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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (74654)	2/19/2000 9:09:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Well maybe. I believe that there are no "races." Each group of people has a particular limited mix of alleles, and everyone in the group is a selection from this library. Yet the variation within in the group is as great as the variation within a single family tree. Old great uncle Groot with the tooth coming out of his left nostril doesn't look anything like aunt Hedda (with the huge lump of flesh hanging from her throat.) Yet if Hedda and Groot were the only remains dug up 9000 years from now, future physanthroapologists would say our people looked like a mix between warthogs and orangutangs (and very handsome specimens at that). I cannot imagine Native Americans claiming these creatures as ancestors. So let's seriously abandon this race question. To assign a skull to a "race" is merely a statistical probem called "multiple classification analysis." I've used it 30 years ago to assign people to different groups: (1) applied for job but not employed; (2) applied and hired and successful; and (3) applied and hired but unsuccessful. Using this approach it is possible to examine each stage in a selection process and see how efficient the process is at not misassigning people besed on their prehire characteristics. I was able to convince AT&T to abandon their hiring process and use mine which led to an enormous increase in hiring of blacks, especially in good jobs, and especially of young black women with children under five who were previously excluded from jobs in the nation's largest employer. AT&T's turnover decreased rapidly once they eliminated choke points in hiring (family status and IQ). "Race" it turns out was correlated with states which screened out blacks even though there was no direct discrimination. Oh, by the way, do you know how people in Hokkaido were classified as Ainu or Japanese in the big Census of the 1890's. The Japanese classifiers did not look at genes or hair, or skull shape. They asked in the man was a hunter, fisherman, forester or folk craftsman or bear-cult priest or blue eyed or blond. If yes, the entire family was classified officially and for ever as "ainu." If not, they were classified as Japanese.

To: Ilaine who wrote (74654)	2/21/2000 12:58:00 AM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

Yes, Del, I did watch the Nova Kennewick man episode. I also read several articles about it recently. I am particularly disturbed that while Native Americans are claiming him as one of their own, they are threatened by the further testing that would actually come closer to identifying him as a Native American. It would be SO refreshing if there was generally more emphasis on seeking truth and less on almost everything else we see in society today. For example, I don't actually support most of John McCain's conservative positions, but I thought his run for the presidency was an interesting way to stir things up. I thought it was dishonest and ridiculous that W went home for the weekend recently to get "retooled" and came back out misrepresenting himself as a reformer, while pandering to the extreme far right and running a really dirty campaign. Of course, it is even more ridiculous that people actually went for it, and now I am back to my first point, about seeking truth . . .