Now this is really bad science - New research suggests racism could be a genetic trait

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an anti-racist movement in the United States, founded as a reaction to many incidents of racism and brutal police violence against black people. The movement got widespread international support in 2020 after the police murder on the Afro-american George Floyd. The murder set off a chain of demonstrations all over the world.

he death of U.S. citizen George Floyd caused demonstrations all over the world. Still, police violence against vulnerable groups and minorities is nothing new. How can racist attitudes and practices have survived so many generations?

According to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), beliefs that some groups are superior to others are deeply influenced by genetics.

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-racism-genetic-trait.html

And the above study shows why more and more people are losing faith in academia

As its complete gibberish

We all know racism is taught and can be unlearned

This is a great dismantling of such garbage By Nicola Barbaro A PHD Reseach Scientist on the link below

https://twitter.com/NicoleBarbaro/status/1291371962497773571

I totally agree! Racism is NOT genetic!!??
This is a stupid article.

This research isn't new and I think there's something to it. Our ancient ancestors grew up in environments in which strangers could be robbers or raiders, or simply carriers of a disease their tribe wasn't immune to.

Evolutionary psychology says that many beliefs and attitudes we have today probably helped us survive in the past, so it's not illogical to think that racist attitudes at one point helped the human species survive.

Ben Reilly wrote:This research isn't new and I think there's something to it. Our ancient ancestors grew up in environments in which strangers could be robbers or raiders, or simply carriers of a disease their tribe wasn't immune to.

Evolutionary psychology says that many beliefs and attitudes we have today probably helped us survive in the past, so it's not illogical to think that racist attitudes at one point helped the human species survive.

Our ancient ancestors had no concept of racism

It was more based on a class control system of elitism. Where Romans enslaved Romans and Greeks enslaved Greeks etc
All societies had slavery in the ancient past

So how would race play a part in genetics, in such a short time frame of history?

Over the last couple of hundred years?

Its essentially a bullshit claim, that is not grounded in science

Granted, it is speculative, but we're talking about the million years or so that human beings existed without written history -- the hunter/gather nomadic tribes that came before any nation or label.

What you find with evolutionary psychology is a layer or more of human sophistication on the top of a basic survival instinct. So the baseline fear of strange people morphs into an attitude of being superior to such people -- after all, people who look and talk like us never invaded our land or gave us a terrible disease, so we must be superior to such horrible people.

Of course, I'm not arguing that racism has any place in the modern world. I'm simply saying that fearing people who don't look like you probably, at some point in the distant past, caused people to run away from a tribe who were perhaps murderous or diseased, a reaction which not only saved their lives, but also possibly passed any genetic component to their "fearing-different-people" attitude to future generations.

Babies are born essentially “blind” for the first few months of their lives.

“It is not until around the fifth month that the eyes are capable of working together to form a three-dimensional view of the world and begin to see in depth. Although an infant's color vision is not as sensitive as an adult's, it is generally believed that babies have good color vision by five months of age.”


That is all.

Ben Reilly wrote:Granted, it is speculative, but we're talking about the million years or so that human beings existed without written history -- the hunter/gather nomadic tribes that came before any nation or label.

What you find with evolutionary psychology is a layer or more of human sophistication on the top of a basic survival instinct. So the baseline fear of strange people morphs into an attitude of being superior to such people -- after all, people who look and talk like us never invaded our land or gave us a terrible disease, so we must be superior to such horrible people.

Of course, I'm not arguing that racism has any place in the modern world. I'm simply saying that fearing people who don't look like you probably, at some point in the distant past, caused people to run away from a tribe who were perhaps murderous or diseased, a reaction which not only saved their lives, but also possibly passed any genetic component to their "fearing-different-people" attitude to future generations.

