“Race”: Confusion about zoological and social taxonomies, and their places in science

Human genetic variation and health: new assessment approaches based on ethnogenetic layering

“…This old paradigm is based on the presumption that real human biological races exist, that they can be easily delineated, that they represent longstanding patterns of reproductive isolation, and that they have perpetuated with significant consistency through time. This is referred to as the 'fallacy of racial thinking' that continues to pervade much of the human sciences 6 . In fact, there is tremendous biological lineage overlap in modern humans.…”

Genomics, divination, “racecraft”

“…This is so because they tend to define their units of analysis by mapping population concepts capable of, for example, allowing biologists to genomically distinguish regional subspecies of drosophila onto what, in the case of human collectivities, are the self-naming, self-delimiting artifacts of culture and political maneuver (Ardener 1989;cf. Bamshad et al 2003;Duster 2005;Gannett 2003Gannett , 2004Keita and Boyce 2001). More often than not, the result is sheer nonsense on logical grounds, or what Jonathan Kahn (2003) calls instances of "statistical mischief."…”

“…It also concerns the existence of a plethora of mechanisms of recruitment into named social collectivities that have nothing to do with genetic relatedness (cf. Gannett 2004;Keita and Boyce 2001). Although no one would, thus, aim to come up with the idea of establishing ancestry informative markers (AIMs) for populations generated by the naturalization laws of modern microstates (think of Liechtenstein, Tonga, or Antigua), the maps of contemporary DNA databases for Africa are full of ill-sampled entities (aka "aboriginal populations" or even "tribes") that have long been known not to be bounded by "natural barriers to interbreeding" and also to have liberally assimilated genetically unrelated personnel through mechanisms such as exogamous marriage, initiation, and enslavement.…”

Race, Rare Genetic Variants, and the Science of Human Difference in the Post‐Genomic Age

“…; Kaszycka et al. ; Keita and Boyce ). Conceptual divides about the meaning of human variation remain especially relevant in the Post‐Genomic Age because the new findings emerging from biomedicine have important implications about the relationship between race and genetics.…”

“…Social and biological scientists have developed theories and methodologies to delineate how humans vary and to understand the factors that shape cultural ideas about difference (Berg and Wendt 2011;Duster 2006;Lee 2009;Mullings 2005;Smedley 1999). Despite advances in analytical tools for exploring human variation, consensus on the meaning or value of human biological difference has proved elusive Kaszycka et al 2009;Keita and Boyce 2001). Conceptual divides about the meaning of human variation remain especially relevant in the Post-Genomic Age because the new findings emerging from biomedicine have important implications about the relationship between race and genetics.…”