I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because frankly, I don't want to, but I believe that racism is one of the most, if not the most common *SYMPTOM* of a broader human quality.  All humans tend towards Us-Them delineations.  Since most humans spend only a few seconds at most interacting outside of their own in-group at any given moment, obvious physical differences are very susceptable to this tendency.  However, all you have to do is look at the effect of sports or other powerful us-them systems to see that race can become far less of an issue given another locus of segregation.

I agree. It's like political correctness is some kind of religion. You can only be 'holy' by taking on the PC point of view. We need to understand where racism, etc.. comes from by understanding how our species and culture really evolved. We can fix societal problems unless we admit who we really are (DDAs).

Racism against people from different continents of course. This has only occurred since technology has enabled global migration. It doesn't make sense to believe our racist tendencies just somehow appeared with globalization. The propensity to be racist has always been in our species. Just like our propensity to be religious and bellicose.

I think there has always been discrimination against other local tribes that lived only a few miles away, the variations were often minor but the still existed. In Africa, our human ancestors probably discriminated against the chimpanzee and gorilla ancestors that lived nearby, the difference became greater over time. There was probably an idea that human characteristics were superior. I believe this sped up the adaptation of human characteristics(walking, swimming, language, etc...). Also there are advantages as far as immunity to diseases, elimination of competition to being Xenophobic.

I think we had genetic purity in geographic locations because of racist attitudes within societies. For example, when our ancestors migrated from Africa to northern Europe and Asia, the big challenge became surviving the winter. We needed lighter skin to absorb more sunlight. There were random variations that gave advantages to light skinned people. The people with dark skin would have had problems, they would be sick and lethargic from lack of Vitamin D in the winter. Because of this perhaps the idea that light skinned people were superior to dark skinned people became a prevalent idea in the society. This 'racism' actually sped up the adaptation of humans to arctic climates. In tropical climates there was racism against light skinned people that could not handle the intense sun.

I don't if you've experienced this but on a warm sunny beach, I'll find a well tanned or dark woman way more attractive than a white woman. But then in the cold snow, I'll find the white woman more attractive.

I think there is an interesting balance between protecting the tribe and keeping it genetically pure and being open to new ideas, cultures and genetic codes.

I was reading about that scientists now think what humans find attractive in a mate is the way they smell and that we are attracted to someone that has different immunity system and we can subconsciously tell this by smell. The reason we don't find our close relatives attractive(except in West Virginia and Kentucky) is that they smell like ourselves and that this indicates that they have a similar immune system. Nature wants us to breed with someone that has immunity against disease which we don't have.

But their is also a danger in foreigners bringing in diseases as well. With globalization we got the plagues of the Middle ages and the Native American extermination. Since globalization, the greatest adaptation has been with immunity to disease. The people that have survived have been the ones with the best and most diverse immune systems.

I think religion and racism kind of go hand in hand. Doesn't all religion believe that our tribe is the special chosen people of the god(s)? That other tribes and species are inferior cause god(s) is on our side. That the leaders of the tribe are mediators with the god(s) or the leader is god. In order to justify racism, one must believe one is created special.

I agree with much of what you write, but I think you sometimes fall into the trap of Political Correctness. We don't want rational atheism to turn into the church of political correctness. Yes, racism and religion in the modern world probably have a net destructive effect on society and individuals.

But there is this politically correct idea that racism is evil, produced by some kind of devil in men's souls. Racism like religion is a natural phenomena, we should understand them as such. They may have aided individuals and tribes in past as far as survival and adaptation, they also lead to a lot of war and conflict. But with globalization and modern technology and understanding they both need to fade away.

There were chimp and gorilla ancestors. We gradually went our separate ways. But at first, the differences were minor. If you read the article in my first post, it seems to suggest there may have been some interbreeding all throughout the past 6 million years. So perhaps we could have some common ancestor with chimps within the last million years. But the major split seems to have occurred 6 million years ago base on DNA evidence. There probably has always been some horny 'human' like dude that couldn't resist some nookie with a 'chimp' like ape(even today it's true).

