Full Version: Skin colour of chinese - is it "yellow"?
China History Forum, Chinese History Forum > Chinese History Topics > Chinese Ethnic Groups and Peoples > Chinese Anthropology
It's funny how the chinese has been perceived as being yellow, africans as blacks and the europeans as whites, because the reality is that chinese aren't really yellow and the whites aren't really white. Where did this idea come from(about chinese being yellow)?
I nerver heard foreigners call chinese "yellow", I only heard chinese call chinese "yellow". That's what my real life experience, and I'm chinese.
QUOTE(Solid_Snake @ Feb 7 2007, 10:09 AM) [snapback]4874811[/snapback]
I nerver heard foreigners call chinese "yellow", I only heard chinese call chinese "yellow". That's what my real life experience, and I'm chinese.
Referring to East Asians as yellow is a byproduct from the Age of Colonialism.
Historically, the people of China never called themselves as being yellow or yellow-skinned, unless they have health problems.
Scientifically, you decide for yourself if you observe the skin colours of East Asians to be closer to yellow or white, as compared with the Caucasians. My own observation is the East Asians are not more yellow than white compared to Caucasians.
so we are as so called "white" as the caucausians are =D
Technically, everyone in the human race is just different shades of pink. Africans are just very very dark pink
Using skin colours as racial terminology carry a lot of historical baggage, even relatively recent ones.
Time to dump it all and start treating people as people rather than colours.
Time to dump it all and start treating people as people rather than colours.
QUOTE(Andy Lau @ Feb 7 2007, 12:46 AM) [snapback]4874825[/snapback]
so we are as so called "white" as the caucausians are =D
To a large extent, yet there are many darker-skinned Chinese south of the Yangtze River (along with most of the linguistic variants of "Chinese" aside from official Han Mandarin, ie. Hakka, Min, Wu, Cantonese, etc.)
Besides, collectively, all East Asians don't average out to look like this:
And, collectively, Caucasians don't average out to look like this:
Lol.
Eric
If we compare coloured comics from East and West, I do notice a common tendency :
Japanese coloured their characters "whiter" and the Caucasians more yellowish in skintones.
Americans coloured their white characters "whiter" and the Chinese/Japanese slightly more yellowish.
Try comparing some manga and some comics.
However, this observation does not apply to the relatively more recent comics.
Japanese coloured their characters "whiter" and the Caucasians more yellowish in skintones.
Americans coloured their white characters "whiter" and the Chinese/Japanese slightly more yellowish.
Try comparing some manga and some comics.
However, this observation does not apply to the relatively more recent comics.
Nah, I don't feel yellow. I don't have jaundice.
QUOTE
because the reality is that we chinese aren't yellow and the whites aren't white
Black's aren't black either.
Great! Perhaps it will be sooner than later that people learn not to use colours for racial references.
QUOTE(Anthrophobia @ Feb 8 2007, 12:49 AM) [snapback]4874996[/snapback]
Black's aren't black either.
some are. skin of some people from certain region of Africa seems to aborb sun light. No kidding. Some however seem to reflect it right back in my eyes......
And there are those that doesn't look that black at all.
White people are actually pink.
Anyway, regarding to Menga. I think none is more telling than "Silent Service".
Because after all this is supposed to be reflection ofthe real world at the time.
So, does the colouring reflect the truth?
White Americans:
Japanese:
White and possible Hispanic Americans:
Another Japanese:
Here you have it all....
Yellow race come from word Yellow Peril
"Yellow Peril"
"Yellow Peril" was a racial epithet directed against persons of Asian descent that was fashionable in Europe and America in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its historical roots can be traced to the persistent theme in Western culture that the barbarian hordes of Asia, a yellow race, were always on the point of invading and destroying Christendom, Europe, and Western civilization itself. This interpretation of history contributed to racism in the United States.
The spirit of this racial slur pervaded major aspects of American diplomacy, congressional legislation, federal-state relations, economic development, transportation, agriculture, public opinion, trade unionism, and education for more than eight decades. The Burlingame Treaty with China in 1868 encouraged the Chinese coolie (a source of cheap labor) to enter the United States to help build the Pacific railroads; however, these immigrants were denied U.S. citizenship under the Naturalization Act of 1790, which limited naturalized citizenship to white persons. Fifty-six years later, with the Immigration Act of 1924, Congress excluded nearly all Asians from the United States. Those restrictions were not eased until 1952 when Congress created quotas for Asian immigration and made people of all races eligible for naturalization.
In the interim, murder, personal and social humiliation, and physical brutality became the lot of the Asian residents, particularly Chinese workers in California and the mining camps of the mountain states. In the late nineteenth century, Chinese residents were targets of sporadic labor violence, which included boycotts and the destruction of Chinese businesses. In 1906, the San Francisco School Board ordered the segregation of all Japanese, Chinese, and Korean children in a separate Oriental school, an order that was rescinded a few months later. And state legislatures and Congress passed laws and entered diplomatic treaties and agreements dealing with China and Japan that were designed to halt the yellow peril. These acts focused on immigration restriction and exclusion, naturalization prohibition, limitations on citizenship, prevention of free transit, and denial of rights to land ownership. The specifics of the yellow peril mania are evident in the CHINESE EXCLUSION ACTS, passed between 1880 and 1904, and in treaties and enactments with Japan, especially the treaties of 1894, 1911, and 1913 and provisions of the Immigration Act of 1907. The yellow peril fear peaked with the Immigration Act of 1924.
Thereafter, in its most gross form the yellow peril declined, although it emerged during the early days of World War II, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the confinement of Japanese Americans in camps. Nevertheless, with changes and modifications evident in new legislation, such as the McCarren-Walter Act of 1952, and administrative actions based on the exigencies of cold war foreign policies, the yellow peril was absorbed by other social forces and concerns of racism in the United States.
Bibliography
Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States Since 1850. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.
Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1925. 2d ed. New York: Atheneum, 1978 (orig. pub. 19
History Yellow Peril
A supposed threat to the United States posed by Japan and China. The phrase arose in the late nineteenth century, at a time when Japanese and Chinese immigration to America was meeting resistance and when Japan was growing as a military power.
The noun yellow peril has one meaning:
the threat to Western civilization said to arise from the power of Asiatic peoples
.
Many sources credit Kaiser Wilhelm II with coining the phrase "Yellow Peril" (in German, "gelbe Gefahr") in September 1895.
While immigration of Asians was not a major issue in Europe, the rise of Japan as a major world power was a cause of anxiety for some Europeans.
In 1898 M. P. Shiel published a short story serial The Yellow Danger. Shiel took the murder of two German missionaries in Kiau-Tschou 1897 to spread his anti-Chinese feelings. In later editions the serial was named The Yellow Peril.
United States
The notion of "yellow peril" manifested itself in government policy with the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which reduced Chinese immigration from 30,000 per year to just 105. The labor leader Samuel Gompers argued, "The superior whites had to exclude the inferior Asiatics, by law, or, if necessary, by force of arms."
In 1920, the author Lothrop Stoddard wrote The Rising Tide of Color arguing against Asian immigration, claiming immigrants threatened American society, with their presence a "peril."
