How Not To Talk About Race And Genetics

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Thoughts?

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Makes sense to me, as it conforms to my opinions. I would have signed it. It also conforms to the data. There’s geographically structured variation, but that’s not sufficient to make “races”, since the variation is clinal, and the clines don’t even line up all that well.

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In the world of infectious disease there are cases of differing susceptibilities between populations. For example, Filipinos are much more susceptible to disseminated coccidioidomycosis than most other populations. So yes, there are genetic differences between populations that can be biologically significant. However, the article is correct in stating that this doesn’t correlate with what we consider “race”.

I think it makes much more sense to view race as tribe. Race is a cultural phenomena, and not a biological one. What a race is depends heavily on which culture or society you find yourself in. It is a political division between “us” and “them”.

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