[Conservationist]

The FBI, Louisiana State Police, Baton Rouge Police Department and sheriff’s departments soon began a massive search. Based on an FBI profile and a confident eyewitness, the Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force futilely upended South Louisiana in search of a young white man who drove a white pick-up truck. They interrogated possible suspects, knocked on hundreds of doors, held frequent press conferences and sorted through thousands of tips.

In late December, after a fourth murder, police set up a dragnet to obtain DNA from some 1200 white men. Authorities spent months and more than a million dollars running those samples against the killer’s. Still nothing.

In early March, 2003, investigators turned to Tony Frudakis, a molecular biologist who said he could determine the killer’s race by analyzing his DNA. They were unsure about the science, so, before giving him the go-ahead, the task force sent Frudakis DNA swabs taken from 20 people whose race they knew and asked him to determine their races through blind testing. He nailed every single one.

Still, when they gathered in the Baton Rouge police department for a conference call with Frudakis in mid-March, they were not prepared to hear or accept his conclusions about the killer.

“Your guy has substantial African ancestry,” said Frudakis. “He could be Afro-Caribbean or African American but there is no chance that this is a Caucasian. No chance at all.”

There was a prolonged, stunned silence, followed by a flurry of questions looking for doubt but Frudakis had none. Would he bet his life on this, they wanted to know? Absolutely. In fact, he was certain that the Baton Rouge serial killer was 85 percent Sub-Saharan African and 15 percent native American.

“This means we’re going to turn our investigation in an entirely different direction,” Frudakis recalls someone saying. “Are you comfortable with that?”

“Yes. I recommend you do that,” he said. And now, rather than later since, in the time it took Frudakis to analyze the sample, the killer had claimed his fifth victim. The task force followed Frudakis’ advice and, two months later, the killer was in custody.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoverie ... 0/dnaprint

Holy s**t! I thought race was a social construct!!!1!

[ThereBeDragons]

The genetic component of race is very much not a social construct because it's in your genes; it's simply the genetics that control your appearance. Genetics can be determined.

This doesn't disprove that race, as a social force, is a social construct.

[[Edit]] In addition, this isn't racial profiling.

[PBVBROOK]

The genetic component of race is very much not a social construct because it's in your genes; it's simply the genetics that control your appearance. Genetics can be determined.

This doesn't disprove that race, as a social force, is a social construct.

[[Edit]] In addition, this isn't racial profiling.

QFT.

[HoniSoit]

The genetic component of race

You fail, TYB.

Are you living in the 19th century?

Race has no genetic or biological basis.

[Zyx]

Race has no genetic or biological basis.

. . . I was so considering making this thread one chain of the copy of TYB's response . . .

I think the usage of "race" here is one suggesting ancestry . . . in essence, "ancestry" is "genetic." After all, the use of argument within the article was "ancestry" rather than "inherent social behavior."

[Donna]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait_%28biological%29

[capndoncarnage]

Race has no genetic or biological basis.

That's quite true.

How this molecular biologist figured out his "race" is quite easy. within the nucleus of a cell there are x and y chromosomes. If we, for example, were to take the y chromosome and analyze its chemical structure, we would find a sequence of repeating chemical compounds( Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, and Cytosine). Depending on how these chemical compounds were structured, one could compare it to another person. It just so happens that this man's genes are comparable to a family lineage coming out of Africa. So if we were to look at it this way, it's not so much that genes define race, but rather our genes are similar to our forefathers. If there were no genetic samples of people from the sub-sahara region, it's quite possible that a scientist wouldn't know the man was black.

So yeah, race is a social construct.

[ThereBeDragons]

Are you living in the 19th century?

21st.

Race has no genetic or biological basis.

Race has a genetic basis. Black people have genes that make them black. White people have genes that make them white. Treating them differently in a social context would be socially constructing race, but that's not what we're doing.

The aspect of race that I (and this article) is concerned about is less about the actual grouping than the characteristics used to group them. On a purely genetic basis, race may be hard to classify, but in terms of physical appearance and the genes that create that appearance, race is a way to refer to the set of physical characteristics that are entwined with a race. Rather than say "a person with characteristics which have historically been associated with people referred to as black," or to completely leave it say, "a person with <THIS PHYSICAL TRAIT>, <THAT PHYSICAL TRAIT>, <MORE PHYSICAL TRAITS>, etcetera," we can simply say, "a black person" and have it more or less make sense.

[Donna]

TBY is correct. Black people make black babies, Asian people make Asian babies. It cannot be more obvious. To proclaim there is no genetic element to race is a politically correct un-science.

[Steven_K]

Race, as a phenotypical characteristic, is real, but all significant genetic diversity is within races. That is, race is only a meaningful category for dividing people's skin colour, but cannot speak meaningful to any of the other characteristics the constituted the traditional categories of race. So, you can track someone's genetic heritage certain regions but that doesn't tell you anything meaningful about the individual except MAYBE skin colour, hair colour, eye colour, and MAYBE some more extensive physical characteristics, but thats it. That is extremely different from how race scientists have understood race.

Edit: Jesus christ, Donald. Show me one "politically correct" person claiming that phenotypical traits are not passed on genetically.

[KurtFF8]

On a biological basis, race is as arbitrary and insignificant as hair color.

[capndoncarnage]

Black people have genes that make them black. White people have genes that make them white.

There isn't much scientific evidence linking race and genetics. Black people have darker skin because that's the phenotype of their parents. What makes a man black in Nigeria and another man black in South Africa is because their parents were black, not because they somehow are genetically similar!

[PBVBROOK]

Political correctness gone MAD. Sometimes things are so absurd that people just have to believe them.

All this bullshit boils down to this.

Race exists because:

It is so damn easy to demonstrate.


Better reason. It is the law. Race exists because government mandates that it does.

Best reason: Race exists because it is important to a significant number of people. Most really. Some self identify some point fingers none can escape it. It is an obvious and inevitable conclusion in and of itself.

[capndoncarnage]

Race exists because:

It is so damn easy to demonstrate.


Better reason. It is the law. Race exists because government mandates that it does.

Best reason: Race exists because it is important to a significant number of people. Most really. Some self identify some point fingers none can escape it. It is an obvious and inevitable conclusion in and of itself.

If in the whole race is social construct kind of way, then yes. But there is insufficient evidence of race in the scientific sense.