Irvine511 said:
right.
so race, as it is understood, is the performance of a social construct, otherwise known as culture.
No it is not, in the complete absence of social interaction and expression, with thousands of samples of DNA from around the world, one can group them according to genetic markers, identify relationships and find the borders of distinct types and the clinal zones between them (which are a small part of the total).
Acknowledgement of distinct and identifiable groups of human beings on a genetic level that indicates common evolutionary linneage is defining race in biological terms.
Such methodology is independent of social interactions - it is objectively determining relationships between populations. It is a suspension of logic on par with young earth creationism to suppose that humanity is removed from the natural processes of evolution that act upon every other organism. It is not issuing arbitrary declarations of racial superiority, racial pride is not based upon evidence - it is based upon social expression. To pursue objective research into human population genetics is not arbitrary and requires very real and testable evidence to make conclusions with
the genetic differences you point out between "races" is absolutely valid, however that does not prove even the scientific existence of race.
How so? Distinct and identifiable inbreeding populations with some gene flow from other populations. Identifying basal groups of human populations with genetic evidence and not arbitrary physiological evidence.
race definitions are usually sloppy, arbitrary, derived from custom and history, and that the existence of a "race" is willed into existence by the observer.
One can hardly will into existence the genetic differences associated with inbreeding populations. Like many arguments the cultural invention of race requires the objective scientific evidence to have a very wide margin of uncertainty. Which is a good reason that the oft cited paper to support the absence of race (Lewontin RC, 1972) is used rather than more recent papers using more advanced and specific analysis which give contrary results (Edwards AW, 2003)
"race" is an amalgamation of certain genetic traits -- insofar as such traits are affected and evolved through natural selection or migration -- but there is no race gene;
You are right there is no single gene to identify race, this is the argument of Lewontin, but when we analyise at multiple points of variation it is possible to distinguish people into well defined groups. There is no single race gene - that is true, likewise there is no single intelligence gene, it is a set of many different traits.
there are no biologically singificant subcategories. "race" is simply not a valid way, either scientifically or culturally, to describe any population.
Wrong, there are statistically significant differences between inbreeding populations that can be objectively measured allowing grouping of individuals. These groups have some correlation to what we have considered race at a cursory level but reconstructions can be much more accurate in depicting the history of change and gene flow between populations.
It is a controversial subject to be sure. But to deny any and all evidence that identifiable groups of race exist as a reaction to history is wrong.
Race defined as identifiable groups of human beings that can be quantified by genetic evidence, with blurry clinal variation between boundaries and with complex histories of gene flow does exist. Human beings are subject to evolutionary mechanisms just as much as other species in the world and we can apply taxonomy to humanity - like most things in the natural world this is not a heirachy of development and any slight variation in aptitude between basal groups is outdone by individual variation. But that does not stop the basal groups themselves from existing.