Scientific racism is bullsh**.

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Here is a video of David Duke talking.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU4cvmk44MQ&feature=related[/youtube]
Notice how he shows the scientifically proven fact that there are physical differences between the races and just assumes that there must be behavioral differences as well.

I have previously stated on this site that nearly all apparent racial differences in behavior can be better explained by history. (http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt153052.html) White supremacists see physical differences and assume behavioral differences.

Nature vs. Nurture debates are so 20th century.

Genetics can predispose you to all sorts of things, but environment - and in sentient species, self-determination - molds behavior.

It's within the realm of possibility that genes can presidpose a developing brain to certain kinds of behavior. We know that chemical imbalances and other neurological disorders can have a genetic component.

But people generally behave the way they do because of external factors more than anything else.

Please insert your own video of The Clash performing "White Riot". I'm too lazy to find and link one. It turns out that poor white people in the UK have the same problems as poor black people in the USA. Wonder why, eh?

Sherlock Holmes said it best:

The context was different, but the point’s the same. People like this are simply looking for justification for their hatred.

Well there actually are physical differences between races...in case you had never noticed. and there probably are some behavior differences probably nothing perfectly defined and set in stone but I am sure there are some differences there but I agree that they are probably mostly influenced by history and culture.

I like differences, maybe that's just another way I'm different, though. *sigh*

I think even talking about the subject is premature. Projects looking at and comparing genomes, plural, are pretty new. People fifty years from now will think we were on the level of witchdoctors in our understanding of genetic diversity and what it means for real people.

And Duke better hurry and get his racism in while he has an audience. Once we start tailoring our genomes, natural variation will look quaint. The racists will be like men arguing the pros and cons of the horse and buggy.

Have you spent your whole life in a cave? Have you never set foot out of an all-white community? You need to go out in the world and have contact with other ethnic groups to see what kind of patterns become evident. Forget David Duke, don't take my word for it either, and get out and see for yourself.

we don't have to decode the genome to build statistical models of biological performance that have nothing to do with behavior.

Japanese people get so much of their diet from the sea, and have for so many centuries, that sodium-related hypertension is far less common in japan than it is in europe and even further less common than it is in africa. Why? The people who were sensitive to sodium in their diet all keeled over ages ago.

There are primitive tribes that get almost all of their calories from honey but have no diabetes at all. Why? The ones who could get diabetes died centuries ago.

We have a tribe we call "sherpa" because they adapted to life in a thin atmosphere. Over time the members of their tribe who couldn't hack it at low oxygen were naturally selected out.

Evolution works.

But getting into the subject of behavior - it's impossible to say at this point whether scottsmen are superior cattle rangers, and even if we presume that they are it's impossible to say whether that is due to learned behavior or due to predisposition.

You can say that members of the Mohawk tribe are less fearful of tremendous heights, but it turns out that if you get Mohawk steelworkers drunk enough they admit that they are as terrified as anybody else up there in the sky standing on a 10 inch steel girder. It's just that the bragging rights get them laid when they go back home.

I'm in full agreement with the sentiment of the OP. I think the core error, at least philosophically, of what Duke and others of his ilk are advocating, is viewing people as objects having an intrinsic essence, rather than beings that are a composition of the relational properties that comprise them. In this case, they reify the abstract category of race as an absolute reality. So, philosophically speaking at least, they are leaving a lot to be desired, since humans are infinitely more complex than this is giving them credit for.

Scientifically, the situation is just as bad. One would be remiss if they suggested that sub-populations of humans did not have significant genetic diversity, but this diversity does not hue to the neat categories of classical racial categorization. Gladly, long gone are the days when the racial categories of "Caucasoid", "Negroid", and "Mongoloid" had the imprimatur of the scientific community. When any sub-population of a species is studied today, it is generally regarded that the genetic variations of populations are gradients along a continuum of sorts, with no clear boundary lines:

Cline

But as another poster mentioned, we really don't have clear evidence at this time as to the degree to which genetics accounts for variations in human behavior. We do know that most of our fundamental endowments are genetically given, such as our basic drives, emotions, and faculties. And we know that genetics accounts for about 50% of the variations in our personalities. But as far as differences between races are concerned, however you would like to arbitrarily classify them, we know that there exists far more variation within populations than between them, and at least in the modern world, we can account for the poorer achievements among minority communities by considering the disadvantages resulting from the legacy of historical oppression, and the poverty that results from it. When you account for the social inequality, most of the supposed differences evaporate.

Ive made the same points half a dozen times here. But the OP mentioned behaviors. That's Harry Potter stuff if you are trying to link it to genetics today.

But is what you are saying actually in opposition to the OP? It seemed to me that 'DarthMetaKnight' made a statement about 'most' behaviors, you are making a statement about behaviors. No one is saying were are all, in all ways, the same. To be honest, I do not actually want to know if there are substantial differences between the races. We know there are small ones now and more than enough people have used as a pretext to sanctify by science, their internal prejudices. None of it gets past the inherent worth of any human being.

There may well be behavioural difference between the races as well as physical differences.
The point is, is that those difference do not make any race better or worse than any other.
Sure, they may be some things that people of some races can do better than those of some other races, but so what? Those 'other races' will have things that they can do better as well and it all balances out overall.