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> concepts of race How is 'genetic characteristics common to humans with a shared geographic origin' a concept? Did you read the article? > Groundbreaking adv

> concepts of race How is 'genetic characteristics common to humans with a shared geographic origin' a concept? Did you read the article? > Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing technology...enable us to measure with exquisite accuracy what fraction of an individual’s genetic ancestry traces back to, say, West Africa 500 years ago — before the mixing in the Americas of the West African and European gene pools that were almost completely isolated for the last 70,000 years. With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real. Allow me to emphasise: "differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real". Wow, what a coincidence given the fact that "differences in genetic ancestry" is exactly what race is. Maybe you have another definition of race that might be a social construct but "differences in genetic ancestry" is what most people mean when they say 'race'.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> How is 'genetic characteristics common to humans with a shared geographic origin' a concept It is a concept (pretty much anything that you can refer to in language is a concept), but more to the point it's not the basis of actual racial categories in the real world. > Maybe you have another definition of race that might be a social construct Yes, the categories socially ascribed (including legally assigned) and self-identified (which are usually similar, but not always aligned), largely based on trivially observable lphenotype, into which people are sorted as “races”. Which, demonstrably, have a drifting relationship over time and space, driven by social factors, to any genetic-based assignment system you might care to establish, though they obviously have a correlation to genetics (both because geneticd play a role in determining phenotype and because those social categories are often socially enforced, or at least incentivized, boundaries on acceptable mate selection, making them semi-isolated breeding pools.)

dragonwriter 9y ago

> How is 'genetic characteristics common to humans with a shared geographic origin' a concept It is a concept (pretty much anything that you can refer to in language is a concept), but more to the point it's not the basis of actual racial categories in the real world. > Maybe you have another definition of race that might be a social construct Yes, the categories socially ascribed (including legally assigned) and self-identified (which are usually similar, but not always aligned), largely based on trivially observable lphenotype, into which people are sorted as “races”. Which, demonstrably, have a drifting relationship over time and space, driven by social factors, to any genetic-based assignment system you might care to establish, though they obviously have a correlation to genetics (both because geneticd play a role in determining phenotype and because those social categories are often socially enforced, or at least incentivized, boundaries on acceptable mate selection, making them semi-isolated breeding pools.)