Comment by narkee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by narkee | Hacker News Reader

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I haven't read much on the subject, but the idea that races can't be separated based on genetics is either false, or due to the fact that we don't have enough sensitivity in the measurement.

Phenotypically, I can easily identify a black person vs. an asian person, with nearly 100% accuracy. What I'm seeing are phenotypic differences in hair type, skin colour, facial structure, etc. that are all defined by genetics.

It's ludicrous to think that I can't sort people into groups based on these apparent differences(and I'm talking broad racial categories, not Ukranians vs. Russians or anything). Ignoring that might be PC, but it's definitely not realistic.

Just to be clear, I'm not insinuating anything about intelligence, ability, or whatever. I'm just saying that to deny that there are distinct categories that humans can be classified into is unrealistic. There may be edge cases, but nobody would mistake one of China's 1.6 billion people for an east African.

You are 100% correct, and anyone can verify for themselves that you can predict geographic ancestry from saliva to an incredible level of detail:

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/origins

Nevertheless, if you take for the sake of argument the fallacious concept that "geographic ancestry has no connection to genetics", then there is and should be nothing stopping an Asian American (or a European American for that matter) from self-identifying as an African American. Is a university going to start administering blood tests?

>Phenotypically, I can easily identify a black person vs. an asian person, with nearly 100% accuracy.

This is a rather hyperbolic statement. You concede edge cases, but the fluidity of phenotype means that it fails to map cleanly onto neatly delineated categories. We can look at the recent book describing the history of 'passing' reviewed here [1] for one of many examples.

>I haven't read much on the subject, but the idea that races can't be separated based on genetics is either false, or due to the fact that we don't have enough sensitivity in the measurement.

Again, I'd caution against letting your intuition be your guide on this topic. A cursory examination of the literature (i.e., 15 minutes on Google Scholar [2]) might lead you to the conclusion that: (1) genotype != phenotype, and (2) while we can reliably sort humans by ancestry using genetic information, there is variation within these clusters because the proportion of any individuals ancestry that arises from different populations also varies.

I think that the upshot is that the science is less useful when applied to a nebulous term like race, which involves a host of cultural, political and historical factors. The way we Americans define race in debates like these is a legacy of our binary 'one-drop rule' concepts of identity, and it isn't at all clear that appeals to science couched in sweeping generalizations have any connection to the biology.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/books/review/Arsenault-t.h...

[2]: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=genomics+race

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