Lynchings of Asian immigrants by vigilante groups were common in the early 1900s, paralleling the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and related groups in the South against African-Americans. California academics such as David Starr Jordan and politicians such as James D. Phelan (who ran for mayor of San Francisco and United States Senate on the platform of "Keeping California White") were firm believers in the "yellow peril", and the politics of Washington highlighted "yellow peril". The fear of the yellow peril reached its peak during World War II after the Japanese Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor. The Yellow Peril as the primary form of West Coast racism and as a factor in politics seemed to die out in the mid-20th century, perhaps due to guilt over the Japanese American internment during World War II.
In the 1980s the Yellow Peril was revived as the US was in intense competition with Japan over industrial supremacy. Many believed that the beating to death of Vincent Chin was a part of that US sentiment.
Since the 1990s there has been increased concern in the United States over what has been perceived as an attempt by the People's Republic of China to challenge the United States militarily and economically.
The Yellow Peril is a major topic of study in Asian American studies.
New Zealand
The "yellow peril" was a significant part of the policy platform promoted by Richard Seddon, a populist New Zealand prime minister, in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Measures designed to curb Chinese immigration included a substantial poll tax, which was abolished in 1944 following Imperial Japan's invasion and occupation of China, and for which the New Zealand government has since issued a formal apology.
Yellow Peril myth
The Yellow Peril was a common theme in the fiction of the time. Perhaps most representative of this is Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels.
The "Yellow Peril" was a frequent theme of pulp fiction in the early 20th century. The Swedish author Sven Lindqvist has pointed out that several science fiction novels from the time depicting cataclysmic clashes of civilizations take particular relish in describing the ultimate defeat of the Chinese, as compared to Africans or communists.
Jack London's 1914 story "The Unparalleled Invasion", taking place in a fictional 1975, described a China with an ever-increasing population taking over and colonising its neighbors, with the intention of eventually taking over the entire Earth. Thereupon the nations of the West open biological warfare and bombard China with dozens of the most infectious diseases - among them smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, and Black Death - with all Chinese attempting to flee being shot down by armies and navies massed around their country's land and sea borders, and the few survivors of the plague invariably put to death by "mopping up" expeditions entering China.
This genocide, described in considerable sickening detail, is througout the book described as justified and "the only possible solution to the Chinese problem", and nowhere is there mentioned any objection to it. The terms "Yellow Race", "Yellow crowds in streets", "yellow faces" and the like are frequently repeated throughout the story. It ends with the edifying spectacle of "The Sanitation of China" and its re-settlement by Western settlers, "the democratic American programme" as London puts it (see [2], [3]).
Philip Francis Nowlan's novella Armageddon 2419 A.D., which first appeared in the August 1928 and was the start of the long-lasting popular Buck Rogers series, depicted a future America which had been occupied and colonised by cruel invaders from China, which the hero and his friends proceed to fight and kill wholesale.
Robert A. Heinlein's novel Sixth Column depicts American resistance to an invasion by a blatantly racist and genocidally cruel "PanAsian" empire.
H.P. Lovecraft was in constant fear of Asiatic culture engulfing the world, and a few of his stories reflect this.
In the late 1950's, Atlas Comics debuted the Yellow Claw, a Fu Manchu pastiche. However, a growing realization of the racist nature of the character archetype led to the villain having a handsome young Asian FBI agent, James Woo, being his principal opponent. Other characters inspired by Rohmer's Fu Manchu include Pao Tcheou.
A 1977 Doctor Who serial, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, builds a science fiction plot upon another loose Fu Manchu pastiche. In this case, the key "yellow devil" character serves to enable an ill-intentioned time traveller from the fifty-first century.
Yellow Peril is a book by Wang Lixiong, written under the pseudonym Bao Mi, about a civil war in the People's Republic of China that becomes a nuclear exchange and soon engulfs the world, causing World War III. It's notable for Wang Lixiong's politics, a Chinese dissident and outspoken activist, its publication following Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and its popularity due to bootleg distribution across China even when the book was banned by the Communist Party of China.
"Yellow Peril"
"Yellow Peril" was a racial epithet directed against persons of Asian descent that was fashionable in Europe and America in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its historical roots can be traced to the persistent theme in Western culture that the barbarian hordes of Asia, a yellow race, were always on the point of invading and destroying Christendom, Europe, and Western civilization itself. This interpretation of history contributed to racism in the United States.
The spirit of this racial slur pervaded major aspects of American diplomacy, congressional legislation, federal-state relations, economic development, transportation, agriculture, public opinion, trade unionism, and education for more than eight decades. The Burlingame Treaty with China in 1868 encouraged the Chinese coolie (a source of cheap labor) to enter the United States to help build the Pacific railroads; however, these immigrants were denied U.S. citizenship under the Naturalization Act of 1790, which limited naturalized citizenship to white persons. Fifty-six years later, with the Immigration Act of 1924, Congress excluded nearly all Asians from the United States. Those restrictions were not eased until 1952 when Congress created quotas for Asian immigration and made people of all races eligible for naturalization.
In the interim, murder, personal and social humiliation, and physical brutality became the lot of the Asian residents, particularly Chinese workers in California and the mining camps of the mountain states. In the late nineteenth century, Chinese residents were targets of sporadic labor violence, which included boycotts and the destruction of Chinese businesses. In 1906, the San Francisco School Board ordered the segregation of all Japanese, Chinese, and Korean children in a separate Oriental school, an order that was rescinded a few months later. And state legislatures and Congress passed laws and entered diplomatic treaties and agreements dealing with China and Japan that were designed to halt the yellow peril. These acts focused on immigration restriction and exclusion, naturalization prohibition, limitations on citizenship, prevention of free transit, and denial of rights to land ownership. The specifics of the yellow peril mania are evident in the CHINESE EXCLUSION ACTS, passed between 1880 and 1904, and in treaties and enactments with Japan, especially the treaties of 1894, 1911, and 1913 and provisions of the Immigration Act of 1907. The yellow peril fear peaked with the Immigration Act of 1924.
Thereafter, in its most gross form the yellow peril declined, although it emerged during the early days of World War II, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the confinement of Japanese Americans in camps. Nevertheless, with changes and modifications evident in new legislation, such as the McCarren-Walter Act of 1952, and administrative actions based on the exigencies of cold war foreign policies, the yellow peril was absorbed by other social forces and concerns of racism in the United States.
Bibliography
Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States Since 1850. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.
Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1925. 2d ed. New York: Atheneum, 1978 (orig. pub. 19
History Yellow Peril
A supposed threat to the United States posed by Japan and China. The phrase arose in the late nineteenth century, at a time when Japanese and Chinese immigration to America was meeting resistance and when Japan was growing as a military power.
The noun yellow peril has one meaning:
the threat to Western civilization said to arise from the power of Asiatic peoples
.
Many sources credit Kaiser Wilhelm II with coining the phrase "Yellow Peril" (in German, "gelbe Gefahr") in September 1895.
While immigration of Asians was not a major issue in Europe, the rise of Japan as a major world power was a cause of anxiety for some Europeans.
In 1898 M. P. Shiel published a short story serial The Yellow Danger. Shiel took the murder of two German missionaries in Kiau-Tschou 1897 to spread his anti-Chinese feelings. In later editions the serial was named The Yellow Peril.
