contributed to the pool of european alleles? Of course not - these are just the core groups we can make some generalizations about. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 09:52, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
other sources that provide good biological reasons for the non existence of race that has got nothing to do with "political" considerations.
It's got nothing to do with politics and everything to do with biolgy. Alun 18:15, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
The model of European genetic ancestry has recently shifted away from the Neolithic diffusion model towards an emphasis on autochthonous Paleolithic origins. However, this new paradigm utilizes genetic reconstructions based primarily on contemporary populations and, furthermore, is often promoted without regard to the findings of ancient DNA studies. These ancient DNA studies indicate that contemporary European ancestry is not a living fossil of the Paleolithic maternal deme; rather, demographic events during the Neolithic and post-Neolithic periods appear to have had substantial impact on the European genetic record. In addition, evolutionary processes, including genetic drift, adaptive selection and disease susceptibility, may have altered the patterns of maternal lineage frequency and distribution in existing populations. As a result, the genetic history of Europe has undergone significant transformation over time, resulting in genetic discontinuity between modern-day Europeans and their ancient maternal forbearers. [25]
fourdee you keep making claims without providing evidence to support these claims. This is not a chat room, what you seem to stating is your own opinion. You cannot include your own opinion in the article. If you can provide evidence from reliable sources that Y chromosomes lineages have not gone extinct then please do, but just saying "it doesn't make sense" is not an informed argument, you need to verify this by producing a reliable source that claims it doesn't make sense. Researcher in the field of mtDNA and Y chromosome research tell us that it does indeed make sense, can you find evidence that some of these researchers dispute this? You have also resorted to making personal comments about me when I have provided evidence that you are misunderstanding the science. I tend to think that when people need to resort to ad hominem comments then they have lost the argument. I suggest, with as much good faith as I can muster, that making the same claims over and over again does not make them any more legitimate than they were the first time you made them, unless you go and find some evidence to support your claims. I'm not asking much here, and I have repeatedly asked you to do this. All the best. Alun 11:29, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Muntuwandi 12:17, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Alun is still lecturing on things that are common knowledge and that nobody has misstated. How many times do I need to say that obviously traits are not inherited directly on the Y chromosome? Or that an individual's haplogroups don't directly indicate his features? Alun is adept at misconstruing and misrepresenting very fundamental facts about genetics and trying to work them into implying there is not a genetic difference between the people we call white and the people we don't (or people we call English and people we call Welsh), which is so obviously absurd I doubt even he believes it. It's obvious, given user boxes and "personal" talk page comments, that Alun is deeply disturbed by not only racial awareness and the notion of race, but ethnic awareness and any concepts of genetic difference. Much of the material that is pivotal to his position, if you look closely, is actually conjecture (what is possible or could've happened, what admixture is mathematically feasible in the most ideal scenario, etc.) but ignores the most basically obvious facts which are that people in Europe who are natives of the regions with the markedly dominant haplogroup distributions (R1b celt, R1a slav, I nordic) also have markedly unique appearance. Of course those groups don't form a strict boundary of whiteness as their traits have spread to and come from surrounding populations, and they are not absolutely pure groups by any measure. But we all know what they look like and that what a person looks like is mainly due to their ethnic group.