I was reading that feature about human evolution is that we developed around bodies of water. Where as chimps and other apes ancestors stayed in forests and mountains(perhaps to avoid being killed by our racist human ancestors). Humans developed the ability to swim which required us to have down-turned nostrils to keep water out of the nose. Now early humans that could catch fish and cross rivers had an advantage in natural selection. But wouldn't the uglies with chimp like noses that made it difficult to swim have been discriminated against? So maybe this sense of ugly and beautiful is closely related to racism. And there is 'ugly' people today because we are a product of this evolution process that is still occurring.

To the chimp are we not ugly with our nostrals made for swimming, lack of body hair and arms that are not very good for climbing trees?

From what I've read, it can probably be done with a little help from science and it may even be possible without any help. There'd probably be a lot a stillborns. It's probably not something any government or university would want to fund at this point in time.

Sure just like any species, you have variety and adaptation to a particular climate/environment. But the differences start out as a different breed or race and eventually can become what we call a different species.

I should say more UV rays penetrate through the outer layers in white skin. Here's an article that say's dark skinned people need 20 to 30 times more sun exposere to get the same vitamin D production as light skinned people:

http://www.phonesisters.com/vitaminD_health_reminder.html

I would guess that the Europeans had already traveled to Africa and Asia and throught Europe and brought disease back with them. In the middle ages, Europe had pleanty of plagues where the survivors would have been people with superior and diverse immune systems. Also the first Europeans in the Americas were sailors that had already traveled to many places to pick up pleanty of diseases. The native Americans were pretty isolated until Columbus so they never had need to develop much of an immune system.

Sure there was, unless you're a creationist. The differences started out like what we would call today a different breed or race, the interbreeding became less and less frequent over time. The decline of interbreeding between ancestors occurred gradually and was due to geographic separation and I believe tribalism/racism and what could be called the ugliness of inferior apes. What do you find more sexually attractive, a chimp or human female(Rosie O'Donnell and Rosanne Barr excluded)? Didn't this perception evolve over time as well, so the chimp ancestors became less attractive to our human ancestors as time progressed. 

There we some disease in the Americas but not all the same ones as the old world. They had some immunity and some aboriginals survived the infections by the Europeans. But they obviously did not have as diverse and developed immunity as the Europeans did.

I think you are hung up on 'race' specifically. It is not racism that we are predisposed to, it is us-vs-them-ism, and 'race' just happens to be one form of us-vs-them.

I think what you are referring to is really the tendency to form groups. Thus, I think you should use a different term, such as 'groupism', which I just made up, but which captures the idea better than 'racism'.

But notice this very important fact: The groups that groupism operates on are largely cultural, rather than genetic. Religion is a perfect example. There is no gene for Catholicism, but there are cultural symbols that identify one as a Catholic: Behaviour, clothing, symbolic ornaments, etc. Same with Jews, same with Hindus, etc. These are all cultural affectations that people display to emphasize their in-group. Likewise, anyone who displays a different set of affectations is in the out-group.

Racism, then, is a form of groupism where the affectation is culturally defined as obvious physical differences in skin tone, facial structure, etc. Please note this important distinction: While these things may have a genetic component to them, however superficial that may be, it is the cultural definition that defines the group. The group is *not* defined by actual genetic groups, it is defined by a culturally transmitted stereotype of what it means to be part of the in-group, and what it means to be part of the out-group.

Thus, a white racist may define the in-group according to white skin, but  also to facial features such as lack of oriental eye-flaps, etc. This cultural definition is essentially arbitrary. They could have said that you're only 'white' if you have blond hair and blue eyes. But why not red hair and green eyes? Why not ear-lobes vs. no-ear-lobes? These are all genetically inherited differences as well.

