Science and Race: What We Really Know

The Misconception of Race and Its Impact

The Core Problem: Humankind continues to struggle with its "race problem" due to widespread public confusion about the concept of race itself. Many believe races are naturally evolved or supernaturally created, which fuels racism by amplifying perceived differences and making conflict seem inevitable.
Scientific Consensus: Anthropologists, geneticists, and historians clarify that "race" in popular usage is an invented cultural category, not a biological reality. While biological diversity exists, traditional race categories rely on imaginary borders and arbitrary rules.
Racism's Foundation: Racism is perpetuated by a flawed worldview that can be corrected with scientific and historical knowledge, not by an irreconcilable clash of genomes.
Common Confusion: Racism gains power from this confusion regarding human history and biology. Humans are not subspecies separated by biological "canyons." No natural or supernatural design imposed the varied and often contradictory racial classification systems; they are human cultural constructs.
Biological Variation vs. Racial Groups: Significant biological differences exist between some populations, but this variation does not validate or align with traditional racial groups as popularly designated.
Learned Beliefs: Similar to religious beliefs, the idea of a color-coded, nature-segregated humanity is taught early and consistently reinforced. Believers often claim their society's system is obvious and undeniable.
Localized View: Most people have an incomplete, localized view of humanity, based on personal experience, which prevents them from seeing the global picture where biological races make no sense.

Key Scientific Points Clarifying Race

Genetic Identity: All living humans are 99.9\% genetically identical.
No Biological Subcategories: The American Society of Human Genetics states that "Genetics demonstrates that humans cannot be divided into biologically distinct subcategories."
No Distinct Continental Types: The American Association of Physical Anthropologists confirms, "Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters."
Sociopolitical Invention: The American Anthropological Association highlights that "The 'racial' worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth."
Inconsistent Observable Features: Observable traits (skin color, nose shape, hair type) are too inconsistently spread across humankind to serve as reliable markers for separating the global population into biological races.
Culturally Defined Categories: Biological race categories are defined differently across cultures, with inclusion/exclusion rules varying widely and often contradicting each other. This means an individual's assigned race can change depending on the country.
Historical Instability: Biological races are not historically consistent; racial borders are frequently redrawn, and rules are rewritten. People would have been assigned to different races in the past than they are today.
Anthropological Consensus: Among anthropologists, there is a "dramatic rejection" of the race concept in all subfields. A 2017 survey found a "consensus that there are no human biological races."
IQ Differences Are Not Proof: Race-group differences in average IQ scores do not prove the existence of biological races or that races possess different inherited intelligence abilities or potentials. Races are not credible genetic categories, making broad claims about genetic cognitive abilities based on them nonsensical.
"Racial Diseases" Are a Misnomer: Neither "racial diseases" nor race-based medicine/healthcare confirm biological races. A culturally derived race label is a poor proxy for actual ancestry and genome, potentially leading to serious medical problems.
Sports Do Not Validate Biological Races: The current landscape of sports does not confirm belief in biological races. While small populations might excel in specific competitions due to genetic advantages, these populations do not represent larger, traditional race groups.

Examining Contentious Issues Related to Race

Race and IQ

Racist Misinterpretation: Differences in average IQ test scores between racial groups are often seen as the "Holy Grail" by racists, supposedly confirming a hierarchy of biological races.
Lack of Proof: These differences do not prove that biological races are natural categories, nor has it been proven that these gaps are entirely or partially due to inherited/genetic intelligence rather than environmental/cultural factors.
Measurement Challenges: A major problem is the lack of universal scientific agreement on what intelligence is or how to measure it fairly and accurately. This fundamental disagreement should precede any confident declarations about racialized intelligence.
Practicality vs. Accuracy of IQ Tests: IQ tests are practical for identifying cognitive problems and predicting success in school or some careers, but they only identify specific skills and limited types of intelligence.
Flexibility of Intelligence: Intelligence is flexible, multifaceted, and currently measurable only subjectively and to a limited degree.
Cultural Bias: The testing situation (e.g., sitting indoors with a stranger asking questions) can be unsettling and culturally biased, affecting scores. Efforts to make IQ tests less biased are severely complicated by factors like racism, sexism, poverty, nutrition, environmental toxins, violence, sexual abuse, unequal school access/quality, and healthcare disparities.
Diverse Expression of Intelligence: Intelligence is nurtured, valued, developed, and expressed differently across societies, families, and cultural groups, further compounding the bias problem.
Garbage In, Garbage Out: The greatest issue is that cultural differences cannot be used to identify important biological differences. Presenting average IQ scores as gene-based racial rankings is fundamentally flawed ("garbage in, garbage out").
Arbitrary Racial Rules (e.g., One-Drop Rule): The cultural construction of race, such as America's "one-drop rule" (any perceptible sub-Saharan African features make one "black") or Haiti's reverse rule (any European features make one "white"), demonstrates the arbitrary nature of racial classification. This makes it possible for individuals to be considered different races in different countries (e.g., a "black" American could be "white" in Haiti).
Genetic Admixture: Analysis of African American genomes shows the range of historically recent African ancestry varies from 1\% to 99\%. This genetic variation within cultural racial groups underscores the invalidity of using race for genetic intelligence ranking.
Irresponsible Claims: Given that race borders are policed by ludicrous, historically transient, and culturally inconsistent rules, it is irresponsible, unfair, and unconscionable to claim or suggest that children may have genetically inferior brains due to their race. While genes, environment, and culture all influence intelligence, no one has proven that observed gaps are caused by "racial" genetics.