It's kind of difficult to assume any degree of honesty, expertise or neutrality on the part of Alun given his obvious personal opinions he has stated many times, and emotional investment in the topic, since the raw conjecture that he states is "science" so closely matches these heart-felt personal beliefs and has little or nothing to do with the scientific-looking material he cites so prolificly. If forced into a corner he and others will admit that obviously there are genetic differences between people. The typical strategy here of overloading an article with more material questioning the topic than about the topic is quite effective. However the material is largely nonsense, or hinges on straw men like whether a group is absolutely distinct or would be classified as a monophyletic clade or subspecies in biology. These are not the important categorizations for humans - we look at people much more specifically, and primarily at traits related to appearance (alleles, not "phenotypes" for the most part, another red herring on their part). -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 18:17, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
[27] , Race_and_genetics#Recent_studies Muntuwandi 06:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Alun you commie hypocrite, you wrote, "Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA genealogies are especially interesting because they demonstrate the lack of concordance of lineages with morphology" which proves what I have been saying all along. The quote itself SAYS "genealogies!" Don't you even understand English? A "genealogy" is "ge·ne·al·o·gy (jē′nē-ŏlə-jē, -ăl-, jĕn′ē-) n. pl. ge·ne·al·o·gies 1. A record or table of the descent of a person, family, or group from an ancestor or ancestors; a family tree. 2. Direct descent from an ancestor; lineage or pedigree. 3. The study or investigation of ancestry and family histories. [4] so it is VERY clear that they are talking about groups of people related by decent from a common ancester and guess what, that is RACE. Your own quote says that these DNA geneologies are interesting, can't you even read, yet you keep saying that they mean nothing at all which just shows how ignorant you are. No wonder you are so ignorant you spend all your time with your anarchist communist friends reading Three steps forward two steps back probably I am sure. And can't you read what you wrote, there is a lack of concordance between geneaology and morphology which is what MoritzB has been saying all along which proves that Carleton Coon is still the most important physical anthropologist writing about White races. You know you just keep spinning your liberal propaganda when it is obviously you do not know anything about genetics or even science. I on the other hand spend hours citing at a cafe with my other really smart buddies smoking and talking about people who were real experts on race (and some of you out there know exactly who I mean) so don't tell me I don't know what I am talking about when I talk about this stuff all the time. Next time you want to argue a point maybe you should read a dictionary first. Pfft! Slrubenstein | Talk 09:41, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Hints! Do I have to spell everything out? You are being just like my mother! How DARE you accuse me of not being me! You know, I bet you are all sockpuppets. In fact, I bet aside from a handful of sane people everyone at Wikipedia is a sockpuppet. In fact, you can't even be sockpuppets ... Everybody knows that races are real, and that White people are White people, that is just common sense. And since everyone knows, and you are everyone, you know it too. So you can't even be disagreeing with me! All this moronic wasted talk is just your disagreeing with yourself, because you (not you, the other you) know I am right! So stop interfering with this article. The introduction should simply begin with a definition of "white" and then a definition of "people." Stop wasting tme with fringe views. Pfft! Do i have to repeat myself, are you that incapable of understanding me? Pfft - pfft!!! Slrubenstein | Talk 12:59, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Hey guys! Watcha all been up to? Hmmmm ... maybe it is time to get back to work? Slrubenstein | Talk 13:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
"We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population. Implications of this genetic structure for case-control association studies are discussed." Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies Hua Tang,1 Tom Quertermous,2 Beatriz Rodriguez,4 Sharon L. R. Kardia,5 Xiaofeng Zhu,6 Andrew Brown,7 James S. Pankow,8 Michael A. Province,9 Steven C. Hunt,10 Eric Boerwinkle,11 Nicholas J. Schork,12 and Neil J. Risch3,13 http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1196372 —Preceding unsigned comment added by MoritzB ( talk • contribs) 06:53, August 27, 2007 (UTC)
Isolation by distance can be portrayed in more realistic, continuous map-based fashion than tree-diagrams provide, which helps clarify why classification is so difficult (Figure 2) (Figure 3). The Big Few races can seem real in samples of size N (Norway, Nigeria, Nippon, Navajo). That is, if one examines only the geographic extremes, differences appear large because they can be seen in comparisons between graphic and tree-like presentations of the same data in Figure 3A,B. In that sense it is sometimes said that there are only four or five major patterns of variation. But if we look at geographically closer or intermediate populations, differences diminish roughly proportionately (Figure 3C) (176). Even our view of the Big Few might change were it not for our curious convenience of overlooking places such as India. Who are those pesky billion? One race? A mix of the other already-sampled races? A multiplicity of races, as has often been suggested? [28]
You can believe what you like, but your argument seems generally to be based on your own opinion. I can provide several sources that all support what Ossorio and Duster say and what Kittles and Weiss say, most of the articles in the Nature Genetics supplement I link to above also say the same thing. Even if you are correct about most groups belonging to clusters this does not either support the existence of only 5 or 6 clusters (as opposed to say 63 in the case of the time of Darwin) and neither does it address the problem of a lack of discrete boundaries between these clusters. So essentially it is an arbitrary distinction. Alun 17:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)Assumptions about natural, essential boundaries among races are contradicted by the findings that allele frequency comparisons among human populations rarely show discontinuities that map onto racial boundaries (Marks, 2002; Molnar, 1998). Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans’ physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 30s and 50s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races (Marks, 2002). Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people. [29]
That is incorrect, the three race model basically fails to properly account for at least 20% of the worlds population. In other words many people do not have a race. The indian subcontinent with over 1.3 billion people is an intermeadiate population between Europe, south east asia, east asia and oceania. What race are people in the Indian subcontinent?.
