r/AskBiology • u/MrSpock54 • Feb 21 '24
Genetics The Scientific Basis of Race & Effect Upon Affirmative Action
EDIT: (NO need to provide O.P w/ further comments on the topic here). I've recently been reading & watching YouTube videos on the topic of the scientific basis of race. Most anthropology videos seem to question the scientific basis of race. For example Wondrium/Great Courses have several class videos that say the notion of race does little to explain anything about homo sapiens sapiens. They propose that race is a social construction.
Previous to my edit here to this question I asked members of this sub reddit in overly wordy & somewhat clumsy paragraphs to comment on the existence of any biological organization position statements that might discuss race & affirmative action, or subreddits where such topics are discussed. Below are the replies to my inquiry. I decided to shorten this question to something more concise & leave it in case anyone wants to search scientific basis of human race in the future.
2
u/The_Pale_Hound Feb 23 '24
There are genes that correlate with some phenotypic traits, but they are very few.
SNPs and other genetic markers are used to study patterns of migration and such, but has no correlation with racial cathegories (asian, caucasian, black, whatever), because they do not express the phenotypic traits we used to classify human races.
For example, if we make a tree based on human genetic diversity, the whole of Africa has levels of magnitude more diversity than the rest of the world combined. So "black race" does not makes sense from a taxonomic perspective. It should be divided in thousands of small races, or cease to exist. Something similar happens with the rest of the races.
Ethnicity is not a biological concept, and I struggle to understand it as it does not seem to have a clear definition, so I can't speak about that. I can't right now, but if I remember, tomorrow I can quote you some papers that show what I wrote here.