RE:[tips] Do Jews Form a Race

[Pollak, Edward]

We can stop arguing about this now. The issue has been resolved in a new movie 
set to open at the end of this month in Great Britain. The movie is called, 
"The Infidel" and you can view the trailer at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMudF0MQgC0

Ed


Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, & bluegrass fiddler.. in 
approximate order of importance.

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RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Marc Carter]

Hey, Jim (et alia!) --

Tons of good thoughts.

> -Original Message-
[snip]
>
> I have to disagree that the debate has nothing to do with the
> teaching of psychology; that is, unless we do not plan to
> ever talk about race in our classes.

I'll give you that.  I was more concerned about the argument -- it seemed more 
heat than light.  I think you make good points about the importance of having 
an understanding of "race" in psychology.  I stand corrected.  (I'm actually 
sitting, though.)

> And if we do talk about
> race, there is definitely no unanimity that Marc's brief
> summary is the correct scientific position to take at the
> present time.  Over recent decades advances in our
> understanding of human genetics has demonstrated in several
> ways that races as traditionally defined (e.g., on
> questionnaires or census forms) do in fact correspond to
> genetic distinctions.  Just a couple of examples of relevant research:
>
> Using DNA markers, Risch (a medical researcher) was able to
> reproduce traditional racial clusters and correctly classify
> virtually all of over 3,000 participants' self-reported race. See:
>
> http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050128_racefrm.htm
>
> And in forensic work, DNA has been used to correctly identify
> people as belonging to traditional racial groupings.  See:
>
> http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/10/dnaprint
> ?currentPage=all

I do not mean to say that there are no genetic markers characteristic of 
members of a particular group (the Lemba are a good and really very interesting 
example); I merely meant to say that there is greater genetic diversity within 
racial groups than there is between racial groups, which sort of makes the 
notion less-than-useful in many senses.

Race is an important psychological and cultural concept, to be sure.  And I do 
agree that there is considerable debate about the biological reality of racial 
classes -- but it is that debate that makes one wonder whether or not that 
object -- a racial classification -- exists as a part of the world indepdent of 
human device, or is more a convenient conceptual construct.  I tend to think 
the latter.  Others would disagree.

[snip other good stuff]

> And the issue of defining race raises the more general
> question about how psychologists see categories (whatever
> they are ... race, psychiatric disorders, ...).  I tend to
> draw on prototype or exemplar views rather than views that
> are looking for some single necessary and sufficient feature
> as in classical views.  That is, findings of variability
> within groups, as pointed out correctly by Marc, are not
> definitive with respect to whether such groupings are valid.

This is sort of where I was going: we generate conceptual categories based 
largely on attributes or function (among others).  I wonder whether or not *the 
very reality of* people as members of certain groups isn't a conceptual 
category based on attributes rather than some property of the world, 
independent of human thought.

It doesn't mean race isn't real, but I do think the within-race genetic 
diversity suggests that race is less a property of the world and more a 
property of the way human brains parse the world.

> And then there is the sensitivity and controversy surrounding
> these issues, as actually illustrated in both of the examples
> above (i.e., medicine, forensics), and well represented in
> the broader psychological literature (e.g., the special issue
> of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2005, Vol. 11 on race
> and intelligence), and perhaps some of the recent debate
> here.  Often makes me wish I could retreat ("retreat" is for
> me the right word given my reading of the findings) into the
> safety of a "social construction" view of race.  My own
> teaching approach is to try to communicate positions that
> (perhaps) avoid some of the unwarranted inferences and are
> consistent with the science, such as: science and policy are
> separable issues (e.g., genetic contributions to iq do NOT
> warrant conclusion that early interventions are useless),
> genetic does not mean immutable (e.g., PKU), and environment
> and genes interact in strong ways that can nullify each
> other's effects (e.g., Cooper and Zubeck).  Of course, we are
> never certain that students take away the message that we intend.

I like the social construction thing; it's a lot of fun.  Ian Hacking (_The 
Social Construction of *What*?_ and _Rewriting the Soul_) has done some 
wonderful thinking about what a social construct is, how it functions, and what 
sort of "reality" it has -- and how our conceptions of mental illness, self, 
gender, memory, and other psychological "things" are social constructs, and yet 
quite real.  It's interesting stuff.

So I apologize for injecting myself into a discussion that I really hadn't read 
thoroughly; I just was seeing notes going back and forth that seemed 
exceedingly heated, arguing a position I was pretty sure 

Re: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[John Kulig]

Jim

Thanks for the links - and very reasonable comments. There appears to be 
virtually no research on race (for now, let me use the term ..) and behavior, 
as opposed to, say, culture and behavior. We can make the leap from 
"within-race/group" data to "between group" (it IS a leap), and Arthur Jensen 
paid quite a price for that leap however carefully he did it (i.e. it is "not 
an unreasonable hypothesis" that some portion of the ... etcetera). I mention 
the IQ issue only because that issue has driven much of the sensitivity. I 
sometimes talk about the IQ race issue in Measurement, but from an 
historical/political standpoint because of lack of data. But I still discuss it 
because underlying assumptions about race and behavior drive public policy, and 
continue to lurk in stereotypes. My main teaching message is that, in the 
absence of data, it is better to have "no opinion" than a political opinion. As 
to the claim that data on "race" fuels racism, we can point out that racists 
(by definition) do not need factual ammunition to be bigots, and why should 
bigots have the power to stifle scientific debate? 

