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sundin13 on 19 February 2018
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Aeolus451 said:
sundin13 said:

There is virtually nothing in the way of criteria to naturally delineate the borders between geographical races. Definitions are vague and lacking a true taxonomic backbone allowing classification. As such, it seems like depending on who you ask, there may be three geographical races or nine geographical races or any amount in between.

This lends it the appearance of an artificial distinction, or in other words, a social construct.

A social construct is basically something made up and people just go by it. Geographical race just describes something tangible that exists regardless of the name or belief in it.

Humans have existed and lived on different continents, they adapted to their separate environments resulting in geographical races with biological differences. Again, races have different health issues and advantages from each other. Meds affect certain races differently on average. That doesn't sound like a social construct to me.

Geographical raceA distinct population that is isolated in a particular area from other populations of a species,[9] and consistently distinguishable from the others,[9] e.g. morphology (or even only genetically[3]). Geographic races are allopatric.[7]

So where do the borders of geographical race lie? That is the problem with this definition. The breaking points are not clear, populations are blended and racial groups largely overlap (especially in a globalized world). As such, could you posit that the Finns are a different race from the French? They are isolated by distance and they have distinctions from each other, be it in morphology or genetic characteristics, so they fit the characteristics. The Finnish also have different health issues and advantages when compared to the French. 

The problem is that these "races" are not natural breaks, these are human groupings. It is humanity's way of jamming a square peg into a round hole. To simply describe a complex phenomenon. That is what humans do. 

fatslob-:O said: 
MDMAlliance said: 

Are you reading that line wrong?  "Most human genetic VARIATION is found within populations" meaning that there's more variation within the populations.  The point of that line is to state that despite the fact of those variations, it's possible to trace ancestry to locations with enough data.  That's not really all that surprising.

Nope, the fact that we can track geographic "populations" means that there is a biological basis for race ... 

If race is to be defined with respect to allele frequencies in combination to the geographic population then race DOES exist!

I ask you too. If we can successfully trace ancestry between France and Finnland, does that mean the French and the Finnish are of different races?