The point is this: If the cultural stereotype of the group definition is not faithfully preserved over the generations, then there can be no 'racism'. Therefore, for 'racism' to have operated in the differentiation between humans and chimps, then there must have been stable transmission of culture over generations in our common ancestor.

Therefore, if our common ancestor had stable culture, then chimps today should have stable culture, i.e. the stable transmission of cultural stereotypes.

But, chimps do not have this ability. They do have a weak form of culture, but it is not stable, because they do not have the linguistic capacity to maintain it over many generations. There are no 'ancient tales' in chimp culture, because chimps lack the ability to tell tales.

Any us-vs-them behaviour in chimps reflects the current social hierarchy, or the current tribal divisions of the day. They do not reflect ancient (more than a few generations) divisions. You will not see chimps in group-vs-group conflict over who's great-great-grandfather was better than the other's.

No, it was the development of the human line over 5-6 million years that *created* the capacity for long-term stable culture. Thus, it is impossible that this ability was the *cause* of the initial split.

The only reasonable conclusion is that human-chimp divergence occurred according to typical speciation patterns. Most likely, it was that our common ancestor inhabited two distinct niches, the tree-filled jungle forest, and the tree-sparse savannah. These two niches were either geographically isolated, which allows for allopatric speciation, or they were connected along a gradient (from more-forest to more-savannah), which allows for parapatric speciation.

Due to the different requirements for survival in these two different environments, the groups gradually acquired distinct genetic differences, and eventually were unable (or unlikely) to breed with each other, causing the genetic isolation commonly referred to as speciation.

Once these genetic differences became significant, it is possible that us-vs-them-ism aided in keeping the groups separate. But the differences needed to develop first. There needed to be a long period of adaptation to different environments, such that long-lasting differences (rather than the superficial differences of 'racism') would be stably passed down in two distinct groups (proto-chimps and proto-humans).

In other words, there would have had to have been *real* genetic groups, rather than culturally transmitted stereotypes, for us-vs-them-ism to work as a mechanism for keeping the groups separate. Without real genetic groups, and without cultural stereotypes (due to lack of stable culture), there would have been nothing stable for us-vs-them-ism to work on.

So, in my view, the most rational hypothesis is that humans and chimps diverged for the same reasons other species diverge, and then later humans acquired more-stable cultural transmission.

You may want to do some reading on modern versions of group-selection theory, as espoused by scientists such as David Sloan Wilson, for a different perspective. Be forewarned, however, that group selection is controversial in biology, and there have not been any convincing demonstrations that group selection is truly distinct from the selfish-gene interpretation put forward by Dawkins. Still, group selection can be enlightening to read about. I tend to think that groups may be defined by cultural memes, rather than some form of genetic definition. However, memes are even more controversial than group selection, so there you go.

A more likely explanation, given the facts of history, is that once Europeans developed the technology to travel quickly to various parts of the world (i.e. sailing ships), and they wanted to colonize those 'primitive' lands, they came up with a rationalization that these people weren't actually fully human. And since most of them had darker skin, naturally that meant that whites were superior. They *looked* for the obvious difference that would explain their superior technology, and they assumed that this obvious difference was the cause. They didn't imagine that they had superior technology due simply to accidents of history and geography.

Racism came from colonialism, as a way to justify stealing land from other people.

I, personally, am not arguing against your ideas about racism because of a PC motivation. Prior to my current views, I was a PC racist: I was against racial discrimination, but I still considered myself 'white' (even though we're different, we should be treated equally). Now I don't even consider the concept of 'white' or 'black' races as legitimate in any sense. So, it is not because of political correctness that I'm arguing against your ideas, it is because I think your ideas are mistaken. Not that there's anything wrong with being mistaken, either!

