It seems worth taking this criticism up with the authors of, for example, Risch et al 2005 [0].
From the abstract: "Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity."
It seems worth asking how a paper like this got published, as late as 2005. Scientific racism may be even more entrenched than many have feared...
It's easy to find South Africans "holding forth" etc. For example: [0].
"The number of black people who believe life was better under South Africa's apartheid regime is growing, according to a survey published yesterday... In a rebuke to the African National Congress government, more than 60 per cent of all South Africans polled said the country was better run during white minority rule."
Yes, that's from 2002. Everyone who thinks the ANC has improved since 2002, please raise your hand.
While I didn't click on this thread to banter about details, details like this matter in a way - because South Africa is a real country and not a story or a song. In the real country, pressure from nice white people who live in America helped replace one one-party government, the Nationalists, with another, the ANC.
If the ANC governs South African blacks better than the Nats, the nice white people did a good thing for South African blacks; otherwise, they did a mean thing. Surely this is true whatever the names of the parties, the skin colors of the government bureaucrats, etc, etc, etc.
The possibility that, while listening to "Biko," singing "Free Nelson Mandela," and generally having a grand old time, our nice white people actually damaged the lives of actual real people (eg, there are 500,000 rapes a year in ANC-governed South Africa) does not seem to occur to our collective progressive consciousness. It seems much easier to express "guilt" about our 17th-century ancestors than to consider the possibility that we, ourselves, actually caused real harm.
Sorry, but no. urbit, from the Latin urbs == city, is actually a good bit older than UR.
The initials are somehow very compelling - another couple of great literary UR blogs are the Unz Review (unz.com) and Uncouth Reflections (uncouthreflections.com).
I will admit that urbit has very few users, as technically we're really not launched at all. We were thinking Strange Loop might be a good place for this, but I guess not.
I shouldn't post as urbit. Quite a few other people, few of whom agree with me on anything, have worked on the project.
The word "racist" and its conjugations does not appear in the English language until the 1920s - see Peter Frost's cultural history [0]. If you asked Shakespeare if he was a "racist," he would not know what you meant.
"Racist" is essentially a term of abuse which no group or party has ever applied to itself. Like most such epithets, it has two meanings - a clear objective one, describing a person who fails to believe in the anthropological theories of human equality which became first popular, then universal in the mid-20th century; and a caricature of the vices, personal or political, typically engaged in by such a foul unbeliever.
I actually like the answer given by Steve Klabnik above [1]. To call Steve a communist is a serious personal insult, and you can get banned for it [2]. However, Steve reserves the right to call himself a communist, or not, as he likes. This is actually kind of cool...
From the abstract: "Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity."
It seems worth asking how a paper like this got published, as late as 2005. Scientific racism may be even more entrenched than many have feared...
[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/