I see a lot of arguing at cross-purposes on this thread, and I think the primary reason is that different people are arguing different points revolving around the same issue.
To some extent everyone's got a valid point -- race as we know it both is *and* is not genetic.
Yes, race as we understand it is based on physical features (e.g. skin color, bone structure, hair type, etc.) which are of course based on inheritable genetic differences
But no, race as we understand it from an age-old "common sense" understanding is unsupported by genetic discoveries, and this is where articles like this are interesting and eye-opening.
The first genetic observation is that there is no "caucasian gene", no "negro gene", no "asian gene", etc. Our notions of "race" are not based on a fundamental genetic divide.
The next genetic observation is that the things we *do* consider to be significant racial differences are actually just constellations of noticeable physical features which we have come to mentally lump into different "categories" and label as "race". If we see a straight-black-haired, smooth-skinned, dark-eyed, high-cheekboned person with an epicanthal fold to their eyes, we consider them "Asian", because a large number of people from the eastern Eurasian continent share this combination of traits. However, none of these traits singly are confined to eastern-Eurasian populations, they can be found almost anywhere in a mix-and-match fashion. It's only when all or most of them come together in a single individual to do we consider the result "obviously" of the Asian "race".
And so it is for other "races" and traits we consider "typical" of certain races. There is no trait which is exclusively or diagnostically "black" or "white" or "asian" or what have you. Any trait you can find in the "black" population can be found in the genepool of other "races" as well, and vice versa.
We're all a mish-mash of genetic varieties. It's only when certain visibly noticeable traits happen to be commonly found together in some populations due to geographic extent and overlap that we tend to begin thinking of specific combinations as distinctly recognizable "races". But genetically, there are no underlying fundamental "racial" differences other than the superficially visible ones.
Finally, the interesting observation made by identifying genetic tracers in tests such as done in the high school described in the article is that while people tend to presume that a much larger gulf must separate them from people who appear to be other "races" than those who appear to be their "own" race, in fact our genes often reveal that we may often be more directly related to someone of another "race" than we are to someone born thousands of miles closer and who looks much more like us in a "racial" sense.
Another poster asked whether it was supposed to be profound to "discover" that humans have traveled and intermarried a lot. The fact alone is not, but what is profound is to realize how often it has occurred, and thus how much more interrelated we all are than is commonly presumed. The human family is more closely related than it sometimes feels, and far more closely related than it would appear by looking at the superficial "racial" differences which give people rationalizations for drawing lines between different groups and playing "us versus them", for seeing some people as our "brothers" and some people as "others".
I think that's a very significant thing to learn.
What if the next potential suicide bomber finds that he has closer ancestry to the Jewish kids on the schoolbus than he does to the Hamas goon pushing him to strap on a bomb? The more and varied ways we can learn to find a brotherhood with different people, the less likely we are to be trying to kill each other because of overblown differences.
And no, I'm *not* going to use the Rodney King line... My point is just that regardless of people having a social agenda one way or another on the matter, and lord knows there are plenty, "the facts is the facts", and the (genetic) facts say that despite many centuries of people fixating on "race" as sign of a great gulf between groups of people proving some sort of fundamental human distance, difference, superiority/inferiority, or lack of kinship, it just ain't so. Our genes show that we're all the "mutts" of mankind's melting pot, some of us just have different skin, hair, and bone variations than others -- and some of us place more importance on that than it deserves.
So in the final analysis, supported by genetic studies, it seems that while "races" do exist in the sense of recognizable constellations of physical traits that can often be found together, they don't reflect any underlying Significant Difference. And the closer you look at the notion of "race", the more it fades as having any real meaning, no more than does blue eyes, left-handedness, attached earlobes, or other physical traits which are more common in some populations than others, but to which we attach little or no "us versus them" significance to.