==
John W. Kulig 
Professor of Psychology 
Plymouth State University 
Plymouth NH 03264 
==


- Original Message -
From: "Jim Clark" 
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" 
Sent: Thursday, April 8, 2010 12:25:33 PM
Subject: RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

Hi

I have to disagree that the debate has nothing to do with the teaching of 
psychology; that is, unless we do not plan to ever talk about race in our 
classes.  And if we do talk about race, there is definitely no unanimity that 
Marc's brief summary is the correct scientific position to take at the present 
time.  Over recent decades advances in our understanding of human genetics has 
demonstrated in several ways that races as traditionally defined (e.g., on 
questionnaires or census forms) do in fact correspond to genetic distinctions.  
Just a couple of examples of relevant research:

Using DNA markers, Risch (a medical researcher) was able to reproduce 
traditional racial clusters and correctly classify virtually all of over 3,000 
participants' self-reported race. See: 

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050128_racefrm.htm 

And in forensic work, DNA has been used to correctly identify people as 
belonging to traditional racial groupings.  See:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/10/dnaprint?currentPage=all 

Of course, we do not at present know what the underlying genetic differences 
might mean psychologically.  They could simply be proxies for qualities (e.g., 
skin color, hair quality, ...) that allow classification (as would pictures or 
self-reports) but not directly related to psychological traits (e.g., 
intelligence).  The flip side, of course, is that we do not know that the 
differences are meaningless, and it is quite possible that tiny differences in 
the human genome could have robust consequences.

An even broader gap in our current knowledge (although perhaps I am unaware of 
recent developments in some domains) is the causal connection that still needs 
to be built between genes and subsequent behavior in later generations.  It is 
one thing to talk about the heritability of psychological traits and another to 
explain how genes that control biochemical processes give rise to such 
variation.  Personally I find intellectually unsatisfying claims that certain 
brain regions or certain neurotransmitters are more or less active, absent a 
good psychological model that demonstrates how these states give rise to the 
psychological phenomena to be explained.

Nor does the research resolve difficult definitional questions about what we 
mean by race (or might want to mean).  I would disagree with Stephen Black that 
any group showing genetic differences from other groups (e.g., Jews vs. 
non-Jews) is sufficient to label that group as a distinct race.  Such a 
definition would give rise to an infinity of races (e.g., my family versus 
Stephen Black's family; my immediate family members vs. extended family 
members; me vs. everyone else; ...).  I'm not an expert, but it appears that 
Risch and others generally appeal to ancestral Continents or other Geographic 
units in defining race.

And the issue of defining race raises the more general question about how 
psychologists see categories (whatever they are ... race, psychiatric 
disorders, ...).  I tend to draw on prototype or exemplar views rather than 
views that are looking for some single necessary and sufficient feature as in 
classical views.  That is, findings of variability within groups, as pointed 
out correctly by Marc, are not definitive with respect to whether such 
groupings are valid.

And then there is the sensitivity and controversy surrounding these issues, as 
actually illus

RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Dr. Bob Wildblood]

So nice to see that someone reads Kurt Vonnegut.

.
Robert W. Wildblood, PhD
Riverside Counseling Center and
Adjunct Psychology Faculty @
Germanna Community College
drb...@rcn.com  

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RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Jim Clark]

ategorical, social construct?  It's not blood, it's not genetics.  It's social 
and cultural.  There's more genetic variability within a race than between 
races.

It's a social construct.  It has a reality (I think Hacking would concur with 
that), but it doesn't have to do with genetics.

I think.

m

--
Marc Carter, PhD
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Psychology
College of Arts & Sciences
Baker University
--