Muntuwandi
15:02, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
This is getting ridiculous. As Alun put it, "It would be absurd to claim there are no genetic differences between say Africans and Europeans. The problem is that there are no discrete boundaries" - and the quote from Kittles and Weiss makes the point quite clear. MoritzB does not understand or care about the science, and Muntuwandi, while consistently correct, is nevertheless just basically repeating the same point over and over. Let's move on. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:06, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
An editor has inserted false material / original research to the article and attributes his opinions to Cavalli-Sforza who certainly does not even talk about "race mixing". The version endorsed by Muntuwandi is POV-pushing nonsense and completely misrepresents Cavalli-Sforza's position taking quotes out of context.
I have rewritten the section but unfortunately Muntuwandi is so proud of his own edits that he keeps making reverts.
I summarized Cavalli-Sforza's findings after reading the paper:
"According to the study all non-African populations are more closely related to each other than to Africans. Europeans are most closely related to East Asians and least related to Africans. As the genetic distance from Africa to Europe (16.6) is shorter than the genetic distance from Africa to East Asia (20.6) Cavalli-Sforza proposes that both Asian and African populations contributed to the settlement of Europe which began 40 000 years ago. The overall contributions from Asia and Africa were estimated to be around two-thirds and one-third, respectively. Europe has a genetic variation in general about three times less than that of other continents. [5] [6]" MoritzB 06:03, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
One reasonable hypothesis is that the genetic distance between Asia and Africa is shorter than that between Africa and the other continents in Table 1 because both Africans and Asians contributed to the settlement of Europe, which began about 40,000 years ago. It seems very reasonable to assume that both continents nearest to Europe contributed to its settlement, even if perhaps at different times and maybe repeatedly. It is reassuring that the analysis of other markers also consistently gives the same results in this case. Moreover, a specific evolutionary model tested, i.e., that Europe is formed by contributions from Asia and Africa, fits the distance matrix perfectly (6). In this simplified model, the migrations postulated to have populated Europe are estimated to have occurred at an early date (30,000 years ago), but it is impossible to distinguish, on the basis of these data, this model from that of several migrations at different times. The overall contributions from Asia and Africa were estimated to be around two-thirds and one-third, respectively. Simulations have shown (7) that this hypothesis explains quite well the discrepancy between trees obtained by maximum likelihood and neighbor joining.
Thus, the gene flow happened before modern races hadn't even evolved.
Muntuwandi's version filled with POV and misrepresentation:
"According to the study all non African populations are more closely related to each other than to Africans. This is consistent with the view that all non-Africans are descended from a single population that lived in Africa. What is interesting is the two most genetically divergent groups are those that are defined as Black, that is Africans and Oceanians with a genetic distance of 24.7. (So the similarities between blacks are interesting in the article about white people)
Cavalli contends that if evolution of the races had proceeded independently without race mixing then the minimum genetic distance to Africa should at least be 24.7 as with Australia. (Cavalli does not talk about the evolution of races or race mixing)
The most striking discovery is that the shortest genetic distance from Africa is to Europe at 16.6. (Cavalli-Sforza does not call it his most "striking discovery" in the article)
This is counterintuitive since blacks and whites have the most divergent skin colors. (Does Cavalli-Sforza talk about skin color,no. OR and POV)
Cavalli contends that the only reason for this short distance is significant gene exchange between Africa and Europe. (Cavalli really says that Africans were in a role in founding the original population of Europe 30000-40000 years ago)
And the irrelevant "quotes" he inserted aren't even in the article.
