>


. For instance, it shouldn’t be controversial to admit the people from South Sudan and Chad are taller than the world average,

You know africa is a continent right? with many many different ethnic groups. Both the tallest populations on Earth (the Dinka people) and smallest population on Earth (Pygmies) are found in Africa. If you take two random Africans there can be more of a genetic difference between them than a random African and random European. The only biological trait most Africans share is a higher level of melanin in the skin. The "races" don't exist in a biological sense. Populations exist and populations have genetic differences, but "Black" is not a biological category.
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South Sudan and Chad are taller than the world average, and Jews and Asians are shorter than the world average.

You claimed that there are three races, but then you immediately named four, and obviously lots of people don't fit into either of these.
If the Jewish, the Asians, the South Sudanese are the three races, then which race do Scandinavians fit into? And what about the Italians? And the slavs? Which race are Tamils? Which race are native Australians? Which race are Canadian first nations? Which race are mayans? >

All Europeans, Tamils and Semitic peoples to my knowledge are all Caucasians. The origin of Australian Aboriginese is disputed because we’ve observed a phenotypic mixture between various African/asian traits… I think the best theory is that they migrated from Africa, came to asian along the way, and ended up there really long ago, and have since highly differentiated on their own. I just wouldn’t classify them as a major race, because their population and culture has dwindled massively as a result of colonialism >


All Europeans, Tamils and Semitic peoples to my knowledge are all Caucasians. 

But there are genetic differences between them... How can they be the same race? >

Not that I agree with OP, but it doesn't necessarily follow that there can't be genetic variation within the races. There can also potentially be sub-populations within races. >

But then how do we know there isn't just one race with sub-populations within it? >

That's just a matter of how we choose to define what a race is. Seems like a semantic concern to me. >

But it's a big problem for OP. He's claiming the racial categories are backed up by genetics. If we can suddenly start defining races how we want than it suggests those genetics may have ambiguity in grouping and may not actually be as straightforward as was suggested >

Native Americans out here like... uh... what about us?
But really, I think you're missing a major aspect of the science itself.

In 2003, Phase 1 of the Human Genome Project (HGP) demonstrated that humans populating the earth today are on average 99.9% identical at the DNA level, there is no genetic basis for race, and there is more genetic variation within a race than between them.

This should tell you a few things. 
1 - Race isn't genetic.
2 - Race varies far more within a racial group than it does from other racial groups.
3 - Race comes from environmental and breeding - not genetic biology.
So, with that in mind. You're talking about the .000000001% (for argument's sake) variance that exists between races as a result of their isolated histories. 
So, in that sense, you're right. We can even round it up to 1%.
So, 99% of race is a social construct. And 1% of it is genetics.
I'm not sure if that will change your view - but it should sure show you that your view is almost entirely moot. >

We are also 99% similar to chimpanzees. So there’s no genetic basis for our species differences either? >

It's actually about 96%, and that accounts for the major differences. >

So if that 3% difference makes such a difference, imagine what difference 0.0001% difference would make. Genetics shouldn’t be seen as issue of proportionality though, because a single nucleotide in the chain of millions could create an extreme difference >


a single nucleotide in the chain of millions could create an extreme difference

You're almost there.
Your one SNP might make you more different from your parents than a thousand other SNPs in your sibling.
The differences between individuals within a "race" are often greater than the differences between individuals in different "races."  There is no genetic basis for race, and if you were to classify people on a genetic basis those classes would cut across races with impunity. >

Actually yeah. You got me there. I see the immense problem with putting a big label on populations, when the individual genetic factors (discounting the environmental) could make such a huge difference. Fuck racism. 
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What are the 3 primary races? Who decides who belongs into which race? >

Up until very recently, the races were differentiated after 10s of thousands of years of divergent evolution because they were geographically separated. I’d say the three primary races are Sub-Saharan African, Indo-European/Caucasian, and East Asian/Polynesian/Native American. >

Can you say when "very recently" began? >

Started the last 500 years in the age of colonialism and exploration, has critically accelerated in the last 50 years in the age of information and globalization >

What about Ancient Rome? They had an incredibly diverse population thousands of years ago and shifted people around within their empire. >

The ethnic groups within Rome were not that distinct. They were all descendant of the Indo-European tribe (excluding Jews and Semites) which existed a couple thousand years prior. This is in comparison to like 100000 years of difference between them and Asians >

1 out of four individuals from a Etruscan burials from Veio and Civitavecchia, was found to be a mixture of local Iron Age ancestry and a North African population, probably Moroccan. Do you think of Morocco as Indo-European? >

But you're bringing examples of groups of people that look very similar to each other, that's strawman. 
Yes, Moroccans do look Caucasian, majority of them are mixed. But a Sub-Saharan African definitely looks different when compared to European/Moroccan. >

I'd strongly disagree that an ethnic Moroccan and an ethnic swede look particularly alike. But the issue is if this mixing was happening in one place it happened in others as well. >


I'd strongly disagree that an ethnic Moroccan and an ethnic swede look particularly alike.

