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'All of Us' genetics chart stirs unease over controversial depiction of race

nature.com

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Re: 'All of Us' genetics chart stirs unease over controversial depiction of race

#11

Post by famouswaffles »

sp527 wrote: post #5
tacitusarc wrote: post #2

“Our analysis reaffirms that race and ethnicity are social constructs that do not have a basis in genetics” In what sense is race not genetic?

I'm going to assume that what they're trying to imply is that some sizable share of genetic information is shared across all humans and the information that is typically used to separate us into racial and ethnic categories is a very small subset (imagine some genetic 'knobs' for hair color, skin color, stature, morphology, etc). Their argument seems really fucking stupid when you consider that we share an estimated…

>that is typically used to separate us into racial and ethnic categories is a very small subset (imagine some genetic 'knobs' for hair color, skin color, stature, morphology, etc).

What they're saying is that they're no genetic components that do this at all.

There's no "black dna" or "Asian dna" or genetic component that is present in all peoples of a particular "race" that separates them from other "races".

Re: 'All of Us' genetics chart stirs unease over controversial depiction of race

#12

Post by faeriechangling »

jamilton wrote: post #8
tacitusarc wrote: post #2

“Our analysis reaffirms that race and ethnicity are social constructs that do not have a basis in genetics” In what sense is race not genetic?

Person of race A and race B have two children. People tend to think child 1 is race A, people tend to think child 2 is mixed race AB. In the social sense, it could be said that child 1's race is race A, even though genetically it's probably more like AB. Another common situation: People of race A think child 2 is race B, people of race B think child 2 is race A. And you can imagine more complex examples with more rac…

Another observation is that if we ignore the existence of race AB, a person of race A with "mixed" genetics, and a person of race B with mixed genetics, may be closer to eachother genetically than other members of race A and B (since as you say, they're closer to race AB, not A or B).

Defining discrete categorisations for things that exist on a continuum is definitionally arbitrary and misleading.

Don't tell that to psychiatrists though, who do EXACTLY what is being criticised here and slap people who exist on a continuum with an arbitrary label, and yet the DSM-V is still taken seriously by the scientific mainstream.

Re: 'All of Us' genetics chart stirs unease over controversial depiction of race

#13

Post by faeriechangling »

br3d wrote: post #4
tacitusarc wrote: post #2

“Our analysis reaffirms that race and ethnicity are social constructs that do not have a basis in genetics” In what sense is race not genetic?

Adam Rutherford's book "How to Argue with a Racist" is all about this.

I'll read it

Re: 'All of Us' genetics chart stirs unease over controversial depiction of race

#14

Post by famouswaffles »

tacitusarc wrote: post #2

“Our analysis reaffirms that race and ethnicity are social constructs that do not have a basis in genetics” In what sense is race not genetic?

There are no trademark genes basically. Is there a genetic factor present in all Black people that is not present in any Asian person and some on ? The answer is no, there isn't.

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-res...

>"Race’ cannot be biologically defined due to genetic variation among human individuals and populations."

"In the Stanford study, over 92% of alleles were found in two or more regions, and almost half of the alleles studied were present in all seven major geographical regions. The observation that the vast majority of the alleles were shared over multiple regions, or even throughout the entire world, points to the fundamental similarity of all people around the world—an idea that has been supported by many other studies (Figure 1B).

If separate racial or ethnic groups actually existed, we would expect to find “trademark” alleles and other genetic features that are characteristic of a single group but not present in any others. However, the 2002 Stanford study found that only 7.4% of over 4000 alleles were specific to one geographical region. Furthermore, even when region-specific alleles did appear, they only occurred in about 1% of the people from that region—hardly enough to be any kind of trademark."

Re: 'All of Us' genetics chart stirs unease over controversial depiction of race

#15

Post by tacitusarc »

famouswaffles wrote: post #14
tacitusarc wrote: post #2

“Our analysis reaffirms that race and ethnicity are social constructs that do not have a basis in genetics” In what sense is race not genetic?

There are no trademark genes basically. Is there a genetic factor present in all Black people that is not present in any Asian person and some on ? The answer is no, there isn't. https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-res... >"Race’ cannot be biologically defined due to genetic variation among human individuals and populations." "In the Stanford study, over 92% of alleles were found in two or more r…

This feels like moving the goal posts… and rather silly. Obviously people are dramatically more similar than different. But the concept of race is about those differences, and seems to be intimately tied to various gene expressions. Of course there isn’t an Asian gene or white gene or black gene, but there are genes that regulate hair color, height, facial structure, eye color, melanin production, etc., and those are what people think of when they think of racial differences. So to say race isn’t genetic seems silly at best.

Re: 'All of Us' genetics chart stirs unease over controversial depiction of race

#16

Post by famouswaffles »

tacitusarc wrote: post #15
famouswaffles wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no trademark genes basically. Is there a genetic factor present in all Black people that is not present in any Asian person and some on ? The answer is no, there isn't. https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-res... >"Race’ cannot be biologically defined due to genetic variation among human individuals and populations." "In the Stanford study, over 92% of alleles were found in two or more r…

This feels like moving the goal posts… and rather silly. Obviously people are dramatically more similar than different. But the concept of race is about those differences, and seems to be intimately tied to various gene expressions. Of course there isn’t an Asian gene or white gene or black gene, but there are genes that regulate hair color, height, facial structure, eye color, melanin production, etc., and those are…

It's not about being more similar than different.

It's that you literally can't biologically divide people into the categories we divide them into.

Two sub-saharan african men might be more genetically apart than one of those men and some White European fellow. In fact, Africa is more genetically diverse than the rest of the world combined.

Yet those two Africans are "black" and supposed to be the same "race", separate from the white fellow.

If an alien species landed on Earth today, took exhaustive genetic samples of everyone on the planet and did their best to classify us, it wouldn't look anything like our "races". That's the point.

Maybe you think that's goalpost moving but it's not.

Re: 'All of Us' genetics chart stirs unease over controversial depiction of race

#17

Post by tacitusarc »

famouswaffles wrote: post #16
tacitusarc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like moving the goal posts… and rather silly. Obviously people are dramatically more similar than different. But the concept of race is about those differences, and seems to be intimately tied to various gene expressions. Of course there isn’t an Asian gene or white gene or black gene, but there are genes that regulate hair color, height, facial structure, eye color, melanin production, etc., and those are…

It's not about being more similar than different. It's that you literally can't biologically divide people into the categories we divide them into. Two sub-saharan african men might be more genetically apart than one of those men and some White European fellow. In fact, Africa is more genetically diverse than the rest of the world combined. Yet those two Africans are "black" and supposed to be the same "race", separa…

This is moving the goal posts. Saying that members of the same racial group can actually be more genetically similar to members of another race has no bearing on whether or not the traits that define racial categories are genetically derived.
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