# If "there's no such thing as race," is there such a thing as gender? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 5, 2012, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779 "2012-03-05T03:43:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 424
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779/424 "2012-03-16T05:36:01Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Your reading comprehension skills leave much to be desired. Well, I just explained to you why your comment about no one denying race was a social construct still leaves you having to deal with real underlying biological groupings. You ignored that. The queries about the other groups brings up the acknowledged reality that there are mixed zones in humans just as there are in other sub-species and races . In the context of that Time article they are referring to the UK, Germany & US as being predominantly caucasion. Who do you think they are referring to? People whose ancesters were born in Europe. If you do a search on Google Scholar you’ll find the term caucasian is commonly used, particularly in relation to health research. The term generally isn’t even defined because it is taken as self evident - for example in NZ caucasian simply refers to those whose ancestry is from Europe. I’m not sure if this article by Leroi can help clarify the point. Anyway dude, I will be back in a few days (am away with family - so will try to address your queries further then). > [@](#): > > The identification of racial origins is not a search for purity. The human species is irredeemably promiscuous. We have always seduced or coerced our neighbors even when they have a foreign look about them and we don’t understand a word. If Hispanics, for example, are composed of a recent and evolving blend of European, American Indian and African genes, then the Uighurs of Central Asia can be seen as a 3,000-year-old mix of West European and East Asian genes. Even homogenous groups like native Swedes bear the genetic imprint of successive nameless migrations. > > Some critics believe that these ambiguities render the very notion of race worthless. I disagree. The physical topography of our world cannot be accurately described in words. To navigate it, you need a map with elevations, contour lines and reference grids. But it is hard to talk in numbers, and so we give the world’s more prominent features - the mountain ranges and plateaus and plains - names. We do so despite the inherent ambiguity of words. The Pennines of northern England are about one-tenth as high and long as the Himalayas, yet both are intelligibly described as mountain ranges. > **[Opinion | A Family Tree in Every Gene (Published 2005)](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/a-family-tree-in-every-gene.html)** > > Armand Marie Leroi Op-Ed article examines debate about whether genetic data show that races clearly exist; says anthropologists and geneticists have for years defined race as social concept, not scientific one; holds it is genetic variants common to... --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-theres-no-such-thing-as-race-is-there-such-a-thing-as-gender/614779)._