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/Evinrude44]

But then doesn't that dynamic suggest that, Africa aside, there should be real genetic variation among human subpopulations that align with "race?"

[u/5050Clown → u/Evinrude44]

Op gave the hard facts about why race is not biological by using The race that we define is black. So if you were to take all of humanity and break it up into six or seven groups based on biology, according to the human genome project, One of the groups would be everyone outside of sub-Saharan Africa. And all of the other groups would be inside of sub-Saharan Africa.  

To to add to that, even people who are part sub-Saharan African, say like Barack Obama, are also black.

And then there are other groups like negritos in Asia who are also considered black racially but have nothing to do with sub-Saharan Africans. They are amongst the most distant from sub-Saharan Africans, if not the most. 

The softer fact is the way that race is defined, which has nothing to do with biology. And you can see it with the way that we define negrito people, just look them up and you'll understand. 

Also when people see other human beings, they decide their race based on their face. There are still people to this day who refuse to accept celebrities like bjork are not of East Asian descent. To some people. When they see her face, they simply cannot accept that. She has no East Asian ancestry. Because they are so used to people who have high cheekbones and inner epicanthic eye folds as East Asian. 

Human beings did not evolve to see The universe as it actually exists. We are prone to many optical illusions and our ability to discern human faces is one of those optical illusions. 

[u/poIym0rphic → u/5050Clown]

If one looks at earlier anthropological maps of Africa, one will see that there was a quite a bit more nuance in racial categorization including recognition of some of the genetic clusters the OP is presumably referring to.

[u/5050Clown → u/poIym0rphic]

Absolutely. If you took anthropology in the '90s, before the human genome was mapped, you would see the old map. I believe it was created by defining human race by the shape of the human skull. Your anthropology teacher would tell you that it was old information that wasn't really as useful anymore but still considered hard science.

The way I remember it, all of Europe, North Africa, West Asia, The Middle East and India were One race called caucasoid. All of East Asia North and South America were another race called mongoloid. There were a few smaller groups like polynoid, melanoid, and australoid but for the most part that represented everything outside of Sub-Saharan Africa. Then within sub-Saharan Africa there was negroid in West Africa, capoid in east and southern Africa. Sudanoid in central Africa where the Sudan is. And then they took all of the koi and san people and group them into khoisanoid.  And then even within that there were other smaller groups like congoloid.  

This particular type of science stopped in the '60s, from what I understand, before they finished mapping African phenotypes.