From RTE today:
The number of people who claim they have been victims of racial discrimination in the workplace has doubled, according to statistics released today by the Equality Tribunal.
It is impressive that race is such an issue for so many people. Anthropologists and scientists tell us that there is no scientific basis for the definition of race. Every single person on the planet, apart from identical twins, is different to every other person. Each person has novel mutations and is genetically different.
Large differences in appearance can be the result of small differences in genetics. The overwhelming majority of these genetic differences are inconsequential - eye colour, shape of ear, etc. Some are important - having cystic fibrosis or not, etc. The colour of skin is not important. I find it has no relevance in our attitudes to other people. The colour of my skin is due to some minor genetic element and its manifestation (light colour, freckling) has very little to do with how somebody should react to me.
That’s how I see it anyway.
Leave a comment, if you like.
3 users commented in " Race Discrimination in Ireland "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackLove your blog, James — but there’s no scientific basis for the definition of race? That’s just silly. Really.
Read this and this.
Cheers!
HG
Hi HG: I still haven’t read anything that I find defines a race. Using standard scientific principles, you would need to identify a characteristic that describes all members of a ‘race’ that makes them different to all non-members. Nobody has done that yet.
Race is a social construct without any strict scientific meaning.
For your consideration.
HG
“DNAWitness, the test Frudakis applied in the Baton Rouge case, uses a set of 176 genetic markers selected precisely because they disclose the most information about physical characteristics. Some are found primarily in people of African heritage, while others are found mainly in people of Indo-European, Native American or South Asian heritage.
“No one sequence alone can predict ancestral origin. However, by looking collectively at hundreds and analyzing the frequency of the various markers, Frudakis says he could predict genetic ancestry with 99 percent accuracy.”
The Inconvenient Science of Racial DNA Profiling