A lot of BAME people work in the NHS, where the provision of PPE has been, and remains, scandalously inadequate. And a lot of BAME people are poor. Put those two facts together, and a lot of BAME people have contracted Covid-19.
But there is no such biological category as race. It has been 60 years since white supremacists felt moved to found Toby Young's Mankind Quarterly, which has since been edited by an old university irritant of mine, in reaction to the increasing recognition of that simple fact. There is no such biological category as race.
Biological race is very real, and as the latest science shows, it affects everything from vulnerability to disease to height (although geneticists usually now use the less loaded term “population” instead of race or “human variation” instead of racial difference: some biologists even use the clunky term “biogeographic ancestry group.”) We now know the ancestors of East Asians, Europeans, West Africans and Australians-were, until recently, almost completely isolated from one another for 40,000 years or longer, which is more than sufficient time for the forces of evolution to work.
ReplyDeleteOur understanding of DNA sequencing has shown real differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs. Recent genetic studies have demonstrated differences across populations not just in the genetic determinants of simple traits such as skin color, but also in more complex traits like bodily dimensions and susceptibility to diseases. For example, we now know that genetic factors help explain why northern Europeans are taller on average than southern Europeans, why multiple sclerosis is more common in European-Americans than in African-Americans, and why the reverse is true for end-stage kidney disease. For example, prostate cancer is a disease that occurs 1.7 times more often in African-Americans than European-Americans. Scientists found a location in the genome with about 2.8 percent more African ancestry than the average. This region contained at least seven independent risk factors for prostate cancer, all more common in West Africans.
Read leading scientists explaining the latest genetic understanding of race in the New York Times below.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.amp.html
I wouldn't normally put that kind of thing up, but such are the times. Let's just say that most people will spontaneously recognise it for what it was. But sadly, the people who either will not, or who will amuse themselves by pretending not to, now have an enormous megaphone. It's still rubbish, though. Of course it is.
Delete"I read on the Internet, and it said PhD after his name so it must be true..."
DeleteQuite.
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