And by the same logic colors are meaningless, too. So are height and weight measures. If the doctor thinks you are too fat and tries to get your weight, tell him that the measures of weight are infinitely divisible, so any talk of weight differences are meaningless.
Uh huh, nice try.
Say, about that whole Human Genome Project thing . . .
Which race's genome did they map? I mean if there's so much difference between the races then we obviously need more than one genome mapping right? Maybe we need around 7 billion mappings.
I don't know which race(s) were mapped, as the few individual contributors of DNA were kept anonymous. Since the genomes among human populations widely vary (not just between races but within them), the human genome project was incomplete. We don't know about genetic variation by looking at only one genome. It is for that reason that there is now an ongoing "
1000 Genomes Project," with samples from many races, that would give a fuller indication of human genetic diversity.
Ok, let me be clear. Races are spectral. It does not follow that races are meaningless, as that reasoning would be a variation of the "continuum fallacy."
Races are spectral.
Ok, let's go with that one.
I'm guessing by "spectral" you might mean amorphous with no readily defined boundaries?
If so, then how can anything useful at all be claimed about these ill defined categories and the similarly spectral "g"?
Don't double down on the continuum fallacy. Many people have a habit of thinking about races as discrete, which is designed to deny. At the same time, there are many phenomena we think of as both spectral and objectively useful, and to deny them would seem ridiculous (i.e. colors on the profile of a rainbow). If we adjust our thinking of race to fit both the data and evolutionary theory, only then can we make accurate sense of them. For example, you may have thought that races were defined by a single set of genes, where if you have the genes then you belong to the race in question and if you don't have the genes then you do not belong to the race in question. Not quite. Races are best defined by gene FREQUENCIES. A race has this
frequency of a given gene, and a different frequency of a different given gene, and so on. With many gene frequencies in combination, the probabilities compound positively, and the race of any person can be identified with high certainty. That is how 23andMe.com does it. They will test your DNA by mail and give you percentages representing the respective regions of your ancestors, and when they genetically determine your race like this it has almost a 99% match to the race you THINK you have (Tang et al, "Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies," 2004).
What use does it have? Anything that genetically varies among individuals in the same race also varies between races, so use your imagination. If it is useful to make sense of individual genetic variation, then it is probably likewise useful to make sense of racial genetic variation about the same thing. 23andMe.com used to be able to tell you your probability of various heritable diseases based on the genetic tests, and it relates to race as some races have a much higher probability of having given diseases that others. The FDA shut down that operation of 23andMe.com, as they feared too many people would confuse probabilities with diagnoses, and only medical doctors have the legal authority to make a business out of medical diagnoses. Such knowledge informs good medical doctors that the probability of a disease is higher or lower given a patient's race, much like the probability of a diseases is higher or lower based on behavior patterns. For example, members of the white race are far more likely to have celiac disease. I was alerted to that when a BuzzFeed list wondered why white people are so obsessed with gluten (
per this other thread).
