As long as they actually are facts, then yes this is true.
However, the presentation and choice of which facts to use can be racist, I'm sure you'll agree with me on that.
@Kednicma asked for evidence: A basic google search finds it. [0][1][2][3]. They complain of downvotes & karma lost: Those may very well come from the desire of many in this community to take basic research steps before leveling very serious accusations.
There is no reason to jump to "racism" so quickly merely because a biological difference is asserted between people of different ethnic backgrounds. Ethnicity is intertwined with genetic background, and it's not up for dispute whether or not genetics influence biology, it's practically axiomatic within the concept of genetics.
I acknowledge that research finding biological differences between ethnic groups can be ammunition for racists, but that must not be the automatic assumption, especially in this community where it violates the community guidelines to jump first to an uncharitable negative interpretation of someone's comments.
[0] https://americanbonehealth.org/nutrition/african-americans-n...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894250/
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5954269/
[3] https://web.musc.edu/about/news-center/2019/06/20/vitamin-d-...
You are kind of missing the point, which is that the test used for vitamin D levels is not directly measuring the levels of the kind of vitamin D actually needed. It is measuring a different kind of vitamin D, and then we infer the levels of the other kind from that.
This inference is based on data for light skinned people, and it appears that it is not valid for dark skinned people. It underestimates the amount of the needed kind of vitamin D for them.
This may lead to widespread misdiagnoses of vitamin D deficiencies in African-Americans who in fact have fine levels of the kind of vitamin D that is actually needed.
No, it did not explore systemic racism. It explored physiological differences between races.
Race is a social construct, it's not a scientific category. There is only a continuous spectrum of skin tone. If someone is mixed parentage, what "race" are they?
Race the social construct is a social construct. We are the same species. Period, the end. But differences in genetics and physiology do warrant study because this is how we can find treatments and preventative measures to a multitude of disease.
This is a lot like saying that research that shows that men are more susceptible to heart attacks then women is sexists because gender is a social construct. Gender is a complex topic that evolves with our evolving understanding of wha it means to be human on a philosophical level. But the X chromosome isn’t a social construct and has very direct very tangible effects. You can’t call it a social construct.
In short: when it comes to how we build a society, recognize differences and account for them to bring as much economic opportunity equality to everyone. When it comes to medicine, study everything including genetic differences in order to get the best understanding of the problem at hand. Getting offended doesn’t get us closer to for example a cure for COVID, does it?
I think the point is that races are based on a handful of cherry-picked phenotype differences. On the one hand, these characteristics are a decent proxy for human migrations in the past and might map to evolutionary events with clinical implications. On the other hand, another set of genetically conditioned characteristics would be similarly good at that. In an alternate universe, humans might have defined race based on hair color and height, and that would possibly match evolutionary history in another useful way.
But if you want a really interesting thought experiment consider what would happen if other species of humans than sapiens would have survived along us. Would the Declaration of Independence start with “we the people” or “we the sapiens”? Would the myth of Christ be that he died for sins of men or some specific subset of humans?
But really I don’t see much of a problem with race both being a social construct and a biological reality in the sense that we are talking about two related but separate phenomena. Socially, race is a construct. The idea that judging by your skin color or shape of skull we can tell how smart or virtuous you are is bogus. A lot of people have tried to justify science behind it and all of it has not been science. Scientifically we have a number of genetic differences that can be traced between different origins of our genetic trees. Some of these are inconsequential like some people having straight hair and others having curly hair. Others are more impactful like ability to metabolize lactose as adults. Or susceptibility to heart disease or certain cancers. The kicker is that it is easier to tell the public “if you are ethnicity X you might want to get your heart checked out 5 years before another ethnicity because statistically it’s more beneficial that way” than to say the same thing as “if you have genes A, B, and C”. When my doctor tells me that because I am Easter European my cholesterol is more likely to be elevated, I don’t take offense to that.
Having said all that, don’t use “blacks” or “whites” as a damn noun. That isn’t ok.
What is a scientific category vs a non-scientific category?
And I don't think every item needs to fall neatly into a category for that category to be useful.
If I say 86% of african americans have a hypersensitivity to warfarin which means that if they were given the same dose as a white person they'd have a much increased risk of stroke.
Clearly in the previous sentence the distinction of ethnicity is useful and the information makes people safer.