Racial classifications [Was: Also an Austro-Asiatic Disconnect]

From: Francesco Brighenti
Message: 42023
Date: 2005-11-10

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-
language@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti"
> <frabrig@... wrote:
> >
> > The validity of Sergent's old-fashioned racial classifications,
> > dating back to B.S. Guha's times (1930's), is generally not
> > confirmed by current genetic research. "Black skin", for
instance, > > cannot be taken as a genetically inherited physical
character.
>
> I have no horse in this race but I cannot permit scientifically
unsound > ideas to be propagated without, at least, a challenge. >
> Color (of skin, hair, and eyes) _is_ a genetically inherited
feature. > > While only upper-class humans seem to take it into
consideration when reproducing, traits like color are maintained and
enhanced through > scientific animal breeding.
>
> [...]
>
> Francesco, I respect what you are contributing to the discussion
in general > but you must rid yourself of these out-of-date half-
explanations.

The dark vs. light skin classificatory scheme was meant by me merely
as an example of how theorists of race diversity, old and new, are
prone to label different human groups as different 'races' on the
basis of phenotypical characters which are, no doubt, genetically
inherited through natural selection determined by environmental
conditions, but for which variation, afaik, no abysmal variation in
the *overall* human gene pool is required besides the mutation of a
few genes.

Bernard Sergent, whose racial classification of South Asian
populations was the real issue in my post, is under many aspects an
excellent scholar who nevertheless, because of his cultural leaning
to the French _Nouvelle Droite_, accepts old-fashioned racial
classifications rather acritically -- see, for instance, Sunthar
Visuvalingam's English translation of some excerpts of his book _La
genèse de l'Inde_ at

http://www.svabhinava.org/AITvsOIT/Sergent-AfroDravidian.htm

Can you tell me, Patrick, to which scientifically determined gene
pools the racial labels 'Veddoid', 'Melano-Indian', 'Mediterranean'
(in its 'Ibero-insular', 'Atlanto-Mediterranean', 'Indo-
Afghan', 'South-oriental', 'Saharan', and 'Nordic' variants)
correspond? If the genes that determine the phenotypical differences
corresponding to the above racial labels are not detected (and I
think they haven't been detected to date), I assume those labels to
be the projections of preconceived ideas about the existence
of 'human races' professed by a section of old and new physical
anthropologists .

Identifying the migration of languages and cultures with that
of 'races' -- whatever this term means -- is a discredited
scientific method that, as I hope, will be discarded by 21st-century
anthropologists.

One does not need to be a 'liberal' to understand this basic truth.

Thanks,
Francesco