Racism is a recent phenomenon, in historical terms, and a tiny speck in evolutionary terms. Groupism is likely an ancient phenomenon. It would be interesting to see if chimps develop cultural groups, such as cliques/fraternities or long-standing (multiple generation) tribes, rather than mere coalitions or families. I would tend to think that they develop groups out of immediate need, such as social or political struggles, or out of friendship, and also that their tribes are only loosely defined for maybe two or three generations max. There is probably a lot of inter-tribal breeding that makes the tribe more a survival group (safety in numbers), rather than a cultural group (Hatfields vs. McCoys).

There are several possible explanations for such differences in high-performance displays. Only a few of those explanations have to do with genetics.

Here's a quick list off the top of my head for non-genetic explanations for these kinds of differences: Some cultures just happen to emphasize one sport over another; some cultures do not have access to the same equipment than other cultures, for example running takes very little equipment to practice, whereas swimming requires a large pool that is maintained and cleaned and kept available for a sports team (as opposed to a communal swimming hole where anyone and their dog can swim, and get in the way of an athlete trying to do laps); some cultures live in environments that make it easier or more desirable to practice a certain sport over another (for example, you don't get many ski-jumpers from Africa, but lots from Switzerland).

Of the genetic reasons, the most important one is known as the bell-curve effect. There are two variations of this effect.

Tail-end amplification. In a bell-curve (or, normal distribution), you have a big lump of people in the middle, and much smaller 'tails' at each extreme. There are very few extremely tall people, and very few extremely short people, but there are lots and lots of people who are 'close to average'.

Now, imagine you take two groups of people and measure them on some characteristic (how fast they can run). Both groups will have a bell-curve distribution. Now, imagine that one group has a very very slight difference in performance of the average. Say, on average, a person from group A can run 100m in 30 seconds, and a person from group B can run 100m in 30.5 seconds. Now, there is a lot of variation in each group. Some people can only run 100m in 45 seconds, some can run as fast as 10 seconds.

The bell curves overlap almost completely, but there is small, tiny little difference in the mean (average).

But statistically, what that means is that if you look at the tail of the bell-curve at the highest end, you will see that the small difference in the mean leads to a quite large difference in the tails. Whereas those who can run faster than 30 seconds from A and B is 50.01% to 49.99%, those who can run faster than 11s may be closer to 75% to 25%, because we are looking only at the tail end of things.

Try it your self: Draw a bell-curve on a piece of paper. It doesn't even have to be exact, just an approximation will illustrate it. Now, take another piece of paper and trace out the curve from the sheet below it. Shift the piece of paper just slightly, say 2 millimetres, and trace out the curve below it again. Now, look very closely at the tail end. Even though you only shifted it by 2 mm, you will see a large difference in the tails, proportionally. Draw a vertical line (think of the Olympic qualifications cut-off) near the very end of the two tails. You will see that one tail will have an area significantly greater than the other tail.

So, while the curves only barely differ when taken as a whole, there is a much bigger difference when you only take the extremes.

This is tail-end amplification of minor differences.

The other kind of bell-curve effect is when you have differences in variation. If the two groups have the same average/mean, but one group has a slightly higher variation in the variable, then the group with more variation will have a significantly higher representation at the tail-end of the spectrum. This time the key is not a shift in the mean, but a widening of one bell-curve over the other. Even a small shift in variation can lead to a large over-representation at the extreme ends, similar to that in the previous example.

To do this, you'd have to draw two slightly different bell-curves. For example, you could draw one that is 2 mm wider than the other. Then, line them up so that both are on exactly the same mean, and look at the tails again. Again, one tail will have a significantly greater area than the other above a certain cut-off point.

So, it is not accurate to look at extreme tail-end measurements, such as high-performance athletes at the Olympics. You have to look at the overall population and compare entire groups to entire groups. Otherwise, you will get confounding measurements such as when you notice that most winners of the 100m have black skin. It could simply be that the overall genetic variation of African populations is higher than in European populations. And since we know this is the case (since Europeans descended from a small offshoot population out of Africa, they have less genetic variation overall than Africans), then it is not a valid conclusion to say that the entire population of blacks is significantly faster than the entire population of whites.

