A question about race and double standards in Humans

[Aractus]

Most people here say that race doesn't exist biologically, and I agree - But I was thinking about how we classify non-Human species. Just think about it - Do Golden retrievers exist? What about German Shepherds? Are dog breeds fake? If so, why do we pay so much for breed dogs and confidently assert that certain breeds have X or Y characteristic, are more prone to Z or Q behavior and are smarter/dumber, etc.? Isn't this making a special pleading? We pretty much do this with lots of species. I don't understand how this works. We do the same with cats - Do Siamese cats exist? What about persians? 

And if the categorization we do with animals is valid, and the price we pay for them, the worth we attribute to certain breeds and our preferences for some breeds over others (basically "racism"), why do we make an exception for Humans? Are we special?

We say dogs have different breeds, we do not say they are different 'races'. Also as is pointed out to you by Pyrrho, you would need to actually breed humans to create a "breed", an ethnicity is nothing of the sort. There's only one human race - no one who believes otherwise is able to number the "races" they think exist or even categorise them. Is French a 'race'? Is European a 'race'? Is Aryan a 'race'? Well they can't all be - what about French-Canadians are they a 'race'? Which level of categorisation is 'right'?

Ethnic identity has nothing to do with DNA. A genealogist would not be able to identify someone's ethnicity from their DNA.

'Race' is an ancient us-and-them construct. It's primitive. People in ancient times believed the people living 5 kilometres away in a different "city" were literally of a different 'race' (this can even be proven using the Old Testament).

There is only one set of genes positively identified with people from European-decent and that's the lactate-persistent genes. However, they exist in south-east Asian people of no European decent as well - it's just much less common. So even those genes can't tell you if someone is of Mediterranean-decent or south-east Asian decent. Also note that the genes, if you were to use them to 'identify someone's race' exist in a high proportion in a far broader category of people than even "Aryan" covers. So your categorisation of race based on genes alone would be Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern people who of non-Indigenous decent, and everyone else.

[paulpablo]

no one who believes otherwise is able to number the "races" they think exist or even categorise them. Is French a 'race'? Is European a 'race'? Is Aryan a 'race'? Well they can't all be - what about French-Canadians are they a 'race'? Which level of categorisation is 'right'?

 
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.

[Ben Davis]

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.

[Mister Agenda]

It's popular to say there's no such thing as race these days, but a race is a regional variation within a species. Humans have those.

[Minimalist]

Anthropologically the question of human "species" has always bothered me. 

This site, http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_41

the University of Berkeley, defines a species as:

A species is often defined as a group of individuals that actually or potentially interbreed in nature. In this sense, a species is the biggest gene pool possible under natural conditions.

This would dismiss the arbitrary distinction of ancient humans into Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis into separate species since Svante Paabo showed that the two did interbreed.  The question which I still have hope to see answered is, did both groups descend directly from Erectus?

[Mister Agenda]

One would think so, since they could interbreed. Perhaps they might be better termed as subspecies.

[The Grand Nudger]

In my AO, we'd call the difference between hn and hs a "variety" - hence the term garden variety, lol.  IDK why either hs or hn would classify as subspecies..since neither is geographically isolated -as such- (and apparently they weren't isolated geographically -or- reproductively relative to each other).  I know that zoologists don't recognize variety....but I can't understand for the life of me why not. I suppose that subs are supposed to handle what variety handles for plants, fungi..etc.....but going by their description of a subspecies - it's hard to point to those two reps and say subspecies. Subspecies -of what-, and by what metrics?

The whole things becomes a wash with the progression of time, otoh...since we'll just have to keep adding rungs to the "bottom" of the ladder, or to the outer branches of the bush, if we persist in classifying things as they continue to diverge, or redefining what we mean by each term as it gets more and more crowded. Taxonomy is just a snapshot in time, after all...hehehe.

[BrokenQuill92]

I've never understood the classification in race and the thing is I could pull three random black people of the street and they'd all look totally dissimilar. Yet they're still under black.

[Minimalist]

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.

[Jenny A]

Those are very nice dogs, Min.

BrokenQuill, I enjoyed watching the video, but if dog breeds are made up like Human breeds, why do some people comfortably say that dog breeds exist but not Humans?

Because they don't feel racist in saying dog breeds exist.   And while they might not exist from a biological standpoint, both dog breeds and human races exist culturally.