Meter = Yard

2007-11-20 · Original WordPress address

First, you keep saying that "there are no human races. If you compare genetic variation within each of the so-called races with other populations, there is more vriation within group than between groups." I love this point. Such wisdom. But when I tried it out today on a fellow worker, I got confused. He happened to mention that men are on average a few inches taller than the average woman. What a know-nothing, I thought, and then I used your argument: "If you look at variation in height among men, you find some men who are 4 feet tall and others who are over 7 feet tall. Thus, there is more variation among men than there is between men and women." Pretty good point, no? But my co-worker didn't seem as shock-and-awed as I expected. He just said, "Sure, there's lots of variation among men, but there's still an overall average difference between male and female height, even if it's comparatively small." I was stumped, and I have to ask for your assistance here. What do I say when some hack tries to suggest that there can be differences between groups even if each individual group has internal variation? I mean, clearly it's a fact of anthropology that [variation within a group] = [no possible differences between that group and another group]. Just no way it can be. But I can't seem to get that point across very effectively. Maybe an analogy would help. Such as, "There's more variation between inch 1 and inch 36 of a yardstick than there is between a yardstick and a meter. Therefore 1 yard = 1 meter." Would a simple example like that help? Or maybe you can think of others.