An Interesting NYT Article On Race

Race

According to Harvard genetics professor David Reich, despite the current orthodoxy that race is only a social construct, "it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among 'races."' Oddly enough, Reich accepts the view that race is a social construct. He explains as follows:

A classic example often cited is the inconsistent definition of "black." In the United States, historically, a person is "black" if he has any sub-Saharan African ancestry; in Brazil, a person is not "black" if he is known to have any European ancestry. If "black" refers to different people in different contexts, how can there be any genetic basis to it?

That's Reich on race as a social construct, but he otherwise believes that race is real, namely that the various races are human populations that are different enough from each other to constitute races. I'm sure that some of my readers understand all this better than I do. Such readers are invited to read the article - "How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'" (NYT, March 23) - and try to understand the logic (that race is a construct and a real thing), then come back and explain it to me.