(September 17, 2015 at 10:40 am)vorlon13 Wrote: Would the Amish interbreeding and their resulting explosion in genetic health concerns be comparable to, for instance, hip dysplasia in German shepherds ?

Yep.  Not to mention inbreeding of royal human lines.

(September 21, 2015 at 12:55 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I suspect that slave-owners visiting the slave quarters late at night for 4 centuries had something to do with that BQ.  Oddly, when the Tutsis were slaughtering the Hutus they had no trouble telling who was who.

Somehow I think that is doubtful. Even in families you can get people who look wildly different. I mean what if a Hutu married a Tutsi like in Hotel Rwanda?

Put Rwanda slaughter into Google images.

It doesn't look like they had a hard time figuring it out.

They don't seem to have had a hard time figuring it out, but whether or not they're "figuring" was accurate is an amusing question.  Tutsis are tall - supposedly, and Hutus are short -as an example of what one might offer.  One might imagine a firing line standing there with a yardstick...but they didn't even go that far.

Here's a better description of reality. The Hutus -did- kill Hutus, both on purpose and accidentally...they weren't actually as good at determining the difference as they believed themselves to be, no more so than any of the rest of us. I'd have gotten into the SS, and the Klan would instinctively recognize me as "one of us"..........but if they knew my family, or had me sequenced....... :throat slit:...and what they were looking for is -far- more noticeable than what the Hutus and Tutsis thought (and some still think) were reliable ways of telling a person apart at a glance, between the two groups - it just isn't very informative with regards to that difference -as- they thought it existed. Most of the "success" in locating Tutsis in Rwanda was geographic and by previous self-identification.

Oh my...you mean...

Only in reverse, apparently, with ak's and machetes...yup.  Stunted little dipshits shooting at people who'd self identified and/or were taller than the clowns nose.  It was a good time to be a short, chunky tutsi.

(September 18, 2015 at 8:49 am)Ben Davis Wrote:

(September 18, 2015 at 8:21 am)paulpablo Wrote: But I think the point is that there's nothing you've said here that couldn't be said about dogs.  All males can breed with every other dog breed so their are mixes, they're basically innumerable since you can get mixed breeds and they can breed with mixed breeds and the breeds become even more mixed. 
A lot of dogs are artificially bred unlike humans are though which I'm guessing is why there's more of a clean cut difference between a lot of their breeds, grey hounds will pretty much always be fast, great danes will pretty much always be huge.  But there is a bit of that in humans, pygmy tribes are pretty much always short, the fastest runners in the world are usually black people.
All of the examples you listed except for Aryan (I don't know what Aryan is) would be considered nationalities rather than race.

I think people need to be educated about the fact that racism is a negative expression of tribalism and nothing else. It served some purpose, in times past, when groups of people needed to protect their scares resources from other groups of people to ensure their own survival. Now o'days, the positive aspects of such tribalistic expression have become all but redundant. As Aractus has indicated, it's impossible to tell one 'race' from another, genetically, and the physiological differences are so few (and easily homogenised within a generation) as to be discounted as an accurate identifier. Race doesn't really exist, racism however is alive and well and must be combatted in every form to ensure equality, justice and fair opportunity for all people.

This brings up an interesting question - Is tribalism itself bad? We do try to protect our tribes, whether it is an ethnic, religious or friends group - I do protect my family and my girlfriend as much as I can whenever possible, and I consider that a natural expression of tribalism, even if it isn't based on race or ethnicity, it is certainly based on the fact we share the same bloodline (and as for my girlfriend we simply love each other). I am not using race as a biological concept, rather as an identity/cultural/historic concept. I seriously doubt we can create one single race within a generation because (1) Intraracial marriages are still the norm, at least because most people marry people of the same social class (2) the far-right will most likely grow in some European countries and nationalism can possibly take over again, even if this is not the case for the UK

Isn't racism essentially one form of discriminating people for being different than us, just like we do with pretty much many other characteristics? Usually racism is done by the majority, native race against minority, weaker/powerless groups of unprotected people that no one cares about. 

Usually with race comes culture, and people have a tendency to prefer those with similar cultural, national origin and background. It is only natural. If I am an amateur intellectual atheist who comes from a middle class family, I would love to marry someone with more or less similar cultural backgrounds - Usually, this equals the same ethnic background, but there's exceptions.

(September 22, 2015 at 4:41 pm)Dystopia Wrote: This brings up an interesting question - Is tribalism itself bad?

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We do try to protect our tribes, whether it is an ethnic, religious or friends group - I do protect my family and my girlfriend as much as I can whenever possible, and I consider that a natural expression of tribalism, even if it isn't based on race or ethnicity, it is certainly based on the fact we share the same bloodline (and as for my girlfriend we simply love each other). I am not using race as a biological concept, rather as an identity/cultural/historic concept. I seriously doubt we can create one single race within a generation because (1) Intraracial marriages are still the norm, at least because most people marry people of the same social class (2) the far-right will most likely grow in some European countries and nationalism can possibly take over again, even if this is not the case for the UK

Isn't racism essentially one form of discriminating people for being different than us, just like we do with pretty much many other characteristics? Usually racism is done by the majority, native race against minority, weaker/powerless groups of unprotected people that no one cares about. 

Usually with race comes culture, and people have a tendency to prefer those with similar cultural, national origin and background. It is only natural. If I am an amateur intellectual atheist who comes from a middle class family, I would love to marry someone with more or less similar cultural backgrounds - Usually, this equals the same ethnic background, but there's exceptions.

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I assume you mean 'in a contemporary context' rather than trying to pass value-judgments on historic tribalism with contemporary value-systems?

Depends on where you live. Many natural and social environments require tribalism for survival. That makes it 'good', right? Maybe not 'optimal' but definitely 'not bad'.

(September 18, 2015 at 8:49 am)Ben Davis Wrote:

(September 18, 2015 at 8:21 am)paulpablo Wrote: But I think the point is that there's nothing you've said here that couldn't be said about dogs.  All males can breed with every other dog breed so their are mixes, they're basically innumerable since you can get mixed breeds and they can breed with mixed breeds and the breeds become even more mixed. 
A lot of dogs are artificially bred unlike humans are though which I'm guessing is why there's more of a clean cut difference between a lot of their breeds, grey hounds will pretty much always be fast, great danes will pretty much always be huge.  But there is a bit of that in humans, pygmy tribes are pretty much always short, the fastest runners in the world are usually black people.
All of the examples you listed except for Aryan (I don't know what Aryan is) would be considered nationalities rather than race.

I think people need to be educated about the fact that racism is a negative expression of tribalism and nothing else. It served some purpose, in times past, when groups of people needed to protect their scares resources from other groups of people to ensure their own survival. Now o'days, the positive aspects of such tribalistic expression have become all but redundant. As Aractus has indicated, it's impossible to tell one 'race' from another, genetically, and the physiological differences are so few (and easily homogenised within a generation) as to be discounted as an accurate identifier. Race doesn't really exist, racism however is alive and well and must be combatted in every form to ensure equality, justice and fair opportunity for all people.

This still doesn't seem to detract anything from the points I made though, about how could say the same thing for dog breeds as you can for human races.  I don't think anyone would argue that racism is a positive expression.

@ MIN, sorry for your loss I know it must have been tough, I've lost Rotties to cancer and it's hard waiting on the time to put them down and I'm doing that right now with another, my first show Rott.

GC

@ anyone interested, I think the best way to look at breed vs race is this, we use one to identify dogs and the other to identify people.