Sunburn results when the amount of exposure to the sun or other ultraviolet light source exceeds the ability of the body’s protective pigment, melanin, to protect the skin. Sunburn in a very light-skinned person may occur in less than 15 minutes of midday sun exposure, while a dark-skinned person may tolerate the same exposure for hours.
That doesn’t say “immunity to sunburn” (it also doesn’t say much about “a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races”, since the variable “levels of melanin in the skin” screens off the variable “race”).
Fact-checking, via sources similar to Kawoomba’s, leads to the milder claim that melanin in the skin merely provides protection against sunburn, and not immunity. Levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with race; though it is not strictly equivalent (albinism is possible among black people) it is reasonable to say that black people, in general, are more resistant to sunburn than white people.
Levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with race
This smacks of circular reasoning—for a correlation to be demonstrated, you’d have to know that “there is a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races ” to start with. So, this too needs a citation.
There is a largish argumentative gap from “some genes confer a desirable resilience to sunburn” (possibly conferring some less desirable traits at the same time) to “some races enjoy unalloyed advantages over others by virtue of heredity”.
Levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with race
This smacks of circular reasoning—for a correlation to be demonstrated, you’d have to know that “there is a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races ” to start with. So, this too needs a citation.
What about this: levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with the geographic provenance of one’s ancestors in the late 15th century?
Somewhat more specific; still not enough to support a coherent notion of “race”, as geographic latitude becomes a confounder. For instance, there’s mounting evidence that “similar skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from genetic relatedness” (from WP).
Classifiers such as “black”, “white”, and so on do not carve nature at its joints.
“similar skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from genetic relatedness”
Well… duh. I don’t think anyone would have expected that the reason sub-Saharan Africans, south Indians, and Australian Aborigines are all dark-skinned, or Europeans, Ainu and Inuit are all pale-skinned, is that they’re closely related.
Classifiers such as “black”, “white”, and so on do not carve nature at its joints.
Those labels aren’t intended to be literal. Colin Powell is still generally considered “black”, despite being pale-ish.
This smacks of circular reasoning—for a correlation to be demonstrated, you’d have to know that “there is a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races ” to start with. So, this too needs a citation.
Well, there have been such categorisations in the past. Consider, for example, Apartheid—the entire legal system enshrined under that name depended on a categorisation along racial lines. However, it was far from a perfect classification; to quote from the linked section of the article:
The Apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria at the time that the Population Registration Act was implemented to determine who was Coloured. … Different members of the same family found themselves in different race groups.
(What was then done with that classification was racism in an extremely negative sense, a very conscious and institutionalised form of racism-3; however, the point of the citation is merely that there were laws laid down that served as a racial categorisation, however flawed).
There is a largish argumentative gap from “some genes confer a desirable resilience to sunburn” (possibly conferring some less desirable traits at the same time) to “some races enjoy unalloyed advantages over others by virtue of heredity”.
Oh yes. Agreed. One very minor desirable feature does not make an unalloyed advantage, especially when paired with an unknown number of other traits, which may be positive or negative.
I was only responding to what you quoted, which is that “high levels of melanin in the skin lead to an immunity to sunburn”. Immunity is—as could be expected—a poor choice of words and strictly speaking wrong, but “high degree of resilience / protection” would be valid.
a poor choice of words and strictly speaking wrong
That’s the point of a fact-check—saying things that are strictly speaking true, rather than things that are strictly speaking wrong.
If you’ll forgive me for quoting chapter and verse, “In argument strive for exact honesty, for the sake of others and also yourself: the part of yourself that distorts what you say to others also distorts your own thoughts.”
One of life’s crazy coincidences: I just at this very moment looked at that same page and took a quote from it for another comment I just now submitted, before reading yours.
That aside, my “strictly speaking wrong” was, unfortunately, also strictly speaking wrong. For example, the jargon “x gene variant confers a certain immunity versus y disease” is also in good use—otherwise the word “immunity” could never be used period. Vaccinations wouldn’t be described by conferring immunity, when sometimes they just limit the extent of the infection to a subclinical level. So in some sense, “immunity to sunburn” isn’t even wrong, strictly speaking, just an unfortunately chosen phrase in a forum such as this (which always checks for boundary cases and not for “true in a more general sense”, a habit I myself indulge in too much).
