Race is genetic, not social

One of the sillier requirements of political correctness is the notion that race is not real, it is only a social construct. The scientist that dares to question this orthodoxy risks losing funding if not his career, at least in North America and Europe. Fortunately there are still some scientists continue to be, well, scoentists. Thus the body of evidence showing that race is genetic continues to grow, much as any open-minded person would expect. The abstract of one study is presented below and a link to the complete work is here.

It's scary to think how much science is being crushed or altered in the name of political correctness these days, and how much damage is being done to the advancement of human knowledge, not to mention human welfare if this mindset creeps into medical research (has it already?).

"We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ ethnicity-as opposed to current residence-is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population. Implications of this genetic structure for case-control association studies are discussed".

Hat tip: John Ray.