Race

Genetic Variation

Wikipedia, an excellent source for dubious knowledge, states that human to human genetic variation is estimated to be at least 0.5% (99.5% similarity), including copy number variation. Copy number variation is inherited, but also can arise during development.
0.5% doesn’t sound like a lot, because, well, it’s typically not. I’d be moderately happy if my savings account earned 0.5% right now, just so I could scoff at the $0.36 that it earned by the end of the year.
0.5% genetic variation among humans isn’t a lot either. Color, as they say, is just skin deep.
Why then, has skin color and race played such an important role in the course of recent human history? Presumably, when Homo sapiens emerged from Africa 200 thousand years ago, they all had the same skin color and there wasn’t much variation in race. The gene pool was more concentrated back then, obviously.
Even now, with nearly 7 billion humans on the planet, there is about 99.5% genetic similarity between me and you, no matter where you live in the world and no matter which race, color, or culture you claim you’re from.
Scott Brown’s Racist Comments
With that context in mind, I boggled when I heard about the debate between incumbent Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown vs. Elizabeth Warren. Brown referred to Warren as “Professor Warren” a little too often, which made me wonder if Brown thought being a professor was a detriment. Besides that, Brown also said and did this:
Brown began the debate by saying Warren "checked the box claiming she is Native American, and clearly she is not."
Brown called on Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School, to release records related to her hiring at the school to show whether she got an unfair advantage. (Source)
As if this wasn’t bad enough, Brown doubled down in a TV ad today that showed a series of TV clips, including a newscaster who said, “Elizabeth Warren is trying to put questions about her heritage behind her. . . She is facing tough questions about whether she claimed to be a minority for professional gain.” (Source)
Warren responded with her own TV ad today, which defended her Native American heritage:
Let me be clear. I never asked for, never got any benefit because of my heritage. The people who hired me have all said they didn’t even know about it. . . Scott Brown can continue attacking my family, but I’m going to keep fighting for yours. (Source)
Normally politicians try to hide being racist. It’s not too often that you face blatant racism, like pointing at a woman and saying she is clearly not Native American based on… uh, I don’t know. Skin color? Because she’s educated? Wealthy?
~ Intermission ~
“Oliver, come over here,” Meg called. She let out Penny to do her business outside.
“What’s up?” I said, getting up from my computer.
“The mantis is back.”
Last night, we got a splendid praying mantis specimen sitting on the outside of our back door screen. Tonight, he’s back on the stucco wall near the door. Is he giving me the stinkeye? Here he is:

I like the torso that looks like a folded leaf or green bud. I ran to get the camera, which gave me some blurry pictures. I returned with my iPhone, which worked better.
“I shall call him Zorak,” Meg declared.
~ Back to the Show ~
So why is Scott Brown using Elizabeth Warren’s genetic and cultural heritage as a political attack? He’s lumping it in with an attack on affirmative action, even though it’s unwarranted in Warren’s case (no phonetic pun intended).
I’ve never been fond of affirmative action, at least on the onset. I haven’t given it a lot of deep thought, but I think that everyone should be given a fair chance. If you have two people applying for one spot in college and they are equal in all ways but their race, why should we pick the racial minority over the majority? The idea of being denied entrance to college because I was the wrong color worried me when I sent out my applications.
Then again, I doubt we’d ever get the hypothetical situation where the two kids are always equal in all ways but their race. I think if you broke it down statistically, the minority race kid came from a much harder position in life to get to the same point as the majority race kid, and thus, maybe deserves more of a break to get into college than the majority race kid. At that point though, I suppose the people accepting applicants are also looking at socio-economic status and other factors rather than just specifically race.
~ Racial Designations ~
As silly as race is, it’s a good descriptor to narrow down a description of what a person looks like without much effort. I see bank robbery notices all the time, and they often use race.
There’s also a form known as a HMDA loan application registrar (LAR) in banking (HMDA is pronounced hum-duh). It’s a required form for closed-end real-estate lending, like a typical 10-year home equity loan or a first mortgage, let’s say. If you apply for a first mortgage or a closed-end home equity, the lender is required to ask you some questions, which makes it way to the government, to comply with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.
The questions on the LAR include questions about the applicant’s ethnicity and race.
Definitions go thusly:Ethnicity
— Hispanic or Latino
— Not Hispanic or Latino
— Not applicable

Race
— American Indian or Alaska Native
— Asian
— Black or African American
— Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
— White
— Not applicable
 
To matters even more interesting, applicants are permitted to answer more than one category to describe themselves.
 
The intent of the LAR is to prevent discrimination; it allows the government to regulate unfair lending practices and enforce anti-discriminatory laws in the ECOA, FHA, etc. But my point of bringing this up isn’t because of lending regulations, but because of the government’s peculiar views on ethnicity and race.

