PghBaldy: "The DNA of blacks cannot be distinguished from the DNA of Asians or the DNA of whites" -— That is not true.
T-Bone Texan: Oh brother, here comes the lame "race is merely a construct" people.
cincinnati65: Agreed. Sickle Cell comes to mind right off the bat.
Lx: Right...
T-Bone Texan: Folks with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry get a disease called Tay-Sachs at a far higher rate than non-Ashkenazi ancestry folks. I guess that’s all just a construct, and people who point that out, like doctors and scientists, are rayciss.
Ultima: This is nonsense. Scientists can tell the race of a person just from a sample of blood. Furthermore, their are race specific medicines designed for different races of people.
bert: Race is infact not a mental construct but the very basic genetic differentation among humans. To say otherwise is just ignorance
Altura Ct.: Really? So skin color, facial features, diseases, ethnic culture etc are all just a figment? One of the biggest lies of our time.
I want the USA back: There are distinct differences beteween the races that doctors need to take into account when treating patients.
PapaBear3625: There are documented differences in average testosterone levels, bone density, and other factors
mjp: all non-Africans today have Neanderthal gene fragments in their genetic codes.
TO EVERYONE:
The gist of this article is that the criteria popularly employed to distinguish "race" or to categorize people according to "race" are as arbitrary and unscientific as categorizing people according to right-handedness, blood type, or their preferences in pizza toppings.
Sure there are very broad commonalities (pigmentation, epicanthal fold, etc.) that overlap to a large extent with the conventional concept of "race." But, by and large, 90% of what we perceive as "race" is learned.
How else to explain that the average American will classify a member of the San people (of the Kalahari desert) as "Black" or "Negro" although they should actually be categorized as a distinct race (when considering DNA)?
By the same token, a southern plantation owner and slave-owner of the antebellum America would probably have seen no difference between an Australian Aborigine and a typical plantation slave.
The numerous examples presented in the article further bolster this position. There is also the reverse case of citizens of certain countries being intensely aware of ethnic differences which would be invisible to you or me.
If you want to take something like Sickle Cell Anemia or Thalassemia other genetic disorders - yes, they are found predominantly among certain sub-populations. But is one Jew who is a carrier of Tay-Sachs a member of a different race than another Jew who is completely free of the predisposition? Is a Gentile (say, a Cajun from Louisiana) who has the disease somehow partly Jewish - or at least racially affiliated?
In these respects, the concept of "race" is a construct.
Regards,
“The gist of this article is that the criteria popularly employed to distinguish “race” or to categorize people according to “race” are as arbitrary and unscientific as categorizing people according to right-handedness, blood type, or their preferences in pizza toppings.”
Read The Bell Curve. It scientifically concludes otherwise.
>>>Marshall’s statement was even truer than he could have imagined. Today we know for a fact what scientists in the 1950s could only have surmised: Race is not biological. It is a social construct, not a genetic reality. The DNA of blacks cannot be distinguished from the DNA of Asians or the DNA of whites.
This is a denial that there is a biological thing called race. It is however true that racial definitions do change over time and that a black person in America (who on average are around twenty percent European) may be labelled as white in parts of Africa where Africans are one hundred percent African DNA.