Racists are wrong: Both light and dark skin originated in Africa

[L]ong-held racist assumptions based on skin color have been scientifically proven wrong, according to a groundbreaking new study in the journal Science published on [October 12].

With their observations, the team of geneticists led by the University of Pennsylvania’s Sarah Tishkoff, Ph.D., tear down that notion by discrediting the idea that race has any biological roots.

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“The fact is that many of these variants that we found to be associated with light skin — that are really common now in Eurasians — originated in Africa,” [Tishkoff] tells Inverse. “Here are these genes that impact skin color, and they have an African origin. Even the ones associated with light skin.”

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The vast diversity of human skin color, they found, is largely due to a few tiny tweaks to the gene sequences in these regions.

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There is no guarantee that Tishkoff’s work will convince people to rethink racist beliefs, but at least it offers us a bit of perspective: Those tiny discrepancies, mere aberrations in the human genome we all share, are at the root of some of the most egregious crimes we commit against each other. Isn’t it time we rethink the poorly informed assumptions that our Middle Age ancestors held?

[Editor’s note: Read full study]

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Genetics Researchers Just Disproved a Long-Held Racist Assumption