> -Original Message-
> From: Louis Schmier [mailto:lschm...@valdosta.edu] 
> Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 5:12 AM
> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
> Subject: RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?
>
> "Jews in general?"  "Conventional Jewish population?"  Gosh,
> that sounds like an distorting stereotype to me.  You're not
> talking about red hair; you're offering a red herring.
> You've been reading too much of Wikipedia.  Amazing how on
> this list Wikipedia has been bashed as a legitimate sources
> and here you go citing it.  And, how I've been bashed for not
> citing refereed scientific studies, and you go and cite
> newspaper reports.
> Nevertheless, I am confused.  Who are you talking about?
> You're not talking about black dyed red-haired converts to
> Judaism; you're not talking about black dyed red-haired
> Jewish converts to other religions;  you're not talking about
> the Lemba; you're not talking about the descendants of Hagar;
> you're not talking about Joseph's offspring from two
> Egyptians wives (Gen 41:50-2); you're not talking about
> offspring of marriages between Jews and non-Jews; you're not
> talking about Sephardim; you're not talking about Ethiopian
> Jews; you're not talking about Yemeni Jews; you're not
> talking about Baghdadi Jews; you're not talking about Iranian
> Jews; you're not talking about German Jews; you're not
> talking about the Jews of Kaifeng in China (whom I've met and
> "don't look Jewish"); you're not talking about the Cochin
> Jews or Bene Israel Jews of India; you're not even talking
> about over the 97% of  Ashkenazi Jews who don't have the
> Tay-Sachs gene marker; you're not talking about Jews who
> lived before the Tay-Sachs mutation occurred.  And, if you
> want to dwell on Tay-Sachs, I guess that makes Cajuns, French
> Canadians, and Irish American Catholics either members of
> your "Jewish race" or have "Jewish blood" flowing through
> their veins since the incidence of Tay-Sachs in these
> populations is nearly the same as in the
> Ashkenazi Jews (and don't hand me the debunked "Jewish fur
> trader hypothesis").No, I
> have no trouble with the obvious because it's obvious that
> you're just talking about "Jews in General" and "conventional
> Jewish population."
>
> Mike is right.  Enough!
>
> Make it a good day.
>
>   --Louis--
>
>
> Louis Schmier
> http://www.therandomthoughts.com Department of History
> http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org 
> Valdosta State University
> Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\   /\  /\   /\
> (229-333-5947)/^\\/  \/   \
> /\/\__/\ \/\
> /
> \/   \_ \/ /   \/ /\/ \  /\
>//\/\/
> /\\__/__/_/\_\\_/__\
> /\"If you
> want to climb mountains,\ /\
> _ /  \don't
> practice on mole hills" -
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: sbl...@ubishops.ca [mailto:sbl...@ubishops.ca] 
> Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 8:40 PM
> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
> Subject: [tips] Do Jews form a race?
>
> I  knew I shouldn't have done  it, and yet I did. Now I hear
> myself screaming, "Stop, stop! Don't do it again. Get help
> for your SPAA (Stupid Pointless Argument Addiction)!  And yet
> I persist.
>
> I'm shocked that Louis would stoop to the cheap and
> disrespectful trick of invoking the Holocaust as a bullying
> tactic to attempt to silence me.  I'm sure the tactic has
> worked well for him in the past.  But not this time. What am
> I supposed to do, compete with him in whose family suffered more?
>
> Louis sneered:
>
> >  (1) So, tell me, does a convert to Judaism instantly undergo a
> > miraculous genetic mutation and racial transformation
> induced by the
> > mystic waters of the mikvah?
> >  Here in our community, the rabbi is conver

Re: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[John Kulig]

I have only scanned these posts, so hope I am not repeating old information. 
Some data is out there ... they do not answer categorically the 'race' vs 
'non-race' question, but better than no data at all ...

Basically, Jews from different countries are usually more similar to each other 
(using DNA markers) than they are to their non-Jewish neighbors (Hammer et al 
Jewish and middle eastern non-jewish populations share a common pool ... Proc 
Natl Acad Sci USA 97, 6769-74, 2000). Though they are very similar to 
non-Jewish middle eastern Arabs. Perhaps no surprise given the dual lines from 
Abraham+Sarah (Jewish) -> Isaac, and Abraham+Hagar (Egyptian) -> Ishmael. 

Further, DNA markers indicate the Falasha from Ethiopia have african (not 
Jewish) markers (and the Mormons are NOT the lost tribe genetically at least). 
However, the Lemba from South Africa ARE related, and have the same markers as 
the Cohanim (who supposedly have markers different from other Jews, consist 
with the historic Cohen priest role (Skorecki et al Y chromosomes of Jewish 
priests, Nature, 385, 32, 1997)

And, to answer Michael S's previous question, yes there are Ethiopian Jews, 
though not genetically similar. Though the % of Ethiopian Jews is small (less 
than 10% I believe). And if I am permitted to put a plug in for Greece, early 
all of non-Muslim Ethiopians are Greek Orthodox (but I have NO idea about the 
genetics!) - they were Greek Orthodox before much of Europe was Christian 
apparently.

I am not an expert on DNA or little else on this thread, except summaries on 
these references, so I make no claims for the quality of the work summarized ..


==
John W. Kulig 
Professor of Psychology 
Plymouth State University 
Plymouth NH 03264 
==


- Original Message -
From: "Marc Carter" 
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" 
Sent: Thursday, April 8, 2010 9:23:51 AM
Subject: RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?


