Race and genetics

Researchers have investigated the relationship between race and genetics as part of efforts to understand how biology may or may not contribute to human racial categorization. Today, the consensus among scientists is that race is a social construct, and that using it as a proxy for genetic differences among populations is misleading.^[1][2]

Many constructions of race are associated with phenotypical traits and geographic ancestry, and scholars like Carl Linnaeus have proposed scientific models for the organization of race since at least the 18th century. Following the discovery of Mendelian genetics and the mapping of the human genome, questions about the biology of race have often been framed in terms of genetics.^[3] A wide range of research methods have been employed to examine patterns of human variation and their relations to ancestry and racial groups, including studies of individual traits,^[4] studies of large populations and genetic clusters,^[5] and studies of genetic risk factors for disease.^[6]

Research into race and genetics has also been criticized as emerging from, or contributing to, scientific racism. Genetic studies of traits and populations have been used to justify social inequalities associated with race,^[7] despite the fact that patterns of human variation have been shown to be mostly clinal, with human genetic code being approximately 99.6%-99.9% identical between individuals, and with no clear boundaries between groups.^[8][9][3]

Some researchers have argued that race can act as a proxy for genetic ancestry because individuals of the same racial category may share a common ancestry, but this view has fallen increasingly out of favor among experts.^[2][10] The mainstream view is that it is necessary to distinguish between biology and the social, political, cultural, and economic factors that contribute to conceptions of race.^[11][12]

Scientific consensus about race has shifted multiple times across history. In fact in the 1980s many scientists believed that there was a multiregional origin of different human races. It was not until 2003 that this theory was officially discarded in favor of the Out of Africa theory (OOA). ^{[13] [14]}

In 1956, some scientists proposed that race may be similar to dog breeds within dogs. However, this theory has since been discarded, with one of the main reasons being that dogs have been specifically bred artificially, whereas human races developed organically. ^[15] Furthermore, the genetic variation between dog breeds is far greater than that of human populations. Dog breed inter-variation is roughly 27.5%, whereas human populations inter-variation is only at 5.4%. ^[16]

Another similar erroneous analogy that popped up later on was the comparison of human races to subspecies among animals. Although human races can sometimes be mapped as gene clusters from DNA, there is still considerable overlap and similarities, whereas the same cannot necessarily be said for different subspecies. Therefore, it is statistically incorrect to insinuate that human races are comparable to subspecies. ^[17]

Race can be considered roughly a crude grouping based on superficial phenotypic attributes. The phenotypes may have a tangential connection to DNA, but are still yet a rough proxy that would omit various other genetic information. ^[18] In the past, it was common for race to be associated with IQ levels, with the justification being that supposedly, racial groupings were still statistically significant with regards to IQ. ^[19]However, this does not give much significant information - since the phenotypic traits used to assess someone's race are not representative of the specific genes that code for intelligence, for example. With intelligence being a polygenic trait like height, it is obvious that there would be statistical trends in arbitrary groupings such as race. Yet, these trends are still not an inherent quality of the phenotypes themselves, they are simply a rough measurement of gene clusters that can code for intelligence. As any gene, they can become more or less common within a population based on environmental factors - thus being an ambiguous construct altogether. ^[20]

Today, in a somewhat similar way that "gender" is differentiated from the more clear "biological sex", scientists state that potentially "race" / phenotypes can be differentiated from the more clear "ancestry".^[21] However, this system has also still come under scrutiny as it may fall into the exact same problems - which would be large, vague groupings with little genetic value. ^[22]