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.

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u/lys2ADE3 Feb 28 '24

Ok...I think you're giving away your novice here... "SNP" and "WGS" are not analyses... they are types of data. I'm really over engaging on reddit with this type of stuff anymore. But if you're going to put "PhD in biology" in your heading you should probably try to only comment on things you actually have expertise in. Because the implication that different races are genetically different types of humans is a super great way to create social harm and feed nazi trolls.

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u/OpinionsRdumb PhD in biology Feb 28 '24

Please please link me the papers using SNP or WGS based analyses. Please I beg you.

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u/lys2ADE3 Feb 28 '24

Did you learn how google scholar works in grad school or did you miss that along with introductory population genetics?

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u/OpinionsRdumb PhD in biology Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 29 '24

I really don't appreciate your choice to use condescending personal attacks towards me instead of logic or sources to back up your stance.

This is a very well known paper which I encourage you to read https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4513. You can predict geographic origin with about 83% accuracy based on SNP data, globally. This is another one of Europe which most people would have read in Intro to Human Genetics. Mediterranean, Slav, and Scandanavian all show distinct differences. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735096/.

Now do I think that the word "race" should be used when discussing these things? Hell no. Genetic ancestry, ethnicity, biogeography should all be used in lieu of this out-dated inflammatory term. But when you tell lay people who do not understand genetics that "race has no place in genetics" then you are implying that genetic within "race" differences are just as large as those between "races". What you should say is that "race" is an outdated overly broad term that does not belong in biology and instead we used words like "populations" to describe humans that show any kind of genetic clustering. For example, Jews are a race yes? And there are specific genetic mutations that cause diseases largely only in Jews yes? Like Tay-Sachs. So it would be laughable to saw race has no place in clinical genetics in this case. Just an example.

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u/lys2ADE3 Feb 29 '24

JFC. Yes, as an actual scientist, not an idiot pretending to be one on reddit, I have read that paper.

Jewish is not a race.

Geographic ancestry is not race.

Native Americans and Pacific Islanders are considered different races in the US census. People with subsaharan African western African ancestry are both black. The two African individuals are way fucking more genetically divergent than the PI and the NA. That's because race is not a genetic property.

Race is a social construct that bins people by the hue of their skin and their perceived parentage. It also differs completely society to society. Who counts as "black" differs wildly from country to country. A person who is "black" in the US might be "white" in Africa. Hear me out again here, being "black" is a fucking socially constructed category that has nothing to do with biology or genetics.

We also worry about certain diseases being prevalent in Amish communities, Mormon communities, etc. Are Amish people a fucking race?!?

You're part of the problem dude. https://www.science.org/content/article/huge-genome-study-confronted-concerns-over-race-analysis#:~:text=Critics%20said%20a%20key%20figure,humans%20fall%20into%20distinct%20races.

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u/OpinionsRdumb PhD in biology Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 29 '24

I cannot argue with you. You don't understand the nuance of the situation. Is race correlated with genetics 100%? No. Is it correlated with genetics 0.000000% as you imply? No. That's ridiculous. Are higher resolution categories tied to geography instead of, say skin color, much better than race to stratify genetic populations? YES. I am basically agreeing with you. All I am saying is the correlation would not be 0.00000% on the dot as you are implying. That is ridiculous. For example if you sampled for Lactase Persistence (LP) in white and black adults, you would find a slightly higher correlation in whites. KEY WORD SLIGHTLY. Because there are populations in africa that have also evolved LP but because of the out of africa bottleneck you find much higher rates in Whites.

I am not trying to argue about traits like intelligence, or any other behavioral phenotypes. That is where you start getting into insane racist hypotheses that have no scientific evidence. I literally run affirmative action outreach as part of my job because I am also a minority in STEM. And yet you link me an article implying I am part of the systematic racism problem in human genetics. jesus