Shriver's study was methodologically flawed and Shriver himself has retracted his claims. Shriver now says that only about 10 percent of European-American population has some African ancestry. Shriver was interviewed by Nicholas Wade. See: "For Sale: A DNA Test to Measure Racial Mix" by Nicholas Wade, New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/health/genetics/01RACE.html?ex=1188446400&en=55b928e33c2dfa94&ei=5070 To my knowledge Shriver has no study to confirm even that result, though. MoritzB 12:29, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
This is cavalli's quote: In order to examine the problem of the constancy of evolutionary rates, we can look at the distances between Africa and the other continents: 24.7 with Oceania, 20.6 with Asia, 16.6 with Europe, and 22.6 with America. It is clear that the shortest distance is between Africa and Europe, followed by that between Africa and Asia. If the rate of evolution were truly constant, the four values would be identical (within the limits of statistical error due to small sample size)
The distance from Europe is anomalously low. North Africa is populated with Caucasoid people like Europeans, but we have made sure to eliminate these populations and are restricting ourselves to Sub-Saharan Africa. The simplest explanation is that substantial exchange has taken place between nearby continents. Genes peoples and languages page 52 Muntuwandi 07:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
"One reasonable hypothesis is that the genetic distance between Asia and Africa is shorter than that between Africa and the other continents in Table 1 because both Africans and Asians contributed to the settlement of Europe, which began about 40,000 years ago. It seems very reasonable to assume that both continents nearest to Europe contributed to its settlement, even if perhaps at different times and maybe repeatedly. It is reassuring that the analysis of other markers also consistently gives the same results in this case. Moreover, a specific evolutionary model tested, i.e., that Europe is formed by contributions from Asia and Africa, fits the distance matrix perfectly (6). In this simplified model, the migrations postulated to have populated Europe are estimated to have occurred at an early date (30,000 years ago), but it is impossible to distinguish, on the basis of these data, this model from that of several migrations at different times. The overall contributions from Asia and Africa were estimated to be around two-thirds and one-third, respectively. Simulations have shown (7) that this hypothesis explains quite well the discrepancy between trees obtained by maximum likelihood and neighbor joining." http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/15/7719
The problem is you are just reading the pnas article. That article is an excerpt from the book. The book has the full details. What is well established is that there have been several migrations between Europe and Africa during the paleolithic and the Neolithic. It is not rocket science that europeans are closely related to africans because they are right next door to each other. If you put aside skin color there will be many similarities beneath the skin. You can see that haplogroup E3b originated in Africa but is found at moderate frequencies in various parts of Europe for example.
