How is an ancient racist man from a racist state any proof that whites are just as good as blacks at basketball?
I'm pointing out that cultural memes are very powerful at dictating how culture perceives these sorts of issues.
Phenotype is what the general population sees. That's why they perceive different races and different groupings. Pointing to things like "Well X are just GREAT at Y, therefore race is real!" is just the exact sort of stuff that anyone in the scientific community trying to explain the issue from the level of the genome has to deal with, and all of that stuff based on what you're seeing on a phenotypic level, is just irrelevant from the scientific standpoint.
We do not use morphology in modern populations of any species to determine if they are separate species, or subspecies, etc. We only use morphology in populations so ancient that genomes are unknowable because the DNA is degraded. That's how the modern field of biology works.
The human species is varied because the human genome is incredibly plastic with the environment, which includes the cultural environment. But the underlying genetic foundation is not divisible in a way which is sensical and consistent with subspecies/race.
Like I said before, the main reason I was staying out of this thread was because I didn't want to bog it down with the technical details of genetics, and we're seeing that happen now.
People tend to conflate phenotypic variation with actual genetic variation. But that simply isn't how it works. You and I may have the same allele at the same location for, say, height, but because you had better access to nutrition and medical care as a child than I did, or you underwent less physiological or other stresses during development, or because you were raised in a warmer environment, where I was raised in a colder environment, or you were raised at a level closer to sea level than I was, maybe you're 6 feet 3 inches, and I'm only 5 foot 10. Does this make sense to you? This is how plastic the human genome can be with the environment.
Of course a geneticist from Kentucky would say no blacks in the nba 50 years ago wasn't racist.
That's like 180 degrees out of phase with the point I was making.
This forum is supposed to be about having adult discussions and not trolling.
I think his real point is "black and white is a meaningless distinction anyway so you guys are all idiots"
I explicitly said that your misunderstanding does not indicate stupidity, but rather a lack of education in a very highly technical field.
