“Race Finished” declares American Scientist

This article at American Scientist was evidently not written in response to my Mythical Myth #3.

Indeed, it exemplifies the unfortunate tendency of well-intentioned people whom I would like to agree with to sabotage their own position by overstating the case and reacting to anything we don’t like by denying that it exists.

Anyone who looks can see that of course races exist. And to suggest that anything is unworthy of scientific interest is itself unscientific and foolishly unimaginative. For one thing the fact that we are so strongly aware of variations in a tiny fraction[1] of the genome is certainly a question of scientific interest (and one which may well have important practical and moral consequences if we can figure out how to minimize and control our reactions to those perceptions).

[1]Speaking of “tiny fraction” one of the most irritating things about those who quote numbers in polemics is the stupidity of giving a number like the percent of the genome which varies between races without any reference for comparison of what it is supposed to be “small” compared to (eg the percent variation which distinguishes us from chimpanzees for example)

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