United States
The notion of "yellow peril" manifested itself in government policy with the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which reduced Chinese immigration from 30,000 per year to just 105. The labor leader Samuel Gompers argued, "The superior whites had to exclude the inferior Asiatics, by law, or, if necessary, by force of arms."
In 1920, the author Lothrop Stoddard wrote The Rising Tide of Color arguing against Asian immigration, claiming immigrants threatened American society, with their presence a "peril."
Lynchings of Asian immigrants by vigilante groups were common in the early 1900s, paralleling the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and related groups in the South against African-Americans. California academics such as David Starr Jordan and politicians such as James D. Phelan (who ran for mayor of San Francisco and United States Senate on the platform of "Keeping California White") were firm believers in the "yellow peril", and the politics of Washington highlighted "yellow peril". The fear of the yellow peril reached its peak during World War II after the Japanese Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor. The Yellow Peril as the primary form of West Coast racism and as a factor in politics seemed to die out in the mid-20th century, perhaps due to guilt over the Japanese American internment during World War II.
In the 1980s the Yellow Peril was revived as the US was in intense competition with Japan over industrial supremacy. Many believed that the beating to death of Vincent Chin was a part of that US sentiment.
Since the 1990s there has been increased concern in the United States over what has been perceived as an attempt by the People's Republic of China to challenge the United States militarily and economically.
The Yellow Peril is a major topic of study in Asian American studies.
New Zealand
The "yellow peril" was a significant part of the policy platform promoted by Richard Seddon, a populist New Zealand prime minister, in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Measures designed to curb Chinese immigration included a substantial poll tax, which was abolished in 1944 following Imperial Japan's invasion and occupation of China, and for which the New Zealand government has since issued a formal apology.
Yellow Peril myth
The Yellow Peril was a common theme in the fiction of the time. Perhaps most representative of this is Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels.
The "Yellow Peril" was a frequent theme of pulp fiction in the early 20th century. The Swedish author Sven Lindqvist has pointed out that several science fiction novels from the time depicting cataclysmic clashes of civilizations take particular relish in describing the ultimate defeat of the Chinese, as compared to Africans or communists.
Jack London's 1914 story "The Unparalleled Invasion", taking place in a fictional 1975, described a China with an ever-increasing population taking over and colonising its neighbors, with the intention of eventually taking over the entire Earth. Thereupon the nations of the West open biological warfare and bombard China with dozens of the most infectious diseases - among them smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, and Black Death - with all Chinese attempting to flee being shot down by armies and navies massed around their country's land and sea borders, and the few survivors of the plague invariably put to death by "mopping up" expeditions entering China.
This genocide, described in considerable sickening detail, is througout the book described as justified and "the only possible solution to the Chinese problem", and nowhere is there mentioned any objection to it. The terms "Yellow Race", "Yellow crowds in streets", "yellow faces" and the like are frequently repeated throughout the story. It ends with the edifying spectacle of "The Sanitation of China" and its re-settlement by Western settlers, "the democratic American programme" as London puts it (see [2], [3]).
Philip Francis Nowlan's novella Armageddon 2419 A.D., which first appeared in the August 1928 and was the start of the long-lasting popular Buck Rogers series, depicted a future America which had been occupied and colonised by cruel invaders from China, which the hero and his friends proceed to fight and kill wholesale.
Robert A. Heinlein's novel Sixth Column depicts American resistance to an invasion by a blatantly racist and genocidally cruel "PanAsian" empire.
H.P. Lovecraft was in constant fear of Asiatic culture engulfing the world, and a few of his stories reflect this.
In the late 1950's, Atlas Comics debuted the Yellow Claw, a Fu Manchu pastiche. However, a growing realization of the racist nature of the character archetype led to the villain having a handsome young Asian FBI agent, James Woo, being his principal opponent. Other characters inspired by Rohmer's Fu Manchu include Pao Tcheou.
A 1977 Doctor Who serial, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, builds a science fiction plot upon another loose Fu Manchu pastiche. In this case, the key "yellow devil" character serves to enable an ill-intentioned time traveller from the fifty-first century.
Yellow Peril is a book by Wang Lixiong, written under the pseudonym Bao Mi, about a civil war in the People's Republic of China that becomes a nuclear exchange and soon engulfs the world, causing World War III. It's notable for Wang Lixiong's politics, a Chinese dissident and outspoken activist, its publication following Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and its popularity due to bootleg distribution across China even when the book was banned by the Communist Party of China.
While the term Yellow Peril was wide spread, however I doubt it's the origin that people in Asia be described as yellow.
You said Many sources credit Kaiser Wilhelm II with coining the phrase "Yellow Peril" (in German, "gelbe Gefahr") in September 1895.
Europeans has been in Asia since the 1600s.
You mean to tell me that in the 300~400 years that they were in Asia, they never came up with calling Asians yellow?
Come on, they jumped on the Black, Brown, Red Skin shite much fater than that.
I think the term Yellow Peril is a result of referring to Asians as having "yellow skin", not the other way around.
You said Many sources credit Kaiser Wilhelm II with coining the phrase "Yellow Peril" (in German, "gelbe Gefahr") in September 1895.
Europeans has been in Asia since the 1600s.
You mean to tell me that in the 300~400 years that they were in Asia, they never came up with calling Asians yellow?
Come on, they jumped on the Black, Brown, Red Skin shite much fater than that.
I think the term Yellow Peril is a result of referring to Asians as having "yellow skin", not the other way around.
QUOTE(Andy Lau @ Feb 7 2007, 03:46 AM) [snapback]4874825[/snapback]
so we are as so called "white" as the caucausians are =D
No we are not.
What's so good about being "white" anyway?
This verneration of "white-ness" can only lead to the psychological domination of East Asia by Europe and America.
It's nothing more than a myth, just like the "short Asian" bullcrap. Most Asians I see are white in winter and brown in summer, just like us westerners.
Actually, my family are Irish so we just go red.
Actually, my family are Irish so we just go red.
QUOTE(Conan the destroyer @ Feb 10 2007, 11:32 AM) [snapback]4875282[/snapback]
It's nothing more than a myth, just like the "short Asian" bullcrap. Most Asians I see are white in winter and brown in summer, just like us westerners.
Actually, my family are Irish so we just go red.
Actually, my family are Irish so we just go red.
haha, so the Irish don't tan, just turns red thing isn't a myth?
QUOTE(naruwan @ Feb 10 2007, 07:07 PM) [snapback]4875291[/snapback]
haha, so the Irish don't tan, just turns red thing isn't a myth?
It's pretty much true. Even most Irish with dark hair and eyes don't tan well.
QUOTE(Conan the destroyer @ Feb 10 2007, 06:32 PM) [snapback]4875282[/snapback]
It's nothing more than a myth, just like the "short Asian" bullcrap. Most Asians I see are white in winter and brown in summer, just like us westerners.
Actually, my family are Irish so we just go red.
Actually, my family are Irish so we just go red.
No we are not "white".
East Asians in general have a darker skin colour compared with most Europeans, especially North Europeans.
QUOTE(somechineseperson @ Feb 10 2007, 07:38 PM) [snapback]4875300[/snapback]
No we are not "white".
East Asians in general have a darker skin colour compared with most Europeans, especially North Europeans.
East Asians in general have a darker skin colour compared with most Europeans, especially North Europeans.
