h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

we are all beings

year end issue newsweek 1999/2000 had article about changes in America in 15 years one of the conclusions was that America will not have an American who is 100% of one race.

we are all beings


I am not sure if BBC has "newweek" archive, but I think if they have the pisa people can find it!

it's kind of funny, my boyfriend didn't even realise he was in a "mixed race" relationship until there was a talking point about it here on h2g2...

I think any of my ex-gf/s would have been surprised to learn the same thing...

*is still waiting for clarification of the original post*



Hey, so is it a mixed race relationship if you come from different countries, but have the same skin colour?

*ponders*

Kilroy was talking about "mixed relations and mariages" intresting talk

Depends on what you mean by "race". A recent article about gypsies commented that they are a particularly closely knit community, and rarely marry people from outside their own community. Yet, if even only a couple of percent of people a year (I think the number was 4%) marry outside their community, it only takes a few decades for more than half of the community to be of "mixed race". Given the history of the US, is there one single Amercican of just one race.

A black American probably has a very interesting mix of ancestors from the many races in Africa.... in addition to all the "post-Africa" mingling. All "whites" may (yes, I did say may) have had black ancestors if you go back far enough.

If the intent is present hue of skin (as opposed to any notion of race), should we use color-code indexes to find a suitable partner.

We might see "friendship and perhaps more..." ads along the lines of
"light beige male (color code 5313GLB4) with pinkish cheeks (color code 5265FRD6) seeks partner with similar color codes (wintertime colors)"

"should we use color-code indexes to find a suitable partner."

Ooh! Do you think B&Q will have them?

"All "whites" may (yes, I did say may) have had black ancestors if you go back far enough."

Way down here near the border, substitute 'Hispanic' for 'black' If you looked at Mrs Gosho you'd think she's an average Anglo-Saxon American, but her mother is full-Spanish and there's a good deal of that influence in her father's side too.

Following this thread has been quite interesting. Sometimes it made sense, sometimes it was like watching an old mid-eighties version of Channels 4's 'Right to Reply' when anyone could get on tv as long as they were outraged and offended enough and held the right views.

And as for the Researcher who kicked the whole thing off...

I'm a troll, fol-de-rol. I'm a troll, fol-de-rol.
I'm a troll, fol-de-rol. And I'll eat you for my supper.

My applause to the H2G2 community at large for the way in which this has been handled. Hoovaloo in particular for post 40, which pretty much wrapped up the racist side of it. Here's a long, rambling post just to subscribe.

Couple of points - Lucy wasn't 'black' as such - probably more 'furry'. And while melanin does reduce sun-damage, white skin is more efficient at forming Vitamin D from sunlight - or so I heard. Hence light skin is an advantage in low-sunlight countries, dark in sunny climes.

Interbreeding won't necesarily lead to a 'single race', due to the digital nature of genetics - the 'pure white' genes will always be there, it's just you might get, say 'afro' hair with pale skin. Statistically, every so often you will get a 'pure white' throwback.

There are those who hold up 'Darwinism' as an argument that there is/should be a struggle for supremacy between the races. They seem to fail to understand that the human race is already dangerously inbred (more so than tribes of a few hundred mountain gorillas - another of my unreferenced factoids). Long-term, our only chance of surviving even quite minor environmental change is to increase our diversity.

Breeding only within races will eventually lead to speciation (1 species splitting into two non-mutually-fertile species), and interracial breeding is the only way to prevent this. In fact, it's slightly surprising it hasn't happened already - probably due to low genetic diversity, as mentioned above.

Gif

This is an extreamly interesting topic, one that leasds many minds to flip the arm nukes switch. If people are like me, i.e I have grown up in a socitiy that dosn't care about skin colour, (generaly, you always get idots) you don't even see it untill someone points it out.

-- DoctorMO --

Yes, it has definitely been interesting. I suppose we should thank PYT for providing us with it.

A side issue to consider is the one of adoption, where the authorities try to match background & so on of child & prospective parents. I can understand the need to remove possible areas of stress in creating a new family, but how important is this, in terms of a child having an awareness of their racial origins?

The more mixed race relationships there are, will the sense of heritage & belonging become more or less of an issue?

Interesting point Teaswill - on the one hand this thread has pretty much shown that for h2g2 Researchers race is not an issue when considering friends, loved ones, etc, but on the other hand all of those who have railed against PYT would probably also be on the side of celebrating diversity and cultural heritage. Can you have one without the other? Where do you draw the line between preserving heritage and preserving a race?

