What is the deal with anti-race mixing?

Sumthin'wrong with watching Mad Men?

I mean, it does have a pretty much all-white cast... But I don't think there was much in the way of black NY corporate executives before the Civil Rights Act.

edited 30th Nov '11 11:10:30 AM by SavageHeathen

Well the show does seem to ignore the whole civil rights issue, even as a background detail.

I mean sure I don't want them to shoehorn a token black cast member, but they could remember that black people existed now and again.

IIRC, the guy with the beard dated a black gal quite involved with leftie activism during Season One. What I don't recall is if we ever got to see her.

edited 30th Nov '11 3:15:09 PM by SavageHeathen

I just came upon this lovely gem: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/kentucky-church-bans-interracial-couples

WTF, are people still living in the 60s.

I like how this lady summed it up

To be fair, it is natural for populations to "stick to their own". That's how species happen in the first place. Also, even though we are all one species, there has been enough regional variation that you could divide human populations into sub-species.

At least, we would if we didn't treat humans like special little snowflakes that get to be exempt from every rule of species classification (you should HEAR the UPROAR over wanting to remove the genus "pan" and rename chimpanzees "homo troglodytes", despite the fact that genetically that is a perfectly valid and reasonable assessment).

All that I'm saying, really, is that if aliens came down to earth and started to classify species, they would likely split humanity up into several subspecies, based not only on obvious observational differences but also on biochemical differences (like how Europeans are lactose-tolerant, and Indians have resistance to several sub-tropical diseases). And that it is perfectly normal for subspecies to tend to mate within their own subspecies rather than pursue mates of a different subspecies.

The issue here is that people can't seem to think of themselves as just another animal, and to recognize that sometimes a red-furred squirrel will prefer another red-furred squirrel over a black-furred squirrel.

I smell a failure of sociological study. Racism is not inherent. Does it have inherent aspects? Yes. But it is primarily a product of socialization and materialistic economic inequality—that is to say, racism is essentially classism but with window dressing.

As for the OP, anti-race mixing is what happens when bigots born way out of the century they should have been born in realize that the world has moved on without them, and they then try to rationalize their stupidity and backwardness.

Doing that would show a pretty major failure in comprehending basic biology. You know how humans and chimps are something like 98% genetically similar? Different races of human are a whole lot more similar than that.

The whole "subspecies" thing is itself a racist myth. Which is not to say that you are racist, but that's where that line of thought comes from.

This is the Chinese tiger: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_tiger

And this is the Bengal tiger: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_tiger

They are subspecies of tigers. Notice how they basically look identical? Now look at this picture of an Australian native, and compare it to this picture of a Thai, and tell me that they are more similar to each other than the two cats:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_peoples

By all definition, humans have many different subspecies. This isn't a racial conjecture, simply me applying the same philosophy that we apply to other animals to ourselves.

edited 30th Nov '11 10:20:17 PM by MyGodItsFullofStars

"And that it is perfectly normal for subspecies to tend to mate within their own subspecies rather than pursue mates of a different subspecies."

There is genetic advantage in pursuing a mate outside your immediate gene pool, so if biology had any say in it, we'd all be fucking other races left and right. No, buddy. Racism is ingrained in us from the millennia of the 'us and them' mentality, not because our ancestors migrated to different places tens of thousands of years ago.

"By all definition, humans have many different subspecies. This isn't a racial conjecture, simply me applying the same philosophy that we apply to other animals to ourselves."

No, this is you applying utter misunderstanding of human evolution and migration patterns. We haven't been around for long enough to form subspecies, and we sure as hell haven't been isolated from one another to have much genetic diversity.

edited 30th Nov '11 10:34:04 PM by kashchei

What does this have to do with anything? Just because other animals do it or hypothetical aliens would follow that model doesn't mean it's okay.

Besides, God made Adam and Eve, not Subspecies A and Subspecies B.

Actually, hybrid vigor may not counter the disadvantages of mixed matings. Sub-species rarely have the opportunity to mingle in the wild (they wouldn't be subspecies otherwise), so in the rare events involving a hybrid mating typically one of the parents was an outcast (i.e., not very desirable as a mating partner to begin with) or driven away from their natural breeding territory by some sort of disaster. In the wild, getting chased out of your territory reduces your lifespan and your opportunities for successful mating.