You've misinterpreted me. East Asians are white, or at least they clearly aren't black. Doesn't mean I think they have the same skin-tone as northern Europeans.
QUOTE(Conan the destroyer @ Feb 10 2007, 07:57 PM) [snapback]4875304[/snapback]
You've misinterpreted me. East Asians are white, or at least they clearly aren't black. Doesn't mean I think they have the same skin-tone as northern Europeans.
But it's clearly not just "white" and "black".
Just because East Asians aren't black, it doesn't mean they are white.
"White" should not be used as a racial label for East Asians. Such a label is historically inaccurate and Eurocentric. Please show me a single ancient East Asian source in which "white" is used as a racial label.
QUOTE(somechineseperson @ Feb 10 2007, 12:38 PM) [snapback]4875300[/snapback]
No we are not "white".
East Asians in general have a darker skin colour compared with most Europeans, especially North Europeans.
East Asians in general have a darker skin colour compared with most Europeans, especially North Europeans.
The point is no one is truly white. With exception of those street actors who put on white paint all over their naked body.
Could the term come from, we are descendants of the yellow emperor? 
QUOTE(somechineseperson @ Feb 10 2007, 08:07 PM) [snapback]4875308[/snapback]
But it's clearly not just "white" and "black".
Just because East Asians aren't black, it doesn't mean they are white.
"White" should not be used as a racial label for East Asians. Such a label is historically inaccurate and Eurocentric. Please show me a single ancient East Asian source in which "white" is used as a racial label.
Just because East Asians aren't black, it doesn't mean they are white.
"White" should not be used as a racial label for East Asians. Such a label is historically inaccurate and Eurocentric. Please show me a single ancient East Asian source in which "white" is used as a racial label.
Sorry. I'll start describing east-Asians as "somewhere between black and white, but a little closer to white side" from now on.
QUOTE(Conan the destroyer @ Feb 10 2007, 01:23 PM) [snapback]4875314[/snapback]
Sorry. I'll start describing east-Asians as "somewhere between black and white, but a little closer to white side" from now on.
I have a very patchy skin colour. My skin is divided by tiny patches of orange and pearl white colours, very weird. I envy those whose skin colour looks uniformed from up close.
QUOTE(newbie06 @ Feb 10 2007, 08:20 PM) [snapback]4875313[/snapback]
Could the term come from, we are descendants of the yellow emperor?
The "yellow" in Yellow Emperor has absolutely nothing to do with skin colour. It is based on the ancient Chinese Five Phases theory. The Yellow Emperor is associated with the Phase Earth, which corresponds to the colour Yellow.
QUOTE(Conan the destroyer @ Feb 10 2007, 08:23 PM) [snapback]4875314[/snapback]
Sorry. I'll start describing east-Asians as "somewhere between black and white, but a little closer to white side" from now on.
Why not use the term "yellow"? Historically it has been in use for quite a while, and objectively speaking "yellow" is no more inaccurate than "black" or "white".
what characterizes an Asian from Negroid, to a Caucasian is not skin color alone. It's mainly other facial features that define us.
QUOTE(somechineseperson @ Feb 11 2007, 04:07 AM) [snapback]4875308[/snapback]
"White" should not be used as a racial label for East Asians. Such a label is historically inaccurate and Eurocentric. Please show me a single ancient East Asian source in which "white" is used as a racial label.
QUOTE(somechineseperson @ Feb 11 2007, 05:39 AM) [snapback]4875343[/snapback]
Why not use the term "yellow"? Historically it has been in use for quite a while, and objectively speaking "yellow" is no more inaccurate than "black" or "white".
Disagree totally.
In the first place, there is no ancient East Asian source referring to East Asian as yellow as a racial label.
Its use only came about during the Age of Colonialism.
In the second place, why use any colour for racial references?
QUOTE(snowybeagle @ Feb 11 2007, 10:18 AM) [snapback]4875431[/snapback]
Disagree totally.
In the first place, there is no ancient East Asian source referring to East Asian as yellow as a racial label.
Its use only came about during the Age of Colonialism.
In the second place, why use any colour for racial references?
In the first place, there is no ancient East Asian source referring to East Asian as yellow as a racial label.
Its use only came about during the Age of Colonialism.
In the second place, why use any colour for racial references?
This whole subject is getting heated . I do not wish to offend anyone.
I agree it was most likely the Europeans that started using the different colors of skin to notate different peoples. This was a typically arrogant attitude they had.
QUOTE
Actually, my family are Irish so we just go red.
Conan had an interesting observation in that the Irish /Scots/Nordic(Celtic people) turn much redder than that of the American Indian. (there's another huge mistake in names- the indigenous people of the Americas were not from India hence should not be called Indians. Most people still refer to Native Americans as Indians and there is very little misunderstanding.) My family is mostly of Celtic background and has just a bit of Native American. I got almost all of the Celtic features . My daughter , my sister and my mother all got the beautiful pale olive ( for lack of a better description)skin from the Native Indian genes. Whereas I have a peachy base that turns a light tan and red with much difficulty, they all tan easily to a much darker shade beautifully. I never could understand the term "redskins "being used for Native Americans when my father had much more red skin and had no Native American background at all. I am sure that even though I have never heard Olive skin being used as a racial slur, I am sure that the term came from the use of Olive oil by the Mediterraneans and was originally meant as a slur.
Growing up in the era of Civil Rights in the 60s I remember when the African Americans wanted to be called Blacks as opposed to being called Coloreds or Negros. I personally never heard anyone refer to Chinese as yellow in a derogatory way.
I think that there is a need to be able to use color shape size to describe features IE: color of hair , shape of nose, eyes, mouth or color of shin if you are trying to describe someone. To use use a feature as a slur is not acceptable.
There is no question that the use of colors to designate different races is wrong on many different levels. There is the essence of a bully calling names to make himself feal better about his own insecurities. The whole attitude of not respecting anyone else for their culture and individuality.
QUOTE
Could the term come from, we are descendants of the yellow emperor?
Newbie06 has a good observation, I cant answer if this is where the "yellow" came from, but I do know that in the Old West era, the Americans used the term "Celestials"in a derogatory way when referring to the Chinese. I have to wonder if yellow was also another derogatory term originally meant to refer to the meaning that someone is a coward.
There is also the Yellow River. This might have been the source of the name for the northern Chinese. I would guess that it would have been the sailors and merchants that came by boat that would have given this name to the peoples living along the Yellow river.
The only people I have ever seen that were actually yellow have had jaundice. and this is not an implied hidden slur , just a observation.
QUOTE(snowybeagle @ Feb 11 2007, 03:18 PM) [snapback]4875431[/snapback]
Disagree totally.
In the first place, there is no ancient East Asian source referring to East Asian as yellow as a racial label.
Its use only came about during the Age of Colonialism.
In the second place, why use any colour for racial references?
In the first place, there is no ancient East Asian source referring to East Asian as yellow as a racial label.
Its use only came about during the Age of Colonialism.
In the second place, why use any colour for racial references?
It's still a lot better than "white".
I do agree with you that it is pretty silly to divide people racially based solely on skin colour. In ancient China we have nothing like this. But in today's world many people are still attached to this kind of thing.
QUOTE(somechineseperson @ Feb 12 2007, 06:45 AM) [snapback]4875494[/snapback]
It's still a lot better than "white".
