It may not exactly overlap with geographic ancestry, but if self-reported race can be predicted by DNA tests, how can it not be reflective of real genetics?
DNA Tests can predict a trait that would cause you to self-identify, but that doesn’t relate to the rest of your gene profile...and that trait (like hair consistency, nose size and shape etc) may have nothing to do with the other result you’re trying to measure. I may self-identify as black because I full lips, but if you then try to measure my athleticism, you may find that’s dictated by genes I received from someone Native American or white in my ancestry.
They recently tested Snoop Dogg and Charles Barkley for a bit on the George Lopez Show. Snoop Dogg has far more stereotypically “black” physical traits,” particularly much darker skin...which would lead you to identify as being more black and having more African Ancestry. It turns out Snoop Dogg was only 70% black, and Charles Barkley’s percentage was higher. If you think Snoop Dogg’s data, is more indicative of “black genes” and what they result in, you’d be wrong. Thus, self-reporting is not objective scientific data about DNA categories.
DNA Tests can predict a trait that would cause you to self-identify, but that doesn’t relate to the rest of your gene profile...and that trait (like hair consistency, nose size and shape etc) may have nothing to do with the other result you’re trying to measure. I may self-identify as black because I full lips, but if you then try to measure my athleticism, you may find that’s dictated by genes I received from someone Native American or white in my ancestry.
Alleles tend to correlate with each other.
For instance, it is possible for conventionally black people to have blonde hair and/or blue eyes, since the alleles that control hair and eye color are, to some extent, different than those that control skin color. Some black people do indeed have blonde hair and/or blue eyes, but most of them don’t.
If I ask you to estimate the probability that a person randomly sampled from the world population has blue eyes, you can do no better than aswer with the worldwide prevalence of blue eyes. If I then tell you that this person is black, then you can improve the a posteriori probability of your prediction by updating it to the, much lower, prevalence of blue eyes among self-reported black people. We can do the same even for traits that are not immediately visible, yet entirely genetic, such as lactose tolerance or blood type.
This is evidence that self-reported race is an epistemically useful concept.
EDIT:
They recently tested Snoop Dogg and Charles Barkley for a bit on the George Lopez Show. Snoop Dogg has far more stereotypically “black” physical traits,” particularly much darker skin...which would lead you to identify as being more black and having more African Ancestry. It turns out Snoop Dogg was only 70% black, and Charles Barkley’s percentage was higher. If you think Snoop Dogg’s data, is more indicative of “black genes” and what they result in, you’d be wrong. Thus, self-reporting is not objective scientific data about DNA categories.
Actually, they are both self-reported black people and the DNA test detected primarily sub-Saharan African ancestry in both of them.
If I ask you to estimate the probability that a person randomly sampled from the world population has blue eyes, you can do no better than aswer with the worldwide prevalence of blue eyes.
If I then tell you that this person is black, then you can improve the a posteriori probability of your prediction by updating it to the, much lower, prevalence of blue eyes among self-reported black people.
We can do the same even for traits that are not immediately visible, yet entirely genetic, such as lactose tolerance or blood type.
This is evidence that self-reported race is an epistemically useful concept.
A self-identified “black person,” has a highly unpredictable amount of actually African genes, and the common results of certain traits will depend on genes that may not cause self-reporting, so your conclusions will all be corrupted. Including the fact that genetic-causation of traits is a hopelessly flawed concept in the first place. But if you’re hellbent on doing this type of science, go for it.
Actually, they are both self-reported black people and the DNA test detected primarily sub-Saharan African ancestry in both of them.
They are self-reported “black people” with significantly different DNA, including in their skin color, which is supposed to be a defining trait in terms of self-reporting. Their actual proportion of Sub-Saharan DNA did not express itself in these most stereotypical traits. In regards to having “primarily” Sub-Saharan African Ancestry, the cultural “one-drop rule” tendency to self-report as black with an African-American parent will also cause you to have self-reported black people who actually have less than 50% Sub-Saharan African DNA. So even that will be highly unreliable.
A self-identified “black person,” has a highly unpredictable amount of actually African genes, and the common results of certain traits will depend on genes that may not cause self-reporting, so your conclusions will all be corrupted.
Are you seriously going to argue that self-reported black people are no less likely to have blue eyes and blond hair than the general world population?
Including the fact that genetic-causation of traits is a hopelessly flawed concept in the first place.
What? Do you deny that eye color, hair color, lactase persistence and blood type are genetically caused?
They are self-reported “black people” with significantly different DNA, including in their skin color, which is supposed to be a defining trait in terms of self-reporting.
First, you somehow forget to mention that Charles Barkley also has more European DNA than Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg has more Native American DNA. Is the fact that Charles Barkley has lighter skin than Snoop Dogg so surprising given these data?
