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Is this effort shared by, for example, Chinese and Russian geneticists, or is it purely a Western endeavor? Edit: It seems my suspicion was correct, and at lea

Is this effort shared by, for example, Chinese and Russian geneticists, or is it purely a Western endeavor? Edit: It seems my suspicion was correct, and at least Chinese anthropology does not share the Western aversion to 'race': https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/on-the-concept-of-race-in-chinese-biological-anthropology-alive-and-well.pdf https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/on-...

polski-g 5y ago
The latter. The problem with this line of thinking is that race is a genetic term. Crime investigators can determine race from a blood droplet. NHS has a monthly begging campaign for "black blood" donations. And the biggest thing is that race corresponds to generic ancestry with 99.86% accuracy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/
- rectang 5y ago
  > Crime investigators can determine race from a blood droplet. Such as determining that a person who is ~75% "white" and ~25% "black" is in fact, "black"? If "race" is a "genetic term" it is certainly not only a "genetic term".
- Aeolun 5y ago
  In other words, it corresponds 100% with genetic ancestry, it’s just asking people to self identify their race that’s problematic.
- nefitty 5y ago
  That's what confuses me. Some people say race is a construct, but then why do ads for sickle cell medicine only have black actors in them? I don't see how cloaking or censoring ideas of race benefits humanity. I know there's specific problems that are more common in my race. I WANT doctors and scientists to acknowledge that and use that information to improve treatments. I don't feel outraged, just sort of confused as to what the incentives at play here are.
  - vmception 5y ago
    what they're trying to convey is that certain phenotypes have correlations to an overly broad construct, and with your example it is only showing that certain debilitating evolutionary paths are correlated or exclusively within a subset of people with those phenotypes not that hard, to me, let me know when you get there though
    - nefitty 5y ago
      You're being unnecessarily condescending when my comment was sincere and inviting of new information. I'm not really sure what you intended to accomplish with that last line, except making yourself feel superior to a stranger online who hasn't read some book or taken some class you have?
      - vmception 5y ago
        yeah you’re right, so without that last line what do you think its not supposed to be new information, its supposed to deconstruct that people in the largest continent on the planet have the most genetic diversity and only chose/were forced to group together for shared representation after noticing they all got a shitty parallel experience in some other continents the same concept applies to other groups that happen to overlap in some unique phenotypes
        nefitty 5y ago
        Ah ok, that makes sense. Thanks for acknowledging my criticism of your comment and clarifying your idea.
  - wrp 5y ago
    The problem is in the variation of what people mean by "race". In popular culture, people generally use it as a synonym for ethnicity. In genetics, it means the same as "breed" does when referring to animals. The first is a social construct. The second is a grouping of heritable traits.
  - 5y ago
- nverno 5y ago
  They can also distinguish at a much finer level than the typical black, white, asian races. It's a social construct because the cutoff for being one or the other is determined by whatever matters to people in a society, not because science can distinguish them.
  - jevoten 5y ago
    That the precise cutoffs are socially constructed does not imply the categorization itself is not biological. It's simply a coarse clustering based on kinship, that can be reproduced without reference to any society. Edit: To the replies claiming the categorization is arbitrary and mostly cultural - that does not appear to be the case. In fact, it almost perfectly corresponds to genotype principal component plot clusters, as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29669918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29669918 noted: https://youtu.be/iegYpOG6mQI https://youtu.be/iegYpOG6mQI I.e. the categorization corresponds to what you get when you consider all/many genes, and not a few arbitrarily chosen ones, like those that determine eye or hair color.
    - nverno 5y ago
      You could group people by hair color or eye color as well, without reference to any society. But, the social importance of that grouping could vary greatly between societies. Eg. not many people care about who is an Ionian or an Achaean in modern society. The racial distinctions (at least today in the west) are associated with biological traits, and specifically the ones that are visually obvious. But, I think those biological traits are used socially to distinguish groups that are considered different for other reasons (values, beliefs, etc.).
    - ofTheFountain 5y ago
      The categorisation isn't fully biological though, it's far heavier in the cultural camp. And even when it is biological, it's mainly phenotypic, which isn't adequate for genetic research.
  - esyir 5y ago
    So is ancestry. All Phylogenetic histories with any form of categorization is by definition a social construct. Social constructs, however, are not useless.