I haven't been reading all these posts closely (and in fact would love to see 
them off-list because they have little to do with the teaching of psychology), 
but can I just interject that that "race" is not a biological construct, but a 
categorical, social construct?  It's not blood, it's not genetics.  It's social 
and cultural.  There's more genetic variability within a race than between 
races.

It's a social construct.  It has a reality (I think Hacking would concur with 
that), but it doesn't have to do with genetics.

I think.

m

--
Marc Carter, PhD
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Psychology
College of Arts & Sciences
Baker University
--

> -Original Message-
> From: Louis Schmier [mailto:lschm...@valdosta.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 5:12 AM
> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
> Subject: RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?
>
> "Jews in general?"  "Conventional Jewish population?"  Gosh,
> that sounds like an distorting stereotype to me.  You're not
> talking about red hair; you're offering a red herring.
> You've been reading too much of Wikipedia.  Amazing how on
> this list Wikipedia has been bashed as a legitimate sources
> and here you go citing it.  And, how I've been bashed for not
> citing refereed scientific studies, and you go and cite
> newspaper reports.
> Nevertheless, I am confused.  Who are you talking about?
> You're not talking about black dyed red-haired converts to
> Judaism; you're not talking about black dyed red-haired
> Jewish converts to other religions;  you're not talking about
> the Lemba; you're not talking about the descendants of Hagar;
> you're not talking about Joseph's offspring from two
> Egyptians wives (Gen 41:50-2); you're not talking about
> offspring of marriages between Jews and non-Jews; you're not
> talking about Sephardim; you're not talking about Ethiopian
> Jews; you're not talking about Yemeni Jews; you're not
> talking about Baghdadi Jews; you're not talking about Iranian
> Jews; you're not talking about German Jews; you're not
> talking about the Jews of Kaifeng in China (whom I've met and
> "don't look Jewish"); you're not talking about the Cochin
> Jews or Bene Israel Jews of India; you're not even talking
> about over the 97% of  Ashkenazi Jews who don't have the
> Tay-Sachs gene marker; you're not talking about Jews who
> lived before the Tay-Sachs mutation occurred.  And, if you
> want to dwell on Tay-Sachs, I guess that makes Cajuns, French
> Canadians, and Irish American Catholics either members of
> your "Jewish race" or have "Jewish blood" flowing through
> their vei

RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Mike Palij]

On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 06:24:04 -0700, Marc Carter wrote:
>I haven't been reading all these posts closely (and in fact would love 
>to see them off-list because they have little to do with the teaching of 
>psychology), but can I just interject that that "race" is not a biological 
>construct, but a categorical, social construct?  It's not blood, it's not 
>genetics.  It's social and cultural.  There's more genetic variability 
>within a race than between races.
>
>It's a social construct.  It has a reality (I think Hacking would concur 
>with that), but it doesn't have to do with genetics.
>
>I think.

Though what you say may be true I think it fails to appreciate
what the function of "race" is.  One way to think of what "race"
is is to view it as a "MacGuffen".  A MacGuffen is not an item on
a McDonalds menu, rather, quoting the Wikipedia (SDA) entry 
on it:

"a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot
of a work of fiction"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin

The film director Alfred Hitchcock popularized the term and referred
to it as a key element in his films, that is, the MacGuffin was what people
were concerned with, would kill to obtain, go around around the world
to find but often the viewer would have no idea what it was.  Quentin
Tarrentino uses this to a brilliant degree in his movie "Pulp Fiction" where
the MacGuffen was the leather case that Jules and Vincent had to get
back to Marcellus Wallace.  For more on other famous MacGuffens,
see:
http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare/archives/2008/06/the_tribal_mind_73.html

I know, I know, you're probably saying "Hey Mike!  WTF does a MacGuffen 
have to do with a concept like race?"  Well, it is necessary to have some
familiarity with the Bokononism religion to understand.  See, within Bokononism,
the MacGuffen is a wampeter which serves as the basis of a karass, that is,
it serves as the basis or goal of the karass (defined as a "team of people that
do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing).  Wampeters
wax and wane in importance but even as they replace each other, they
serve as the basis for the activities of the karass.  Of course, one should not
confuse a karass with a granfalloon which is a false karass, that is, an 
arbitrary
collection of individuals who may think that they are doing God's Will but
don't realize they have false consciousness or general cluelessness.  A more
specific definition is:

|A granfalloon is "a false karass, [...] a seeming team that [is] meaningless 
|in terms of the ways God gets things done." Examples of granfalloons are 
|"the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General 
|Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows -- and any nation, 
|anytime, anywhere.
http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/personal/bokonon.html

One could probably add "Tea Partyers", Tipsters, and any religion at any
time to this list.

So, for some people "race" may serves as the wampeter of their karass while
for granfallooners it would be the false karass that binds them together.

Then again, one might claim that "race", like most of the rest of the knowledge
we have and use, is just foma.

