Nate Silver: Does race affect votes?

Re:Nate Silver: Does race affect votes? by tokenadult on Sunday April 26, 2009 @01:27PM (#580183)

Your doctor isn't going to screen you for sickle cell if you're white.

Another reply has already shown the error of thinking that the sickle cell trait is confined to populations identified as "white." It is not. What is your proposed definition of races on biological grounds, and what is your citation for a scientific consensus on that?

See

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Fruit-Sides-Wrong-Debate/dp/...

for citations to recent primary research literature backing up the statement that "race" as now construed in society has very little medical usefulness. The author is a neurobiologist.

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Re:Nate Silver: Does race affect votes? by space_cowboy on Sunday April 26, 2009 @01:33PM (#580190)

I agree that race is a social construct to some degree. For example, in America a person is considered "black" if he has one parent of African ancestry and one parent of European ancestry. However, I am not sure that the idea that "race is biologically meaningless" is defensible. I hope it is. But I wonder what we tell ourselves if the evidence says that it's not.

I know you can tell where a person's ancestors recently came from based on their DNA, and that there are certainly distinct genetic lineages in the human population.

I am open to reading more literature and articles on the subject. I am merely stating that according to the extent of my current knowledge, the idea that "race is meaningless" is suspect.

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