Second, I think you are attacking a strawman: nobody here is claiming that the precise skin tone can be perfectly predicted by DNA ancestry percentages. Skin color is clearly only one of the various traits that concur in the conventional perception of racial appearance. Indians, for instance, have a range of skin tones overlapping with sub-Saharan Africans, yet Indians are not commonly considered blacks, and they do not self-report as blacks.
If Snoop Dogg’s DNA test found, say, 30% African DNA, you could claim to have at least identified one outlier. It wouldn’t have invalidated the general claim that self-reported race is correlated with ancestry, since you aren’t allowed to generalize from one example, but at least it would have been a data point against it. But your own example didn’t even show that: Snoop Dogg, a self-reported black man, has 71% African DNA. I’m afraid you shot yourself in the foot.
In regards to having “primarily” Sub-Saharan African Ancestry, the cultural “one-drop rule” tendency to self-report as black with an African-American parent will also cause you to have self-reported black people who actually have less than 50% Sub-Saharan African DNA. So even that will be highly unreliable.
There are of course people with less than 50% sub-Saharan DNA that identify as black. Barack Obama is the most famous example. Yet most people who identify as black have more than 50% sub-Saharan DNA.
Are you seriously going to argue that self-reported black people are no less likely to have blue eyes and blond hair than the general world population?
I’m arguing that your data is corrupted and thus so is its predictive power. This is getting very boring, as is your circular voting with Azathoth and his failed red-herring arguments. This is precisely why the voting system here is flawed.
What? Do you deny that eye color, hair color, lactase persistence and blood type are genetically caused?
Genes are caused by environment. If environment shifts, these fuzzy-categories, including racial categories, will become associated with wildly different traits. It’s trivially easy.
First, you somehow forget to mention that Charles Barkley also has more European DNA than Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg has more Native American DNA. Is the fact that Charles Barkley has lighter skin than Snoop Dogg so surprising given these data?
You’re talking about who is self-reported as a black person. Which refers traditionally to their Sub-Saharan African DNA. To claim that other DNA has contributed to their skin color, and thus corrupted the causal link between self-reported race and genetic profile, is to shoot yourself in the foot, not vice versa.
I’m arguing that your data is corrupted and thus so is its predictive power.
Yeah, whatever. Answer this question: Are self-reported black people less likely to have blue eyes than the world population? Yes or no.
This is getting very boring, as is your circular voting with Azathoth and his failed red-herring arguments. This is precisely why the voting system here is flawed.
I never voted.
Genes are caused by environment.
For a slow-reproducing species like humans, environmental pressures take at least thousands or tens of thousands years to cause any noticeable evolution.
If environment shifts, these fuzzy-categories, including racial categories, will become associated with wildly different traits. It’s trivially easy.
It doesn’t change the fact that these correlations hold right now.
To claim that other DNA has contributed to their skin color, and thus corrupted the causal link between self-reported race and genetic profile,
A self-identified “black person,” has a highly unpredictable amount of actually African genes,
For American blacks this is not the case.
Ancestry, the cultural “one-drop rule” tendency to self-report as black with an African-American parent will also cause you to have self-reported black people who actually have less than 50% Sub-Saharan African DNA.
The “one-drop rules” together with taboos against miscegenation also resulted in there being very few blacks with less than 50% Sub-Saharan African DNA.
It may not exactly overlap with geographic ancestry, but if self-reported race can be predicted by DNA tests, how can it not be reflective of real genetics
Predict is a relative term.
A south American native with Black skin color can have more DNA in common with a Japanese than two native Africans from different parts of Africa.
How so? It is a supervised learning problem: you have DNA markers as input features and self-reported race as the target class. If the model reaches >99% accuracy (*) I would say it performs pretty well.
(* The classes are skewed, but not extremely skewed. I don’t know if this accuracy has been corrected by class skew, but even if it hasn’t you wouldn’t get this accuracy unless the model didn’t work as intended).
A south American native with Black skin color can have more DNA in common with a Japanese than two native Africans from different parts of Africa.
Would this South American “native” self-identify as “black”?
How so? It is a supervised learning problem: you have DNA markers as input features and self-reported race as the target class. If the model reaches >99% accuracy (*) I would say it performs pretty well.
The point I wanted to make is that in the real world models in this area don’t have >99% accuracy.
Would this South American “native” self-identify as “black”?
That depends on the social environment. If they want to apply to an university that has a quota for Black students it wants to accept and their skin color is Black, there a good chance that they will put Black in the field that asks for the race.
A lot of people think it makes sense to speak of a Black race, a Caucasian race, and an Asian race as if two Black people would be as genetically similar as two Caucasians or as two Asians.
South American natives and Asian people are both descendants of the African tribe that left Africa ~100,000 years ago. Some South American natives have spent enough time near the equator so that they are also as Black as Africans.
