Race, like the gender, is now considered a social construct.
The meanings of words are defined by a community of users who find them useful in communicating. Race and ancestry are both useful words.
This was my thinking, also. Good cluster of links.
Nobody in race sciences (anthropology, etc) claim that there are only unique races that are separate from each other and don't mix. This is a clear strawman.
The fact that there is mixing between races does not mean that races don't exist. You can make an emulsion out of water and oil, but water and oil still are their own things.
And the science has all kinds of specific categorization for human groups that go way beyond the rough separation into 3-4 main races. All the mixing, separation, migration, isolation, etc have been taken into account.
It's a pity this kind of topic/science is basically a taboo in the Western World and for real info and honest discussion have to go to other systems/countries/languages.
Between us, you are clearly the one with no clue about what he's talking about.
There’s more genetic variation within any so-called racial group than between groups, race mixing or not. Clearly, 'race' has no genetic justification.
You must be one of those clueless people who think that sex is fluid and is a social construct because there is in certain characteristics a bigger difference within each sex than between the medium of each sexes.
Shortly:
- Unique how? Optimally genetically, but this has practical problems that the field of paleogenetics is trying to work on. Until then must use: classical morphological features, odontology, dermatoglyphics, biochemical characteristics.
- How long enough? Depends on the type of group. There are different levels of human group classification, both above the traditionally understood "races" and a lot below that.
That is comically retarded. Like do you have any understanding of the words you are using ?
If there's no genetic justification, how would it be possible to trivially determine someone's race just from their DNA ?
Genetic ancestry is determined by correlation with geographic origins and population. In other words, where a set of genetic markers are highly concentrated. It says nothing about race.
After all, the reason why no real object is an actual circle is because the definition of circle is so to say an "ideal" definition that no real object can fit in all it's precision. It's natural to assume that no real object will have all of it's "points" perfectly distributed according to a circle's equation (without even getting philosophical as to how these mathematical definitions relate to the real world, or if they do at all). If one rejects any "approximate", non exact application of the concept, then it will be mostly useless when it comes to describing or understanding the real world (because you won't be able to use it for anything).
On the other hand, the concept of "race" is quite the opposite to ideal: it's not "ideal" as the circle is, in fact it's more of a pragmatic/working definition. It's more like the definition of "chair": many things may or may not be considered a chair, but usually people don't feel that there's "no such thing as a chair" in the real world. On the contrary, it's more common to feel that anything "could" be a chair because it has a malleable definition based on the context, instead of nothing being "precisely" a chair because there are some rigid constraints to the definition that no real object can actually fit.
When the idea of races within the human species is pushed against, it's not because "race" is an ideal concept that no real thing may implement in all it's precision (as would be the case with the circle). I won't present these actual reasons (which could get quite political) here, but I will say that I definitely wouldn't consider those two claims to be in the same category:
- Saying that X real object is not a circle, or that no real object can be (exactly) a circle has to do with the fact that the concept of circle is ideal and by definition nothing "real" will fit it perfectly.
- Saying that (in the human species) there are no races is, however, not based on a quality of the definition of the concept of "race" (specifically, it's not ideal), but on some quantitative judgements about what kind of thing qualifies as a race an what doesn't (pretty much like the concept of "chair", "food", etc. which are not ideal and there's some room for discussion based on context when it comes to whether some specific object fits the category or not).
Races is like that, scientists can't define it but its still a useful concept like a chair. Scientists can't exactly define what a chair is either, but its still a very useful concept and we can discuss chairs and everyone understand what we mean.
The thing about race is that it has no biological justification. It's still 'real' of course but in the same way money has 'real' value. It's a powerful social construct.
> It's a powerful social construct.
This is 100% correct, and yet progressive academics have yet to figure out how to slot this fact into their ideology without creating incorrigible inconsistencies.
For instance - if race is a social construct just like gender, why is transracialism frowned upon, while transgenderism is lauded? Quoting Richard Dawkins, famous debunker of Creationist and religious bullshit [0]:
Why is a white woman vilified and damned if she identifies as black,
but lauded if she identifies as a man? That's topsy-turvy, because
race really is a continuum, whereas sex is one of the few genuine binaries
of biology.
What matters, then, is that intersubjectively we have all agreed that
ancestry is relevant to the determination of one’s race.
There is no science or biology on the far LGBTQ+ progressive left. Only pseudoscience and apologetics befitting of a Creationist.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cubkdBuvJAQ