# Race is a social, not biological / scientific concept **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 17, 2012, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461 "2012-06-17T22:20:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/41 "2012-06-19T14:41:51Z")
Here is a quote from C. Loring Brace in the Journal of Forensic Science “Skeletal analysis provides no direct assessment of skin color, but it does allow an accurate estimate of original geographical origins. African, eastern Asian, and European ancestry can be specified with a high degree of accuracy” Dr. Risch published a paper in the journal Genome Biology “on the basis of existing surveys that testing a person’s DNA at 100 random sites along the genome, or at 30 specially chosen ones, would be sufficient to distinguish the major racial groups” So you can tell a person’s race by looking at their skeleton or looking at their DNA. That means that race has a biological component. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/42 "2012-06-19T14:53:38Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > So you can tell a person’s race by looking at their skeleton or looking at their DNA. That means that race has a biological component. An oversimplification, of course. For example, by DNA analysis, that just means you can differentiate say an East Asian from somebody from the Indian subcontinent or somebody of Yoruba descent. It doesn’t mean that everybody from Asia has the same skeletal structure or DNA. Or that everybody from Africa has the same DNA or skeletal structure. That’s rather the point. You can’t divide people into 3-5 simple races using these criteria. You’d have to group people who are unrelated genetically into a common race, even if they share a closer genetic legacy with somebody from a different putative “race”. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/43 "2012-06-19T15:05:30Z")
I figured out a better example may make the point more clear. Genetically, we can differentiate lions, zebras, tigers, llamas, gorillas, orangutans, capybara, etc. Clearly, we can use genetics to determine which of these animals are from Africa, Asia, and America. It’s not really even that hard for a layperson. The concept of a single “black” race is like grouping lions, gorillas, and zebras into a single animal “family” because they’re all from Africa, even if lions are more closely related to tigers than to gorillas or zebras. It makes more sense to group the African lion with the Asian tiger. Or the African gorilla with the Asian orangutan. Sure, we can use DNA to identify which animals came from Africa, Asia, and America, just as we can identify which human populations come from Africa, East Asia, and the rest of Eurasia. But that doesn’t mean “race” is anything more than an artificial grouping we made based on geography, rather than actual genetic commonalities. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/44 "2012-06-19T15:47:00Z")
So we should group people into genetic commonalities instead of geography, but if we did that then race would be a biological concept? The good news is that someone already did that and they found "In one of the most extensive of these studies to date, considering 1,056 individuals from 52 human populations, with each individual genotyped for 377 autosomal microsatellite markers, we found that individuals could be partitioned into six main genetic clusters, five of which corresponded to Africa, Europe and the part of Asia south and west of the Himalayas, East Asia, Oceania, and the Americas " ---
**Author:** ![Nars\_Glinley](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nars_glinley/32/8177_2.png) [@Nars\_Glinley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nars_Glinley)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/45 "2012-06-19T15:54:39Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > No one has a problem with populations. Your example of black and white as markers for race is exactly why you can’t extend population to race. Skin pigmentation is a lousy way of grouping populations, as are nearly all surface characteristics. Serious question. So what are the preferred ways of grouping populations? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/46 "2012-06-19T15:58:41Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > So we should group people into genetic commonalities instead of geography, but if we did that then race would be a biological concept? > The good news is that someone already did that and they found "In one of the most extensive of these studies to date, considering 1,056 individuals from 52 human populations, with each individual genotyped for 377 autosomal microsatellite markers, we found that individuals could be partitioned into six main genetic clusters, five of which corresponded to Africa, Europe and the part of Asia south and west of the Himalayas, East Asia, Oceania, and the Americas " Can you link to this source? According to mitochondrial DNA analysis [here](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/fig_tab/nature08976_F3.html), many African populations are actually closer, genetically, to Asian and European populations than to many other African populations. For example, the Bamileke of Cameroon have a more recent common ancestor with (and are therefore more closely related to) Europeans then they do with the Kikuyu of Kenya. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/47 "2012-06-19T16:12:40Z")
Here is the link: > **[Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human...](https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070)** > > Previously, we observed that without using prior information about individual sampling locations, a clustering algorithm applied to multilocus genotypes from worldwide human populations produced genetic clusters largely coincident with major... Your link goes to a dna analysis of a hominid fossil, is that what you are trying to link to? ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/48 "2012-06-19T16:21:24Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Why does race being a social concept mean that it can not also be a biological concept? I think it has to be both. Otherwise one could move between races as one chose to. You know, like in high school you could be a jock, a hippy, a nerd, whatever and then later you could become a middle class business person. Those are social constructs based on changing values systems and behaviors. I lived in a Black community for a while but I can guarantee that no matter how I adjusted my behavior or values I would have never been considered Black. