[tokinonagare]

It's less hilarious when whole country policies are made on those assumptions thus ruining it economically (notably), and voicing any concerns is threatened with legal force.

In France the official dogma of the educated is that every difference is cultural, and races don't exist. My father for example strongly held and defend those beliefs. Somehow he gets very angry when I ask why there is wide academic achievement difference between his children despite growing in the same environment, or how Japanese people could instantly guess I'm a foreigner while not uttering a single words. I think that deep down all those people know the truth but they don't want to admit it, nor admit it to other for fear of the social consequences.

[Timon3]

> why there is wide academic achievement difference between his children despite growing in the same environment

Why are there wide academic achievement differences between children who have the same "race" who grow up in the same environment? According to you, this should not be the case.

> how Japanese people could instantly guess I'm a foreigner while not uttering a single words

Do you think they can do so for any given person? I guarantee you there are foreign people who Japanese people don't guess are foreign, and non-foreign people who Japanese people guess are foreign. How can this be?

I can sympathize with your father getting angry. Considering how trivial it is to come up with counter arguments, it must be frustrating to have this brought up more than once.

[dani__german]

For the education example, the answer is quite simple: Sexual reproduction produces varied offspring even among the same two mates.

Same environment, different genes = educational performance gap.

[Cornbilly]

> races don't exist

Do they exist in a scientifically viable way?

Most of the definitions around race are tied to a subjective view of a person’s physical appearance.

Is Obama (the son of a black Kenyan man and a white American woman) black or white? If neither, what is this new race to be called? Would he be a different race if his father was also mixed race?

I find that often times asking people this question leads us back to something akin to the one-drop rule and I don’t see any value in that.

[sangnoir]

> If neither, what is this new race to be called? Would he be a different race if his father was also mixed race?

American racists had precise, and now-offensive nomenclature for rations all the way down to 1/8 black, possibly beyond. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mix...

[dani__german]

This [1] discussion on X includes a gene prevalence graph, showing varied groups mostly easily identifiable by DNA sequencing. Such graphs use the prevalence of 2 genes amongst different samples of populations. Including more genes develops a much sharper image.

https://x.com/JoshRainerGold/status/1888468962306142430

[sangnoir]

> Somehow he gets very angry when I ask why there is wide academic achievement difference between his children despite growing in the same environment

Wait, I thought your argument is that intelligence this is genetic - what then explains the variation among siblings, according to your worldview?

[dani__german]

Punnet squares explains this, siblings are not usually identical.