Race as Socially Constructed

It is a fundamental assumption of progressives that race is a social construction: that there is no underlying genetic origin to race.  My students show up having been thoroughly indoctrinated to believe this.  But like most things that the schools teach, it is false.  From Nature Genetics 36, S28 - S33 (2004)

Genetic variation, classification and 'race'

Lynn B Jorde & Stephen P Wooding

Analysis of many loci now yields reasonably accurate estimates of genetic similarity among individuals, rather than populations. Clustering of individuals is correlated with geographic origin or ancestry. These clusters are also correlated with some traditional concepts of race, but the correlations are imperfect because genetic variation tends to be distributed in a continuous, overlapping fashion among populations.  ...

A statistically more sophisticated approach for cluster definition is afforded by the structure program³⁸, in which individuals are first randomly assigned into one of k groups, without regard to population affiliation. Individuals are then moved between groups to minimize Hardy-Weinberg disequilibrium and interlocus linkage disequilibrium within each group (minimal within-groups disequilibrium ensures genetic homogeneity within each group). Posterior probabilities of membership in each of the k groups are then estimated for each individual. Figure 3a shows the results of applying the structure program to individuals from the populations shown in Figure 2. When 100 Alu insertion polymorphisms and 60 short tandem repeat (STR) polymorphisms were used, all Europeans, East Asians and Africans were correctly placed according to their respective continents of origin.