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/49 "2012-06-19T16:33:15Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Here is the link: > [PLOS Genetics](http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070) > Your link goes to a dna analysis of a hominid fossil, is that what you are trying to link to? My link contains a phyogenetic tree that shows the most recent common ancestor of a varied selection of mitochondrial DNA from many different populations around the world. The figure shows that many African populations (like the Bamileke) that are actually closer, genetically, to European and Asian populations than they are to many other African populations (in my example, the Kikuyu). Thus, “black” is not a distinct genetic grouping, because some “black” populations are closer to non-“black” populations than they are to some other “black” populations. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/50 "2012-06-19T20:38:05Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Here is a quote from C. Loring Brace in the Journal of Forensic Science “Skeletal analysis provides no direct assessment of skin color, but it does allow an accurate estimate of original geographical origins. African, eastern Asian, and European ancestry can be specified with a high degree of accuracy” > Dr. Risch published a paper in the journal Genome Biology “on the basis of existing surveys that testing a person’s DNA at 100 random sites along the genome, or at 30 specially chosen ones, would be sufficient to distinguish the major racial groups” > So you can tell a person’s race by looking at their skeleton or looking at their DNA. That means that race has a biological component. What racial group are the people living in Mexico? How about in Ethiopia? Yemen? Tajikistan? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/51 "2012-06-19T20:46:10Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **puddleglum** : > > Why does race being a social concept mean that it can not also be a biological concept? > Take height and weight. Someone who is 5’5 is of average height in Vietnam but is short in Sweden. Does this mean that there is no such thing as height as a biological concept? OK, let’s consider height. If height means anything to race, then surely we should be able to say which race is tallest? Well, that’s easy. The Bantu are the tallest population of people in the world, so clearly the black race is the tallest race. Likewise, we surely should be able to say which race is shortest, right? Again, that’s easy. The Mbuti are the shortest population of people in the world, so clearly the black race is the shortest race. Wait, what’s that? The shortest population _and_ the tallest population are both the same race? But how can that be, if height is a racial trait? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2012, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/52 "2012-06-19T23:55:41Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Why does race being a social concept mean that it can not also be a biological concept? > Take height and weight. Someone who is 5’5 is of average height in Vietnam but is short in Sweden. Does this mean that there is no such thing as height as a biological concept? Likewise a man who weighed 170 pounds would be considered heavy in South Korea but considered light in the US. Does this mean that speaking of someone as fat or thin has no basis in biology? No, it means that being Sweden has no basis in biology. Unless you are seriously arguing that the borders of Sweden are themselves determined by some sort of biological factor, then this is a textbook fallacy of composition. The average resident of Sweden has a greater height than the average resident of Vietnam. Height is based upon biology. Therefore Sweden and Vietnam are based upon biology. The average resident of Vietnam is more religious than the average resident of Vietnam. Religion is based upon imagination. Therefore Sweden and Vietnam are based upon imagination. Exactly the same argument, and both equally erroneous. You can not ascribe the properties of the parts as a property of the whole. That is a fallacy of composition. > [@](#): > > Look at this study on the clustering of genetic markers: [PLOS Genetics](http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070) > What it says is that there are clusters of people with similar genetics in geographic areas where travel is easy. Mountain ranges, deserts, and oceans tend to seperate people groups and those groups differentiate genetically from each other over time. Thus you get clusters which mostly correspond to the different races. No, you don’t. The first part of what you aid is correct. Human population are clinal, and geographic barriers can produce zones of greater discontinuity. But there are no barriers that correspond to races. So there is no “thus”. That is an total non sequitur. > [@](#): > > So we should group people into genetic commonalities instead of geography, but if we did that then race would be a biological concept? No, this is another fallacy of composition. If we _can’t_ group people into genetic commonalities instead of geography then race _can’t_ be a biological concept. That does not allow you to conclude that if we **can** group people into genetic commonalities instead of geography then race _will_ be a biological concept. In case you still don’t spot your logical error: If Jim _doesn’t_ have any money then Jim _can’t_ buy my house. Agreed? That doesn’t allow you to conclude that because Jim _does_ have some money Jim _can_ buy my house. Does it? Jim might not have \*enough \*money to buy my house? Or he might be a foreign citizen, and thus disqualified by law from buying my house and so on and so forth. What you have done is focussed upon a single flaw that invalidates your classification scheme, and conclude that if \*that \*flaw was removed the scheme must b valid. Nuh uh. you can’t do that. To be even given serious consideration as biologically valid a classification