3000 words

How much admixture does it take for one race to no longer exist? The answer to the question is intuitive, and using Hardimon’s (2017) minimalist race concept, it is also easily answerable on logical grounds. For example, the answer to the question will show that the “one-drop rule” (that “one drop” of “black blood” makes one black) doesn’t make logical sense. These kinds of holdovers are from the racialist concept. Racialist races do not exist, therefore the concept of the “one-drop rule” does not either, since there are no facts of the matter the two concepts explain.

Social Isolation

The maintenance of the races that current exist depend on, at the moment, social barriers to reproduction, such as racism, segregation, differences in culture and class, role segregation and racial discrimination. Thus, social isolation is important for the maintenance of the current races. Social isolation, like geographic isolation (i.e., oceans, mountains, deserts, etc.) impedes racial interbreeding and thus ensures the continuation of the genetic transmission of distinct patterns of visible physical features which correspond to geographic ancestry.

Social isolation mechanisms have been in effect for hundreds of years, which began with the advent of African slavery to the New World. Laws against miscegenation existed in some states (Phillips, Odunlami, and Bonham, 2007), which is part of the reason why it’s (an unspoken) taboo to racially intermarry and bear children with someone not of their own race. Due to this, the few interracial unions that did produce children were specifically barred—in the eyes of society—to only be able to have children with others of their same socialrace at the lower ends of the social hierarchy.

Social isolation mechanisms have ensured the continuation of human races after the discovery of the New World when the geographic isolation mechanisms began breaking down due to exploring new lands. These isolating mechanisms on the populace ensured little admixture in the European population, but compared to European Americans, African Americans have a higher percentage of the opposite admixture. Understanding racial admixture and the genetic transmission of distinct visible physical features which correspond to geographic ancestry is extremely important to understanding when races “disappear” due to inbreeding.

Therefore, social isolation—ever since 1492—and the laws/rules that came after the breakdowns of geographic isolation between races still ensured the existence of the races as we know them today. Social factors acted as de facto physical barriers that impeded the races from breeding, thusly keeping their visible physical features intact, which means keeping their racial phenotype intact since races are defined—most importantly—on the basis of visible physical features. Social isolation can, clearly, be just about as “strong” as geographic isolation, since the social repercussions of interracial unions may exile them from the groups they were in. Thus, people would be wary of interracial unions, even if—as it seems—our culture in America seems to be swaying towards inclusivity in regard to interracial relationships, people still generally associate with and date people who look like themselves and their parents (see below).

How Much Admixture?

How much admixture can one race take before said race ceases to exist? Since C 1 (a group is distinguished from another group on the basis of distinct visible physical features) doesn’t require sharp lines between said visible physical features, C 2 (members linked by peculiar ancestry) also doesn’t require that all of the ancestors of Rs (races) be Rs.

The best possible example for an answer to the question of “How much admixture?” is simple. Think of Europeans (a subrace of the Caucasian race). When Europeans interbreed with non-Europeans, they begin to lose their distinct pattern of visible physical features which correspond to their geographic ancestry. Thus, in the case of Europeans, the answer to the question of “How much admixture?”, meaning “How much interbreeding can the European subrace take before it is “bred out” of existence?” is, of course, not too much.

Think of a union between a black woman and white man (using the social race designation; their populationist race is African and Caucasian, respectively). The child the woman bears will share some of her physical features, but barely. The baby will look more like the non-European parent, but of course, a baby who is the product of the union between an African and European will share features with both parents, and thus, the baby can “roughly fit the pattern” of a minimalist race. We can easily explain this: mixed-race individuals can err, physically, to one minimalist race over another because they are the products of individuals who do fit the patterns (of visible physical features which correspond to geographic ancestry).

Contrary to the alarmist claims heard in the media and from the altright, trends in interracial marriages do not indicate that minimalist (populationist) races are coming to an end (in this case, the white (social) race).

It is true that in the modoern (post-1492) world there is vastlty more racial interbreeding than there was before 1492. And if one is referring to the very long run, then races are almost certainly on their way out. But it is one thing to say that the human races will cease to exist at some point in the distant future and quite another to say that they are likely to disappear anytime soon. It is by no means clear that we are in an epistemic position to make the latter claim.

Contrary to what some writers suggest, recent trends in racial intermarriage in the United States do not indivate the imminent end of populationist (or minimalist) races. 5 The skyrocketing rates of intermarriage in this country notwithstanding, it remains true that the vast majority of Americans continue to marry within their own conventionally designated racial group. Despite the remarkable fact that the multiracial, multi-ethnic Americans have apparently become the fastest-growing demographic group in the United States, their numbers are still swamped by individuals who are members of a single continental-level minimalist races. 6 I don’t think that the significant fraction of DNA traceable to “Europeans” in most black Americans, and the small but real fraction of DNA traceable to “Africans” in white Americans, makes the end of the populationist (or minimalist) race significantly more imminent.

