[bearl]

Specifically, as well stated by [23] there is no such thing as “race.” The premise of racial group differences is not possible; we can’t have racial differences if race is not real. Sadly, a lot of people very much believe in race, especially the ones that shouldn’t!

[robwwilliams]

Geneticist use the word “ancestry” to refer to summarize the historical geographic origins of genetic variants that we are inherit. Ancestry can be reliably estimated by genome analysis.

Race, like the gender, is now considered a social construct.

The meanings of words are defined by a community of users who find them useful in communicating. Race and ancestry are both useful words.

[holbrad]

People who say there's no such thing as race are complete charlatans playing semantic word games.

[famouswaffles]

There’s more genetic variation within any so-called racial group than between groups, so race obviously has no genetic justification. That's not semantics. Yes it's real, but for social, not genetic reasons.

[holbrad]

>has no genetic justification

That is comically retarded. Like do you have any understanding of the words you are using ?

If there's no genetic justification, how would it be possible to trivially determine someone's race just from their DNA ?

[jonnybgood]

> If there's no genetic justification, how would it be possible to trivially determine someone's race just from their DNA ?

Genetic ancestry is determined by correlation with geographic origins and population. In other words, where a set of genetic markers are highly concentrated. It says nothing about race.

[flir]

It isn't.

[flir]

So define one. A race.

[Der_Einzige]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_maxim

[famouswaffles]

There’s more genetic variation within any so-called racial group than between groups, so race obviously has no genetic justification. It's real in the way other social constructs are real.

[flir]

aka "a category that appears self-evident to me".

This was my thinking, also. Good cluster of links.

[machomaster]

A group of people that have lived long enough in relative isolation that they became unique, distinguished and separate from other races.

[famouswaffles]

The problem is that Human 'races' are not in fact unique, distinguished and separate from other 'races'. Genetically, two sub Sahara African men could be more genetically distinct than one of those men and a random white man even they should be both 'black'.

[machomaster]

The problem you describe only concerns people who don't know anything about the subject, but still have no shame to have strong opinions about it.

Nobody in race sciences (anthropology, etc) claim that there are only unique races that are separate from each other and don't mix. This is a clear strawman.

The fact that there is mixing between races does not mean that races don't exist. You can make an emulsion out of water and oil, but water and oil still are their own things.

And the science has all kinds of specific categorization for human groups that go way beyond the rough separation into 3-4 main races. All the mixing, separation, migration, isolation, etc have been taken into account.

It's a pity this kind of topic/science is basically a taboo in the Western World and for real info and honest discussion have to go to other systems/countries/languages.

[famouswaffles]

My example has nothing to do with race mixing lmao. Two Sub Saharan Africans today are literally descendants of people that never left the continent, there's no amount of 'race mixing' that would causing one of them to be genetically closer to another 'race' than to each other if race was a genetic reality. You're just an idiot with poor reading comprehension.

Between us, you are clearly the one with no clue about what he's talking about.

There’s more genetic variation within any so-called racial group than between groups, race mixing or not. Clearly, 'race' has no genetic justification.

[flir]

"long enough"? "relative isolation"? "unique" how: genetically? culturally? phenotypically?

[machomaster]

You are asking questions that are already were answered if you cared to RTFM/LMGTFY.

Shortly:

- Unique how? Optimally genetically, but this has practical problems that the field of paleogenetics is trying to work on. Until then must use: classical morphological features, odontology, dermatoglyphics, biochemical characteristics.

- How long enough? Depends on the type of group. There are different levels of human group classification, both above the traditionally understood "races" and a lot below that.

[delichon]

I've been told that there's no such thing as a circle because there's no such thing as a perfect circle. The claim that race does not exist seems to be in that category.

