Obama is not black

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by w1z4rd, Nov 3, 2008.

  1. Betrayer0fHope MY COHERENCE! IT'S GOING AWAYY Registered Senior Member

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    2,311
    Hmm, we have a statistic here in the US that 12% of our population is Black. Does this include the "colored" people, as you say? Or is it just what people fill in when they're asked? I know some half black half white people who put other, some who put black, but none who put white. Nevertheless, Obama is black. He is also white. People just seem to forget the second part.
     
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  3. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

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    I'd have to disagree. Sure most wealthy people know that everyone's money is green, but being rich doesn't make you white. My parents would be considered upper middle class. They make quite a bit of money and the other kids used to say I was "rich", (back in school) but that didn't change my race or people's first impression of me. Like I said I will always be the black girl. Not that there is anything wrong with being the "black girl" I'm proud of who I am and where I come from. However I always feel like people are stepping on eggshells when they are around me or automatically assume certain things about me simply based on race. I know that they probably don't know that they do this. They don't do it to be hateful or mean so I don't take offense, but they still do it.
     
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  5. sniffy Banned Banned

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    Please either get over yourself or give up your computer and chair! Tap, tap, tap.

    Capitalists are capitalists. It is a system based on exploitation which as we know is not sustainable. another system greatly flawed as all encompassing systems tend to be.


    You do love the sweeping generalisations don't you? And remind me again how two humans mating produce offspring that is 'mixed race' as 'race' doesn't exist at a biological level?

    Is this something you think of as some sort of argument? Human beings mating with each other does seem to be a huge issue for you.

    And your point is? Why don't you go and do some research on the importance of biodiversity.


    Leave Pepe out of this! I live in a small house and he was rejected by one of those nasty capitalist dog breeders for his wonky eye. And he's cute.


    Interesting yet sleep inducing, eh?



    Which global studies are these then?

    They do? Do they emerge at 8 months rather than 9 then and dressed all ready for school?

    Is there something wrong with wanting to be academic? I thought the intellect was everything to you?

    Anyway.....primate skin colour:

    Melanin comes in two types: pheomelanin (red) and eumelanin (very dark brown). Both amount and type are determined by four to six genes which operate under incomplete dominance. One copy of each of those genes is inherited from each parent. Each gene comes in several alleles, resulting in the great variety of different skin tones.

    For reference - some research:

    The Biology of Skin Color: Black and White


    The evolution of race was as simple as the politics of race is complex
    By Gina Kirchweger

    Ten years ago, while at the university of Western Australia, anthropologist Nina Jablonski was asked to give a lecture on human skin. As an expert in primate evolution, she decided to discuss the evolution of skin color, but when she went through the literature on the subject she was dismayed. Some theories advanced before the 1970s tended to be racist, and others were less than convincing. White skin, for example, was reported to be more resistant to cold weather, although groups like the Inuit are both dark and particularly resistant to cold. After the 1970s, when researchers were presumably more aware of the controversy such studies could kick up, there was very little work at all. "It's one of these things everybody notices," Jablonski says, "but nobody wants to talk about."

    No longer. Jablonski and her husband, George Chaplin, a geographic information systems specialist, have formulated the first comprehensive theory of skin color. Their findings, published in a recent issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, show a strong, somewhat predictable correlation between skin color and the strength of sunlight across the globe. But they also show a deeper, more surprising process at work: Skin color, they say, is largely a matter of vitamins.

    Jablonski, now chairman of the anthropology department at the California Academy of Sciences, begins by assuming that our earliest ancestors had fair skin just like chimpanzees, our closest biological relatives. Between 4.5 million and 2 million years ago, early humans moved from the rain forest and onto the East African savanna. Once on the savanna, they not only had to cope with more exposure to the sun, but they also had to work harder to gather food. Mammalian brains are particularly vulnerable to overheating: A change of only five or six degrees can cause a heatstroke. So our ancestors had to develop a better cooling system.

    The answer was sweat, which dissipates heat through evaporation. Early humans probably had few sweat glands, like chimpanzees, and those were mainly located on the palms of their hands and the bottoms of their feet. Occasionally, however, individuals were born with more glands than usual. The more they could sweat, the longer they could forage before the heat forced them back into the shade. The more they could forage, the better their chances of having healthy offspring and of passing on their sweat glands to future generations.