scheme needs to meet two basic criteria: It needs to be objectively verifiable based upon biological characters. A scheme that can group people into genetic commonalities would meet such a standard. But it also needs to be revealing. What that means is that placing an organism into a category it needs to tell you something other than the very concept that you used to define that category. This is where all the racial schemes I have ever seen fall down. It is certainly possible to group people together based upon skin colour, but such a scheme won’t tell you a damn thing about any other trait that those people share. > [@](#): > > The good news is that someone already did that and they found "In one of the most extensive of these studies to date, considering 1,056 individuals from 52 human populations, with each individual genotyped for 377 autosomal microsatellite markers, we found that individuals could be partitioned into six main genetic clusters, five of which corresponded to Africa, Europe and the part of Asia south and west of the Himalayas, East Asia, Oceania, and the Americas " The article that you reference here to has the same problem. By using selecting 993 genetic markers, out of literally billions of potential markers, they managed to construct a grouping that corresponded, not to race, but to geographic boundaries. That’s great, but what does such a scheme tell us? If I tell you that a person falls into the Oceania geographic grouping, what can you tell me about that person? Can you tell me, with \>95% certainty, anything about his skin colour? About his height? About his genetics? No, you can not. Having assigned someone to one of these geographic races, you can do absolutely nothing further with that information. The classification scheme is perfectly self-referential. And it is thus logically invalid and, being illogical, it is biologically invalid. Look, nobody ever doubted that it was possible to assign people to races based upon a fine enough analysis of DNA. That was obvious as soon as DNA was determined to be the mechanism of inheritance. At the finest scale, we can classify people into tiny clades based upon who their grandparents were. I can simply look at someone’s family tree, see the name of their grandparents, and assign them to grandparent group 1. then I look at the next person and assign them to Grandparent group 2, and so forth. Cousins will of course all fall into the same Grandparent group. So if I categorise everybody based upon their grandparents, I can then arrange those grandparent groupings so that they correspond with geography, can’t I? I can say that 95% of the people in Europe have grandparents from Groups 1, 697, 9987672, 11 and so forth. By doing this i would obtain a 95% correlation between grandparent group and geography. Do you agree? Since who your Grandparents were obviously has a huge effect on your genetics, this is a surrogate for genetics. I have effectively produced a genetic scheme with about 2 billion markers, rather than the 1, 000 used in the Rosenberg study. But again, nobody disputed that this was not only possible, it was inevitable. By using enough genetic markers, it had to be possible to categorise people into geographic zones. The only question was how many markers it would take. We knew from the grandparent example that it had to b possible with 2 billion markers. Using great, great grandparents we know that it had to be possible with half a billion. Rosenberg _et al_ have proved it can be done with a s few as 1, 000 markers. That’s interesting, but it does not make the scheme a racial scheme because, as it stands, it is entirely self referential. By assigning people based upon the distribution of those thousand markers, all that you learn about them is where they fall within the distribution of those thousand markers. **You don’t even learn anything about the person’s genetics** , because people in those groups don’t actually have all 1, 000 markers. The system relies upon combinations of those thousand markers. So any two people within a grouping may actually have 0% genetic commonality. All we know is that the genetic pattern that they do have causes them to cluster together under this system. To see what I mean, try to answer this question: using another 1, 000 markers, would it be possible to produce an equally accurate distribution scheme that lumped Asians and Europeans into the same race and lumped Africans and Amerindians? And the answer is, yes, it almost certainly would be possible, just as it would be possible to do so based upon grandparents. So, since the same technique could produce a classification scheme that produced totally different grouping, why should we favour \*this \*scheme? What is the utility of this scheme over those others? And of course the answer is that there is no reason to favour it. It’s completely arbitrary and self-referential, and thus biologically invalid. > [@](#): > > What the limits of each race is and what it means to be in a race is the social construct part, but that does not mean there is no biological part. Another fallacy of composition. A scheme having a biological part does not mean that the scheme is biological. You can not ascribe the properties of the parts to the whole. I have toenails, that does not mean that I \*am \*a toenail. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/53 "2012-06-20T07:48:09Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > An oversimplification, of course. > > For example, by DNA analysis, that just means you can differentiate say an East Asian from somebody from the Indian subcontinent or somebody of Yoruba descent. > > **It doesn’t mean that everybody from Asia has the same skeletal structure or DNA. Or that everybody from Africa has the same DNA or skeletal structure.