I do not advocate the East Asians displacing Caucasians to be the bearer of the reference "white".
I think what another poster meant when he said Chinese are white, he was referring to the fact that the skin colour of the Chinese are not technically yellow, and going by degree of fairness (as in fair complexion), it can constitute as "white", but in a different way from Caucasian skin being white. That is my understanding of his post.
QUOTE(somechineseperson @ Feb 12 2007, 06:45 AM) [snapback]4875494[/snapback]
I do agree with you that it is pretty silly to divide people racially based solely on skin colour. In ancient China we have nothing like this. But in today's world many people are still attached to this kind of thing.
We are either part of the solution, or part of the problem.
The world has come a long way in the 20th century in dispelling ridiculous myths - we do not have to be passive if we are given the opportunity.
I don't march around with a placard about it, but I do welcome the chance to speak about it.
Recently, my own daughter learn from her friends in childcare about skin-colour and racial stereotypings, and again it is an opportunity for me to explain to her, let her know that skin colour do not make a person good or bad, and that it takes courage to stand up against ideas when the ideas are wrong, even if they come from her friends.
Terms like White, Black and Yellow seem to be more popular among Chinese to categorise people compared to Caucasians that I meet. In the US, White and Black as descriptors usually has no derogatory meaning to it at all, simply a descriptor. Black people describes themselves as Black, even politiians on national television. Interestingly, they don't use Yellow but Asians for Chinese and other Asians. The only persons I have heard use the term Yellow as a race descriptor is ironically the Chinese as in 黄种人 Seriously for those of you who are literate Chinese look it up.
The tone of your skin depends not only on how much melanin it has but also on the thickness of your outer epidermis. This accounts for the different tones even when 2 persons may be very fair, and partly why some Caucasians turn red before they tan in the Sun, their thinner skin simply makes the burned skin more obvious.
The tone of your skin depends not only on how much melanin it has but also on the thickness of your outer epidermis. This accounts for the different tones even when 2 persons may be very fair, and partly why some Caucasians turn red before they tan in the Sun, their thinner skin simply makes the burned skin more obvious.
It is quite interesting to investigate how Yellow came to be associated with the Chinese. Did it came from the Caucasoid cultures or from East Asians themselves? Like others have already said Chinese have the Huang Di (yellow emperor), the Chinese historically originated from the Huang He (Yellow River) valley, Yellow was the imperial color of China, as opposed to purple being Imperial color of the Western Monarchies. I agree, East Asians in general come in different shades of light, tan and peachy skinned color.
QUOTE(urofpersia @ Feb 12 2007, 10:55 AM) [snapback]4875515[/snapback]
The only persons I have heard use the term Yellow as a race descriptor is ironically the Chinese as in 黄种人 Seriously for those of you who are literate Chinese look it up.
Yes, but from my own readings, the term 黄种人 (yellow people) did not exist until the Age of Colonialism, and then only with the introduction of the term 白种人 (white people), probably as late as mid 19th century after the Opium War.
It was possible, even probable, that the Chinese of Qing Dynasty did not consider it derogatory, but I feel it is hardly accurate.
It had gone deep in the psyche, and I do understand that it will take a long time if it is to be dispelled.
The next time someone use that descriptor, ask the person what is the basis of adopting it.
Most people just accept and propagate what they hear without thinking much about it.
QUOTE(snowybeagle @ Feb 11 2007, 09:24 PM) [snapback]4875510[/snapback]
I do not advocate the East Asians displacing Caucasians to be the bearer of the reference "white".
That would be sad to replace one problem with the exact same thing.
QUOTE
I think what another poster meant when he said Chinese are white, he was referring to the fact that the skin colour of the Chinese are not technically yellow, and going by degree of fairness (as in fair complexion), it can constitute as "white", but in a different way from Caucasian skin being white. That is my understanding of his post.
Yes, that was exactly how I read his post too.QUOTE
We are either part of the solution, or part of the problem.
The world has come a long way in the 20th century in dispelling ridiculous myths - we do not have to be passive if we are given the opportunity.
I don't march around with a placard about it, but I do welcome the chance to speak about it.
Recently, my own daughter learn from her friends in childcare about skin-colour and racial stereotypings, and again it is an opportunity for me to explain to her, let her know that skin colour do not make a person good or bad, and that it takes courage to stand up against ideas when the ideas are wrong, even if they come from her friends.
The world has come a long way in the 20th century in dispelling ridiculous myths - we do not have to be passive if we are given the opportunity.
I don't march around with a placard about it, but I do welcome the chance to speak about it.
Recently, my own daughter learn from her friends in childcare about skin-colour and racial stereotypings, and again it is an opportunity for me to explain to her, let her know that skin colour do not make a person good or bad, and that it takes courage to stand up against ideas when the ideas are wrong, even if they come from her friends.
I wish that more people raised taught their children that lesson.
It never ceases to amaze me how people still can't see beyond the color of someones skin.
I have always thought that it was the height of hypocrisy for the "whites" that hate "blacks" , all the while basting themselves with oil and cooking their own skin to get the deepest tan possible.
QUOTE(snowybeagle @ Feb 12 2007, 11:29 AM) [snapback]4875520[/snapback]
Yes, but from my own readings, the term 黄种人 (yellow people) did not exist until the Age of Colonialism, and then only with the introduction of the term 白种人 (white people), probably as late as mid 19th century after the Opium War.
It was possible, even probable, that the Chinese of Qing Dynasty did not consider it derogatory, but I feel it is hardly accurate.
It was possible, even probable, that the Chinese of Qing Dynasty did not consider it derogatory, but I feel it is hardly accurate.
That is correct. The origin is almost certainly a western label not a chinese one. What I meant was while the 'West' has largely moved beyond using Yellow as a descriptor, the Chinese are still using it. In fact while the West has tried using more 'PC' terms to describe people the usage of colours as a race descriptor still dominate chinese writings.
This may not be true of Chinese in Singapore but I get this very strongly from people in Taiwan and to a lesser extent China. The 'colour' of your skin is an important concept to them.
To be honest I don't have a problem with the term, but then again I have not heard anyone use it in a derogatory manner. It might change my mind then.
QUOTE(urofpersia @ Feb 11 2007, 10:45 PM) [snapback]4875524[/snapback]
That is correct. The origin is almost certainly a western label not a chinese one. What I meant was while the 'West' has largely moved beyond using Yellow as a descriptor, the Chinese are still using it. In fact while the West has tried using more 'PC' terms to describe people the usage of colours as a race descriptor still dominate chinese writings.
This may not be true of Chinese in Singapore but I get this very strongly from people in Taiwan and to a lesser extent China. The 'colour' of your skin is an important concept to them.
To be honest I don't have a problem with the term, but then again I have not heard anyone use it in a derogatory manner. It might change my mind then.
This may not be true of Chinese in Singapore but I get this very strongly from people in Taiwan and to a lesser extent China. The 'colour' of your skin is an important concept to them.
To be honest I don't have a problem with the term, but then again I have not heard anyone use it in a derogatory manner. It might change my mind then.
Ok, possibly Yellow came to be used to describe East Asians during Age of Colonialism, but whats with the Huang Di and Yellow being the Imperial color? Why is it called the Yellow river? Do all these usage of Yellow have anything to do with why East Asians are labeled as Yellow?