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/3/text_pop/l_073_04.html

    Now DeepThought I know this is a silly question but do you have anything contradictory to say?
     
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  7. sniffy Banned Banned

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    Another piece of science:


    The earliest members of the hominid lineage probably had a mostly unpigmented or lightly pigmented integument covered with dark black hair, similar to that of the modern chimpanzee. The evolution of a naked, darkly pigmented integument occurred early in the evolution of the genus Homo. A dark epidermis protected sweat glands from UV-induced injury, thus insuring the integrity of somatic thermoregulation. Of greater significance to individual reproductive success was that highly melanized skin protected against UV-induced photolysis of folate (Branda & Eaton, 1978, Science201, 625–626; Jablonski, 1992, Proc. Australas. Soc. Hum. Biol.5, 455–462, 1999, Med. Hypotheses52, 581–582), a metabolite essential for normal development of the embryonic neural tube (Bower & Stanley, 1989, The Medical Journal of Australia150, 613–619; Medical Research Council Vitamin Research Group, 1991, The Lancet338, 31–37) and spermatogenesis (Cosentino et al., 1990, Proc. Natn. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.87, 1431–1435; Mathur et al., 1977, Fertility Sterility28, 1356–1360).

    As hominids migrated outside of the tropics, varying degrees of depigmentation evolved in order to permit UVB-induced synthesis of previtamin D3. The lighter color of female skin may be required to permit synthesis of the relatively higher amounts of vitamin D3necessary during pregnancy and lactation.

    Skin coloration in humans is adaptive and labile. Skin pigmentation levels have changed more than once in human evolution. Because of this, skin coloration is of no value in determining phylogenetic relationships among modern human groups.

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJS-45F4X4V-13&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c70b4804251d1e749613802a0f9eb94b

    And another:

    The primate face and rump undergo colour modulations (such as blushing or blanching on the human face, or socio-sexual signalling on the chimpanzee rump), some which may be selected for signalling and some which may be an inevitable consequence of underlying physiological modulations. Because for highly social animals like most primates, one of the most important kinds of object to be competent at perceiving and discriminating is other members of one's own species, we investigated the hypothesis that primate colour vision has been selected for discriminating the spectral modulations on the skin of conspecifics, these modulations providing useful information about the current state or mood of another conspecific.
    .....
    This connection between bare skin and colour vision may be important in understanding why humans are the ‘naked ape’: for primates with colour vision, skin modulations may serve as signalling on any body part that can be seen (e.g. a chimpanzee rump), and for apes that walk upright, more parts of the body are potentially visible and amenable to colour signalling. (See §3 of the electronic supplementary material for further discussion of face bareness and also see §4 and figures 2 and 3, for a discussion of evidence of the visibility of skin colour modulations.)

    http://http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1618887

    So skin colour:

    Presence of increased levels of melanin offering protection from UV exposure
    An indicator of diet and potential vitamin availability/defficiency
    Closely related to evolution of primate colour vision enabling spieces recognition and mood prediction (useful for instance in distinguishing anger from sexual receptivity).
     
  8. Mr. Hamtastic whackawhackado! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,492
    Ok. Stupid question. How is Obama's blackness different than a non-ancestral Jew's Jewishness?

    Then there is the side issue of Black inferiority or superiority or equality genetically.

    I'm sorry, but the major gap between Black and other is the same as the major gap between any set of cultures. Culturally, Obama is pretty fly for a white guy, he has a great tan. Most mulattoes I have known are rejected from the black culture for impurity, and white culture for holding fast to their ancestral culture. I think it's ridiculous.

    Why can't we just accept that all Humans are beneath contempt, and worthy of a slow, torturous death?
     
  9. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    18,523
    Ok lets clean the whole slate and start for square one:

    What is "Black"?
     
  10. Buckaroo Banzai Mentat Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    333
    I think that Obama himself made some comment about not being black or white, but mixed, or whatever is the PC word; he even joked about also not having a pure breed dog as the "first dog", but some mixed or "breedless" one.
     

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