The thing I really like about Americans, is they're just don't throw up their hands and say "oh well, that's the way its always been, can't do anything to change it now." (The gypsies definitely come to mind here) For better or worse, they try.

The problem, it seems to me, is that people of other races don't realize there will always be prejudice. That someone who has prejudice against another because of their skin color is no different than a person who has prejudice against someone for any other reason they couldn't prevent (grew up in a certain place, speaks in a certain way, etc...)

So racial prejudice will never fully go away and people who think they can define themselves by race until it does will always define themselves by race.

Skin colour is the single item you can tell about a person at 100 meters distance, even before you can tell their gender. That makes it a prime candidate for differentiation and differentiation is a first step towards racism.

If everybody would be born exactly the same shade of medium brown as of tomorrow I'm sure we'd focus on hair colour next. And anybody with red hair knows how true that is.

Well, that's different. The ginger gene is recessive; a community that's mostly ginger has a high probability of being inbred. Other signs include webbed feet and hands, and extra nipples.

For another, you've just created the possibility that people will go "Ooh, they've got ginger hair, I'll bet they're inbred."

And finally, you started with "well that's different ... " which, in the context, suggests it's OK to be prejudiced against people who happen to have red hair.

I hope that in real life you're less prejudiced than that comment makes you appear.

Note: I am not saying that an individual ginger should be discriminated against. But a high proportion of them is a warning sign that something is going genetically wrong with a community.

Funny how eugenics doesn't work whichever way you try to slice it isn't it ?

A gene being recessive or dominant and being expressed in a group of individuals is not immediately a sign of 'inbreeding'. By that standard we are all 'inbreeding', everybody will have a number of recessive genes expressed, even if that does not lead to them having a different phenotype.

Inbreeding refers to a population too small to have a viable sized gene pool, one of the traits is exposure of recessive traits.

You're confusing the cause and the effect. Not all recessive traits are exposed by inbreeding, the vast majority of them are regular recombination in a lively genepool.

Well, yes. There are such communities, and they are inbred.

Maybe you personally aren't, and quite possibly that's not what you mean, but it is an interpretation of what you are saying.

If it's not what you mean, I suggest you think more carefully about how you say things.

Of course I'm not saying that. I know that the gene for red hair is recessive. And it's true that an entire community having mostly red hair has an increased probability of being inbred.

But think of it as a test that someone comes from a community that is inbred. Almost every positive (someone has red hair) will be a false positive (they most likely are not from a community that's inbred, although the chances are increased infintesimally). Your comment, however, seems to advocate pointing at someone and saying "They've got red hair, it's more likely they're an inbreed."

Now turn it around. Give everyone on HN a test for some rare condition (SRC). There are a few tests turn up positive, so you point at them and say "It's more likely they've got SRC." Yes, that's true, and completely unhelpful. It's almost certain to be a false positive.

On the other hand, you said:

  Quoting>> And anybody with red hair
  Quoting>> knows how true that is.

  You said> Well, that's different.

  > If everybody would be born exactly the same
  > shade of medium brown as of tomorrow I'm sure
  > we'd focus on hair colour next. And anybody
  > with red hair knows how true that is.

That's how your comment reads. That's what your comment appears to say. It may not be what you meant, but it's still deeply offensive, even if you don't realise it.

Your comments about communities, etc, are correct, but when you insert them into a discussion about prejudice, the implications and import are entirely different. It's that juxtaposition that matters.

Any outside distinction will lead to people using that distinction to draw far reaching conclusions about the people that have that distinction.

Inbreeding indeed.

It sounds cruel, but I don't think people married in the past just because they loved each other so much. As said in the article, it was a necessity, but such thing is ceasing to exist, so the disposition of people for marriage is decreasing.

Look at men in the past. It’s against men’s evolutionary nature to marry yet they still got married just as quickly (and they didn’t need wives to support them). So your argument that women are taking a role traditionally held by men before and hence aren’t marrying doesn’t seem to hold water.

Here’s the problem: The feminist narrative currently out there is a myth. It says women were always kept down and only now are rising to positions of power. But look at history and you’ll see there were women in positions of power going back thousands of years (Most pre-industrial societies gave power over a nation to the Queen if her King died first and societies like the Egyptians were ruled over by women even without men)

To me this seems like a societal misfire. It seems like the majority of women in the past wanted to stay home and take care of their family (as evolutions suggests they do). Then that became their accepted role and the minority who didn’t want that felt trapped in their circumstance. They became the original feminists and rightfully won the ability to do whatever they want. Then the next generation feminists developed some kind of resentment towards women who did stay at home and attacked them. So now we have a society that has forgotten how valuable housewives were and in doing so has created a value system in which women who want to be housewives are told their inferior to those who don’t. But the housewives were the ones who were driving most men to get married.