-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu





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RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Marc Carter]

I haven't been reading all these posts closely (and in fact would love to see 
them off-list because they have little to do with the teaching of psychology), 
but can I just interject that that "race" is not a biological construct, but a 
categorical, social construct?  It's not blood, it's not genetics.  It's social 
and cultural.  There's more genetic variability within a race than between 
races.

It's a social construct.  It has a reality (I think Hacking would concur with 
that), but it doesn't have to do with genetics.

I think.

m

--
Marc Carter, PhD
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Psychology
College of Arts & Sciences
Baker University
--

> -Original Message-
> From: Louis Schmier [mailto:lschm...@valdosta.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 5:12 AM
> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
> Subject: RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?
>
> "Jews in general?"  "Conventional Jewish population?"  Gosh,
> that sounds like an distorting stereotype to me.  You're not
> talking about red hair; you're offering a red herring.
> You've been reading too much of Wikipedia.  Amazing how on
> this list Wikipedia has been bashed as a legitimate sources
> and here you go citing it.  And, how I've been bashed for not
> citing refereed scientific studies, and you go and cite
> newspaper reports.
> Nevertheless, I am confused.  Who are you talking about?
> You're not talking about black dyed red-haired converts to
> Judaism; you're not talking about black dyed red-haired
> Jewish converts to other religions;  you're not talking about
> the Lemba; you're not talking about the descendants of Hagar;
> you're not talking about Joseph's offspring from two
> Egyptians wives (Gen 41:50-2); you're not talking about
> offspring of marriages between Jews and non-Jews; you're not
> talking about Sephardim; you're not talking about Ethiopian
> Jews; you're not talking about Yemeni Jews; you're not
> talking about Baghdadi Jews; you're not talking about Iranian
> Jews; you're not talking about German Jews; you're not
> talking about the Jews of Kaifeng in China (whom I've met and
> "don't look Jewish"); you're not talking about the Cochin
> Jews or Bene Israel Jews of India; you're not even talking
> about over the 97% of  Ashkenazi Jews who don't have the
> Tay-Sachs gene marker; you're not talking about Jews who
> lived before the Tay-Sachs mutation occurred.  And, if you
> want to dwell on Tay-Sachs, I guess that makes Cajuns, French
> Canadians, and Irish American Catholics either members of
> your "Jewish race" or have "Jewish blood" flowing through
> their veins since the incidence of Tay-Sachs in these
> populations is nearly the same as in the
> Ashkenazi Jews (and don't hand me the debunked "Jewish fur
> trader hypothesis").No, I
> have no trouble with the obvious because it's obvious that
> you're just talking about "Jews in General" and "conventional
> Jewish population."
>
> Mike is right.  Enough!
>
> Make it a good day.
>
>   --Louis--
>
>
> Louis Schmier
> http://www.therandomthoughts.com Department of History
> http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
> Valdosta State University
> Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\   /\  /\   /\
> (229-333-5947)/^\\/  \/   \
> /\/\__/\ \/\
> /
> \/   \_ \/ /   \/ /\/ \  /\
>//\/\/
> /\\__/__/_/\_\\_/__\
> /\"If you
> want to climb mountains,\ /\
> _ /  \don't
> practice on mole hills" -
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: sbl...@ubishops.ca [mailto:sbl...@ubishops.ca]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 8:40 PM
> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
> Subject: [tips] Do Jews form a race?
>
> I  knew I shouldn't have done  it, and yet I did. Now I hear
> myself screaming, "Stop, stop! Don't do it again. Get help
> for your SPAA (Stupid Pointless Argument Addiction)!  And yet
> I persist.
>
> I'm shocked that Louis would stoop to the cheap and
> disrespectful trick of invoking the Holocaust as a bullying
> tactic to attempt to silence me.  I'm sure the tactic has
> worked well for him in the past.  But not this time. What am
> I supposed to do, compete with him in whose family suffered more?
>
> Louis sneere

RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Louis Schmier]

"Jews in general?"  "Conventional Jewish population?"  Gosh, that sounds like an
distorting stereotype to me.  You're not talking about red hair; you're 
offering a red
herring.  You've been reading too much of Wikipedia.  Amazing how on this list 
Wikipedia
has been bashed as a legitimate sources and here you go citing it.  And, how 
I've been
bashed for not citing refereed scientific studies, and you go and cite 
newspaper reports.
Nevertheless, I am confused.  Who are you talking about?  You're not talking 
about black
dyed red-haired converts to Judaism; you're not talking about black dyed 
red-haired Jewish
converts to other religions;  you're not talking about the Lemba; you're not 
talking about
the descendants of Hagar; you're not talking about Joseph's offspring from two 
Egyptians
wives (Gen 41:50-2); you're not talking about offspring of marriages between 
Jews and
non-Jews; you're not talking about Sephardim; you're not talking about 
Ethiopian Jews;
you're not talking about Yemeni Jews; you're not talking about Baghdadi Jews; 
you're not
talking about Iranian Jews; you're not talking about German Jews; you're not 
talking about
the Jews of Kaifeng in China (whom I've met and "don't look Jewish"); you're 
not talking
about the Cochin Jews or Bene Israel Jews of India; you're not even talking 
about over the
97% of  Ashkenazi Jews who don't have the Tay-Sachs gene marker; you're not 
talking about
Jews who lived before the Tay-Sachs mutation occurred.  And, if you want to 
dwell on
Tay-Sachs, I guess that makes Cajuns, French Canadians, and Irish American 
Catholics
either members of your "Jewish race" or have "Jewish blood" flowing through 
their veins
since the incidence of Tay-Sachs in these populations is nearly the same as in 
the
Ashkenazi Jews (and don't hand me the debunked "Jewish fur trader hypothesis"). 
   No, I
have no trouble with the obvious because it's obvious that you're just talking 
about "Jews
in General" and "conventional Jewish population."  