I'm going to venture a guess that economics are more of a factor in sports than race is. Tennis lessons are expensive, as is the gear needed  to play hockey or golf.  Even a baseball bat, jersey, cleats, bat, and a glove can set you back $500. By way of comparison, a basketball and sneakers are cheap. The chosen sport of a person probably has a lot to do with what they or their parents can afford.

If one were interested in reading about sexual selection, "The Mating Mind" by Geoffry Miller would be a decent starting point.  While it's my opinion that Miller takes a little more liberty than he is due in speculating about the extent of sexual selection in human cognitive development, he certainly does a good idea of explaining how males develop displays of conspicuous consumption, how runaway selection can lead to pronounced features, and several other better established consequences of sexual selection.

Oh, and EXC... you know DDA is a biologist, right?  You really should consider listening to him.  He knows his shit.

Seriously? Are you seriously posing this question like it's a real question? Those people were slaves. They worked because otherwise they would get whipped or otherwise abused. So they had a choice between working outside and a whipping. I don't think productivity can boil down to their genetic ... anything, actually.

Okay, look: I understand your curiosity about these things, because in the States, it's terrible to even bring up in conversation. Everyone gets all weird. But trying to compare the laziness of different groups of people is fruitless. Equally so is the pursuit of some kind of species difference starting from minor genetic variation. And I mean MINOR variation.

 Ergh... Let me clarify the first reply.  By the time you had a swimming proto-human and a non-swimming proto-chimp, there was no more interbreeding.  This kind of evolutionary change happens gradually over many generations -- and I mean at least hundreds, probably thousands.  There is absolutely no way to know what females would prefer during these generations.  They had no way of knowing that in a thousand generations, swimming would lead to a speciation event, or that eventually, their sexual choice would be the catalyst for the invention of the internet, which would allow uneducated simpletons to speculate about evolutionary mechanics they didn't even begin to understand.

You're trying to suggest that females choose what is best for the species.  They don't necessarily, and in fact, they often choose things that end up being bad for the species.  If you had taken the time to read the books I recommended, you would understand that sexual selection as a predictor of evolutionary success is a dead end.

Just wanted to make sure this was repeated. Kinda sums it up.

Honestly, dude.  This conversation is over.  Read a fucking book.  You don't need to be embarrassing yourself like this.

Anything else I should do to absolve my sins? The shame and guilt is just unbearable. Do you do confessionals on Saturdays?

Okay, you're just joking. I thought you were looking for a serious answer to your questions. There are guys who will fuck sheep, too. That's not "interbreeding". You're just making shit up now.

Seriously? I've disagreed with Hamby a LOT. He didn't "excommunicate" me. In fact, he agreed that I should be a moderator. That doesn't really fit with your assessment. If there's a cult of conformity, here, it's in a collective understanding and interpretation of the facts available in any secondary school biology textbook. Agreeing on solid fact is hardly conformity. You were trying to link race and speciation, for fuck's sake! That's so far out of the realm of reasonable for someone familiar with even the briefest course in biology that you predictably got a lot of responses like, "wait, what?"

Asking you to educate yourself ISN'T indoctrination. It's really difficult to discuss something with someone if they don't want to learn about the topic they're discussing. Throw us a bone, here.

It reminds me of an old joke:

A guy prays to God every day that he would win the lottery. Every day, he prays, "Oh God, please let me win the lottery. You're the greatest. Amen."

Years of this. The man, though weary of his quest, still prays every day, "Dear God, though you have not seen it in your wisdom to grant me this one thing I ask, please still consider letting me win the lottery. Amen."

Another few years. Finally, the man cries out to God, with bitter tears in his eyes, "God, I've prayed every day that you might grant me this one thing I ask, and nothing. All these years I've been good and faithful, and to no avail! What kind of cruel God are you?"

The sky parts, and God appears. "Dude! Meet me half way: buy a ticket!"