QUOTE(TwinkieDP @ Feb 19 2007, 02:23 PM) [snapback]4876714[/snapback]
Do all these usage of Yellow have anything to do with why East Asians are labeled as Yellow?
I don't believe so. It is as good as any colour to differentiate the 'races' Native Americans aren't 'red' either but that is the label attached to them.
QUOTE(snowybeagle @ Feb 8 2007, 03:55 PM) [snapback]4874997[/snapback]
Great! Perhaps it will be sooner than later that people learn not to use colours for racial references.
Well, hopefully the Chinese will do so in the future. Not at the moment though, judging by some CHF posts here:
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...c=16336&st=
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...c=16331&hl=
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...c=16357&hl=
QUOTE(snowybeagle @ Feb 12 2007, 10:24 AM) [snapback]4875510[/snapback]
I think what another poster meant when he said Chinese are white, he was referring to the fact that the skin colour of the Chinese are not technically yellow, and going by degree of fairness (as in fair complexion), it can constitute as "white", but in a different way from Caucasian skin being white.
I read a while back that a gene for light skin in East Asians is different from its counterpart in Europeans, although they both have similar effects.
QUOTE(TwinkieDP @ Feb 19 2007, 02:23 PM) [snapback]4876714[/snapback]
Ok, possibly Yellow came to be used to describe East Asians during Age of Colonialism, but whats with the Huang Di and Yellow being the Imperial color? Why is it called the Yellow river? Do all these usage of Yellow have anything to do with why East Asians are labeled as Yellow?
The Yellow river took its name from its appearance.
I do not have the etymology of Huang Di.
As Ur pointed out, those had nothing to do with East Asians being labelled yellow (and besides, the Japanese were also labelled Yellow but they got nothing to do with Huang Di nor Yellow River).
But what could be true was the prestige enjoyed by the colour Yellow in history of China made the Chinese back then more amenable to being termed as "Yellow-skinned".
QUOTE(urofpersia @ Feb 21 2007, 02:21 PM) [snapback]4877195[/snapback]
Well, hopefully the Chinese will do so in the future. Not at the moment though, judging by some CHF posts here:
I won't bother with those posts ...
On Feb 21, 2007, Straits Times (Singapore) Senior Writer Andy Ho wrote in Review section "More recently, statistical modelling suggests that all of us who are alive today, regardless of race, share a common ancestor who lived just 3,500 years ago, circa 1415BC. The bottomline: There are no races to speak of, genetically."
I'm not sure where he read that from, since I thought there were already distinct human civilisations in different parts of the world more than 3,500 years ago.
But I do support from a personal belief POV, all humans descended from common ancestors anyway, so our racial relationship with each other is only a matter of degree. I have no idea what the common ancestors look like, but retaining more similar physical appearances to them or less does not make one's bloodline more pure or diluted since I do not believe the humans had intermingled with outer space aliens or mythological faerie folks anyway.
PS : I corrected my post above as shown after re-checking the related newspaper article. I will try to post the whole article to show the context, including Andy Ho's highlighting that different scientists have different take on the idea of "race".
QUOTE(snowybeagle @ Feb 21 2007, 03:30 PM) [snapback]4877208[/snapback]
Just a couple of days ago, ST commentator stated that through DNA analysis, it is shown all human beings today descended from a common ancestor pair 3,500 years ago. I'm not sure where he read that from, since I thought there were already distinct human civilisations in different part
Is the article available online? Something appears not quite right, but I had better read the original article first. Biologically speaking it is not possible that humans descended from only one pair (man and woman) the gene pool is not sufficiently large for the race to be viable. What I had read previously was that while humans first expanded out of Africa, they were later reduced to a relatively small number (counting in small thousands) and all current humans are descended from that group. The event was also relatively recent IIRC correctly, dated to something like 7,000 BCE. Of course as is always with science, much is a matter of evidence pointing to certain directions, and new evidence might always refine, or at times point to others.
QUOTE
But I do support from a personal belief POV, all humans descended from common ancestors anyway, so our racial relationship with each other is only a matter of degree.
It need not be from a personal belief POV. All the evidence suggests that humans are but one race, we all came from the same human ancestors. The differences are too superficial to warrant separation into races.
Having said that I love our differences from a guy's point of view. We love diversity of looks in gals.
QUOTE(DaMo @ Feb 21 2007, 01:36 AM) [snapback]4877198[/snapback]
I read a while back that a gene for light skin in East Asians is different from its counterpart in Europeans, although they both have similar effects.
Yes, I read a similar report stating Asians chose a gene for whiteness of skin that is different from Europeans. It's all about sexual selection. Maybe this explains why some asian girls have smoother, porcelain white skin.
As to why asians are yellow, I don't get what is to debate about. Asians are classified as yellow, caucasians white, africans black, indians brown, native americans red. Everybody knows they are only classifications, and do not indicate asians are truly all yellow, africans are all black, and native americans really red, etc. If you have certain sexual preferences, then fine, but nothing to discuss here.
QUOTE(Ryz05 @ Feb 21 2007, 04:53 PM) [snapback]4877217[/snapback]
As to why asians are yellow, I don't get what is to debate about. Asians are classified as yellow, caucasians white, africans black, indians brown, native americans red. Everybody knows they are only classifications, and do not indicate asians are truly all yellow, africans are all black, and native americans really red, etc. If you have certain sexual preferences, then fine, but nothing to discuss here.
First, the classification is incorrect.
Second, some of us do not accept the colour classification as there is no scientific basis for it but a lot of unwanted historical baggage that comes along.
Third, it is not true that "everybody knows ...".
What each person knows depend on what books he read or who he has been listening to.
Fourth, it's not a debate. In this thread, those of us who disagree are making our voices heard.
If you want to accept the classification, that's your personal choice, and it's fine by me.
But it is not fine by me to have an errornous classification foisted on me, or to have it propagated without challenging its validity.
Here is the article I mentioned.
Disclaimer: the article represents the opinions of the author only, and not necessarily that of this poster nor the Straits Times.
The Issue of Race
What’s genes got to do with it?
By Andy Ho
Senior Writer
I do not celebrate Chinese New Year, which my family and friends think is a crass denial of my Chinese genes. But is there really a genetic undercarriage to my racial identity?
It was upon the completion of the Human Genome Project in February 2001 that we were told any two unrelated human beings were 99.9 per cent alike in their genomes. (Your genome is that complete ordering of all the DNA building blocks called nucleotides that you carry.)
More recently, statistical modelling suggests that all of us who are alive today, regardless of race, share a common ancestor who lived just 3,500 years ago, circa 1415BC. The bottomline: There are no races to speak of, genetically.
But six years on, “the molecular reinscription of race” in medicine and policing has already begun, says Professor Troy Duster, a New York University sociologist who spoke on the issue at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, recently.
But just a few years after it was proclaimed that there is no genomic basis for race, some scientists are making exactly the oppposite claim.
If there is no genomic basis to race, why would US studies show that Chinese Americans need less of the blood thinner called warfarin than white Americans, say?
Or, consider a study reporting how 5 to 10 per cent of Europeans, but only 1 per cent of Japanese, carry a non-functioning version of the CYP2D6 gene which involved in breaking down some 40 different drugs. There must be racial genes!