~ Another Intermission ~
I’m drinking raspberry flavored Diet Snapple. I have it upon good authority (i.e., my sister-in-law with a B.S. in chemistry) that most things flavored with “raspberry” really comes from the anal gland of a beaver. Don’t believe me? Google “castoreum” and hold onto your hats.
Now I wonder what “Natural Raspberry Flavor With Other Natural Flavors” means exactly? Flavors extracted directly from a beaver’s anal glands are technically natural. Whelp. I don’t trust the word “natural” anyway. There are plenty of natural, gross things out there which I wouldn’t prefer to ingest. For example, cyanide and arsenic. At least beaver anus glands are somewhat tasty.
~ More about Racial Designations ~
Hispanic or Latino
I think many could consider “Hispanic” or “Latino” as races, although I don’t quite understand the definition. In Tucson, it’s mostly just “Mexican,” but I think the more generic term used in these parts is Latino.
 
I leaned over and asked Meg her opinion. Here are her definitions:
 
Hispanic: someone with Spanish heritage (whether they come from Mexico, Central America, or Spain)
Latino: someone from Mexico or Central America
 
After some ambitious googlage, this appears to be fairly accurate. I wonder what term the designees of these titles prefer? Do they consider this to be an ethnicity or a race?
 
Black or African American
I’ve never been a fan of the –American tag. If we’re going to talk about race, should we add a young country like America into the mix? How far back does a heritage have to go to be added in a person’s racial designation? If you go back far enough, like I mentioned at the start of this entry, we are all Africans. There’s even an official shirt.
 
Nevertheless, the term persists because I think most people feel a little uncomfortable bringing up race in terms of skin color anymore, at least when it comes to anyone but “white.” You can’t call Asians “yellow” without sounding horribly racist. So the word “black” has been phased out slightly for the more neutral “African American.”
 
It kind of makes you wonder, though, how you would refer to a dark skinned person living outside of Africa or America, like the British actor Colin Salmon? I think some people, when describing Colin Salmon’s race, would start to say “African American,” even though America has nothing to do with his race.
 
I’ve heard some people say “black” without any negative connotations, and even some people who’ve said “black” and “African American” in the same breath, as if they’re interchangeable.
 
White or Caucasian
A mentioned previously, “white” seems to be a fairly accepted term, but “Caucasian” seems to be thrown around quite a bit. Caucasian refers to the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, parts of Central Asia, and South Asia. It supposedly is derived from Vainakh ancestor Kavkas. Vainakhs are the ancient natives of the Caucasus. Caucasus – Kavkas – Kavkasians. Something like that.
 
It’s an interesting history lesson, but really, I don’t have a clue if I’m a descendent of the Kavkas or the Vainakhs. I’m probably just as genetically related to the Kavkas as I am to the Africans of the Congo. At some point my ancestors lived in northern climes, since their skin adapted to the lack of sunshine by becoming lighter to gain more Vitamin D during the shorter summers. I can trace my mother’s half of my ancestry to a small part of Austria/Slovenia, which fits my skin color. Beyond that, I don’t identify with any race, aside from declaring myself a primate animal in the species H. sapiens sapiens.
 
As for white, well, it’s not technically accurate. A truly white person would be an albino. A truly black person doesn’t exist. It’s mostly dark and light browns, taupes, peaches, olives, and so forth. White isn’t not a term I prefer to describe myself, either, although if put in a corner, I might check the box for the sake of expediency.
 
Native American or American Indian or Alaska Native
Back in college, I studied Lakota for a semester, and the language didn’t have past or future tense. I’m quite certain Native Americans have names for themselves which have different connotations than English. I used to see the term Amerindian used occasional, which I enjoyed, because it flows off the tongue if anything else.
 
The confusion that Columbus promulgated by thinking the natives in the Caribbean and the mainland Americas were “Indians,” and how this ended up in the English language, has always puzzled me. But apparently it’s easy to confuse races if your preconceptions are strong enough.
 
I also find it weird that most Europeans thought it was perfectly normal when they found out that they just discovered lands… with people living there already. You’d think this would have been the biggest news: NEW HUMAN RACE DISCOVERED – CONTACT MADE. Instead, I guess it was NEW LAND DISCOVERED – CLAIMED BY SPAIN. Anyway, this is getting off-topic.
 
What do they prefer? I suspect “Native American” these days is the most accepted form, at least when non-Native Americans refer to them. I suspect that the people in question prefer to use their tribal names (Pascua Yaqui, Tohono O’odham, Hohokam to give you some local examples).
 
Elizabeth Warren, for her part, defended herself on her TV ad today:
 
As a kid, I never asked my mom for documentation when she talked about our Native American Heritage. What kid would? . . . I knew my father’s family didn’t like that she was part Cherokee and part Delaware. So my parents had to elope. (Source)
 
Maybe the government’s on the right track with the HMDA LAR, and you should be able to just check whatever boxes you want without anyone judging you for it. But why should it matter in America what race you descended from? America is supposed to be the melting pot, where everyone regardless of heritage gets a chance, to dare to dream, to just drop all the racial designation and identify with the country instead. I’m not White-American. I’m not Caucasian-American. I’m American. A somewhat peach-skinned American.