These facts may seem absurd to you right now but in future studies may just reveal them to be so. I think there is a little misunderstanding regarding admixture. The ancestry informative markers used to determine admixture are based on polymorphisms that are known to be divergent between the populations. for example a gene found in 98% of blacks and only found in 1% of whites can be used to give a rough estimate of admixture of a multiracial population or individual. A gene that is found at 50% among whites and 50% among blacks would not be a good candidate for an admixture estimate. But the problem is that gene could have entered either one population at a time much earlier via admixture and spread quickly. There would be no way of telling that such a gene entered the population through admixture. Consequently the lack of admixture only refers to more recent mixing. In the past admixture could have taken place. An ancestors tale by Richard Dawkins for example states that every one alive 2000 years ago regardless of their race is an ancestor of everyone alive today [32]. With regard to height once again if two populations share a similar characteristic, it could arise by three mechanisms
So it is either that Northern Europeans either converged on height, but seeing that other populations did not converge on height as well and that evolution favors shorter bodies in colder climates, it is highly possible that Northern Europeans gained their height through African Admixture in the past. Muntuwandi 13:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
This push by Alun, ramdrake, muntuwandi and slr is completely absurd. Any genetics section in this article should be primarily focused on alleles and lineages strongly associated with the core groups we call white, not arguments about where the distributions of those lineages and alleles end. Alun is focusing on very minor issues that nobody denies or misunderstands, and is using false conclusions (his and own and by intermediary parties), misphrasings and cherry picking to give the impression that there is no genetic or scientific basis for the differences we observe between populations. We all know that there is a genetic difference between the groups that appear to be different. Whether we would be better served by looking at "ethnic" groups, "racial" groups, haplogroups, or allele clusters is completely outside the topic of this article. "Science" isn't objective either. The decision on what makes a subspecies is something man created, not nature. Fine - humans groups don't look like subspecies. Our terms for these classes of people are "ethnic" or "racial" groups and maybe today these terms should be revised in light of analysis of population history, genetic lineage and dominant lineages, and clusters of alleles important to sexual selection. This is a worthwhile topic but is largely tangental to this article. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 12:56, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
STOP THE PRESSES! Hold Everything! ohmygod! Fourdee, you have a time-travelling mind-reading machine? Can I borrow it, pleeeeaaase??!? I want to know what Hitler was thinking just before he killed himself. (I actually have a pretty good idea but as you know, Wikipedia is all about verifiability!) Slrubenstein | Talk 18:08, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
This is not an article on genetics, so lets stop debating genetics. This is an article on White people, so lets start discussing the literature on White people. Yes, there is a real body of literatur ethat is explicitly about "white people" so there will be no doubt about appropriateness of sources or NOR, these works direcly address the subject of this artilce. Let's see who has read the, or divide up the readings, and discuss how to improve the article:
Perhaps the single most important reader
Both are law professors and it is published by Temple University Press, so it is quite reputable. As an edited volume it contains essays by a plethora of authors and thus represents a wide range if views - helpful for complying with NPOV, and all in one easy source. I think this is generally considered the best collection of diverse essays. But to help you guys out some more, here are some other books directly relevant to this article:
This is only a partial sampling of the amount written by scholars on the concept of "White people" - there is much more than the very length of the list reveals just how inadequate this article is, how much it is leaving out. Now, some of the above books are absolue classics. But for more cutting-edge research, your best bet is journals (it takes less time to write and publish a journal article than to write and publish a book, so rejecnt journal articles are more likely to be "state of the art." Of course, journal articles are also shorter which is a mixed blessing: obviously, they take less time to read, but they are much more focused. Still, good articles review the literature and thus provide handy summaries of the range of views. They can also provide great little case-studies that illustrate specific aspects of the concept "White people."
Any major library will have subscriptions to at least a few of these journals. In hard-copies, one could look at the index at the back of any given volume; if one has J-Stor or another electronic version of the journal once can do a boolean search. It woul dnot take long to search for "Whiteness," "White+Race" and "White+Ethnicity." You will not come up with an overhwlming number of articles, but what you do come up with will represent the best scholarship (these are all top-ranked peer-reviewed journals; the authors of the articles did all the complex hard work, we just need to benefit from their labor). You will also come up with book reviews and if the review is positive, it is probably worth reading the book. In the end, you will know a lot more about White people (which presumably is what you want, if this article interests you) and you will be able to improve this article by ensuring it complies with NPOV and by ensuring that you are not violating NOR. Like I said (I think!) above - good luck! No article in Wikipedia is ever perfect - after all, by its very Wiki nature, all articles are perpetual works in progress. But obviously this article can be much, much better. That's pretty exciting! Slrubenstein | Talk 21:43, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not following your logic. Above you imply that variation in alleles is described or caused only by geography (obviously false). So I accept that there is a component of this and say that doesn't change anything about "race". Then your retort is to attack the plausibility of your own idea that geography explains variation? When do we get to the part where you admit there are factual biological differences between groups of people. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 08:12, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
1) My response was sarcastic, I thought this was obvious. You claim "Races are geographical". Well the USA is a geographical region, therefore by your own statement all Americans belong to the same "race". This is clearly nonsense, so your comment is clearly nonsense.