Sidebar: For people who are tempted to say that historical success/failures of different "races" must indicate some sort of fundamental racial differences -- or to anyone fascinated by the topic of the flow of human history -- I strongly recommend the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies", by Jared Diamond. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and fully deserved it. It traces the factors which underly the rise of man from humble hunter-gatherer beginnings to our modern world of agricultural subsistence, literature, technology, and nationstates. Among other observations, it makes a seemingly indisputable case that the reasons for, for example, the failures of sub-Saharan Africans and native Australians to develop a "modern civilization" before or along with Eurasians is not because of any racial deficiency, but because of being "dealt a bad hand" in their geographic circumstances (details in the book, too much to go into here). Also, the lack of suitable native plant and animal species for domestication left open for them no viable options for the development of the large static agricultural communities which are the prerequisites for ultimately spawning writing, political states, and technology. This book is a "must read" for anyone interested in the forces which have shaped the directions which history (and especially pre-history) have taken. It's also a sweeping summary of the travels and triumphs of mankind starting from about 150,000 years ago.
Among other observations, it makes a seemingly indisputable case that the reasons for, for example, the failures of sub-Saharan Africans and native Australians to develop a "modern civilization" before or along with Eurasians is not because of any racial deficiency, but because of being "dealt a bad hand" in their geographic circumstances
The bad hand they have been dealt is the set of genes that gives them an average IQ of 70. This is why they haven't been able to learn civilized behavior from the white settlers over the centuries and it is why Zimbabwe and South Africa are doomed to return to the stone age after all of the whites are driven out.
A liberal friend of mine gave me that book as a present (and in soft-cover, yuk--but that's beside the point).
I have not yet read it, but if your account reflects what this book is about, then it seems to me to be a superficial accounting based on chauvinist standards of judgment.
For one thing, I have doubts that hunter-gathering is inferior and that our modern world of agricultural subsistence, literature, technology, and nation-states is superior.
And that would be just the beginning of the faults I suspect I'd find with this book's arguments.
It is difficult for me to understand the surprise that some folks feel about these findings. Regardless of opinions about our origins, we live in an essentially closed system on one tiny planet in a huge Universe. Whether life had it's origins upon a warm damp rock, or as clay between the Master's fingers, we had a common beginning that has given us all many common traits.
And indeed this is fortunate - else we could not share blood or organs and tissues, sometimes even between species (e.g. porcine heart valves), antibiotics and antifungals would never have effectively cured afflictions equally well in plants and animals. Even the very air we breathe is appropriate for almost all life on our little planet.
Perhaps many global problems would fix themselves if we looked more toward our similarities than our differences. < /idealistic rant>
The next genetic observation is that the things we *do* consider to be significant racial differences are actually just constellations of noticeable physical features which we have come to mentally lump into different "categories" and label as "race".
So, the "age old" understanding of race that has been overthrown is that there is a single gene for various races, and that races are marked by a single, observable, superficial characteristic.
Gee whiz, you mean science has shown that view to be false? Wow. That is fascinating. Thanks so much for coming in above the fray and clearing that up.
Of course, I don't know that you'd find anyone with a college education who ever thought there was a "negro" gene or a "white" gene, or anything similar to the view that you think has been "exploded" by modern genetic science.
As far as the cluster-of-properties view goes, that too would likely already have been accepted by someone who thinks that there is obviously something to racial categories. Why wouldn't someone just recognize the obvious and rather than saying that there is some one characteristic that is both necessary and sufficient for a particular race characterize a race by some cluster of properties? Then a person could point to the obvious fact that particular clusters arose in relatively isolated areas, and the components of the clusters are inherited traits.
And, anyway, even if someone insisted on a single-property view of race, one certainly wouldn't need genetics to show the view was false. One could simply observe the range of people that would fall within the ordinary understanding of some racial group. One could have done that in the 18th century. So showing the single-property view is wrong is hardly an achievement of modern science.
Why not just educate children in the notion of moral equality, or equal consideration of people's rights, rather than trying to force on them muddled and deceptive claims that science has "discovered" that there are no races? There's an idea.