This once applied to humans as well (and still does, to some extent, if you treat "social spheres" as habitats; I doubt that I could breed successfully with a girl from the inner city, for instance). Historically, mixed matings typically involved either a conquest of some kind, or a diaspora, and in both cases the young are less likely to pass on their genepool (in the first case, they are the unlucky children of rape, and in the second they most likely be refugees of some kind and therefore land-poor and malnourished - either way, not as likely to breed successfully as the locals).

It's the same way with, say, lions that get chased out of their territory by bigger lions, or silverbacks that are too old to defend their harem. Being forced out of your natural habitat often leads to a quick death for most animals. Even if hybrid vigor is in play (and there's some debate whether or not hybrid vigor is an actual thing), it isn't going to teach Morak of the Hill Tribe how to hunt the swift-hoofs when he grew up hunting razor-backs, and if Morak of the Hill Tribe can't hunt swift-hoofs he isn't going to have an easy time of winning the heart of Tutankumen of the Sandy Places.

"Historically, mixed matings typically involved either a conquest of some kind, or a diaspora, and in both cases the young are less likely to pass on their genepool"

I randomly picked a formerly colonized country - the Dominican Republic - to see if this holds true, and voila, 73% of the population is multiracial. How'd that happen?

Burn Rape And Pillage, duh.

edited 30th Nov '11 10:51:53 PM by MyGodItsFullofStars

I could have sworn that your hypothesis stated that children of rape would have difficulty passing on their genes.

In particular, part of the definition says that members of two different subspecies do not interbreed because of some external barrier (for example, regional displacement), but would interbreed freely otherwise.

This is very much not the case for human beings, who have always interbred in the wild with members of other "races".

For the same reason, the different breeds of dog all belong to the same subspecies canis lupus familiaris: sure, a poodle looks seriously different from a mastiff, but, like many a horrified dog owner have learned, they do from time to time breed together with no problem at all

Different subspecies of Canis lupus are, instead, the Eurasian wolf (canis lupus lupus) and the Dingo (canis lupus dingo). The difference between them is not much, compared to the differences between the many breeds of domestic dog; however, in this case there is a geographical barrier that largely prevents them from interbreeding (although interbreeding is possible).

They do. You are ignoring the fact that the conquers left the Dominican Republic behind, leaving a majority population built almost solely from their victims.

Now, if the conquerors were still around, then I expect that the healthy and wealthy members of the population would consist of the conquerors, the middle class the mixed population, and the poor class the unmixed natives.

So, then, look at South Africa, or America, or places with several hundred years' worth of usurpation. The class stratification is irrelevant: people continue to mix, and will keep doing so regardless of how it occurs.

To follow up on Carc's post, I've actually read an article on modern attempts to divide humans into subspecies. I don't remember where I saw it, but there were some fairly unusual propositions in it. (For instance, the Xhosa may in fact be the same subspecies as the Dutch, making apartheid even more ridiculous than it already was.)

I only get my science news from Discover or Scientific American, so it had to be one of the two. I think it was a few years back, though. (I remember one of the possible divisions was lactose tolerance versus lactose intolerance, but I'm not sure that's the one that put the Xhosa and the Dutch together.)

edited 30th Nov '11 11:22:18 PM by feotakahari

"the Xhosa may in fact be the same subspecies as the Dutch"

Do you have the source for that? That's priceless.

Triangle Smaller one Miscegenation is a really complicated topic. According to the triangle, various group have various mixtures of European, Native American, and West African in them to varying degrees. Also, note how close Peurto Ricans are to the center of the triangle!

It's a long article, it must happen alot?

edited 1st Dec '11 12:23:41 PM by secretist

Interesting. Mexicans are preponderantly Native American?

I thought that their level of Spanish/European ancestry was far higher than it apparently is...

edited 1st Dec '11 12:59:24 PM by Carciofus

The only reasonable argument I've heard is that it makes it difficult for the children because they might have difficulty with their mixed heritage.

Of course, this discounts the possibility that the child might like his dual heritage, so it could go either way.

This sort of thing varies so much from case to case that it is impossible to make an accurate generalization. Needless to say, I don't go out of my way to defend it.

@MGIFS - Dude, what really are you trying to suggest? You want us to suggest that human beings, the only intelligent life known to exist, is not different from tigers or chimps. Good luck with that.

If you want to suggest that like all animals, there are some distinguishable varieties, then no argument here.

But as Kashchei so eloquently (and awesomely) put it, there are only advantages, both biological and sociological, to humanity rising above petty surface differences and placing affection, loyalty, and mateship above them.