Then you haven't seen enough people. North Africans and Europeans were mixing all the time. There was the Vandal Kingdom right in modern day Algeria and Tunisia which was basically German in ethnicity, then there was the Barbary Slave Trade where the Muslim Berbers (Moroccans + Algerians + Tunisians) were constantly raiding and plundering the entire South European coastline for treasure and white slaves in the name of religion. It'll be highly absurd to think that mixing didn't occur. 

But the issue is if this mixing was happening in one place it happened in others as well.

Depends entirely on the intensity of how much mixing was going on. Your Moroccan example was poorly chosen like I showed above. Now a Japanese will look very similar to a Korean because both nations share so much history together, same goes for a Yemeni and a Somali. But you can't expect a Yemeni to look like a Korean, both groups of people have differences which span more than a hundred thousand years. >

Wait, there are three primary races? That seems arbitrary and thus also a construct. Where are you getting the number three? >

I thought there was four, fire, water, Earth, and air >

Something being a social construct doesn’t mean there can’t be factual differences between them.
Mental illness is a social construct. Our definitions of what mental illnesses are changes over time based on social factors.
This does not mean that there aren’t neurological differences between someone who is schizophrenic and someone who isn’t. All that changes is the way we diagnose, categorize and label schizophrenia, and which features of it we consider to be important.
Similarly with race. There are obvious biological differences between different groups of people. But society can create different social constructs to categorize people based on those differences. >


disparities we see between ethnic populations [emphasis mine]

There's the key point.  Sure, particular ethnic groups may be insulated from other ethnic groups enough to develop noticeable differences.  It's not at all controversial when someone points out that a lot of elite runners come from some particular tribe in Kenya, or whatever.
But ethnic groups... aren't races.

people from South Sudan and Chad are taller than the world average

For example, the racial category here would be Black people.  Which includes some quite short-statured ethnicities as well.
I don't think it's controversial to note that ethnic groups may have general differences, though typically in fairly minor ways.  In your example of Ashkenazi Jews, there's plenty of research out there on specific genetic mutations they're particularly prone to.  But races are unscientific because they're arbitrary groupings at a continental scale, connected by nothing in particular. >

I was trying to claim that as there are micro-differences exhibited by difference tribal groups, there are also macro-differences exhibited by races as a whole due to so many generations of separation. If they continued to be separate for another 2 million years or something, they’d likely differentiate into distinct species, but it turns out they didn’t. >

You're not describing races, though. You're describing ancestral geographic grouping, which is a different concept.
More than that, if you were to actually go and compare your genetics to that of other people, you would find that a substantial percentage of people of any other ancestral geographic grouping is more genetically similar to you than a fairly large percentage of people from your own group. That alone makes the idea that humans can be meaningfully divided into categories like this kind of silly. >

The thing is none of these biological differences are enough to justify separate biological “categories.” There is no racial qualities that couldn’t disappear in a single generation. 
“Race science” is a mythology with a fucked up history. >

The mere fact you've split things up into '3 primary races' is a social construct. What are those '3 primary races'? Because I guarantee you I can find people who disagree that those are the 'primary' races. >

Red, blue and green of course! >

Your entire premise is based on a few genes out of countless, and ignores all the others which makes any comparison moot. Judging people based on racial groups created by Victorian explorers has nothing to do with judging differences in peoples inherent biology, your literally only pointing to a tiny handful of genes and ignoring all the others.  
Any two African people have greater genetic diversity between them then any random two North Americans or Europeans.  To lump people into racial groups do to skin colour is scientifically a weak argument when skin colour is a tiny part of our DNA. This makes judging people based on these ancient racial groupings created before genetics were even dreamed of a silly endeavor. >

I don't think race has ever been a social construct? It's always been a fact. The phenotypically differences between the races aren't a secret, I think it's the more abstract ones that are a problem, like intelligence. I'm not sure if they're even able to locate something like that on a gene, but even if they do, they have to account for a bunch of external factors like culture, upbringing, etc >


Jews and Asians are shorter than the world average.

