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Then you should be looking at ethnicity and not "race" as such. For example, Ashkenazi Jews as an ethnic group are genetically very distinct from other European

Then you should be looking at ethnicity and not "race" as such. For example, Ashkenazi Jews as an ethnic group are genetically very distinct from other Europeans, but are generally considered "white" on self-reported race surveys.

wahern 4y ago
"Very distinct" seems a little exaggerated. Compare the "Autosomal genetic distances" between Ashkenazi jews and other European groups at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews with a similar table of Intra-European distances at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixation_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixation_index. Finns and French have like twice the distance as Italians and Ashkenazi. Now look just above that latter table, showing distances between East Asians and Europeans. The distances are far greater--more than 10x. The precision with which we can identify and track ancestry, often based on small fractions of DNA (Y-chromosome in particular wrt Ashkenazi Jews, not mtDNA as one might think) doesn't imply the degree of genetic distinctiveness.