2) Natural human genetic and physical variation is distributed by geography. This is a fact apparent even to very small children, people from different parts of the world tend to look a little different to each other, they also tend to be somewhat genetically different to each other. This is not disputed by anyone. The question is this, does human physical and genetic diversity allow the classification of the human species into a few discrete "races". The evidence from physical anthropology and genetics tend not to support the existence of a few races. The evidence, such as it is tends to support a nonconcordant distribution of diversity between human groups. For example Europeans may not be particularly like west Africans, but Europeans are much more like east Africans. This makes sense from the perspective of the RAO model of human dispersion throughout the globe. We would expect Europeans to be more like some African populations and less like others. A little bit nearer Europe again and we get to the Near East, where people are even more similar to Europeans. When we get to south east Europe we find Europeans that are similar to Near Eastern populations but who are also similar to northern Europeans, finally we get to north west Europe and these Europeans are somewhat different again. When we go to north east Europe we find that Europeans there are somewhat more like people from central and northern Asia, but are still most like Europeans, as we progress to central Asia we get people who look somewhat east Asian to the European eye, but who look somewhat European to the east Asian eye. This pattern of diversity does not support the existence of a few distinct "races". Rather it supports either a model of isolation by distance, with populations that are closer being more similar to each other and populations that are more distant being more different. Or it supports a small island model where there are populations of people with large amounts of gene flow between these populations. Isolation by distance would lead to a very gradual clinal change, a small island model would lead to a more clustering pattern. Actually we find both types of patterns when we look at human genetics. Probably this indicates that neither model is perfect. Human dispersal throughout the world is imperfectly understood, and the patterns of difference we see are very complex, no model that we currently have accurately reflects the sort of diversity that is observed.[see Long and Kittles 2003] This is a long post, but this is a complex subject. Current work tends to indicate that there are not a few large groups of human races, what diversity there is (and we are a very homogeneous population relative to other mammals) cannot be distributed neatly into five or six well defined groups. I have addressed this issue at least twice before on this talk page over the last few days. You asked me to provide direct quotes because you think I am lying for political reasons, I provided at least two direct quotes on this page that specifically address this problem. Human genetic and physical diversity is complicated, simplistic classifications do not represent good models for explaining this diversity. This problem has been noted since the time of Darwin, and was the main reason why Darwin rejected the concept of human classification into a few discrete "races". In 1864
Alfred Russell Wallace (co author with Darwin) wrote "...there are no races without transitions to others; that every race exhibits within itself variations of colour, of hair, of feature, and of form, to such a degree as to bridge over to a large extent the gap that separates it from other races. It is asserted that no race is homogeneous; that there is a tendency to vary....”
Charles Darwin himself stated "all naturalists have learnt by dearly bought experience, how rash it is to attempt to define species by the aid of inconstant characters....[The characters of races] “graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed.”
[33]
3) The question is not what you personally believe is a "White person" and it is not what you claim most people believe is a "White person", it is not whether you believe that "races" are real. The question is that you do not appear to either understand this subject very well at all and that you do not seem to have any sources to support what you are saying. Indeed you seem to be more interested in 1) Having a general discussion about "race" rather than contributing constructively to the article and 2) Trolling on this talk page looking to have an argument. None of what you have said is supported, most of what you have said displays a certain ignorance in this subject, much of what you have said is personal opinion and not least, a great deal of what you have said appears to be little more than an expression of a personal antipathy towards me. This is the last time I will ask you, please stop making personal comments about my motives and politics.
