Question

Does population genetics recent discoveries reshape our ideas of race? And does this show that race is a social construct?

Answer 1

Earlier it was believed that there are 5 major races based on the geographical location and physical traits that is found commonly in these geographical locations . So a individual was identified based on physical apearance and labled as either Asian, African, Native American ,European or Oceanian. It was believed that a particular race has distinct genetic makeup and it differs from the other race genetically .

With the technological advances ,there has been tremendous amount of research carried out in the field of population genetics. This reasearch has been mainly focussed on the finding out the genetic makeup of particular race and then comparing it with genetic makeup of another race . The results have shown that there is very little variation in the genetic makeup among the races . DNA of individuals from all the races is 99.9 % similar . There is variation among the people found in a particular geographical area.

Hence we can conclude that the race is a social construct . We normally relate a persons physical apperance and history with the race .