[throwaway284927]

You seem to be arguing that talking about races within humans may be useful even if the reality only approximates the definition of race (similarly to the idea of a "circle", which even though it does not apply in all it's precision to any real object it may still be a useful concept as an approximation nonetheless). However, I don't think that comparison is particularly insightful, and it may even be a bit misleading in my opinion because of the important differences in how those two things are defined (circle and race).

After all, the reason why no real object is an actual circle is because the definition of circle is so to say an "ideal" definition that no real object can fit in all it's precision. It's natural to assume that no real object will have all of it's "points" perfectly distributed according to a circle's equation (without even getting philosophical as to how these mathematical definitions relate to the real world, or if they do at all). If one rejects any "approximate", non exact application of the concept, then it will be mostly useless when it comes to describing or understanding the real world (because you won't be able to use it for anything).

On the other hand, the concept of "race" is quite the opposite to ideal: it's not "ideal" as the circle is, in fact it's more of a pragmatic/working definition. It's more like the definition of "chair": many things may or may not be considered a chair, but usually people don't feel that there's "no such thing as a chair" in the real world. On the contrary, it's more common to feel that anything "could" be a chair because it has a malleable definition based on the context, instead of nothing being "precisely" a chair because there are some rigid constraints to the definition that no real object can actually fit.

When the idea of races within the human species is pushed against, it's not because "race" is an ideal concept that no real thing may implement in all it's precision (as would be the case with the circle). I won't present these actual reasons (which could get quite political) here, but I will say that I definitely wouldn't consider those two claims to be in the same category:

- Saying that X real object is not a circle, or that no real object can be (exactly) a circle has to do with the fact that the concept of circle is ideal and by definition nothing "real" will fit it perfectly.

- Saying that (in the human species) there are no races is, however, not based on a quality of the definition of the concept of "race" (specifically, it's not ideal), but on some quantitative judgements about what kind of thing qualifies as a race an what doesn't (pretty much like the concept of "chair", "food", etc. which are not ideal and there's some room for discussion based on context when it comes to whether some specific object fits the category or not).

[Jensson]

Ok, so saying race doesn't exist is like saying chairs doesn't exist, since you can't really say what is a chair, what is a shelf and what is a table, correct? Technically you could say that a chair is a table or a shelf, but people still like to call them chairs, you know the difference when you see it.

Races is like that, scientists can't define it but its still a useful concept like a chair. Scientists can't exactly define what a chair is either, but its still a very useful concept and we can discuss chairs and everyone understand what we mean.

[famouswaffles]

Two sub Sahara African men could be more genetically distinct than one of those men and a random white man even they should be both 'black'.

The thing about race is that it has no biological justification. It's still 'real' of course but in the same way money has 'real' value. It's a powerful social construct.

[ryandv]

> The thing about race is that it has no biological justification.

> It's a powerful social construct.

This is 100% correct, and yet progressive academics have yet to figure out how to slot this fact into their ideology without creating incorrigible inconsistencies.

For instance - if race is a social construct just like gender, why is transracialism frowned upon, while transgenderism is lauded? Quoting Richard Dawkins, famous debunker of Creationist and religious bullshit [0]:

    Why is a white woman vilified and damned if she identifies as black,
    but lauded if she identifies as a man? That's topsy-turvy, because
    race really is a continuum, whereas sex is one of the few genuine binaries
    of biology.

The most coherent (but unsatisfying) answer I have found in the literature is that society has "intersubjectively" agreed to accept transgenderism and not transracialism, where "intersubjectively" ultimately translates to some level of "because we said so and this is society's new fanfiction head canon:" [1]

    What matters, then, is that intersubjectively we have all agreed that
    ancestry is relevant to the determination of one’s race.

It's worth noting that intersubjectivity is basically a religious concept, as defined in the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. [2]

There is no science or biology on the far LGBTQ+ progressive left. Only pseudoscience and apologetics befitting of a Creationist.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cubkdBuvJAQ

[1] https://philpapers.org/archive/TUVIDO.pdf

[2] https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/978-1-4614-6086-2_9182