Of course, that the study also reports how Europeans themselves show an equally wide range in the frequency with which they carry the gene — from 10 per cent in northern Spain to 1 per cent in Sweden — is largely ignored in media reports.
That is, the differences within a “racial group” — white Europeans, say — can be just as great as those between “races” — Europeans versus Asians, for instance.
Anyway, whatever the millenarian pronouncements of 2001, most scientists, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, journalists — and probably everyone else in between — did not summarily drop race as a scientific term or stopped believing it was a biological given.
After all, scientists are brought up the same way as non-scientists, so their own experience of race as something real is difficult for them to dispute. Our social and racialised conditioning reinforces racial stereotypes as being real.
Thus when people talk about race, they think they know what they mean because they think they can see it with their own eyes.
Yet, did you know that the curvaceous diva Mariah “Flesh Flash” Carey is supposed to be a black woman? I did not, until last year, because she looks Caucasian. So what you see may not be what you think you are getting. And despite all your confidence about knowing what race someone may be, you are likely to be quite incoherent if I asked you to define what race itself means.
Yet some forensic scientists have taken to arguing that race is inscribed in our genomes. In 2005, for example, a Stanford University statement said: “A recent study conducted at the Stanford Medical School challenges the widely held belief that race is only a social construct and provides evidence that race has genetic implications.”
If we are 99.9 per cent alike genomically, then we are 0.1 per cent different. Since the genome is made up of three billion base pairs (or nucleotides), that difference works out to be a whopping three million positions.
Prof Duster, who chaired the Joint Advisory Committee on Ethnical, Legal and Social Issues for the Human Genome Project, notes that 90 per cent of all that is “junk DNA” whose function remains unknown. But that still leaves potential differences in 300,000 positions. If those differences were arranged systematically, according to geographical groups, then we may well have the beginnings of a genomic basis for race after all.
But they are not. There are no genetic differences that are only to be found in all people of one race but not people of other races. In fact, the differences tend to be distributed in a continuous, overlapping fashion across geographically separated populations.
Non-human species — say, tigers and lions — exhibit far more between-group genetic differences than do humans, so many animal species have genetically recognisable subspecies. Using the same genetic criteria that are applied to non-human species, humans simply do not possess subspecies — or races.
Think of it this way: A trait like black hair may be encoded by Gene A but more than one gene may code for that same trait. If I know you have that Gene A, I can predict — assuming I have not seen you before — that you have (naturally) black hair. Conversely, just because I have seen you and know that your hair is naturally black does not also mean I can infer that you carry Gene A. You might carry another gene that does the same thing. Thus even if a gene strongly determines a trait, two people with the same trait — black hair — may not carry the same gene for that trait.
Now for the $64 question: If there are no discrete, genomically defined races, on what basis do some forensic scientists — and a complicit media — claim that DNA tests that crime scene investigators carry out can actually disclose a suspect’s race?
Such claims are grounded in assumptions about a suspect’s recent genetic ancestry which, in turn, are based on tests for different markers on the genome. (Markers are positions at which scientists can detect a genetic difference among individuals.) Computers then sort through your particular marker combination to guess what proportion of your recent ancestry originated in East Asia, for example.
There are two shortcomings with this approach, though. First, scientists must decide which markers and how many of them to use. They also decide what reference populations to compare the markers against to infer the frequencies with which these markers occurred in ancient times.
Then there are assumptions about how fast, how far, and where these ancient people migrated to as well as their birth and death rates, etc. Sometimes, assumptions are necessary to make statistical massaging of the data possible but sometimes they are made because scientists simply do not have any relevant data about ancient migration patterns, for instance.
Second, scientists must decide how many clusters of genetic markers (“races”) they want the computer to crank out. One data set can produce any number of clusters, depending on what the computer is instructed to do. Anywhere from two to 16 clusters have been produced.
Scientists must also tell the computer how to scale the clusters: Using different but equally valid statistical methods, the same data can make individuals from different continents cluster together, or segregate people from one continent into different clusters.
Thus a single data set may produce continental, intercontinental, inter-continental, or sub-continental clusters. Yet continental clusters are not intrinsically more important than sub-continental or inter-continental clusters: After all, just 4 to 5 per cent of genetic variation occur primarily between groups from different continents.
But folk belief holds races to be groups of people who developed quite separately on different continents in times past, so continental clusters are taken to mean that race is inscribed in the genome. In truth, it is just that the technique assigns ancestry by continent of origin. The tests, however, could have been designed non-racially.
So it remains true that race is socially constructed — by forensic scientsts with some high-tech smoke-and-mirrors.
Still, while race is not genetic destiny, it is quite real. As Prof Duster notes, race is not a measure of an individual but an interactive measure of how an individual perceives another.
So while there are no Chinese genes impelling me to celebrate Chinese New Year, family and friends who do not respect my reasoned decision try to. But I just ignore them.
Disclaimer: the article represents the opinions of the author only, and not necessarily that of this poster nor the Straits Times.
QUOTE
The Straits Times Wednesday, February 21 2007 (Page 19)
Review
Review
The Issue of Race
What’s genes got to do with it?
By Andy Ho
Senior Writer
I do not celebrate Chinese New Year, which my family and friends think is a crass denial of my Chinese genes. But is there really a genetic undercarriage to my racial identity?
It was upon the completion of the Human Genome Project in February 2001 that we were told any two unrelated human beings were 99.9 per cent alike in their genomes. (Your genome is that complete ordering of all the DNA building blocks called nucleotides that you carry.)
More recently, statistical modelling suggests that all of us who are alive today, regardless of race, share a common ancestor who lived just 3,500 years ago, circa 1415BC. The bottomline: There are no races to speak of, genetically.
But six years on, “the molecular reinscription of race” in medicine and policing has already begun, says Professor Troy Duster, a New York University sociologist who spoke on the issue at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, recently.
But just a few years after it was proclaimed that there is no genomic basis for race, some scientists are making exactly the oppposite claim.
If there is no genomic basis to race, why would US studies show that Chinese Americans need less of the blood thinner called warfarin than white Americans, say?
Or, consider a study reporting how 5 to 10 per cent of Europeans, but only 1 per cent of Japanese, carry a non-functioning version of the CYP2D6 gene which involved in breaking down some 40 different drugs. There must be racial genes!
Of course, that the study also reports how Europeans themselves show an equally wide range in the frequency with which they carry the gene — from 10 per cent in northern Spain to 1 per cent in Sweden — is largely ignored in media reports.
That is, the differences within a “racial group” — white Europeans, say — can be just as great as those between “races” — Europeans versus Asians, for instance.
Anyway, whatever the millenarian pronouncements of 2001, most scientists, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, journalists — and probably everyone else in between — did not summarily drop race as a scientific term or stopped believing it was a biological given.
After all, scientists are brought up the same way as non-scientists, so their own experience of race as something real is difficult for them to dispute. Our social and racialised conditioning reinforces racial stereotypes as being real.
Thus when people talk about race, they think they know what they mean because they think they can see it with their own eyes.
Yet, did you know that the curvaceous diva Mariah “Flesh Flash” Carey is supposed to be a black woman? I did not, until last year, because she looks Caucasian. So what you see may not be what you think you are getting. And despite all your confidence about knowing what race someone may be, you are likely to be quite incoherent if I asked you to define what race itself means.
