a very mixed race future

[sorrel]

i'm a webcomic author, and i have a lot of ideas about the futuristic settings of my stories. one of the things that really interests me is the possible demographics of a futuristic earth
based on historical trends, it seems to me that the population of the earth will gradually merge - at least, to some extent
personally, i hope that, if this happens, cultures will stay intact/grow together instead of being kind of erased and assimilated like those of some indigenous peoples in the americas and australia
agree/disagree??

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Unless some disaster changes things in a profound way, it seems very likely that human beings will grow to become more physically alike than they are now. Here's an article will makes the case convincingly.

http://www.livescience.com/34228-will-humans-eventually-all-look-like-brazilians.html

I found this very interesting:

Already in the United States, another recessive trait, blue eyes, has grown far less common. A 2002 study by the epidemiologists Mark Grant and Diane Lauderdale found that only 1 in 6 non-Hispanic white Americans has blue eyes, down from more than half of the U.S. white population being blue-eyed just 100 years ago.

That's an amazing change in roughly one human lifetime!

Cultural changes are much more complex. Who could have predicted, for example, the decline in the smoking rate in the USA from the middle of the 20th century to now? Who would have predicted the growing acceptance of same sex relationships in the same nation during the same time period?

As one example of a trend we can see coming, here's a study of what religious affiliations are likely to look like during the rest of this century.

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/

A future in which Christianity is the world's second largest religion, instead of first place as it is now, promises to be very different.

Tomorrow is going to be very interesting!

 

[Mad Alice]

There is a tendancy for a strongly ingrained culture to not be assimilated even should they lose their base of cultural identity. i.e. The Jewish diaspora. Though they possess a Middle Eastern origin, they have integrated themselves into many cultures without losing who they are. Another example would be the Rom. They too have spread out culturally but remained who and what they are. The peoples of Acadia were forcibly migrated to the far south, and though they transmogrified to being known as Cajun, their language and culture remain, after hundreds of years.

In this, I believe the signifying factors to cultural survival are; a shared language, a shared religion, a cultural conditioning that includes certain shared behaviorisms and believes. All of which must remain strong enough to supercede the imposition of outside cultural forces.

 

[Germinad]

In many ways I feel that taking on an identity means putting on a mask and losing 'who you are', whether that identity be cultural or spiritual; it leaves a bad taste. Culture is a watering down, an assimilation, and the way the world is turning one culture will dominate and we will all be false people. We can all feel it happening, and the more sensitive amongst us rage against the dying of this light. Tradition and folklore go back further, and these are both much more charming and individuated, but still we don't 'find' ourselves in these things. To find out who we truly are we must go back to the beginning of time, to the original source of all things. We are sparks, each one of us, sparks of some creative force that has long since been forgotten. It doesn't matter that we have forgotten our origin since it ceased to exist the moment we began, but we must all remain individual. Let not that frequency be cancelled out by its mirror. The zero became one so let it remain one.

I think the future will always contain individuals and rebels, it's in our dualistic nature, we make the rules to break them, and we conform so that we may break the mold.

 

[MWagner]

In this, I believe the signifying factors to cultural survival are; a shared language, a shared religion, a cultural conditioning that includes certain shared behaviorisms and believes. All of which must remain strong enough to supercede the imposition of outside cultural forces.

...and in-group sanction against marrying outside the culture. That's the one that's going to be tough to sustain in the future.

 

[Nick B]

Personally, I think the sooner we stop thinking of ourselves as English/French/African/Insert ethnicity of choice here, and start thinking of ourselves as humans, the better.
As far as skin colours are concerned, in the very long term we will probably all end up a mixture, somewhere in the middle brown spectrum. However, once we start to colonize other planets, I imagine we will either artificially change our skin colours accordingly or, thinking very long term, skin colour will change by natural evolution to fit the environment. Most likely the former though.

 

[Wanderlog]

if this happens, cultures will stay intact/grow together instead of being kind of erased and assimilated like those of some indigenous peoples in the americas and australia

It depends on many factors - historical events, wars, alliances, technology and so on. There is no the only true answer to this question.

BTW, what is a "race" in your understanding? Differently colored humans? Or are there non-human races as well?

Personally, I think the sooner we stop thinking of ourselves as English/French/African/Insert ethnicity of choice here, and start thinking of ourselves as humans, the better.

Cultural diversity is necessary. It makes the life much more interesting and colorful. Besides, "English" and "French" aren't names of races. Strictly speaking, I don't think that today there are different races on Earth. Different cultures - yes, different races... what is the set of criteria? Obviously not the skin color.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

People (no matter what their skin darkness), get paler and have paler babies nearer the poles. People get darker skin and have darker babies as they live nearer the equator.
Not just from Intermarriage.
So there will always be darker people in the Tropics and paler people nearer the Arctic / Antarctic.

It seems the amount of sun the mother gets does affect the baby! In a couple of generations (with no intermarriage to other communities) the difference is quite marked.

Race as commonly understood doesn't actually exist at all!

 

[Ursa major]

Regarding your mention of culture (as opposed to ethnicity)....