Mike is right.  Enough!

Make it a good day.

  --Louis--


Louis Schmier    http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History  
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org   
Valdosta State University 
Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\   /\  /\       /\
(229-333-5947)    /^\\/  \/   \   /\/\__/\ \/\
    / \/   \_ \/ /   \/ 
/\/   
\  /\
   //\/\/ /\    
\__/__/_/\_\    \_/__\
    /\"If you want to climb 
mountains,\ /\
    _ /  \    don't practice on mole 
hills" -


-Original Message-
From: sbl...@ubishops.ca [mailto:sbl...@ubishops.ca] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 8:40 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

I  knew I shouldn't have done  it, and yet I did. Now I hear myself 
screaming, "Stop, stop! Don't do it again. Get help for your 
SPAA (Stupid Pointless Argument Addiction)!  And yet I persist.  

I'm shocked that Louis would stoop to the cheap and 
disrespectful trick of invoking the Holocaust as a bullying tactic 
to attempt to silence me.  I'm sure the tactic has worked well for 
him in the past.  But not this time. What am I supposed to do, 
compete with him in whose family suffered more?  

Louis sneered:

>  (1) So, tell me, does a convert to Judaism instantly undergo
> a miraculous genetic mutation and racial
> transformation induced by the mystic waters of the mikvah? 
>  Here in our community, the rabbi is converting an 
> entire African-American family to Judaism.  Do something
 > genetic with that! 

It was clear that I was talking about Jews in general, and the 
existence of a small number of converts as a special case does 
not refute the findings that I cited. These findings show that 
people who self-identify as Jews or the children of Jews tend to 
have certain genetic markers in common, and therefore may 
reasonably be referred to as a race in the biological sense.  It 
seems patently obvious that this would not apply to converts.  

As Louis has trouble with the obvious, let me try again. Consider 
the analogy of having red hair, unquestionably a hereditary 
disorder. Yet anyone afflicted with red hair can cure themselves 
merely by walking into a drugstore.  But the existence of hair 
dye  to create conversions to red hair does not weaken our 
understanding of the genetic origin of hair colour.  It's still 
hereditary, even though on some occasions it might not be. 

So it is with conversion and the concept of race applied to Jews. 
As for Louis terming such ideas "bigoted, hateful tripe",  it is 
about as racist to say that Jews have an identifiable biological 
heritage as it is to say the same thing about people with red 
hair. Both accusations are 

Re: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[michael sylvester]

- Original Message - 
From: "Allen Esterson" 
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" 


Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: [tips] Do Jews form a race?


?Louis Schmier writes:


As for those learned English judges who seemed to follow the path

Halakha (the woman is the religious determinant since we know from
whose womb a child comes while no one can be sure who is the father)
because it was the easiest road to walk. […] According to you, their
legal ruling had the scientific consequences of establishing physical
laws of biology, making the Jews into a biological race.  Funny thing
happened earlier on the way to Auschwitz, their learned counterparts,
as well as the bureaucrats in the Rassenamt, did the same thing in Nazi
Germany.  And, as a consequence, both I and my wife lost family both
shot and buried during the "hidden Holocaust" in a field outside
Bobrika in Galicia and Zhitomir in the Ukraine by the Einstats gruppen
and gassed and burned at the death factory of Auschwitz because of such
bigoted, hateful tripe.  There are more holes, huge gaps, in your
assertion, but that's enough.  I find this discussion distasteful, but
necessary. If you want to continue it, bring it on.<

Louis: By all means take issue with Stephen's account of what
constitutes Jewishness (and given the complexities there is more than
one "logical" conclusion that one may arrive at), but I find it
distasteful that you chose to make a connection between the verdict of
the British Supreme Court cited by Stephen with Nazi race laws. (You,
not Stephen, describe the Nazi judges as "learned counterparts" to the
judges in question.)