Jews are not a race. It's a religion. You can convert into Jewish but that doesn't make you shorter. >

Should’ve clarified the ethnic group of Ashkenazi Jews >

Even this little exchange here should be enough. If we can't agree on what groups are races and what racial groups there even are, is there really any utility to it? >

Problem 1: Why do you assume that the differences between races is down to genetics? For example, there is a large difference in Black babies survival rate compared to White babies. But to claim that this fact means that white babies are just naturally more hardy and survive more commonly due to genetics is extremely flawed, since the much more likely explanation is that the wealth gap and redlining lead to these different outcomes. Another obvious example is the difference in average height between North and South Koreans. These groups are genetically extremely similar, yet since the division of the penninsula there has been a large gap opening in height due to environment.
Why do you think that differences in outcome on issues such as IQ and Height cannot also be caused by environmental factors? 
Problem 2: What do we gain from assuming that other groups have these general qualities? Sure, most East Asians are shorter than most Africans. That is not a controversial statement. But making firm divisions between these groups and calling them substancial different races is controversial, because trends in some factors do not actually tell the whole story of genes. And, because trying to make those trends into genetic differences does not seem to me to actually help with what you talk about. Like, what would we gain from drawing firm lines here? >


There are certain ethnic tendencies that are genetically determined, in that the phenotypic distributions among population groups are oftentimes quite distinct. For instance, it shouldn’t be controversial to admit the people from South Sudan and Chad are taller than the world average, and Jews and Asians are shorter than the world average. It shouldn’t be controversial to admit the Ashkenazi Jewish population has a much higher average iq with a smaller variance than certain other groups, as Bordercollies have higher intelligence than many other dog breeds. To claim that all disparities we see between ethnic populations are socially constructed and a result of social injustice, though true to a very large degree, I see as anti-scientific.

Agree with all of that.

This is not to say the maximum and minimum traits are not equal among the populations, meaning there are Einsteins in every race and culture and idiots likewise, as well as world class runners in Polynesia as much as they are in Kenya, but the DISTRIBUTION of these traits among the races is probably different.

for what its worth,  I googled 10 ten fastest men in the world and they are all black.

It should not be a culturally sensitive issue to extensively attribute certain large-scale cultural issues to genetic and ethnic factors. This is a realistic and logical factor in sociology which is scientifically proven, but because it can be so easily tainted by bigotry, has become censored on a widespread level. Perhaps I’m too naive to understand the social implications of allowing genotypic analysis with regards to sociology, but I think if approached with a logical and slightly sensitive matter, real issues and disparities can be addressed better. It’s not like I want to exasperate racial differences, but if we learned to comprehend racial differences more realistically, it could yield better solutions for all parties. Let’s say we have a community that is marginalized and treated unfairly because of racial tension. It certainly wouldn’t be the solution to conversely ignore racial tension, or ethnic difference in behaviour, when clearly these are inherent truths in the human condition.

I agree with all of that as well. 
None of this is really at odds with the idea that race is a social construct. 
Why do you say there are 3 primary races?  why not 4 or 5.  Why not 10 or 20?  
Why are the relatively short pygmies of Africa considered the same race as much taller groups from around Africa?
The idea that race is a social construct is just saying that we've been relatively arbitrary in how we chose to create racial categories.  Society created a system for categorizing people.  We call the system race.  We put people into different categories mostly based on their skin color.  
When you do genetic analysis and group people with similar genetic profiles you get something very different from race. >

These 3 major populations each have major walls of uninteraction for 50-100 thousand years, within them these barriers were much smaller and can be observed phenotypically. There are certain exceptions, like Ethiopians, who notably mixed with Semitic peoples over 10s of thousands of years, and have an ethnic identity very unique to themselves, but there is no denying there was a period of time when these 3 particular groups I’ve outlined were almost totally separated, and today those consequent difference can be observed. >

If you separated out groups of people into categories based on the scale of the genetic differences between them, you would not end up with racial groups, at least not the ones you are proposing nor ones that align with any other historical or modern conception of race. Therefore, racial categorization is not based on genetics, but rather arbitrary biases and preferences.