There is no evidence of which I am aware indicating that the rate at which racial interbreeding in the United States (or anywhere else) is occurring is one that would lead to the elimination of all racial differences—a situation in which no two groups could be distinguished on the basis of patterns of visible physical corresponding to differences in geographic ancestry—in the near future. To sum up: the increase frequency of encountering individuals of mixed racial ancestry does not mean that the concept of race is going to go out of business anytime soon. (Hardimon, 2017: 122)

Yaeger et al (2009) show that, in their sample, self-identification as African American is a reliable indicator of ancestry. Their findings also “suggest that self-reported race and ancestry can predict ancestral clusters, but do not reveal the extent of admixture.” Thus, self-identified race—even in the presence of admixture as is the case with African Americans—can show the racial category that an individual belongs to (based on their ancestry).

Hardimon (2017: 49) articulates a simple rule that employs the minimalist concept of race:

If both parents of an individual belong to one particular racial group R, that individual will belong to R.

What happens, however, if one parent belongs to R1 and the other parent belongs to R2. The minimalist concept of race does not say. Still less does it tell us what one’s race is if one’s grandparents belongs to an R1, another to R2, another to R3, and another to R4. This is a further respect in which the minimalist race concept is vague.

Particular conceptions of race (for example, the infamous “one-drop rule”) may specify the race of the individuals of “mixed” parentage, but the minimalist concept of race does not. The idea that a genune concept of race must specify the race of each individual is a hangover from the racialist race concept. Recall here that the minimalist racehood is not defined in terms of the characteristics of the individuals who belong to races. It is defined in terms of characteristics of groups.

So, the minimalist concept of race is vague, just like the populationist concept. But we can make one claim on the answer to the question “How much admixture?”: “Once a race loses its specific phenotype due to racial interbreeding, then the race ceases to exist.”

One drop?

The one drop rule (also known as the law of hypodescent), is a form of racial essentialism (Perez and Hirschman, 2009), which states that “one drop” of another, inferior (on the basis of racialist races) race’s blood denotes him to the inferior race in the social hierarchy. The one drop rule was created back during the slave days and signified who could breed with who, on the basis of how “pure” their blood was. It was, and still is today, a way for race deniers to deny the existence of race.

The one-drop rule stated that anyone with one black ancestor was classified as black (Pauker et al, 2009). That is, his position on the socialrace hierarchy (a hierarchy since it’s based on the false racialist race concept) is based on the fact that he has one black ancestor. Due to this, and other differing amounts of admixture in certain ethnic groups and other social groups taken to be races, people have—fallaciously—stated that races do not exist since the unions of two separate races “erases” one, or both, of the races in question.

This rule helped to ensure the maintenance of populationist races, since society frowned upon interracial marriage. This, obviously, was a social custom. The Jim Crow laws helped to ensure the maintenance of the physical characteristics of the races in question, though the laws were enacted to ensure the “racial purity” (whatever that is) of the European race, it helped to ensure lower amounts of admixture in black Americans. Thus, black Americans would be expected to self-identify as black (Liebler and Zacher, 2017).

Liebler and Zacher (2017)‘s data “supports the notion that this “rule” has some power even today, as there are almost 30 times as many people reporting that they are racially black with American Indian ancestry (weighted N=522,607) as there are people reporting American Indian race with black ancestry (weighted N=16,226).” Bryc et al (2015) show that, despite the expectations of the one drop rule “individuals identify roughly with the majority of their genetic ancestry.”

Most people in one sample that had less than 20 percent African ancestry identified as white. In the US, “Latinos” (a social-race) were estimated to have 65.1 percent European, 6.2 percent African, and 18.6 percent Native American DNA. Overall, 3.5 percent of European Americans had 1 percent or more African ancestry, while 1.4 percent of self-reported European Americans had were estimated to carry at least 2 percent African ancestry (Bryc et al, 2015).

Importantlty, Guo et al (2014) write:

The one-drop rule represents an important case in which social context trumps bio-ancestry. When asked to classify into a single race, most individuals with 30 % to 60 % African ancestry self-report as black; virtually all respondents with >60 % African ancestry self-classify as black. In contrast, a substantially higher proportion of European ancestry is “required” to self-classify or to be classified by an interviewer as white than the proportion of African ancestry necessary to self-classify or be classified as black. However, when given the option of identifying as multiracial, the majority of individuals with 40 % to 60 % African ancestry in both ROOM and Add Health and substantial proportions of individuals with >60 % African ancestry in ROOM stopped self-classifying as only black and primarily chose a multiracial classification.

“The infamous one-drop rule is peculiar to this country [America] but it is a feature of the American conception of race, not the minimalist concept of race.” (Hardimon, 2017: 56) The one-drop rule is a clear tell to how the socialrace concept acts. It is an essentialist concept, which means that it is necessarily racialist—since “one drop” of black blood makes one black—according to the rule.

