We don't want unrelated controversies, generic tangents, or flamewars on HN. Racewar is right out. If that's what you want to foment, please foment somewhere else.
However, "race" is absolutely not biological because so little of race is physical. Nobody has ever denied that skin colour and facial features are biological, its the accompanying traits that round out what makes a "race" that have no significant biological basis
Yes the frequency of response and the side effects will vary by an individual's genetic background, but there is to my knowledge no drug or side effect found only in one broad population grouping.
Yes, people who share similar melanin probably have similar genes providing them that attribute, but there are significant genetic differences between a black Jamaican and a black Ethiopian; or, a white Spaniard and a white Russian (not the drink). Saying they're just black or white dismisses the substantial differences that exist.
>Uncertain about the science, the police asked Frudakis to take a blind test: They sent him DNA swabs from 20 people to see if he could identify their races. He nailed every one.
>On a conference call a few weeks later, Frudakis reported his results on their killer. "Your guy could be African-American or Afro-Caribbean, but there is no chance that this is a Caucasian."
So we can see that not only are the classes used more precise than just "black" or "white", but there is empirical evidence that they can be predicted from DNA.
I read the article and responded to a comment overemphasizing the importance of determining race from DNA.
> So we can see that not only are the classes used more precise than just "black" or "white", but there is empirical evidence that they can be predicted from DNA.
There is no implication from my comment denying the ability to derive an individual's race from DNA. Nor would I ever suggest that you could not predict race using DNA, I am simply questioning the value of doing so. Information from DNA is extremely precise, so diluting the information to interpret race is degrading its potential. As pointed out by others, the human categorization of race is an inaccurate, archaic taxonomy.
Even using the law enforcement aspect of the Wired article, you can clearly demonstrate why race is an antiquated distinction to make when evaluating DNA. If you have more information from DNA, why stop at race? Technology is developing to render facial models from DNA. IMO that is a far superior use of DNA than determining, "Your guy could be African-American or Afro-Caribbean, but there is no chance that this is a Caucasian."
The latter. The claim is pretty unambiguous. There are genetic markers that are only found in certain populations. His statements imply that he observed no markers that are only found in Caucasian populations, and several that are only found in African or Afro-Caribbean populations. If a person were mix raced, they would likely have a combination.
I'm more interested in finding the genes responsible for racism. Racism being such a giant human flaw that can lead to the collapse of societies it would be great if we could identify individuals prone to racism early.
Of course it is biological. Doesn't stop it being an appallingly crap system for human taxonomy. Especially given that there are a very large quantity of people out there whom you would really have to give a long list for in this taxonomy, rather than a word, as people have a habit of not sticking to these neat little groupings when they have sex, even if you force them to with law.
What is biological is that different people from around the world are genetically more similar to their neighbours than people more distant and people with a similar genetic background tend to look similar.
What is more interesting is not race, but that different human populations around the world are different species that can produce fertile offspring. There are four known living human species; sub-Saharan Africans, Euro/Asians, Melanesian/Australian Aborigines, and African pygmies (there might be some more human species in Africa, but we lack the fossil DNA data to know this). Each one of these different species is a hybrid between ancient sub-Saharan African’s and one of the other homo species that lived on the planet before 50,000 years ago [0].
These groups are not considered different species or subspecies of human (homo sapiens sapiens). There are homo sapiens subspecies, but all except sapiens are extinct.
As for races vs species, that well has been so thoroughly poisoned that I for one refuse to drink from it. But, you know... you do you.
I think where people get worked up is thinking because there are different species of humans living on the planet that one must be better (or worse) than the other. Nobody with a clue would say that lions are better cats than tigers, just different. The different humans species are the same.
The other thing that makes things more complex is all living humans are predominantly sub-Saharan African (90% to 100%). If you had a large cat population that was 95% lion and 5% tiger you would most likely not even notice it was not a pride of lions. It would still be a different species, and the average member of this population would be different to the average lion, but the differences would be relatively subtle.
When people connect race and talents/abilities is when people get uncomfortable though for fairly obvious reasons. Which is likely how many will interpret this result (Race related to intelligence) and probably what you really wanted to say.
People that observe that “race” is a highly malleable concept (there isn't even a broad agreement on how many races there are) that evolves with social, demographic, and economic shifts in the culture whose views of race are examined.
No, people who recognize that despite the conceit that race is a “biological concept”, the identification of race (both ascription to others and self-identified) has always been driven by the same sociological phenomon that drive ethnic identity, and that, in practice, the concept of race operates as simply a broader set of ethnic categories, which is why identification of what races exist and how people are identified as being in one race or another vary not only between cultures, but within the same cultures over time.
Race and ethnicity are simply larger and smaller group categorizations of humans, both with reasonably accurate biological tests.
https://www.wired.com/2007/12/ps-dna/ (2007)
When will be comfortable accepting that "race" is biological? We need to test drugs on multiple races for this reason.