Someone asked yesterday, in a comment on an article in the Guardian about the crisis in Greece, why Greeks who went abroad seemed to be much more entrepreneurial (probably not the word used, but it will do) than those remaining in Greece. I didn't reply, but thought that, setting aside the idea that those who moved abroad might have been more dynamic than those who stayed at home**, this was probably due more to differences between the cultures in which the "two types" of Greek people were living.

What this means is that as well as changing the ethnicity in various parts of the world (which has happened in various ways for a very long time, e.g. Europe 30,000 years ago, the Americas and Australasia in the last few hundred years) various cultures will also change, even the ones that keep the labels they have today.


** - I almost replied by pointing out that those of European descent living in the US now appeared to be more religious (by various measurements) than Europeans remaining in Europe. Some have suggested that this is because a lot of the earlier US immigrants moved because they wanted religious freedom, i.e. they were people who gave religious concerns a higher priority. This rather discounts all the later ones moving to the US for economic and/or political reasons. It's far more likely to be a result of the way US culture has developed. (And even this ignores that Europeans in the past were far more religious than they are now, and not that long ago.)

 

[beardedwordsmith]

Very interesting reading.
It seems to me likely that over a big enough timescale, there will be a gradual homogenisation of races and cultures.
Having said that, I would like to see more variance in Sci Fi shows set in the far future. There can't just be one perfect Earth Gov where we all hold hands and get along fine and nobody notices colour or creed.
As the poster before said, diversity is a necessity. I wonder what kind of genetic issues would arise from 10,000 years of human interbreeding! Would that be where specialised genetic technology comes in?

 

[Wanderlog]

setting aside the idea that those who moved abroad might have been more dynamic than those who stayed at home**, this was probably due more to differences between the cultures in which the "two types" of Greek people were living.

In fact, you should take into account both the factors: those who moved abroad are different from those who stay home, and they should compete with local residents to be successful. Those who can't adapt to new (more dynamic) ways of life simply return home. So this is a two-stage selection process. This is typical not only for Greeks, but for Chinese, Russians, Japaneses and many other people as well.

I wonder what kind of genetic issues would arise from 10,000 years of human interbreeding!

I sincerely hope that in 10,000 years humans will use something more robust and long-living than biological bodies.

 

[beardedwordsmith]

Absolutely Wanderlog, I want my damn robot body!

 

[Phyrebrat]

It's one of the things I like about The Matrix series of films; the occupants of Zion are so creolised.

pH

 

[Vertigo]

I think it's interesting to look at how SF treats aliens as a parallel question. It's not always the case but I'd say that more often than not alien races encountered in SF have a single homogenous culture. Sure there are SF stories showing aliens with multiple cultures, but I would say the majority do not. So, is that SF tunnel vision or is it an accurate portrayal of how a civilisation would end up? Also it's rare that we see racial differences such as different skin colour in the alien races, and yet such variations are likely for exactly the same reason we have such differences, ie any planet is going to have different climate/environmental zones. But again it could be argued that such races, assuming they are older than us, would have averaged out, though maybe Ray's argument would counter that.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Maybe you won't have as stark a difference as Ethnic Ethiopian and Southern Ethnic Swedish person (I think Lapps are darker?), but you'd certainly have very significant variation. An advanced Alien race might even "engineer" this for people moving high UV zone to low UV zone or vice-versa.

In my "Talent Universe" SF, on one Planet, the Earth girl realises that the though the Aliens have no word for Race, there are three or four major variations, related mostly to where people live. Almost Albino like in the Arctic region and quite dusky for those living in tropical regions.

Here, red hair and fair hair, green and blue eyes and Lactose Tolerance are all separate European mutations that would be disadvantageous in more tropical regions. People with very dark skins are disadvantaged nearer Arctic and Antarctic due to making less vitamin D from sunlight. But the pale skin allows more vitamin D from less sun and the Lactose tolerant mutation allows consumption of dairy and thus vitamin D that way.

[Edit]
Our appearance isn't just genetic, also were we live makes some genetic variation that can arise less or more advantageous. So if most people live where their grandparents live (etc), then we will not all tend to a homogeneous milky coffee/ olive colour. Even lifestyle (smoking, indoor only vs outdoor, how much and what we eat, exercise etc) has a dramatic effect on appearance

Scientists were surprised how much melanin babies born with varied with parents and grandparent's environment not just genetics. After all, almost everyone is probably descended from Africans / Horn of Africa / then Middle East /Mesopotanian stock. There is STILL far more Genetic variation within Africa than between many Africans and anyone anywhere else.

I don't think it's any accident of Genetics that Eskimo /Inuit or Lapps are darker than most northern Europeans and don't have the red and fair hair.
Berbers often have paler hair or blue eyes (separate genes), but while North African, historically they had more European contact than the rest of Africa due to Geography.

 

[Dan Jones]

The future belongs to those who show up for it. So while there may be some continued trends in racial integration (if that's the right phrase), I think racial trends probably take a back seat to cultural ones. Who is going to have the most cultural will to be there in 100 years, or even 50? Are western values, nurtured over the last 150 years, retreating? Are other cultural powers on the rise, or are they a flash in the pan? Are we entering a period of non-occidental imperialism? Or will the west remain the broad blueprint for successful modern democratic societies?

