*For years, mainstream scientists have said there are no real racial differences among people. Race is purely a “social construct” – in other words, it’s imaginary, some have argued.*
*But two new studies raise doubts about a key calculation on which this argument rests.*
*This calculation, often cited publicly by world-renowned geneticists, is that all humans are more than 99.9 percent genetically identical. As geneticist Eric Lander told Wired Magazine in February, 2001, any two humans are “more than 99.9 percent identical at the molecular level. Racial and ethnic differences are all indeed only skin deep.”*
*Even U.S. President Bill Clinton said, in a 2000 speech: “All human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9 percent the same.” *
...
*The “race-isn't real” proponents have other arguments besides the 99.9 percent figure to back up their case. But that figure has become one of the most prominent pieces of their argument since about four years ago, when the number came out from scientists associated with the Human Genome Project, a 13-year program to map the human genetic code.*
*Another key argument that scientists have made to back up the statement that race isn’t real, is that most of the genetic differences between people are local ones, not differences between "races." In other words, as the U.S. public television channel PBS states on its website: “two random Koreans are likely to be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian.”*
...
*Some people disputed whether any percentages, whether 99.9 or otherwise, should be cited as a measure of human differences. The figure is “entirely meaningless as a measure of functional population differences,” said Miami University’s Jon Entine, author of “Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It,” in an email. *
* “Dogs and wolves are 100 percent identical but functionally different,” Entine added. “Rats are about 95 percent the genetic equivalent of humans. These are ridiculous statements, although technically accurate. The use of the 99.9 percent figure by the popular press and scientists is, frankly scandalous.”*
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