I'm sure that the Supreme Court judges would rather have not been
called upon to adjudicate in what was essentially an intra-Jewish
dispute – or, more specifically, a dispute between British Orthodox
Judaism and reform Judaism. (I'm sure a large number of secular Jews
like me looked on the whole affair with a certain degree of
bewilderment.)

The issue revolved around whether, within the law as it is currently
constituted, the status of the child in question should be as
recognised by the Office of the Chief Rabbi (the OCR) or according to
the lights of the non-Orthodox section of the British Judaism. Faced
with this difficult task, the High Court came down in favour of the
OCR, but this verdict was overturned on appeal, and the Supreme Court
upheld the appeal. The precise details of the dispute can be seen from
the verdict of the Appeal Court:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2009/626.html

Allen Esterson
Former lecturer, Science Department
Southwark College, London
allenester...@compuserve.com
http://www.esterson.org


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Re: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Allen Esterson]

?Louis Schmier writes:

> As for those learned English judges who seemed to follow the path 
Halakha (the woman is the religious determinant since we know from 
whose womb a child comes while no one can be sure who is the father) 
because it was the easiest road to walk. […] According to you, their 
legal ruling had the scientific consequences of establishing physical 
laws of biology, making the Jews into a biological race.  Funny thing 
happened earlier on the way to Auschwitz, their learned counterparts, 
as well as the bureaucrats in the Rassenamt, did the same thing in Nazi 
Germany.  And, as a consequence, both I and my wife lost family both 
shot and buried during the "hidden Holocaust" in a field outside 
Bobrika in Galicia and Zhitomir in the Ukraine by the Einstats gruppen  
and gassed and burned at the death factory of Auschwitz because of such 
bigoted, hateful tripe.  There are more holes, huge gaps, in your 
assertion, but that's enough.  I find this discussion distasteful, but 
necessary. If you want to continue it, bring it on.<

Louis: By all means take issue with Stephen's account of what 
constitutes Jewishness (and given the complexities there is more than 
one "logical" conclusion that one may arrive at), but I find it 
distasteful that you chose to make a connection between the verdict of 
the British Supreme Court cited by Stephen with Nazi race laws. (You, 
not Stephen, describe the Nazi judges as "learned counterparts" to the 
judges in question.)

I'm sure that the Supreme Court judges would rather have not been 
called upon to adjudicate in what was essentially an intra-Jewish 
dispute – or, more specifically, a dispute between British Orthodox 
Judaism and reform Judaism. (I'm sure a large number of secular Jews 
like me looked on the whole affair with a certain degree of 
bewilderment.)

The issue revolved around whether, within the law as it is currently 
constituted, the status of the child in question should be as 
recognised by the Office of the Chief Rabbi (the OCR) or according to 
the lights of the non-Orthodox section of the British Judaism. Faced 
with this difficult task, the High Court came down in favour of the 
OCR, but this verdict was overturned on appeal, and the Supreme Court 
upheld the appeal. The precise details of the dispute can be seen from 
the verdict of the Appeal Court:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2009/626.html

Allen Esterson
Former lecturer, Science Department
Southwark College, London
allenester...@compuserve.com
http://www.esterson.org


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RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Louis Schmier]

Paul, on this list an aside issue never stopped anyone, which is to the 
members' credit.
Beside, I am addressing the same issue.  When the term "race" is used regarding 
Jews, do
you really think people go down to the benign sixth or seventh definition for 
their
meaning?  Given the history of the 20th century, I don't think so.

Make it a good day.

  --Louis--


Louis Schmier    http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History  
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org   
Valdosta State University 
Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\   /\  /\       /\
(229-333-5947)    /^\\/  \/   \   /\/\__/\ \/\
    / \/   \_ \/ /   \/ 
/\/   
\  /\
   //\/\/ /\    
\__/__/_/\_\    \_/__\
    /\"If you want to climb 
mountains,\ /\
    _ /  \    don't practice on mole 
hills" -


-Original Message-
From: Brandon, Paul K [mailto:paul.bran...@mnsu.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 1:39 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

Louis, very really--
The question is what STEPHEN meant.
You're addressing an issue that was not raised.

PAUL K. BRANDON
paul.bran...@mnsu.edu
Psychology Dept (emeritus)
Minnesota State University, Mankato
http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~pkbrando/



From: Louis Schmier [lschm...@valdosta.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 9:44 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

Paul, really.  Let's put our feet on the ground.  What do you think almost 
everyone means
when they use the term as applied to Jews?
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RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Brandon, Paul K]

Louis, very really--
The question is what STEPHEN meant.
You're addressing an issue that was not raised.

PAUL K. BRANDON
paul.bran...@mnsu.edu
Psychology Dept (emeritus)
Minnesota State University, Mankato
http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~pkbrando/



From: Louis Schmier [lschm...@valdosta.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 9:44 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

Paul, really.  Let's put our feet on the ground.  What do you think almost 
everyone means
when they use the term as applied to Jews?
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RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Louis Schmier]

Paul, really.  Let's put our feet on the ground.  What do you think almost 
everyone means
when they use the term as applied to Jews?

