[asianthrowaway]

> Two black people living in the same area, sharing the same cultural and ethnic identity, can differ more genetically than either with a white immigrant.

I'm pretty sure that's false. What is true is that africans exhibit a great amount of genetic diversity, i.e. two africans will typically be more genetically different than two europeans. But the genetic distance between either of those two africans and either of those two europeans will still be even greater.

> In other words, that "black" is a race, and "white" is a race, etc, is entirely a social construct, which should be non-controversial given that these categories were created and solidified, culturally and politically, long before genetic science was even a thing.

It's a social construct to the same extent as colors are a social construct, which were formulated long before the theories of electromagnetism was even a thing.

A thing being a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't describe an underlying reality. That applies to any category invented by mankind. For instance, considering plants and animals, or even living beings and inanimate objects, as belonging to different categories is also a social construct. Because, after all, they're all just an association of atoms.

[krapp]

>I'm pretty sure that's false. What is true is that africans exhibit a great amount of genetic diversity, i.e. two africans will typically be more genetically different than two europeans. But the genetic distance between either of those two africans and either of those two europeans will still be even greater.

I didn't say Africans and Europeans, I said black people and white people.

A black person from Africa and a black person from elsewhere are considered the same race because of their visual similarities, regardless of their background. That's the social construct.

>A thing being a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't describe an underlying reality

It can be inaccurate enough that it isn't useful, though.

[asianthrowaway]

> I didn't say Africans and Europeans, I said black people and white people.

Same thing

> A black person from Africa and a black person from elsewhere are considered the same race because of their visual similarities, regardless of their background. That's the social construct.

And also perhaps because they actually are from the same race? Do you consider all the current inhabitants of the USA to be native americans?

> It can be inaccurate enough that it isn't useful, though.

That's true, but racial categories are really accurate, especially in this age of cheap DNA testing. As for usefulness, I'd say it's pretty useful in the medical field, for instance certain drugs work in some races but not in others due to racial differences in body chemistry.

[aluren]

All Africans are black and all Europeans are white? That's a new one.

As for medicine, while the efficacy of drugs can be ethnicity dependent, race is such a weak proxy for it that it often leads to mistakes when doctors operate by habit. Nothing trumps actual genetic screening (as opposed to "which Anglo-centric category do you fit best based on how you look").