SUB “species”
The thing is the different “races” are not even SUB-species of homo sapiens sapiens —> all living humans belong to a single, undivided subspecies: Homo sapiens sapiens
Why?
Any two humans on Earth share roughly 99.9% of their DNA —> even the Yoruba and the KhoiSan have that level of closeness in their genes
It is weird, but chimpanzees in west and central africa have MORE genetic variation than the Khoi San vs Yoruba.
Look at these;
1. Lactose intolerance - “White” people from Northern Europe are lactase persistent, but “White” people from the Mediterranean often are not. Similarly, some Black African populations can digest milk perfectly, while neighboring Black African populations cannot. It is tied to agricultural history, not race
2. Sickle-cell. I used to think this was purely a black/ sub-Saharan african trait, but one reading more, you can see that it is completely absent in Black populations from South Africa where malaria is rare. Conversely, it is highly prevalent among non-Black populations in Greece, Italy, India, and the Middle East where malaria was historically common. It is a map of mosquito habitats, not a map of race
3. Height - The tallest and shortest populations on Earth both reside within the exact same continent and racial category (Sub-Saharan Africa). The South Sudanese Dinka people average nearly 6 feet (183 cm) tall, while the Mbuti people of the Congo average around 4 feet 6 inches (137 cm). Grouping them into a single “race” erases the massive genetic differences between them
4. Predisposition to obesity - again, this varies within the ‘races’.
I think if we had spent a few more tens of thousands of years apart, then we would have probably become sub-species separate, but we didn’t — the Turks cutting off European trade with India is what pushed the mingling of “Indo-european” and sub-saharan and later “American” genes together while the Mongols merged the Indo-european and east Asian together.
btw, all of these, indo-european, etc. are definitely not precise terminology, i’m just grabbing linguistics, geographic etc. terms together