You are conflating how people may have a natural fear of something they do not understand
Which again learning would overcome
That is miles removed from a genetic claim to racism
It would mean that people would be a born from a perceived view point to racially fear people. When we are on e biological race
Hence your view makes little sense
For their to be any validity to your claim
We would see babies shy away and cry to babies of other socially construed races only
Does that happen? Where is the evidence for this, to have an a gene to cause such a reaction

This was shoddy science

The fact is we have mated with early cousin species to humans with the Neanderthals ect

For this claim to be true we would have actually have seen formed different racial biological groups formed

Its never happened

Anyway am tired, night all

I'm not saying it holds true for every single person. The human gene pool is quite varied, that's why people are quite varied.

It's not any more unreasonable to think that genes might lead some people toward racist attitudes than it is to think genes might give some people brown eyes.

Of course nurture has much to do with it as well. But genes do play an undeniably huge role in who we become.

Ben Reilly wrote:I'm not saying it holds true for every single person. The human gene pool is quite varied, that's why people are quite varied.

It's not any more unreasonable to think that genes might lead some people toward racist attitudes than it is to think genes might give some people brown eyes.

Of course nurture has much to do with it as well. But genes do play an undeniably huge role in who we become.

Its reasonable to understand that this was based on poor science

If you read the link I posted after, you would see that

The fact that racism is a modern conception is a clue to how this was motivated from a view of trying to make something fit. Which lacked all evidence

Like I say, for this to have validity, we would see this in babies

We dont

I would also add, why have we not seen such a gene for women to fear males?

Being that females have been on the end of violence by males throughout history?

You see when you start to break down this claims, they lack any validity

Humans babies are born in acceptance of others

They only learn poor traits from others

Genetic theory doesn't have to depend on things that are provable within infancy, that's just poor science.

You can't say that certain genetic traits that emerge in adult males, for example a predisposition to heart disease brought on by high levels of testosterone, must present themselves within infancy to be valid. Hereditary dementia doesn't present during infancy, either.

And who's to say that some women don't have a fear of men that has a genetic component to it?

The human mind doesn't start as a blank slate. We're not all born equally intelligent, creative, spiritual, whatever, and then have everything that ends up in our brains put there by others.

I don't know why some people are so uncomfortable with the notion that genetics makes our brains as varied and diverse as it makes our bodies.

I don't know if racism is genetic but I don't think racism is actually the point either.
As has been said its more about being different, another group of people can be the same colour as you but how do you know their intentions so you are suspicious of them, you keep them from your camp if you can. unless they show you they are harmless. Many cultures had, some still have rituals, which may now be ceremonial for strangers coming to your camp.
Different groups of humans probably fought over hunting grounds etc - as some peoples were still doing in the 1800's, 1st nation American tribes were still fighting over hunting grounds, were suspicious of groups of strangers coming into their area
mainly with good reason.
We know modern humans ancestors mated with other groups, we don't really know on
what basis, might have been a happy co existence but maybe not, we still don't know how only one branch of humans survived, even with with genes from other humanoids mixed in.
Probably more instinct for survival that has become engrained over thousands of years. Why do many people have a fear of spiders, even when they aren't harmful to humans, it's supposed to be based on a real enough ancient fear, a sort of echo from the past, maybe racism has evolved from fearing the unknown person or persons.
I imagine the average Celt or Saxon would have run for cover on hearing that the Romans or Vikings were about to enter your village a they mainly did with intent.

Ben Reilly wrote:Genetic theory doesn't have to depend on things that are provable within infancy, that's just poor science.

You can't say that certain genetic traits that emerge in adult males, for example a predisposition to heart disease brought on by high levels of testosterone, must present themselves within infancy to be valid. Hereditary dementia doesn't present during infancy, either.

They are medical conditions, where as racism is not a medical condition

Its a form of hatred learnt

So you are offering up no connection whatsoever

Ben Reilly wrote:And who's to say that some women don't have a fear of men that has a genetic component to it?

The human mind doesn't start as a blank slate. We're not all born equally intelligent, creative, spiritual, whatever, and then have everything that ends up in our brains put there by others.

I don't know why some people are so uncomfortable with the notion that genetics makes our brains as varied and diverse as it makes our bodies.