I’m not sure that’s true if “nobody ever” is meant literally (and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard dark-skinned Indians referred to as black people a couple of times), but yadda yadda weak men yadda yadda, so good point.
Uhm, neither of those are talking about South American natives as if they were “negroes”. I’m pretty sure they’re talking about the Afro-descended people living there, since they also distinguish between them and the natives.
I’ll grant that some thought the Pacific Islanders were “negroes” though.
I’m not at all sure that first part is true, in a practical sense. Though going by the actual method of classifying individuals does bring in other problems.
I don’t know if we’re talking past each other or if I’ve catastrophically misunderstood your point—but what does the first link have to do with the distinction between SA natives and Africans in SA?
It talks about people who “despise the Brazilian people because of the manifest admixture of African blood in their make-up.” Now this is ambiguous—most people in Brazil have non-zero African ancestry, maybe even more than white US citizens have. But it looks to me like the quoted author is in fact classifying people by skin color alone. They simply assume that Italians and various others have “swarthiness” from the same source (falsely, according to the best info I can find without really caring).
They simply assume that Italians and various others have “swarthiness” from the same source (falsely, according to the best info I can find without really caring).
Mediterranean Europeans are typically noticeably darker than Northern ad Eastern Europeans. Eye and hair color also clearly have a North-South and West-East gradient.
It may not exactly overlap with geographic ancestry, but if self-reported race can be predicted by DNA tests, how can it not be reflective of real genetics?
DNA Tests can predict a trait that would cause you to self-identify, but that doesn’t relate to the rest of your gene profile...and that trait (like hair consistency, nose size and shape etc) may have nothing to do with the other result you’re trying to measure. I may self-identify as black because I full lips, but if you then try to measure my athleticism, you may find that’s dictated by genes I received from someone Native American or white in my ancestry.
They recently tested Snoop Dogg and Charles Barkley for a bit on the George Lopez Show. Snoop Dogg has far more stereotypically “black” physical traits,” particularly much darker skin...which would lead you to identify as being more black and having more African Ancestry. It turns out Snoop Dogg was only 70% black, and Charles Barkley’s percentage was higher. If you think Snoop Dogg’s data, is more indicative of “black genes” and what they result in, you’d be wrong. Thus, self-reporting is not objective scientific data about DNA categories.
Alleles tend to correlate with each other.
For instance, it is possible for conventionally black people to have blonde hair and/or blue eyes, since the alleles that control hair and eye color are, to some extent, different than those that control skin color. Some black people do indeed have blonde hair and/or blue eyes, but most of them don’t.
If I ask you to estimate the probability that a person randomly sampled from the world population has blue eyes, you can do no better than aswer with the worldwide prevalence of blue eyes.
If I then tell you that this person is black, then you can improve the a posteriori probability of your prediction by updating it to the, much lower, prevalence of blue eyes among self-reported black people.
We can do the same even for traits that are not immediately visible, yet entirely genetic, such as lactose tolerance or blood type.
This is evidence that self-reported race is an epistemically useful concept.
EDIT:
Actually, they are both self-reported black people and the DNA test detected primarily sub-Saharan African ancestry in both of them.
A self-identified “black person,” has a highly unpredictable amount of actually African genes, and the common results of certain traits will depend on genes that may not cause self-reporting, so your conclusions will all be corrupted. Including the fact that genetic-causation of traits is a hopelessly flawed concept in the first place. But if you’re hellbent on doing this type of science, go for it.
They are self-reported “black people” with significantly different DNA, including in their skin color, which is supposed to be a defining trait in terms of self-reporting. Their actual proportion of Sub-Saharan DNA did not express itself in these most stereotypical traits. In regards to having “primarily” Sub-Saharan African Ancestry, the cultural “one-drop rule” tendency to self-report as black with an African-American parent will also cause you to have self-reported black people who actually have less than 50% Sub-Saharan African DNA. So even that will be highly unreliable.
Are you seriously going to argue that self-reported black people are no less likely to have blue eyes and blond hair than the general world population?
What? Do you deny that eye color, hair color, lactase persistence and blood type are genetically caused?
I think you are referring to these two segments: Charles Barkley DNA Test, Snoop Dogg’s DNA Test.
First, you somehow forget to mention that Charles Barkley also has more European DNA than Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg has more Native American DNA. Is the fact that Charles Barkley has lighter skin than Snoop Dogg so surprising given these data?
Second, I think you are attacking a strawman: nobody here is claiming that the precise skin tone can be perfectly predicted by DNA ancestry percentages.
Skin color is clearly only one of the various traits that concur in the conventional perception of racial appearance.
Indians, for instance, have a range of skin tones overlapping with sub-Saharan Africans, yet Indians are not commonly considered blacks, and they do not self-report as blacks.
