Thread by @rasmansa

A diagram like this helps to explain why race isn't biologically real.

Let's do a thread

So humans are 99.9% the same genetically. In this diagram, the SNPs (think of them as places where people differ) that are known are grouped by the locations of people who carry them.

What we can see is that almost all of humanity's genetic diversity is found within Africa 2/

Those in Europe and those in Asia contain almost a subset of the genetic diversity found in Africa.

This is the same sort of pattern you'd see if Africa was again split into Nigeria and not-Nigeria.

So those outside Africa are like smaller groups within Africa. 3/

Africa is almost the least sampled part of the globe genetically relative to population size. In other words, the circle representing genetic diversity within Africa will grow.

Another thing, the African circle... doesn't include the African diaspora. 4/

So biological a racial category like "Black" would basically encompass all of humanity.

That's clearly not what the race people mean. So that's a problem.

Because of the diversity within Africa as well, Africans are quite often more like non-Africans than Africans 5/

It gets funnier. Looking at those circles again, you should see why it's very normal to find those say 2 random Africans that are farther apart genetically than someone in Britain and someone in Beijing. 6/

So what we realize is that "race" is only biologically defensible if someone starts with the idea that race must exist and they can carve it out.

If you called each of those circles a race, you could put people in them. It's just not... coherent.

7/

Race as people know it isn't derived scientifically. It begins with an assumption about people, with attached moral and hierarchical claims, then proceeds to carve out these people, adjusting as necessary, but staying loyal to the ideology

They essentially preset the circles

8/

So, for those who describe themselves as "race realists", race finds its justification by making a mockery of science, while genomics soundly rejects their pseudoscientific approach.

9/

These are my thoughts on this from what I've learned. I'm not a geneticist obviously. I'm learning too and sharing that info.

I'll defer to corrections brought about by any of those geneticists and add them to the thread.

Diagram from here: sapiens.org/biology/is-rac…

/end

My geneticist friend Tade demonstrating with data some of the ways people's intuitions about biological race don't map to actual human genetics

(He still should turn this isn't an article)

https://twitter.com/tadesouaiaia/status/1466833243261571074?t=CfxqL8faFjqktjzw5nO0yg&s=19

A question: what would you expect to see if race was biologically real?

You'd see 3 fairly distinct circles, with some overlapping at the boundaries.

"Race realists" say race is real, but fuzzy at the boundaries. They're lying. Their ideology exists at those boundaries.