The Maintenance of Races

It is possible that one society could take social measures to ensure the existence of their specific racial phenotype (that is, the existence of their minimalist race or subrace). Such a society would have to grapple with the moral and ethical underpinnings of such measures to ensure the maintenance of their phenotype (see Glannon, 2001’s book Genes and Future People for an extensive review of the moral, political, social, and ethical implications of human genetic engineering). This could also include genetic modification, though sound arguments exist that show that the way most people view genetic modification depends on a “strong view” of genetic determinism, which is false (Resnick and Vorhaus, 2006). However, it is possible that, through the will of the people in the society, that social isolation can lead to a de facto “physical” isolation through the social norms of the society in question.

However, since the races as they currently are are in no danger of non-existence, such measures, while they would (presumably) work, do not need to be taken. Such measures, though, do not need to be taken, since most people want to court with others who look like themselves, and those who are more likely to look like themselves are people of their own ethny, which is to say, people of their own populationist race. Thus, social measures to ensure the maintenance of races do not need to be taken.

As noted above, certain concepts from the days of the one drop rule are still in effect today, as a holdover from the days of Jim Crow and before. Some of these holdover concepts, though, help to maintain the races we know today. However, there is a possibility that our populationist races, too, have benefits socially constructed. Hardimon (2017: 126) writes (emphases his):

If populationist races exist, the role human action plays in their maintenance is rather more pronounced then the role it played in their genesis. Insofar as social norms and practices prohibiting or discouraging intermarriage have been the primary mechanisms preventing racial interbreeding since 1492, the maintenance of the separation has been intentional: this outcome is the very point of the discriminatory activity and practices in question. There is thus an especially strong sense in which, if populationist races exist, populationist race has been socially constructed since 1492.

Hardimon (2017: 126) goes on to say that the maintenance of populationist races “is not a natural process outside of human control”, nor is it “immutable or inalterable“, while “its existence is not an invariant, unchangeable,”natural” fact” and “The continued existence of populationist races, if it is a fact, is a fact within our power to change.” Thus, if populationist races exist (and they do), they exist by virtue of existing in nature.

So the races are not in danger of non-existence anytime soon, since the percentage of interracial unions are not too high compared to those who marry within their populationist races. The maintenance of populationist races comes down to—and will come down to, as long as humans are around—to social policies, whether enacted by state/country governments or the people themselves, sans any laws on miscegenation.

It has been said that we are attracted to people “who look like us“, “who look like our parents“, and “‘who are more similar to ourselves“. This means—NECESSARILY—that people are more likely to be attracted to people of their own race/ethnic group. People “who look like us” are co-ethnics and people of the same racial background; people who “look like our parents”, are, again, people who would share the same geographic ancestry. Since the physical features that delineate races are genetically transmitted from parent to offspring, then, people are more likely to be attracted to people of their same race. Finally, “people more similar to ourselves” doesn’t necessarily mean “people more racially/ethnically similar to ourselves”, since, of course, there are many other things that individuals have in common other than their race/ethnic group. However, it has been established that we are attracted more to people who share more similar genes than ourselves (Rushton,1997, 1998; Sebro et al, 2017). Thus, logically, since we are attracted to people who look like ourselves and our parents, we are attracted to people of our own ethnicity/race, as a matter of fact.

Conclusion

The question “How much admixture does it take for one race to no longer exist” is answered simply once the term “RACE” is defined: the amount of admixture it takes for one race to be “bred out” of existence is proportional to the amount of admixture it takes for one race’s physical features which correspond to geographic ancestry which are exhibited by the real group in question (this case being a subrace of a minimalist/populationist race). Europeans can’t take “much”, if any, other admixture, otherwise the traits that make Europeans European (which are, of course, not mutually exclusive to them, but the traits they—and their ethnies—exhibit are distinct) will  disappear and so one of the Caucasian subraces will disappear as well. Social isolation, at the moment, is maintaining the races as we know them—and will far into the foreseeable future (there is no evidence that they will disappear anytime soon). “Violations” of the one drop rule abound, but they mean little to the minimalist/populationist concepts of race since the visible physical features which distinguish the races remain intact.

The fact that people are more attracted to people who look like themselves and their parents is an implicit way of saying that people are more attracted to people who are physically similar to themselves—that is, racially/ethnically similar to themselves—and shows that the races will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

Human races will continue to exist as long as the social barriers that impede racial interbreeding remain. (Of course, if these social barriers did not exist, a majority of people still would court people who look like themselves and their families.) This is evidence that, contra social laws that impede or frown upon interracial marriages, we do not need such laws/rules because people stick to their own anyway. Therefore, the races are not in danger of disappearing anytime soon.