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0 pointsfoldr4y ago0 comments

Racial categories are based on a very small number of superficial traits (such as skin tone and eye shape) and a host of cultural considerations (such as region of birth, language spoken, etc. etc.) You can group people this way, but it's not really an approximation to anything. Nor is it useful in a non-circular way. The only real reason to keep track of people's race is to ensure that...they're not being discriminated against on the basis of their race.

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caeril4y ago· 1 in thread

> Racial categories are based on a very small number of superficial traits

Right, but genetic correlates are real. These superficial characteristics evolved along with a thousand other non-superficial characteristics, in mostly (with the exceptions of conquest, trade, and border settlements) isolated regions.

Your skin tone and eye shape are indeed cosmetic trivialities, but they correlate strongly with muscle fiber density, susceptibility to certain diseases, endocrine profiles, and a host of other things that very much do matter.

foldrOP4y ago

Yes, no-one is denying that racial categories correlate to various degrees with genetic characteristics. This is blindingly obvious – unless there are some people who think that ethnically Chinese people learn to have epithantic folds from their environment?

Where people err is in assuming that these sorts of trivial observations are sufficient to show that race has a biological basis. Racial groupings are not biologically natural. They are completely arbitrary from a genetic point of view. That is, there are no sensible biological criteria according to which humans can be grouped neatly into a handful of 'races'.

See for example the following comment regarding sickle cell anemia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28525697#:~:text=azalem... Yes, 'black' people are statistically more susceptible, but that's not because of any property of 'black' people as a group. It's just because regions with Malaria happen to have dark skinned populations.