It's the simple truth. There's six billion people, and among the lot of them there's less genetic diversity than there is in 60,000 chimps. We're inbred, by comparison. Obama's father is not American, or West African. He's East African, from Kenya. His mother is more likely to have West African genetics. IIRC East Africans differ from West Africans more than either do from Europeans, genetically. So from a genetic point of view, you have either three races there or one. Or possibly two races, with the white folks being a subgroup of one of them.
We are inbred. Homo sapiens went through a genetic bottleneck quite recently. Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam are the MRCAs (most recent common ancestors) of every one of us, and they lived less than 200,000 years ago. Apparently nothing like this ever happened to Pan troglodytes.
We're believed to all be descended from a small group of survivors, from about that same time ago when there was some major climate change (savannafication) in Africa. Hence the lack of genetic variability. We got "winnowed" genetically, by major climate change about 200,000 years ago.
Actually that is just a statement without any evidence. DNA-wise you might be right, but by look and everything humans are more diversive, if for nothing else because they live under all kind of circumstances....
DNA is what counts, if you are talking about genetics. "By look" depends on who's looking. Like most social animals, humans are specialized in distinguishing each other by small details. Crows can tell each other apart no problem. So can chimps. So can seagulls. Many humans can't tell ducks from loons - a serious bit of "diversity" that is invisible to all but an educated and experienced minority of humans. The ducks don't have that problem, nor do the loons.
Ok, let's take this to its probably totally pointless conclusion then: If the police discriminate between "race", given certain "racial features", because (a) they can, and (b) they think it's important, why do they think it's important (let's leave the "because they can" out of the discussion for now, and assume that most are capable of making this discrimination between different "races"). So then, why is it important that the police (or anyone else) discriminate a person's racial or ethnic background - why is it important to determine "race"?
It is really statistics. If blacks overrepresent their normal population in prison 3-4 times, it is just good police work to pull over black drivers and search their cars, because they are more likely to be drugdealers.... If midgets are not very likely to be serial killers, it is bad police work to concentrate on the midget population while investigating a serial murder.....
As long as you don't draw significant genetic conclusions from insignificant differences in appearance - such as those between any two humans of the same sex. And if you spend all your police time pulling over black drivers and searching their cars, blacks will be more likely to be caught dealing drugs and therefore overrepresented in the population of your prisons. So it all works out well, if your goal is to imprison black people. People who look black to the properly conditioned police officer, I mean.
Vkothii, I couldn't speculate on what circumstances 'anyone else' would have for determining a person's ethnic makeup, but the police may sometimes do a DNA analysis to help identify the perp of a crime. If a serious crime is investigated, such as a murder with no eyewitnesses, DNA collected at the scene can help narrow the field of potential suspects. For instance, if analysis of the DNA indicates the suspect was of almost totally northern european descent, there is no need to investigate the Asian and African-Americans in the area.
Well, to be politically correct, their is no such thing as 'race'. But they can use DNA analysis to determine ethnic backgrounds. They use 'markers' in the DNA to determine which ethnic origins are present in the DNA. Of course, there may be a mixture of origins present that makes determing physical appearance difficult, but the information can still be used to eliminate some ethnic backgrounds. For instance, if the ethnic makeup is a mixture of european and west african, they may not what appearance or skin tone the person has, but they can probably eliminate, among others, Asian and Indian people from their list.
That looks like blatant racial stereotyping, but I'm well aware it passes for "good police work" in a lot of countries. But aren't there at least two problems with this approach: 1) The police aren't really investigating the problem at all, they're really just assigning blame at the outset (finding a group to assign blame to), when they arrest a lot of black criminals this reinforces the stereotype "black people commit more crimes because black people are the ones in jail"; 2) what's to stop the criminals who aren't black (or drivers) from seeing an opportunity to commit crime with impunity, since the stupid cops are chasing the "wrong guys"? If I was a criminal with any brains, I'd be quite happy for the authorities to assign blame to someone else, and let me commit crimes more or less freely because I happen to be of Caucasian descent. I could tell them about the black guys I saw running from the scene, etc. The concept of racial profiling via DNA "fingerprinting", is a concept based on a misunderstanding of what DNA profiling is, I would say. How would a DNA fingerprint reveal that someone came from Mongolia, or India say? You realise how much work is involved in doing an actual genetic analysis and not a "profile"? Edit: having just seen your last post: how good an indicator are these "markers"? Is it any more definitive than the "science" of actual fingerprinting? Fingerprints are supposed to be unequivocal, like a DNA profile. But this claim has never been tested - we just take the word of police and FBI and so on that it's reliable. It's reliable because someone said so...?
Vkothii, I said nothing about "racial profiling". The markers, usually different allies I think, are used to determine ethnic background. It is based on science, not racism. The costs of a genetic analysis for markers is not unusually high. You can even have an analysis done on your own DNA for 21 'markers' for $299 if you are curious about your ethnic background. http://www.dnatribes.com/order.html
Of course, but not very often. It depends on the severity of the crime, whether or not they have a DNA sample to analize, lack of eyewitnesses to the crime, etc. If they come across a bit of DNA they think came from a serial killer or rapist about which they have no other information, the analysis can help to focus their search. It eliminates some ethnic backgrounds while concentrating on others, so I guess you could say that is 'profiling'. They may also look for a female rather than a male, so that could be said to be 'profiling' in the same sense, as some view police procedure.
You introduced the "science" of ethnic markers in DNA testing. I want to know how reliable a marker or indicator it is. Does anyone know? It "might" be useful, so as you say, something the police would consider doing to focus on an unknown identity?