Yet some forensic scientists have taken to arguing that race is inscribed in our genomes. In 2005, for example, a Stanford University statement said: “A recent study conducted at the Stanford Medical School challenges the widely held belief that race is only a social construct and provides evidence that race has genetic implications.”
If we are 99.9 per cent alike genomically, then we are 0.1 per cent different. Since the genome is made up of three billion base pairs (or nucleotides), that difference works out to be a whopping three million positions.
Prof Duster, who chaired the Joint Advisory Committee on Ethnical, Legal and Social Issues for the Human Genome Project, notes that 90 per cent of all that is “junk DNA” whose function remains unknown. But that still leaves potential differences in 300,000 positions. If those differences were arranged systematically, according to geographical groups, then we may well have the beginnings of a genomic basis for race after all.
But they are not. There are no genetic differences that are only to be found in all people of one race but not people of other races. In fact, the differences tend to be distributed in a continuous, overlapping fashion across geographically separated populations.
Non-human species — say, tigers and lions — exhibit far more between-group genetic differences than do humans, so many animal species have genetically recognisable subspecies. Using the same genetic criteria that are applied to non-human species, humans simply do not possess subspecies — or races.
Think of it this way: A trait like black hair may be encoded by Gene A but more than one gene may code for that same trait. If I know you have that Gene A, I can predict — assuming I have not seen you before — that you have (naturally) black hair. Conversely, just because I have seen you and know that your hair is naturally black does not also mean I can infer that you carry Gene A. You might carry another gene that does the same thing. Thus even if a gene strongly determines a trait, two people with the same trait — black hair — may not carry the same gene for that trait.
Now for the $64 question: If there are no discrete, genomically defined races, on what basis do some forensic scientists — and a complicit media — claim that DNA tests that crime scene investigators carry out can actually disclose a suspect’s race?
Such claims are grounded in assumptions about a suspect’s recent genetic ancestry which, in turn, are based on tests for different markers on the genome. (Markers are positions at which scientists can detect a genetic difference among individuals.) Computers then sort through your particular marker combination to guess what proportion of your recent ancestry originated in East Asia, for example.
There are two shortcomings with this approach, though. First, scientists must decide which markers and how many of them to use. They also decide what reference populations to compare the markers against to infer the frequencies with which these markers occurred in ancient times.
Then there are assumptions about how fast, how far, and where these ancient people migrated to as well as their birth and death rates, etc. Sometimes, assumptions are necessary to make statistical massaging of the data possible but sometimes they are made because scientists simply do not have any relevant data about ancient migration patterns, for instance.
Second, scientists must decide how many clusters of genetic markers (“races”) they want the computer to crank out. One data set can produce any number of clusters, depending on what the computer is instructed to do. Anywhere from two to 16 clusters have been produced.
Scientists must also tell the computer how to scale the clusters: Using different but equally valid statistical methods, the same data can make individuals from different continents cluster together, or segregate people from one continent into different clusters.
Thus a single data set may produce continental, intercontinental, inter-continental, or sub-continental clusters. Yet continental clusters are not intrinsically more important than sub-continental or inter-continental clusters: After all, just 4 to 5 per cent of genetic variation occur primarily between groups from different continents.
But folk belief holds races to be groups of people who developed quite separately on different continents in times past, so continental clusters are taken to mean that race is inscribed in the genome. In truth, it is just that the technique assigns ancestry by continent of origin. The tests, however, could have been designed non-racially.
So it remains true that race is socially constructed — by forensic scientsts with some high-tech smoke-and-mirrors.
Still, while race is not genetic destiny, it is quite real. As Prof Duster notes, race is not a measure of an individual but an interactive measure of how an individual perceives another.
So while there are no Chinese genes impelling me to celebrate Chinese New Year, family and friends who do not respect my reasoned decision try to. But I just ignore them.
andyho@sph.com.sg
QUOTE(snowybeagle @ Feb 22 2007, 10:37 PM) [snapback]4877559[/snapback]
First, the classification is incorrect.
Second, some of us do not accept the colour classification as there is no scientific basis for it but a lot of unwanted historical baggage that comes along.
Third, it is not true that "everybody knows ...".
What each person knows depend on what books he read or who he has been listening to.
Fourth, it's not a debate. In this thread, those of us who disagree are making our voices heard.
If you want to accept the classification, that's your personal choice, and it's fine by me.
But it is not fine by me to have an errornous classification foisted on me, or to have it propagated without challenging its validity.
Second, some of us do not accept the colour classification as there is no scientific basis for it but a lot of unwanted historical baggage that comes along.
Third, it is not true that "everybody knows ...".
What each person knows depend on what books he read or who he has been listening to.
Fourth, it's not a debate. In this thread, those of us who disagree are making our voices heard.
If you want to accept the classification, that's your personal choice, and it's fine by me.
But it is not fine by me to have an errornous classification foisted on me, or to have it propagated without challenging its validity.
Yeah, true, I don't think I was born thinking of myself as yellow. My dad actually has tannish, peach skin color.
I think the skin colour of Chinese being "yellow" is just a generalization of 'racial anthropology grouping". There are many chinese with varying different shades of colour with some people being very fair (white), while some being very dark.
Of course biological race is not defined by a completely exclusive set of genes. It is defined by a clustering of various genes that together produce a distinctive phenotype, a manifestation of the prehistoric environmental pressures on relatively isolated gene pools that arose from a common source. And of course it is far more complex that simple skin color or hair color. That is it not simple does not mean it does not exist. Perhaps by the author's narrow archaic definition, but not by mine and that of modern science.
And Mariah Carey is not "black". She is a mixed-race person. I really hate it when blacks point the finger at whites for the "one-drop rule" and then use it themselves.
And Mariah Carey is not "black". She is a mixed-race person. I really hate it when blacks point the finger at whites for the "one-drop rule" and then use it themselves.
QUOTE(Andy Lau @ Feb 6 2007, 05:28 PM) 
It's funny how the chinese has been perceived as being yellow, africans as blacks and the europeans as whites, because the reality is that chinese aren't really yellow and the whites aren't really white. Where did this idea come from(about chinese being yellow)?
I don't think the Chinese are call yellow, I think the Asian race is called yellow. And no, Chinese people are not really "yellow" compare to other Asian ethnicities. Ddude, have you ever seen Japanese people? Now they are YELLOW.
Cosmetically speaking, skin tones are divided into 3 categories: cool, warm, and neutral. Most light skinned Chinese I know, especially those from the north, have more of a cool color tone (meaning very pale with pinkish blue undertone, kinda like Snow White). Those of us with olive skin tone, which has yellow undertone, are call warm tones. I have both, I have pink and yellow undertones, so I am consider a neutral tone. You can tell which skin tone you are by looking at the veins in your wrist. If your veins are blue/purple, you're cool tone. If your veins are green, you're warm tone. Mine are green and purple, so I'm neutral.
I think the term yellow is used to classify a race based on skin color. Just as Europeans aren't really white, they are light and the opposite of the dark ones, which are the blacks. And since Mediterraneans and Latinos got the word brown, they got to call Asians something. Cream is too pleasant of a word so they got to pick something derogatory, so yellow, which in western language also means cowardly or chicken.
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