It’s not clear what value it adds to use (e.g.) US Census racial categories in genetics research. The salience of racial identification changes over time and is deeply politicized (as the author notes). More sophisticated and granular categories that are actually based on genetics would be much more appropriate than trying to recuperate categories that weren’t developed for science.
I can usually tell roughly which European country someone is from by looking at their face.
It doesn't work as well with different parts of Eastern Europe but you get the idea.
Show me a controlled longitudinal study where (eg) men and women are raised in an identical environment, treated identically, and not even informed of the concept of gender. That doesn't exist, and never will exist. There are massive emergent cultural forces that make biology a pretty useless tool for doing sociology, much like chemistry studies the emergent properties of physics principles, but trying to account for emergent properties of atoms and molecules in terms of quantum mechanics is totally useless. Human societies should be studied on sociological terms, not biological ones. With even the smallest amount of effort, you can see that there are HUGE confounding factors that make any attempt to explain social outcomes biologically totally useless.
The word 'race' should not be used by anyone in any context any longer, because it has been misunderstood, ill-defined and systematically abused over and over. It would be irresponsible to attempt to reappropriate the term into scientific usage.
Apart from that, differences in genetic populations exists just as differences in cultures exist, and I don't think anyone has ever denied that. Researchers need to be aware, though, that there is a bunch of bad human beings out there who will invariably draw the wrong conclusions from such research and advocate policies that are plain evil.
I've never heard of anybody calling someone racist if they said "People with African heritage can be carriers for sickle cell anemia." Likewise, I've never seen anyone called an anti-semite for pointing out that Jewish people can suffer from or be carriers for "founder effect" genetic disorders.
If anything, there's a distinct social justice angle to recognizing minority population health concerns in medicine, so I'm actually kind of surprised things aren't tilting the other way: where the "anti-PC" crowd is angry that researchers aren't focused more on traits that apply to the broader human population, as opposed to the genetics of distinct minorities.
Swedes and Finns have quite different profiles of hereditary diseases. Are Finns a different race based on that?
In the 1930s, Finnish scientists spent a lot of time “proving” to their German counterparts that Finns are an Aryan group rather than part of the Mongolic race. That seems completely absurd today. Hopefully in 80 years we’ll be able to say the same about present-day race obsessions.
If you see medical care as going beyond just treatment but also inclusive of education and preventative measures, then if you don't factor in race you will be doing a disservice to members of races that are more susceptible to certain diseases.
A doctor's subjective perception of phenotypical 'race' is not the right diagnostic tool. Questions about ancestors and diseases in the family can very well be, if they are supported by statistical evidence.
how many human races? if you're going to talk about categories of humans you need to precisely define them. So how many human races known exactly?
Jews for example more likely to have Tay Sachs disease.
Sickle cell disease affects blacks disproportionately.
Sure but it's not because they practice Judaism. And since one can convert to judaism, I've never heard about someone who can convert his genes to "jew genes".
> Sickle cell disease affects blacks disproportionately.
Sure but it isn't necessary because their skin are dark, when you can find people from Sri Lanka or India who have a skin blacker than African people yet they don't have this disease prevalence.
See what you are doing here? you are mixing up genetics which can be used to establish statistical facts about gene expressions, and semantics AKA social construct. And this sort of sophism can easily be exploited to make broad generalizations about the behavior of arbitrary racial groups you've established under pretense of science. That's why the notion of race for humans is completely absurd.
What race are people living in Madagascar? most of them aren't negro looking, what race the Yemeni? the afghans? they don't look like Arabs...
Are you poor? Probably black.
Are you in trouble with the legal system? Probably poor -> black.
Can you afford good health care and preventive medicine? Probably not poor -> probably not black.
Funnily enough this also explains why redneck whites are looked down on by everyone else.