Just because people are in favour of mixed race relationships, that doesn't mean they think that everybody should have one. It's just as valid for Chinese to marry Chinese, Inuit to marry Inuit, Afro-Caribbean to marry Afro-Caribbean - it's a matter of personal choice. As for cultural heritage, that's killed off as much by people not practising age old skills as it is by mixed race marriages or non-ethnic adoptions. Gaelic is on the verge of being declared a dead language in Scotland because nobody speaks it. Welsh was kept alive largely by English immigrants to Wales. I saw a programme a couple of weeks ago where survival expert Ray Mears went to New Zealand and taught a group of Maori a method of making fire that had been used by their ancestors, but had been forgotten; they were delighted to have a piece of their 'cultural heritage' back.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Cultural heritage and diversity will die out when people let it. It will survive mixed race marriages as long as people want it to.

First thoughts should be to "preserving" the child. In many countries, there is a "shortage" of children to adopt. So when choosing parents, I assume that the people responsible try to make the best choice. Being overweight may not make you a bad parent, but if someone is very overweight this will be presumed a negative point for the adoption process. The same "points system" will be used for smoking, drinking, being poor, not having large accommodation, both parents working, presence of siblings, age, ......
Color/culture heritage is just another aspect that is surely taken into account in the "points system".
The greater the "selection" of potential parents, the more picky the authorities can be (no matterwhat the feelings of the old, the "poor", ...... would-be parents).
In passing, I note that for some children (the handicapped, "older" children, "difficult" children), the pool of potential parents is much much smaller, verging on the non-existant.

I don't think a child should be kept in an orphanage just because none of the potential parents have the same color skin, but having the same colored skin could be considered a positive factor (just as unfair as being over 40, overweight or whatever).

A fair number of people have talked about race in this conversation, but nobody yet has made the point that no homogenous race exists anywhere. The term as used is a social construction, which leads to downright daft talk about such things as (in the UK) 'the Welsh race', the 'Scottish race' and so on. All regional groups include members with a wide varieties in their characteristics, be it intelligence, moral beliefs or whatever. 'Racial abuse' is in reality often national abuse, or skin colour abuse, both of them examples of attempts at group exclusion, similar to that practiced by many animal groups.

Since when do humans 'breed'?

And I thought it was the human race. One race.

Also the person who started this thread disappeared after posting 7 - I wonder if he/she/it is enjoying all the furor caused by a couple of ignorant and insulting questions.

Nice to see how it got turned around though.



azahar

But is it not true, that for all the bizarre mix of invaders that have swept through the "British" isles, there is still quite a stable gene base that hasn't changed significantly in the majority of the population? Mind you, I'm no geneticist, and have probably muddled facts from a couple of different documentaries.

However, I am an interracial breeder, being mixed-race "Irish" whatever that means racially ( Scots, Anglo-Saxon, Spanish, Norse, Celtic and Lord knows what else genes in there ) who married an Indian whose family hail from Gujerat, a well-mixed gene pool. The Indian genes , dark hair, brown eyes, dark skin, should be dominant, yet two of our children have wild strands of red hair amongst the brown, sprinklings of freckles across the tanned cheeks, one son has nearly black hair, but a red beard and blue eyes.

Sounds bizarre, but they are stunningly good-looking, better than either parent, taller, too. Gene mixing is physically a definite good.

Cultural mixing? That's where the problems begin. The children come across as happily Irish, but the younger son, visiting his Indian/Ismaili cousins in Toronto felt like an outsider. But then I was sent to boarding school in England, and am still assumed to be English here in Ireland because of my accent. Does that matter? No, but that's the level it's felt at.

Mind you, the deeper you go into the countryside, the more racist the population becomes, especially here in "friendly Ireland." A "blow-in" is anyone who hasn't lived in the area for many generations. And the hostility can be keenly felt, even by a Dubliner, for instance, going to live in West Cork ( like a friend of mine who's been in Clonakilty for thirty years, and was recently asked was she thinking of moving "back home" to Dublin!!!!)

One of the biggest genetic jokes in Ireland was when they discovered that the so-called most "Irish" Irish on the Aran Islands off Galway have a rare blood-type that is only common in Derbyshire! They're almost certainly Cromwellian planters!

PS, Wow, Azahar, my daughter is called Zahara!