Make it a good day.

  --Louis--


Louis Schmier    http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History  
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org   
Valdosta State University 
Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\   /\  /\       /\
(229-333-5947)    /^\\/  \/   \   /\/\__/\ \/\
    / \/   \_ \/ /   \/ 
/\/   
\  /\
   //\/\/ /\    
\__/__/_/\_\    \_/__\
    /\"If you want to climb 
mountains,\ /\
    _ /  \    don't practice on mole 
hills" -

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RE: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

[Brandon, Paul K]

And of course the definition of 'race' is itself vague--
you (and implicitly Louis) are using it in the biological sense;
if you look up the term in the OED you'll find many different usages,
some of which would (and are) apply to Jews.


From: sbl...@ubishops.ca [sbl...@ubishops.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 8:23 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] Do Jews form a race?

Louis (call me "Random") Schmier objected to one of my
comments, saying:

> "As a member of said race?"  As a spokesman in this
>  region of the United States on many an occasion for my
> religion, not to mention a scholarly resume of some
> professional repute on this subject, I can attest that Judaism
> is not--I repeat, is not--a race.

First off, I never declared that Judaism is a race, which is
nonsensical. I did say in a  tongue-in-cheek way that I am a
member of the Jewish race, and, of course, that entitles me to
speak on behalf of all Jews everywhere (more tongue-in-cheek
for you, Louis). In reality, I don't claim to speak for anyone
except myself, unlike modest Louis.

I wasn't going to go near the issue of "What (or who) is a Jew?",
one of the most contentious of philosophical questions. And
arguing with Louis is never productive.  But I never learn, and
hopefully my comments below may have some relevance to
psychological science and even the teaching of it.

Until recently the modern feel-good consensus was that race is
not a biologically valid concept but a social one (e.g. see Leroi's
2005 essay in the NY Times). Therefore Jews cannot form a
race in the biological sense.  After, all, we don't have horns as
some believe, which would be handy for identification, and we
do vary in appearance.  Big noses, for example, are not
exclusive to Jews nor essential, thank goodness (e.g. take my
wife's overweening pride in her tiny honker). Also, there is no
specific gene which uniquely identifies a Jew.

But this consensus has now been challenged due to advances
in molecular genetics. When multiple genes are considered,
patterns differentiating races in a meaningful way do show up
(Leroi, 2005).   For example, brilliant research has established
that male Jews with the surname Cohen share a set of six
genetic markers at much higher frequency that anyone else.
(See  http://tinyurl.com/Cohen-genes ). That scholarly review by
Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman notes that "Using the CMH [the Cohen
modal haplotype] as a DNA signature of the ancient Hebrews,
researchers are pursuing a hunt for Jewish genes around the
world".  That's Jewish genes, as in race, Louis.

Second, it's well-established that Jews suffer from certain
genetic diseases at a much higher frequency than the general
population (giving new life to the dark witticism that next time
God should choose someone else for a change). Jewish women
are at considerably greater risk of developing breast cancer,
due to their inheritance of two specific genes (BRCA1 and
BRCA2). Jews also are at much higher risk for the cruel genetic
disorder of Tay-Sachs, which condemns babies to an early
death, and for other deadly neurological disorders such as
Niemann-Pick. It's also known that Jews tend to have elevated
IQ, and disproportionate representation in intellectual
occupations and achievements. These characteristics, too, have
a substantial genetic component.

This has led to speculation concerning the relationship of the
bad (dread diseases) and the good (high IQ).  One recent, and
admittedly controversial hypothesis, is that the two are related
through the inheritance of specific sets of genes which can
cause either outcome.  If an individual receives one copy of the
genes, the outcome is favourable; two copies, deadly. This is a
phenomenon known as heterozygote advantage. The theory
carries the implicit assumption that the Jews, or more
specifically, northern European Jews (the Ashkenazi), form a
race as defined by their genetic makeup.

For more on this, see Cochran et al (2006) for their long and
difficult paper. A more readable source is the LA Times article
by Kaplan (2009).

Finally, the British Supreme Court has boldly taken up the
question of who is a Jew in a dispute involving restrictive
admission to a Jewish school. The court declared that the
school's practice of allowing admission only to children whose
mothers are Jewish was tantamount to admission by race, and
therefore racially discriminatory (Lyall, 2009).  Thus the learned
judges have implicitly declared that the Jews do form a race.

Taken together, these observations tend to the conclusion that
the Jews, in particular the Ashkenazi, form an identifiable race
on genetic grounds, even as the boundaries remain indistinct.


Stephen

Cochran, G. et al (2006). Natural history of Ashkenazi
intelligence. Journal of Biosocial Science, 38, 659-93.
An undated version of their paper is available at
http://homepage.mac.com/harpend/.Public/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosoc
sci.pdf or ht