ok is there actually a good argument for "race is a lie" or have I been straining my brain trying to understand this in vain?
Like, they say there's no racial categories, but... i got a DNA test which puts me into clear categories...
Conversation
Replying to
There is a good argument for the Motte, which is that the way many people use race (i.e. on government surveys) doesn't correspond well with biologically relevant clusters, though there are real clusters. I think I've heard articulate this best.
3
38
I'm not sure I'd process this as "race being a lie", only that people are mistaken about what race they are?
Or is the argument "Race as the way most people understand it is inaccurate and reflects culture more than biology"?
3
31
Show replies
Replying to
dna tests aren’t identifying your race, they’re identifying genetic clusters that belong to certain ethnicities and then race is applied to that. it’s like looking at a color and calling it warm because it’s red. red is the actual property, but you know it correlates to warm.
3
1
28
Show replies
Replying to
Who's saying it and what do they mean?
I said something similar in college when I realised I had more in common with the (American) black students than my (Russian) TA, despite the fact that we were both "white".
1
1
1
Replying to
I often have found I have more in common with men than I do with women, but 'gender/sex' still seems like a really salient category here
4
1
6
Replying to
A bit dry, but the answers you seek are here.
Short answer: our genetic lineage has a lot more horizontal admixture than most would assume based on a shallow understanding of genetics.
This makes traditional “racial” categorization quite imprecise.
3