If Snoop Dogg’s DNA test found, say, 30% African DNA, you could claim to have at least identified one outlier. It wouldn’t have invalidated the general claim that self-reported race is correlated with ancestry, since you aren’t allowed to generalize from one example, but at least it would have been a data point against it.
But your own example didn’t even show that: Snoop Dogg, a self-reported black man, has 71% African DNA.
I’m afraid you shot yourself in the foot.
There are of course people with less than 50% sub-Saharan DNA that identify as black. Barack Obama is the most famous example.
Yet most people who identify as black have more than 50% sub-Saharan DNA.
I’m arguing that your data is corrupted and thus so is its predictive power. This is getting very boring, as is your circular voting with Azathoth and his failed red-herring arguments. This is precisely why the voting system here is flawed.
Genes are caused by environment. If environment shifts, these fuzzy-categories, including racial categories, will become associated with wildly different traits. It’s trivially easy.
You’re talking about who is self-reported as a black person. Which refers traditionally to their Sub-Saharan African DNA. To claim that other DNA has contributed to their skin color, and thus corrupted the causal link between self-reported race and genetic profile, is to shoot yourself in the foot, not vice versa.
This is very, very boring.
Yeah, whatever. Answer this question: Are self-reported black people less likely to have blue eyes than the world population? Yes or no.
I never voted.
For a slow-reproducing species like humans, environmental pressures take at least thousands or tens of thousands years to cause any noticeable evolution.
It doesn’t change the fact that these correlations hold right now.
Except that it hasn’t.
So why are you doing it?
I’d guess it’d take a while (i.e. longer than Africans have been in America) before the traits end up “wildly different”, though.
Really? I would think that constantly inventing new rationalizations to explain away the evidence would at least be intellectually challenging.
For American blacks this is not the case.
The “one-drop rules” together with taboos against miscegenation also resulted in there being very few blacks with less than 50% Sub-Saharan African DNA.
Predict is a relative term.
A south American native with Black skin color can have more DNA in common with a Japanese than two native Africans from different parts of Africa.
How so? It is a supervised learning problem: you have DNA markers as input features and self-reported race as the target class. If the model reaches >99% accuracy (*) I would say it performs pretty well.
(* The classes are skewed, but not extremely skewed. I don’t know if this accuracy has been corrected by class skew, but even if it hasn’t you wouldn’t get this accuracy unless the model didn’t work as intended).
Would this South American “native” self-identify as “black”?
The point I wanted to make is that in the real world models in this area don’t have >99% accuracy.
That depends on the social environment. If they want to apply to an university that has a quota for Black students it wants to accept and their skin color is Black, there a good chance that they will put Black in the field that asks for the race.
The link many comments up suggests that we do in fact have >99% accuracy (when limited to major ethnic groups in the US).
Does anybody dispute this?
A lot of people think it makes sense to speak of a Black race, a Caucasian race, and an Asian race as if two Black people would be as genetically similar as two Caucasians or as two Asians.
South American natives and Asian people are both descendants of the African tribe that left Africa ~100,000 years ago. Some South American natives have spent enough time near the equator so that they are also as Black as Africans.
Nobody ever grouped black South Americans into the same race as black Africans. Where did you get that idea?
Racial classifications were never determined solely by skin color.
I’m not sure that’s true if “nobody ever” is meant literally (and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard dark-skinned Indians referred to as black people a couple of times), but yadda yadda weak men yadda yadda, so good point.
But people do group people from Ghana with the same race as people from Somalia even through they differ a lot in DNA.
They’re more related to each other than either is to a European.
I take it the word “nobody” means ‘Nobody in some particular club’?
Uhm, neither of those are talking about South American natives as if they were “negroes”. I’m pretty sure they’re talking about the Afro-descended people living there, since they also distinguish between them and the natives.
I’ll grant that some thought the Pacific Islanders were “negroes” though.
I’m not at all sure that first part is true, in a practical sense. Though going by the actual method of classifying individuals does bring in other problems.
I don’t know if we’re talking past each other or if I’ve catastrophically misunderstood your point—but what does the first link have to do with the distinction between SA natives and Africans in SA?
It talks about people who “despise the Brazilian people because of the manifest admixture of African blood in their make-up.” Now this is ambiguous—most people in Brazil have non-zero African ancestry, maybe even more than white US citizens have. But it looks to me like the quoted author is in fact classifying people by skin color alone. They simply assume that Italians and various others have “swarthiness” from the same source (falsely, according to the best info I can find without really caring).
Oh, I see your point now.
Okay, I agree that racial characteristics were sometimes determined by only skin color.
Mediterranean Europeans are typically noticeably darker than Northern ad Eastern Europeans. Eye and hair color also clearly have a North-South and West-East gradient.