I’d normally agree, but in this case CCC explicitly said “black people can’t get sunburnt”.
OTOH, I only get sunburnt if I do something deliberate such as sunbathing for an hour around noon in July in Italy, and even then it’s relatively mild, and I’m not quite black; I’d expect darker-skinned people to be even more resistant than that. So I’d say that whereas black people can get sunburnt in principle, for all practical purposes they can’t. This is still a hell of an advantage compared to the pale northern Europeans I knew who got sunburned by walking around in November in Ireland.
Source
That doesn’t say “immunity to sunburn” (it also doesn’t say much about “a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races”, since the variable “levels of melanin in the skin” screens off the variable “race”).
Fact-checking, via sources similar to Kawoomba’s, leads to the milder claim that melanin in the skin merely provides protection against sunburn, and not immunity. Levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with race; though it is not strictly equivalent (albinism is possible among black people) it is reasonable to say that black people, in general, are more resistant to sunburn than white people.
This smacks of circular reasoning—for a correlation to be demonstrated, you’d have to know that “there is a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races ” to start with. So, this too needs a citation.
There is a largish argumentative gap from “some genes confer a desirable resilience to sunburn” (possibly conferring some less desirable traits at the same time) to “some races enjoy unalloyed advantages over others by virtue of heredity”.
What about this: levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with the geographic provenance of one’s ancestors in the late 15th century?
Somewhat more specific; still not enough to support a coherent notion of “race”, as geographic latitude becomes a confounder. For instance, there’s mounting evidence that “similar skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from genetic relatedness” (from WP).
Classifiers such as “black”, “white”, and so on do not carve nature at its joints.
Well… duh. I don’t think anyone would have expected that the reason sub-Saharan Africans, south Indians, and Australian Aborigines are all dark-skinned, or Europeans, Ainu and Inuit are all pale-skinned, is that they’re closely related.
Those labels aren’t intended to be literal. Colin Powell is still generally considered “black”, despite being pale-ish.
Well, there have been such categorisations in the past. Consider, for example, Apartheid—the entire legal system enshrined under that name depended on a categorisation along racial lines. However, it was far from a perfect classification; to quote from the linked section of the article:
(What was then done with that classification was racism in an extremely negative sense, a very conscious and institutionalised form of racism-3; however, the point of the citation is merely that there were laws laid down that served as a racial categorisation, however flawed).
Oh yes. Agreed. One very minor desirable feature does not make an unalloyed advantage, especially when paired with an unknown number of other traits, which may be positive or negative.
I was only responding to what you quoted, which is that “high levels of melanin in the skin lead to an immunity to sunburn”. Immunity is—as could be expected—a poor choice of words and strictly speaking wrong, but “high degree of resilience / protection” would be valid.
That’s the point of a fact-check—saying things that are strictly speaking true, rather than things that are strictly speaking wrong.
If you’ll forgive me for quoting chapter and verse, “In argument strive for exact honesty, for the sake of others and also yourself: the part of yourself that distorts what you say to others also distorts your own thoughts.”
One of life’s crazy coincidences: I just at this very moment looked at that same page and took a quote from it for another comment I just now submitted, before reading yours.
That aside, my “strictly speaking wrong” was, unfortunately, also strictly speaking wrong. For example, the jargon “x gene variant confers a certain immunity versus y disease” is also in good use—otherwise the word “immunity” could never be used period. Vaccinations wouldn’t be described by conferring immunity, when sometimes they just limit the extent of the infection to a subclinical level. So in some sense, “immunity to sunburn” isn’t even wrong, strictly speaking, just an unfortunately chosen phrase in a forum such as this (which always checks for boundary cases and not for “true in a more general sense”, a habit I myself indulge in too much).
I’d normally agree, but in this case CCC explicitly said “black people can’t get sunburnt”.
OTOH, I only get sunburnt if I do something deliberate such as sunbathing for an hour around noon in July in Italy, and even then it’s relatively mild, and I’m not quite black; I’d expect darker-skinned people to be even more resistant than that. So I’d say that whereas black people can get sunburnt in principle, for all practical purposes they can’t. This is still a hell of an advantage compared to the pale northern Europeans I knew who got sunburned by walking around in November in Ireland.