Alun
08:58, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
The list of literature SIRubenstein posted represents the Neo-Marxist school of thought. There are legions of Marxist scholars who have written about almost every topic imaginable, including white people. See: Frankfurt school and Critical theory
However, it is not appropriate that articles which are not related to Marxism include the Marxist point of view. Historical materialism is today discredited with the exception of Communist countries like China.
Please add the material to whiteness studies if you wish, SI. MoritzB 14:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
The books are written by mainstream scholars in mainstream disciplines at mainstream universities so obviously it is mainstream. It is you who are fringe, so of course you call anything mainstream fringe. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:37, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Boo-hoo! I am scared of different ideas! Please make them go away! Slrubenstein | Talk 16:45, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
So MoritzB's position seems to be that only sources vetted by him should be allowed? Is this a rational interpretation of the NPOV policy? Accusations of political bias by certain people with an apparently racialist agenda are getting out of hand on this talk page. Indeed it seems to be the norm to accuse mainstream academia of being wrong, or fringe, and then attacking the editors who want to cite mainstream academic sources. This really does smack of desperation. commie scum 17:21, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
~Boo-hooh! Stop bringing in views I do not like! NPOV is supposed to be about prohibiting any view that frightens me! I am scared by those big professors at Berkeley and UCLA and Yale and McGill! They think they know so much just because they have PhD.s and have jobs at major universities and spend their time researching topics and get published, those know-it-alls? What about me! Why should I have to go to school and study hard to get some stoopid degree? Make those people go away! i just want to see MY views in print! This is my article, you can't come here with your knowledge and stuff like that! go away! Slrubenstein | Talk 18:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Fourdee's right! how DARE we let scholarship into this article! I've said it before and I ill say it again, those damn scholars think they know so much just because they have been trained to do research and spend their lives doing it! Wikipedia should not be tainted with research. WE know what we think, and what is important is that our views be expressed fully here! Slrubenstein | Talk 18:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Theologists are trained scholars as well - but may recite things that are complete mistruths or lies, depending on one's perspective. Sociology is much like theology, its assumptions on often completely nonfactual and reflect a significant bias. In the case of sociology, its assumptions reflect probably the only idea so bad that I would call it evil - they seek to attack and take from the best, strongest (etc.) people by describing their dominance as something other than natural. Again, the core motivation here is to take what whites have: land, resources, genetic material, women, cultural identity - take or destroy it. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 19:07, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
re are at least
- In what way is this discusion going to help improve the article? Slrubenstein | Talk 20:16, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
This has really gotten out of hand. The mudslinging needs to stop, if you want to come to a compromise. Can you please discuss this issue like the civilized people you are? If not, I would recommend taking this to formal mediation, as informal discussion/mediation is not working very well. Thank you. Neranei (talk) 21:35, 29 August 2007 (UTC) Slrubenstein suggested that I take a poll of the participants to see if anyone has had their mind changed by this discussion, and if so, where? Thanks, Neranei (talk) 23:12, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Since Neranei's last resquest on August 23:
Well, I'm going to put forth an idea. As the majority of you can agree on one thing, and, if I'm not mistaken, MoritzB is in the minority here. As Phral, Karen, and Fourdee are all indef-blocked, I think that as the majority of you agree with one position, you should go from that opinion. Neranei (talk) 22:58, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
The mediator made a suggestion yesterday, I do not see why we don't follow it. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:34, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) I've been watching this for days and I am really surprised at the tolerance shown to soapboxers here. Wikipedia is not a soapbox what your issues with "neo-marxism" or critical theory are MoritzB - this is not the place for them, wikipedia is not a forum. This behaviour is tendentious and could be considered disruptive. You are being advised to stop this and reacquaint your self with the 5 pillars of wikipedia-- Cailil talk 20:58, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Because the article had no pictures I have now added a gallery. I took it from European people. MoritzB 00:08, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I propose two galleries. European people should be in one gallery and non-European "white" people in another gallery. Cf. Black people. We can add people like Zinedine Zidane and Ralph Nader to the second gallery. It is crucial that there are reliable sources which state that they are white. MoritzB 16:35, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
CavalliSforza
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).