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Comment by dyauspitr | Hacker News Reader

That’s because you’re holding a particular snapshot of a race in your mind. If you really think about it, a lot of people are intensely mixed. Most African-Americans, a significant portion of white annericans, all Hispanics, the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and all of South Asia are racially mixed. That’s probably half the world’s population.

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We could argue a long time about what counts as "mixed" or as a "race", but there are definitely genetic clusters[0]. I don't think it's that surprising given fast travel is a relatively recent invention. The clusters will probably become less distinct over time.

[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Principal_component_...

The point I’m trying to make is these genetic clusters are from a particular snapshot of time when we decided to classify these. Each of those clusters is already a combination of a smaller number of clusters that would have existed in a previous snapshot. And I’m not talking about a snapshot from prehistoric times more along the scale of a few centuries.

>these genetic clusters are from a particular snapshot of time when we decided to classify these

Not even. No 'races' as commonly understood are defined based on a snapshot of genetic clusters. The concept predates modern genetics or knowledge of DNA. Races are complex social constructions based on appearance, language, ethnicity, etc. etc.

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