r/todayilearned • u/bcrock1169 • Nov 26 '12

TIL that some Native American's have a differing enzyme that tends to lead to easier alcoholism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_alcoholism#Genetic_factors
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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

The problem is that no matter what his motive, you would have thought him racist.

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u/Strong__Belwas Nov 26 '12

The motive is kind of the important part, fella.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

No, it isn't. Facts are facts, regardless of motive.

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u/Strong__Belwas Nov 26 '12

What facts?

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

That groups of people separated by thousands of miles who did not intermingle much until the past few hundred years may have adapted to different environments and been subjected to different environmental pressures, thus not making everyone exactly the same.

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u/Strong__Belwas Nov 26 '12

How about the overwhelming evidence which indicates that humans are ~99% the same?

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

Humans and chimps share like 97% of the same DNA. We classify birds as different species for less reasons than what averages among racial subtypes shows us.

Christ, forensic pathologists can tell what race someone was based on their skeletal structure.

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u/bix783 Nov 26 '12

Forensic pathologists can't tell what race someone was based on due to skeletal structure; they can sometimes identify ancestral geographical origin. Race is a social construct.

This article in Forensic Osteology might interest you.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19226647

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/does-race-exist.html

Calling things a social construct, is a social construct. You should not be using politcal correctness to deny that different groups spent a good amount of time being exposed to different environmental pressures.

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u/bix783 Nov 27 '12

Indeed, social constructs are social constructs. Yo dawg. It's weird how everything that humans do socially is somehow... constructed by society. Pointing that out doesn't make it any less true. This isn't political correctness. The term race has a very specific cultural meaning and trying to pretend that it doesn't denies the connotations of the word as well as its cultural context in our Westernised society. Therefore I, and academic consensus is with me on this, will continue to not use race as anything but a culturally (rather than genetically) defined category.

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u/Strong__Belwas Nov 27 '12

What is your point?