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Comment by ivan_gammel | Hacker News Reader

Self-identification on the basis of race is not objective. Races do not exist, it is a scientific fact. There are many other more reasonable ways to cluster American population. Ancestral angle is important, but only from cultural proximity perspective if you talk about people who are 5-10th generation Americans. Black Americans that are descendants of slaves may have higher proximity to Europe than to Africa, so they should be included in the group that you compare to Europe and anyway that comparison must be based on some theory, otherwise it’s just cherry-picking for building a convenient narrative.

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> Self-identification on the basis of race is not objective.

It correlates extremely closely with objective measures like percentage of genetic ancestry from a given continent or historical population, so close in fact that for statistical purposes, it is justified to regard these two as virtually identical.

> Races do not exist, it is a scientific fact.

I’ll happily use different term like “ancestral group” if you like it more, but the (scientific) truth of the matter is that it’s just splitting hairs. I know that in recent years activists worked hard to obfuscate and misinform people on these topics, so I will happily accommodate you.

> It correlates extremely closely with objective measures like percentage of genetic ancestry from a given continent

It doesn’t make this clustering less arbitrary.

> I’ll happily use different term like “ancestral group” if you like it more

I do not care what term do you use for it as long as I do not see any scientific argument for having it. Politics and whatever activism have nothing to do with it.

> Races do not exist, it is a scientific fact.

Races do not exist in the same sense that the periodic table does not exist. Both are constructs over reality, and they are both informative (i.e. science).

Periodic table uses objective criteria for categorization. American race classification is rooted in debunked theories and mostly meaningless today. One can say at least that there exists black subculture, black dialect of English etc among descendants of slaves. How much of that is related to 1st and 2nd generation immigrants from Africa, which have much stronger cultural links to their motherland, speak different languages and may even have different faith? Asian bucket is absolutely non-sensical — there’s either cultural proximity to America or to native Asian cultures, which are very different, so the people are very different. It is very hard to understand why Indians and Chinese should classify themselves the same way. This classification is imposed on them. How is this nonsense informative? It’s just some racist legacy.

In Europe we do not have that system and we don’t miss it.

Races are also based on objective criteria: physical characteristics, which convey information about ancestry and genetics.

I don't know why you're talking about "culture"?

You cannot be serious. It is very well established by science that biological races do not exist. They remain in the mostly American conversation as sociocultural constructs.

Maybe you at least read Wikipedia to educate yourself?

This is just obfuscation. The population clusters will still exist even if we don't use the word "race" to describe them, and they can be described in biological terms that will overwhelmingly overlap with the sociocultural construct.

You continue repeating this without any scientific evidence, yet any modern source points that racial theories are not supported by genetic research. There‘s no such overlap.

It turns out that if you cluster people together by their genetic information, the clusters that form are pretty similar to the racial groupings that ordinary Americans would understand. See this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering#/medi...

The 4 clusters in the K=4 column are pretty much just Black vs White vs (east) Asian vs Amerindian

First of all, you quote an old study with a very small dataset. We already know by now, that before going out of Africa at least two major genetic branches developed in addition to early Eurasians. At K=4 and clustering by genetic distance, they would likely represent two clusters while the rest of Africa would fall into one of remaining two. Not even close to what average American would understand.

Second, even if in the study you use, it’s „east Asian“. Where you would put Indians? How about southeast Asian people with black skin? Why this clustering is even necessary when the rest of the world is doing fine without it?

> We already know by now, that before going out of Africa at least two major genetic branches developed in addition to early Eurasians.

Nice of you to acknowledge genetics.

> At K=4 and clustering by genetic distance, they would likely represent two clusters while the rest of Africa would fall into one of remaining two.

I suppose they would.

> Not even close to what average American would understand.

The average American would understand if those two branches lived among us today. The value of science is to inform us of what is occurring now and to predict what will occur next, including the impact of immigration on test scores.

> The average American would understand if those two branches lived among us today

Shall I break the news or you find out yourself?.. ok, I will do it.

Those two branches do live among Americans. Afro-American people have the biggest genetic diversity in America and their genetic subgroups are so distinctive that they require separate testing in clinical studies. I bet you won’t be able to tell the difference between them from their appearance though. Now good luck redefining the concept of race with this knowledge.

> Those two branches do live among Americans.

If you were not referring to extinct branches I don't know why you thought "they would likely represent two clusters" if they did not already in the clustering given.

> Afro-American people have the biggest genetic diversity in America and their genetic subgroups are so distinctive that they require separate testing in clinical studies.

Yes, and?

> I bet you won’t be able to tell the difference between them from their appearance though.

Maybe, and?

> Now good luck redefining the concept of race with this knowledge.

Good luck trying to deny biological race when you've just listed more evidence for it.

>I don't know why you thought "they would likely represent two clusters" if they did not already in the clustering given.

Read the study with the clustering. I did it, so you should too.

This is my last reply to you. If you need more answers, there’s already more than enough facts for you here to verify and learn something new in the process.

FWIW, American Descendants of Slaves (ADoS) have an average European genetic admixture of ~24%.[1]

1. https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(14)00476-5

I‘m talking about cultural proximity. The tragedy of American slavery is that it erased any links of slaves to Africa, so modern black Americans have barely any relationship to Africa, still carrying the pain but losing any cultural or ancestral connections. They were raised and educated in a culture that is mostly a product of Europe. It is wrong thus to compare them to African countries since it gives false impression that they are doing great.

> The tragedy of American slavery is that it erased any links of slaves to Africa, so modern black Americans have barely any relationship to Africa, still carrying the pain but losing any cultural or ancestral connections.

I don't know why you deny genetics.

Ancestral connection in the quoted sentence means knowing your ancestors, not genetic lineage. It must have been clear from this thread that I don’t deny genetics.

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