polski-g 5y ago

The latter. The problem with this line of thinking is that race is a genetic term. Crime investigators can determine race from a blood droplet. NHS has a monthly begging campaign for "black blood" donations. And the biggest thing is that race corresponds to generic ancestry with 99.86% accuracy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/

rectang 5y ago
> Crime investigators can determine race from a blood droplet. Such as determining that a person who is ~75% "white" and ~25% "black" is in fact, "black"? If "race" is a "genetic term" it is certainly not only a "genetic term".
Aeolun 5y ago
In other words, it corresponds 100% with genetic ancestry, it’s just asking people to self identify their race that’s problematic.
nefitty 5y ago
That's what confuses me. Some people say race is a construct, but then why do ads for sickle cell medicine only have black actors in them? I don't see how cloaking or censoring ideas of race benefits humanity. I know there's specific problems that are more common in my race. I WANT doctors and scientists to acknowledge that and use that information to improve treatments. I don't feel outraged, just sort of confused as to what the incentives at play here are.
- vmception 5y ago
  what they're trying to convey is that certain phenotypes have correlations to an overly broad construct, and with your example it is only showing that certain debilitating evolutionary paths are correlated or exclusively within a subset of people with those phenotypes not that hard, to me, let me know when you get there though
  - nefitty 5y ago
    You're being unnecessarily condescending when my comment was sincere and inviting of new information. I'm not really sure what you intended to accomplish with that last line, except making yourself feel superior to a stranger online who hasn't read some book or taken some class you have?
    - vmception 5y ago
      yeah you’re right, so without that last line what do you think its not supposed to be new information, its supposed to deconstruct that people in the largest continent on the planet have the most genetic diversity and only chose/were forced to group together for shared representation after noticing they all got a shitty parallel experience in some other continents the same concept applies to other groups that happen to overlap in some unique phenotypes
      - nefitty 5y ago
        Ah ok, that makes sense. Thanks for acknowledging my criticism of your comment and clarifying your idea.
- wrp 5y ago
  The problem is in the variation of what people mean by "race". In popular culture, people generally use it as a synonym for ethnicity. In genetics, it means the same as "breed" does when referring to animals. The first is a social construct. The second is a grouping of heritable traits.
- 5y ago
nverno 5y ago
They can also distinguish at a much finer level than the typical black, white, asian races. It's a social construct because the cutoff for being one or the other is determined by whatever matters to people in a society, not because science can distinguish them.
- jevoten 5y ago
  That the precise cutoffs are socially constructed does not imply the categorization itself is not biological. It's simply a coarse clustering based on kinship, that can be reproduced without reference to any society. Edit: To the replies claiming the categorization is arbitrary and mostly cultural - that does not appear to be the case. In fact, it almost perfectly corresponds to genotype principal component plot clusters, as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29669918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29669918 noted: https://youtu.be/iegYpOG6mQI https://youtu.be/iegYpOG6mQI I.e. the categorization corresponds to what you get when you consider all/many genes, and not a few arbitrarily chosen ones, like those that determine eye or hair color.
  - nverno 5y ago
    You could group people by hair color or eye color as well, without reference to any society. But, the social importance of that grouping could vary greatly between societies. Eg. not many people care about who is an Ionian or an Achaean in modern society. The racial distinctions (at least today in the west) are associated with biological traits, and specifically the ones that are visually obvious. But, I think those biological traits are used socially to distinguish groups that are considered different for other reasons (values, beliefs, etc.).
  - ofTheFountain 5y ago
    The categorisation isn't fully biological though, it's far heavier in the cultural camp. And even when it is biological, it's mainly phenotypic, which isn't adequate for genetic research.
- esyir 5y ago
  So is ancestry. All Phylogenetic histories with any form of categorization is by definition a social construct. Social constructs, however, are not useless.