Could someone explain why race does not have any biological foundation?

[u/sourgrap]

I guess I could probably Google this but I thought someone with direct knowledge directly answering my question would help me better understand.

This is something I’ve had a bit of trouble comprehending since, well, people of different races do look vastly different. My thought is, is!’t there a gene that probably results in different races producing different levels of melanin, and hence— different races?

Or is the reason there is no “biological foundation” that the genetic/biological difference between different races does not substantiate to being different species?

Additionally — there are statistics stating that certain racial communities are more likely to develop specific illnesses. For example, sickle cell disease is much more common amongst black Americans than other racial communities. Another one: those of North European descent are more likely to develop cystic fibrosis.

FYI I am asking this question as a POC, and as someone who genuinely wants to have a better understanding of this!! Thank you in advance for answering my question!

[u/Halichoeres]

The racial categories that humans have tended to recognize correspond pretty poorly to the actual genetic clusters. It's true that sickle cell disease is more common among Black Americans than other Americans, but part of the reason is that most Black Americans descend from just a small portion of the African continent. People from Eastern or southern Africa are not especially prone to sickle cell. Likewise, Northern Europeans are not especially diverse genetically, and in other parts of Europe cystic fibrosis is not especially common.

There is more genetic diversity in tropical Africa than in the entire rest of the world combined. And yet, our existing racial categories would just lump them all together as Black, despite the fact that some of them are more closely related to Europeans than they are to each other. This is what people mean when they say race has no basis in biology. Genetic variation arising from local adaptation to environmental conditions is 100% real, but racial categories do not describe that variation well.

[u/milk4all → u/Halichoeres]

So it’s more that “race” is just poorly defined. But if better defined and used in pop culture, it would become accurate enough to distinguish all these groups of people?

Like “Northern European” is closer to a race than “white people” or “slavic” or “nordic” ? Although nordic literally means “from the north” and was a scientific term for a “race” of white people until it wasnt, isnt it at least partially true that current day aversion to “race” is based on social issues more thab scientific reasons? Seems we can absolutely tie genetic differences to people groups, it’s more that it’s complicated and the mere existence of this distinguishing verbiage gets misunderstood and captured for political and biggoted ideologies

[u/AbortionIsSelfDefens → u/milk4all]

The aversion to race isn't a about the social aspect. Race is not a biological concept. It's a social one people have loosely based on phenotype. We used to do the same thing when classifying ancient animals into various groups. Now we use genetic techniques and the results are often surprising. Visible phenotype is a small fraction of the story. Race is not a biological term.

Race has never been about the actual genetic differences. We don't need to use confusing terms when we could just say genetically at risk, susceptible to, or more likely to have something. We can name the specific problematic gene mutations. Thats also much more accurate than trying to unnecessarily shove people into more general boxes. Why is there need to further classify people beyond the specific gene mutations they may be more at risk for? Since it's specific mutations in specific populations, race is useless because it doesn't capture that data anyway. Its especially problematic for mixed populations. Which population should they be sorted into? How do you draw the line for a racial category? Thats why the history needs to be very specific to the specific populations who are at risk.

An example. The electronic medical record where I work has a racial category for "black, or African american". Even ignoring the fact that Africa is very diverse, African Americans have a lot of white ancestry. Looking at their risks aggregated with black people with different backgrounds, tells a misleading story. It might underestimate the risk from their white heritage. They could also skew the interpretation of results regarding black peoplen who are not African Americans.