Race

I’ll make this simple: “There is no genetic evidence to support any racist ideology.”

The preoccupation with race is both wrong and misguided. Wrong, because even if you could distinguish in a scientific way between races, it does not follow that any race is more pure, or more superior, than any other.

And misguided because you can’t really distinguish in a scientific way between races. You can at best approximate. But science isn’t about approximation. If you want to use ‘race’ at all, use race as defined by DNA, not the ridiculous classifications used in media (and even academic papers) such as “black, white, Asian, Hispanic, whatever”.

Yes, there are differences between individuals based on their genetics. But these differences are pretty minor, and the differences within a ‘race’ are far greater than those between races.

But more to the point, the preponderance of differences between people are based on social and environmental factors. Key among these are mothers’ health, infant nutrition, early education, and the home environment.

We should stop using ‘race’ as a classification system. It makes about as much sense as phrenology, and the data produced are no more accurate. If we must classify between groups of humans, we should differentiate between factors that really matter: those who grew up in poverty and those who did not, those who had access to education and those who did not, those raised in war zones and those who were not, etc.

Racism is wrong. It shouldn’t have to be said, but there it is.

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