To me, it's the cultural picture that is by far the more fascinating question than the ethnocentric one, which - as Victoria has noted - can to an extent be tracked via statistics. Human behaviour is much more unpredictable.

Apologies, I know this isn't quite the question, but that's my two penneth.

Great thread, by the way - this one could go all the way!

 

[Piousflea84]

Honestly, how race/ethnicity work in a SF universe is a direct reflection of the SF author's vision for the future.

In a future where the majority of human cultures are perfectly well assimilated with each other, everyone should be intermixed and "look Brazilian". An alien anthropologist could honestly describe humans as simply "Human" - no racial or ethnic qualifier. However, in order for all of humanity to become highly mixed, we have to actually mix with each other. Even on a highly integrated Earth there may be nations, cities within nations, or ghettoes within cities which are virtually mono-ethnic. In a racially-blended future, the few humans who are clearly identifiable as one race may be treated as outliers. Maybe as primitive weirdos, maybe as a highly valuable endangered species, maybe as a propaganda symbol for neo-nationalists. Maybe all of the above.

As humans leave the Earth and settle interplanetary/interstellar colonies, there is a high chance that some of those colonies will be nearly mono-ethnic. If there is enough inter-colony mobility then they may eventually blend into the "looks Brazilian" mixed race, but it is possible that some colonies are isolated enough to stay ethnically pure. In some fictional settings, such as Peter Hamilton's Nights Dawn Universe, many planets are intentionally designed as "ethnic streaming" colonies.

Even a mixed-race extraterrestrial colony could end up in a situation similar to the USA, where we have a lot of different races and a decent amount of interracial mixing, but there's still plenty of racial conflict. If you're the author writing the scenario, it all depends on how much you want to use race/ethnicity/nationality as a plot device for causing conflict. (Personally, I believe that racial/ethnic conflict will never go away)

 

[Ray McCarthy]

In a future where the majority of human cultures are perfectly well assimilated with each other, everyone should be intermixed and "look Brazilian"

Most unlikely. You make two wrong assumptions. One is that appearance and skin colour isn't just Ethnic / Geographic genetics.
a) How mobile will people be?
b) Appearance is very dependant on where you and your parents etc lived
c) Lifestyle.
d) Why would people keep moving if there is more equitable income / resources in the future
e) People even moving to other countries mostly breed within their own culture. A minority mix.

there is a high chance that some of those colonies will be nearly mono-ethnic.

Why? Look at one of the recent Colonies, the USA.

An alien anthropologist could honestly describe humans as simply "Human" - no racial or ethnic qualifier.

Human might be term for any sapient species. People from Earth might be called something else.

how race/ethnicity work in a SF universe is a direct reflection of the SF author's vision for the future.

No. It's a reflection of what works for the story.
Most SF isn't an attempt to accurately depict how the Author thinks the future will turn out, but just what will make a good story. Or there may be deliberately aspects to illustrate some other point. (Restoree : Anne McCaffery, The Left Hand of Darkeness : Ursula Le Guin both might be set in the future, that is purely incidental to the story, both those have a particular view of sex and Ethnicity to make a point)

 

[Parson]

In fact, you should take into account both the factors: those who moved abroad are different from those who stay home, and they should compete with local residents to be successful. Those who can't adapt to new (more dynamic) ways of life simply return home. So this is a two-stage selection process. This is typical not only for Greeks, but for Chinese, Russians, Japaneses and many other people as well.

I would expect that there is another factor at play. On the whole the one's that leave in the first place are the ones who cannot compete with the dominate group for one reason or another. So you could say that the most successful competitors are the ones who do NOT immigrate. And those who do are motivated to show that they in fact can compete if they are given a chance to compete.

>>>> I also believe that the whole question of race as understood by skin color will disappear almost completely unless we are able to move masses of humans to differing planets. If we are able to do this in the appropriate time scale then the future might be the polar opposite of the blended Brazilian coloration. Groups might try to enforce their homogeneity by limiting the settlers to one genotype. --- But there is only one human race. Anyone who thinks differently hasn't thought deeply enough. Modern genetics proves that there are no "pure-breds" we are a mongrel race.

 

[MWagner]

Someone asked yesterday, in a comment on an article in the Guardian about the crisis in Greece, why Greeks who went abroad seemed to be much more entrepreneurial (probably not the word used, but it will do) than those remaining in Greece. I didn't reply, but thought that, setting aside the idea that those who moved abroad might have been more dynamic than those who stayed at home**, this was probably due more to differences between the cultures in which the "two types" of Greek people were living.

But those cultures are shaped by who lives there. In countries like Canada, made up almost entirely of immigrants, the population is made up of people who moved far from home and family to make a better living, or the children or grandchildren of such people - who likely passed on risk-taking traits either socially or biologically. Furthermore, this country is very large, and its economy based on commodities with wildly fluctuating values. That means a very mobile workforce willing to move thousands of kilometres away for work. The province of Alberta, where I live, has a very different political and business culture from the rest of the country, even though it's largely made up of people who recently moved here from elsewhere. It's a self-selected population of self-reliant risk-takers.