So with women feeling they’d be inferior to want to be married with a family and men screwing everything that moves (as evolution has taught them to do) we have a society where no one’s pushing marriage (and I think we’re worse off for it)

Actually, as I understand it, current evo-psych holds that men (and women) have dual evolutionary strategies. One, as you imply, is to play the field as widely as possible. But the other is to invest one's energy in a single woman/family in order to increase the chances for a particular set of offspring. (Note, it's possible adopt these simultaneously if you, say, have a wife and mistresses on the side.)

I first read this in Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal," where he argues that the institution of monogamy actually benefits poor/lower status men the most.

Again, I'm not disputing the fact that men can want to be monogomous or realize it's the best way to breed. I'll even concede it occurs in non-primates such as birds. But I don't see any examples where a primate male's nature is to be monogamous without female influence.

Edit: You know, I'm thinking on this and it doesn't even make sense. Lets say its true and we have dual evolutionary natures one of which is to seek out means to create a paticular type of offspring. How is that contradictory to polygamy? Couldn't you hunt down every female in your area with those desired traits? More to the point wouldn't it be smart to do just that in order to increase your chances of generating that preferred off spring (assuming primates didn't have in depth knowledge of genetics and passive traits)?

The point about marriage and/or monogamy benefitting lower status males is that, in a polygynous system, all or most of the females will be having sex with the few high-status males who can provide for them and their offspring (barring rape). High-status males would have lots of sex partners and opportunities to produce offspring, low-status males would have few or none.

Housewives being inferior? No way. Being a housewife requires a lot of skill, energy and certain sacrifices that most modern women (me included) don't want to make. Managing a house is like managing your own little company. Except you cover 90% of the job positions at once. And generally cannot fire your "employees". Housewives really deserve a lot of respect. And a honor spot in the entrepreneur comunity :)

Anyway, that's the issue, precisely. We have on one side, a lifetime job, where you will most likely have to depend on someone to provide enough money to run it properly. On the other side, you can be independent by getting a job you might change whenever you feel like. Wouldn't you prefer traveling, have different job experiences, etc. while you're still young? We women actually can now make this choice between committing early to family or wait some more years (I think sooner or later our genetic code will push us to want a family). It's more or less what the article says.

Frankly, your use of the word evolution seems to be to justify preconceived notions of male and female roles in society.

You see this in pretty much all primates. Silverback Gorilla's have whole tribes that are made up of the women they have sex with and their children. Because even in modern primates the males nature is to breed with as many women as possible.

Also, I said nothing about male and female roles in society. My entire argument is based around male and female instincts and I've said there are exceptions (again look above where I say feminism exists because there are exceptions and it's a good thing)

Using other primates as support is dangerous. Raising a human child is much more time consuming than raising a gorilla. Gorillas can forage for themselves much earlier than a human child can provide food for itself. Our ecological niche is using tools, so we have to train our children how to use them. This takes time.

As the expense in terms of time and energy of raising an offspring increases, it puts selection pressure towards monogamy.

In California, in the 1850's, for example, it was determined that any property of a married woman's was legally the property of her husband. Therefore the hundreds of entrepreneurial and successful women land or business owners were suddenly rendered legally and financially dependent on their husbands. Only single women and widowers could hold property.

In case you're ever interested in investigating your assumptions about man's evolutionary nature, I highly suggest you read Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography.

`A proposal to permit women to keep control of their property upon marrying led to discussion of the relative merits of the common-law and civil-law traditions. "I am not wedded either to the common law or the civil law", observed Halleck, "nor, as yet, to a woman; but having some hopes that some time or other I may be wedded, and wishing to avoid the fate of my friend from San Francisco [a crotchety old misogynist], I shall advocate this section in the constitution, and I would call upon all the bachelors in this convention to vote for it." Enough did to win the measure's approval.`

So unless there was a constitutional amendment created a few years after the constitution itself that I'm not aware of, married women actually were allowed to keep their property in California. Indeed, the text from the original 1849 constitution states, in part:

`Sec. 14. All property, both real and personal, of the wife, owned or claimed by marriage, and that acquired afterwards by gift, devise, or descent, shall be her separate property; and laws shall be passed more clearly defining the rights of the wife, in relation as well to her separate property as to that held in common with her husband. Laws shall also be passed providing for the registration of the wife's separate property.`

The Legislative Act entitled "Act To Authorize Married Women To Transact Business In Their Own Name, As Sole Traders," was passed into law by the California State Legislature on April 12, 1852. California State Printing Office Index to the Laws of California, i850-1920 (Sacramento, 1921).

Subject to some restrictions - only married California women-not single, widowed, or divorced women-were required to publicly declare their commercial intentions and to limit their investment to $5,000 or less. Some argue that such restrictions limited women's personal, financial, and commercial freedom and, as such, underscored their dependent legal status.

In any case, the laws of California were rather advanced compared to the common law, and advanced compared to other states.

"They became the original feminists and rightfully won the ability to do whatever they want."

The reason I brought up the feminist narrative is because the lie of "women were never in power" allows them to claim women would never choose to be a housewife which in turn allows them to claim it's somehow an inferior way to live one's life.

As for the book, I will check it out. But there is a view of male nature accepted by the majority of the scientific community and that's what I was quoting.