Race and Medicine

Misleading Evidence: Race-specific diseases and racialized treatments are often cited as evidence for biological races, but this is inaccurate and potentially dangerous.
Unreliable Indicators: Biological races are not scientifically structured. Observable traits like skin color, hair, and facial features are too unreliable to indicate true genetic ancestry.
Problems with Presumed Race in Diagnosis: Relying on a patient's presumed or self-identified race in diagnosis or treatment can lead to serious errors.
- Cystic Fibrosis: Underdiagnosed in dark-skinned individuals because it's incorrectly viewed as a "white" disease.
- Sickle Cell Disease: Not a "black disease." It's an evolutionary adaptation in ancestral populations (not races) who lived alongside the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium. High rates are found in populations from sub-Saharan Africa, India, Italy, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, and Turkey. For example, Orchomenos, Greece, has double the rate of African Americans, while black South Africans show almost no trace of the disease.
- Tay-Sachs Disease: Misread as a racial disease primarily affecting Ashkenazi Jews. It's a population problem caused by recessive genes becoming problematic due to restrictive mating (in-group mating). It has also affected French Canadians in Quebec, the "Pennsylvania Dutch," and Cajun people in southern Louisiana. Any small, isolated population can become burdened with a genetic disease, but this does not validate biological races across the whole species.
Barack Obama Example: Using Barack Obama as a hypothetical patient illustrates the problem. A doctor might wrongly assume his genome and disease susceptibility based on his "African American" race label. Due to America's race rules, he is in a different "biological race" than his mother (European descent). His father was East African, meaning Obama shares little, if any, of the recent West African ancestry common to most other African Americans. His genetic makeup differs significantly because East and West Africans have substantial genetic distance and African populations developed more genetic diversity due to longer habitation on the continent.
Genetic Admixture Complexity: Not only "interracial" offspring are affected; some white Americans have substantial recent African ancestry. The 1\% to 99\% genetic variation of African ancestry in African American genomes makes "biological races" nonsensical but is entirely consistent with cultural definitions of race.
Cultural Race and Health Disparities: Culturally defined races can have severe negative health impacts due to poor/unequal healthcare, stress from racism, inferior living/work/school environments, fewer economic opportunities, and unique behaviors/diets within these groups. As sociologist Colette Guillaumin stated, "Race does not exist, but it does kill people."

Race and Sports

Misinterpretation and Bias: Sports are often misinterpreted as demonstrations of racial differences, seemingly confirming innate mental superiority or primitive physical attributes. This view often aids harmful racist ideas.
White Athletes and High Jump: Despite the belief that "white men can't jump," white athletes have dominated the Olympic high jump for over a century.
"Born to Play" Myth: Attributing success of athletes like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson to unearned racial gifts or being "born to play" ignores their immense hard work and mental focus. Jordan was known as the hardest working player, and Johnson practiced for hours daily from childhood.
Complexities of Success: Winning at elite levels is an intricate mix of motivation, opportunity, coaching, training, culturally/traditionally influenced confidence, and genetic potential. Reducing success to a winner's skin color (race) oversimplifies this complexity.
Olympic 100-Meter Race Misconception: The argument that "Black people run faster, so biological races are real" is common but flawed.
- It doesn't prove inherited advantages or the biological race concept.
- It misinterprets Olympic history. Recent male Olympic 100-meter winners (since 1976) have almost exclusively been descendants of West Africans taken as slaves to the Caribbean and Americas in the last 500 years. This specific, small population (spanning only five countries) does not represent the vast "biological" black race of over a billion people. Population does not equal race.
Distance Running Misconception: Dark-skinned athletes winning marathons and 10,000-meter races is similarly misinterpreted.
- Most of Kenya's best runners belong to the Kalenjin group of tribes who live at high altitudes, suggesting a specific population-level genetic advantage, not a "black" or "Kenyan" one.
- Ethiopia shows a similar pattern, with elite runners from one specific region/population.
- Kalenjin runners and elite sprinters, though culturally "black," are biologically less related to each other than to many people of other cultural races on other continents. Usain Bolt (Jamaican sprinter) and Eliud Kipchoge (Kenyan marathoner) are genetically more distant from each other than either is likely from a typical European or Asian person. They cannot realistically share the same "biological race" given that biological race is supposed to be about kinship, genes, and ancestry.
Looking Beyond Color: Group-based genetic advantages in sports are tied to specific populations, not broad cultural races. If sprint speed were a "black thing," why have no African sprinters won Olympic 100- or 200-meter gold? If distance running greatness were a "black thing," why haven't Nigerians, African Americans, or Jamaicans been factors in those events? Culturally assigned race labels often lead to falsehoods about human kinship, diversity, abilities, and potential.

Reason for Hope

Escaping Racism: The illogical, ever-changing, and contradictory nature of race means that humanity is not inherently trapped by racism. Since humans created the concept, we can dismantle it.
Re-evaluating Race: Individuals can consciously analyze and clarify the concept of race, understanding them as cultural subsets of humanity. This allows them to retain positive value while shedding the "fraudulent powers of imagined inevitability and biological destinies."
Attacking Racism on Its Terms: Recognizing racism as prejudice between fabricated and mutable groups allows for a targeted attack against it.
Scientific Antidote: Racism is not a predetermined war between irreconcilable genetic codes but a flawed worldview correctable by scientific and historical knowledge. A scientific understanding of ourselves is the most powerful antidote, even more so than kindness or interracial familiarity. This knowledge has the potential to extinguish racism's core energy. Guy P. Harrison's book, Race and Reality, further details these misconceptions and the hunger for this awareness.