'Biological reality': What genetics has taught us about race

[Judi Lynn]

4 hours ago

Adam Rutherford

As US President Donald Trump takes aim at the Smithsonian Institution for "anti-American ideology", Adam Rutherford examines what the science of genetics has taught us about race.

When scientists unveiled the first draft of the Human Genome Project 25 years ago, it seemed to deliver the final word on some antiquated myths about race. It provided definitive evidence that racial groupings have no biological basis. In fact, there is more genetic variation within racial groups than between them. Race, it showed, is a social construct.

But despite that fundamental finding, which has only been reinforced as work on human genomes has continued, race and ethnicity are still often deployed to categorise human populations as distinct biological groups. These are views that can be found circulating in the pseudoscience on social media, but they also still creep into scientific research and healthcare systems.

It is even more troubling when this thinking finds its way into the halls of government.

President Donald Trump and his administration have made no secret of his rejection of many aspects of the scientific worldview. Since returning to the White House, he has made sweeping cuts to science funding for biomedical and climate research, but in a recent Executive Order, Trump took aim at what most scientists now regard as biological reality.

More:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250417-biological-reality-what-genetics-has-taught-us-about-race

[Botany]

1. All Homo sapiens* are out of here The Great Rift Valley

We all carry a piece of maternal mitochondria that links us there. Although, and I don’t
know if it is still true there used to be stories that one tribe of people on some Islands in
the Indian Ocean/South Pacific that did not carry that mitochondria segment.

Trump is just dumb fuck and is working to burn America to the ground and sees any
history or science or knowledge that is divergent from his own fucked up thinking as
“the enemy” that should be hidden.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. A good read -- covers a lot of ground for such a short article.

Even though only a tiny percentage of our DNA differs between individuals, the genome is so large and complex that there is great diversity. Geneticists are still working to unravel how this alters people's health, for example. But those genetic differences do not delineate along the lines of what we call race. They follow ancestral lines, can differ by geographic location and can be traced through historic migration patterns.

What we now know is that there is more genetic diversity in people of recent African descent than in the rest of the world put together. Take two people, for example from Ethiopia and Namibia, and they will be more different to each other at a genetic level than either one of them is to a white European, or indeed a Japanese person, an Inuit or an Indian. This includes the genes that are involved in pigmentation.

Maybe "Happy" Harry Cox was right.

[Ponietz]

3. The title is absolutely misleading and infers the opposite of what science has proven and the author writes

Race is a social construct without a scientific basis. The “biological reality” is that social constructs have biological implications, for example, in life expectancy.

From the article:

When scientists unveiled the first draft of the Human Genome Project 25 years ago, it seemed to deliver the final word on some antiquated myths about race. It provided definitive evidence that racial groupings have no biological basis. In fact, there is more genetic variation within racial groups than between them. Race, it showed, is a social construct.

and later:

What we now know is that there is more genetic diversity in people of recent African descent than in the rest of the world put together. Take two people, for example from Ethiopia and Namibia, and they will be more different to each other at a genetic level than either one of them is to a white European, or indeed a Japanese person, an Inuit or an Indian. This includes the genes that are involved in pigmentation.

So, going further, the question is: how to eliminate or ameliorate this most pernicious social construct? Or should the social construct be reinforced? In my opinion classifying a person as white, black, or whatever only reinforces the social construct.