The following is an excerpt.
Writing in The New York Times, science journalist Nicholas Wade reports on the recent discovery that a 35,000-year-old genetic mutation accounts for some of the phenotypic variations found in East Asian populations. From Wade’s article:
Gaining a deep insight into human evolution, researchers have identified a mutation in a critical human gene as the source of several distinctive traits that make East Asians different from other races….Each race has a different set of selected regions, reflecting the fact that the human population had dispersed from its African homeland and faced different challenges that led to genetic adaptation on each continent [emphasis added].
Wade’s choice of words here is deeply troubling. He is apparently rejecting the widely accepted understanding that “race” is a social and political category, not a biological one.
View the original article here: Race as Biology in The New York Times
