User talk:Patrick0Moran/Race rewrite

P0M: I would like to see the first sentence of every paragraph be a good topic sentence, i.e., it should state clearly what we intend to demonstrate or prove in the paragraph. It should also not refer to something in the body of the previous paragraph, but only to previous topic sentences.

This is a good outline of what we have. I think there should be some way to reorganize it, and I am not sure which is best. Two come immediately to mind: first, entirely chronologically (and subsume topics like the politics of race, anthropological views, and race and intelligence, into the chronology); second, entirely topical or theoretical (biological reductionist versus social construction, or something else) -- actually, I see problems with both approaches and don't really like either one. Unfortunately, my schedule right now doesn't allow me to spend a lot of time on this but I've book-marked this page and will make comments or suggestions when I can, Slrubenstein

This should probably be moved to the user namespace or to a better title. Maximus Rex 04:45, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC) P0M:Done

P0M: Regarding reorganizing: I am now tending toward the view that the material should be organized chronologically. I just recently was writing a bit on Carolus Linnaeus and was surprised to discover that he had created sub-species for Homo sapiens, and that his discussion of sub-species characteristics indicated that "white is wonderful" and that every other sub-species had moral and/or intellectual failings.

P0M: The crux of the matter among those who are trying to be objective would seem to be that those inclined to support {race} look at what I guess you could call the "clinal center" (I'm thinking of the innermost circle on a topo map, the part that represents the peak of Denali or whatever is highest on that part of the map.) If you find two such "peaks", then its easy to find characteristics that are not shared, but the lower you go into the valley between the peaks the more mixture of characteristics there is, and that broader perspective motivates the other group to ask, "To what {race} do the people in the valley or the hybridization zone belong?"

P0M: I think that a historical treatment could show how science got from a point where it only looked at the "Denali people" and the "K-2 race" and fuzzed out everything in between, to a point where people like Boas were pointing out that there were no discrete groups anywhere, no groups that were genetically bounded by discontinuities. We seem now to be being treated by some smoke and mirrors by the people at Stanford who seem to be trying to announce as an amazing discovery the fact that there are actually genetic differences between whites and blacks. I will have to get that Science article from our library and see whether they have come up with any amazing facts about {racial} differences that we did not already know from testing people for lactose intolerance or whatever. I actually wrote an e-mail to one of the professors at Stanford asking him as an alumnus and colleague to explain why he prefers the word "race" to the word "population," but I have as yet not been honored by a reply.