That is of waffle Ben

Show me the phobia that masses of women have being unable to be in the same room as men?

Nobody is uncomfortable with genetics or the fact we all have individually different brains, to the point its comparable to different faces

What is being debated here was the poor science 

It got taken apart, as within the study, they do not even mention race or racism once

Kind of odd, when talking about a claim to a racist gene

Vintage wrote:I don't know if racism is genetic but I don't think racism is actually the point either.
As has been said its more about being different, another group of people can be the same colour as you but how do you know their intentions so you are suspicious of them, you keep them from your camp if you can. unless they show you they are harmless. Many cultures had, some still have rituals, which may now be ceremonial for strangers coming to your camp.
Different groups of humans probably fought over hunting grounds etc - as some peoples were still doing in the 1800's, 1st nation American tribes were still fighting over hunting grounds, were suspicious of groups of strangers coming into their area
mainly with good reason.
We know modern humans ancestors mated with other groups, we don't really know on
what basis, might have been a happy co existence but maybe not, we still don't know how only one branch of humans survived, even with with genes from other humanoids mixed in.
Probably more instinct for survival that has become engrained over thousands of years. Why do many people have a fear of spiders, even when they aren't harmful to humans, it's supposed to be based on a real enough ancient fear, a sort of echo from the past, maybe racism has evolved from fearing the unknown person or persons.
I imagine the average Celt or Saxon would have run for cover on hearing that the Romans or Vikings were about to enter your village a they mainly did with intent.

Interesting post Vintage

Ben Reilly wrote:And who's to say that some women don't have a fear of men that has a genetic component to it?

The human mind doesn't start as a blank slate. We're not all born equally intelligent, creative, spiritual, whatever, and then have everything that ends up in our brains put there by others.

I don't know why some people are so uncomfortable with the notion that genetics makes our brains as varied and diverse as it makes our bodies.

I'm not sure why what Ben is saying is so controversial here. That racism may find its origins or basis in an evolutionary trait to be protective of 'your own kind' is hardly a stretch. No one is saying that the racist view of racial superiority is 100% genetic, just that the connections can be made through our relatively recent evolutionary past to explain how and why it came to be.

"So how did we get from A to Z at lightning speed? This is a great example of how #scicomm twists research studies to fit a narrative and use clickbait titles to get attention and hype findings."

"First part of the article has a heading called “racist genes” (oof) and describes that some sets of self-reported attitudes genetically overlap. "

"So what did they measure? Social Dominance Orientation (a psychological scale to assess ones preference for dominance) and some country-specific (Norway) political policies."

"Here’s a version of the SDO. (TBF the SDO has previously been shown to **correlate** with racism, but a correlation does not mean the scales are interchangeable and measure the same thing. That is very bad practice to assume so). "




"The leap, which is unwarranted here, is that the SDO attempts to measure ones preference for group inequality… among any group the participant perceives. Religious groups? Income groups? Maybe. Racial groups? Maybe. The point is WE DON”T KNOW and THEY DIDN’T MEASURE RACISM "

"The study was a twin study in Norway to estimate the genetic correlations between SDO and political policies in Norway"

"This is bad, sensationalized science reporting. Framing findings as “evidence that racism is a genetic trait” when the study does not measure racism and the authors don’t even mention the word or discuss it in their paper is irresponsible. "

"Even the authors frame their results in a neutral way. Not as “we found racist genes” because that’s wildly irresponsible"

https://twitter.com/NicoleBarbaro/status/1291371962497773571

Hence poor science

@Eilzel making the leap of people being protective which is usually in regards to parents rearing their young and to take a leap to racism, a socially constructed concept. When the former has been over literally millions of years.

Shows the claim is absurd to say the least. As people only come to fear something through traumatic events. While people have phobias to certain insects or animals. This is based around a real fear they hold of a specific type of animal/insect. The view of fear would have to be viewed as either humans/males, being they commit 95% of all violence. Race would not even factor scientifically