** > > That’s rather the point.. And that would be a straw man. What is your definition of race? Does it apply to other species? As noted above by Jerry Coyne, if you use a standard definition from evolutionary biology then it seems there are human races (it would be a bit odd if there weren’t really). > [@](#): > > What are races? > > In my own field of evolutionary biology, races of animals (also called “subspecies” or “ecotypes”) are morphologically distinguishable populations that live in allopatry (i.e. are geographically separated). There is no firm criterion on how much morphological difference it takes to delimit a race. Races of mice, for example, are described solely on the basis of difference in coat color, which could involve only one or two genes. > > Under that criterion, are there human races? > > Yes. As we all know, there are morphologically different groups of people who live in different areas, though those differences are blurring due to recent innovations in transportation that have led to more admixture between human groups. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/54 "2012-06-20T08:06:50Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > So you’d agree that it’s absurd to consider population A and B both part of the “black” race when population A is closer, genetically, to “white” and “Asian” populations than to population B? You get mixed groups, or “zones of intergradation” in sub-species and races. After all, they’re not separate species. They interbreed. Risch et al [comment](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/): > [@](#): > > Populations that exist at the boundaries of these continental divisions are sometimes the most difficult to categorize simply. For example, east African groups, such as Ethiopians and Somalis, have great genetic resemblance to Caucasians and are clearly intermediate between sub-Saharan Africans and Caucasians [5]. The existence of such intermediate groups should not, however, overshadow the fact that the greatest genetic structure that exists in the human population occurs at the racial level. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/55 "2012-06-20T08:45:44Z")
Sigh. Same old nonsense from Chen. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/56 "2012-06-20T08:57:43Z")
“Clines, not clades” - it’s really that simple. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/57 "2012-06-20T09:40:08Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > You get mixed groups, or “zones of intergradation” in sub-species and races. After all, they’re not separate species. They interbreed. Risch et al [comment](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/): They’re not even subspecies- all humans are far more closely related than any two Chimp subspecies. You’re saying that the Bamileke are a mixed group? And the Mandenka? That phylogenetic tree shows Most Recent Common Ancestors- which shows that the ancestors of Kikuyu and Bamileke separated **before** the ancestors of the Bamileke and Eurasians separated. Not that they’re mixed, but that the Bamileke share a more recent history with Eurasians then they do with Kikuyu of Kenya. Note that with the “out of Africa” theory this is not surprising- populations separated many times in African pre-history, and it makes perfect sense that the group that eventually left Africa shares a more recent history (and more recent common ancestor) with some African populations than either do with others (for example, population X splits into Xa and Xb, Xb splits into Xba and Xbb, and Xbb leaves Africa- so Xba is closer to Eurasians then it is to Xa). ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/58 "2012-06-20T17:15:16Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > And that would be a straw man. What is your definition of race? Does it apply to other species? As noted above by Jerry Coyne, if you use a standard definition from evolutionary biology then it seems there are human races (it would be a bit odd if there weren’t really). Of course, that is simply is one aspect of the semantic games that the pro-race people play. They can point, (legitimately), to hundreds of human populations and can use the word “race” to label them. Then when the the word “race” has been accepted in that context, they go back to talking about the Three Races that cannot be legitimately so described. Classic bait and switch. (NDD does this, regularly and you have been known to get very close to the same nonsense. He spouts off about the Three Races all the time, then, when challenged on the “superiority” of “Mongoloid” intelligence, he falls back on a claim of “Oriental” intelligence. Even ignoring the obvious fact that his claims for “Oriental” intelligence are not supported by real world evidence, he is changing the definition of “race” from one post to the next.) ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/59 "2012-06-21T10:57:38Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > They’re not even subspecies- all humans are far more closely related than any two Chimp subspecies. > > You’re saying that the Bamileke are a mixed group? And the Mandenka? That phylogenetic tree shows Most Recent Common Ancestors- which shows that the ancestors of Kikuyu and Bamileke separated **before** the ancestors of the Bamileke and Eurasians separated. Not that they’re mixed, but that the Bamileke share a more recent history with Eurasians then they do with Kikuyu of Kenya. > > Note that with the “out of Africa” theory this is not surprising- populations separated many times in African pre-history, and it makes perfect sense that the group that eventually left Africa shares a more recent history (and more recent common ancestor) with some African populations than either do with others (for example, population X splits into Xa and Xb, Xb splits into Xba and Xbb, and Xbb leaves Africa- so Xba is closer to Eurasians then it is to Xa). 1. Is there a chimp benchmark used for determining races and subspecies across species? Consider this example of fst values for various other subspecies. Is it much different to that between human races? There appear a number of examples you can look at of animal subspecies where the level of genetic differentiation is similar to that of humans. 2. That may well be the case for the Bamileke. Does that mean there aren’t human races as defined above by Coyne? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461/60 "2012-06-21T11:20:58Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > 1. That may well be the case for the Bamileke. Does that mean there aren’t human races as defined above by Coyne? I don’t know- what races does Coyne claim? Does he use the common “three races”, or something else? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/race-is-a-social-not-biological-scientific-concept/625461.md?page=4)