Comment by AlotOfReading
11 hours ago
That's not what your previous post was talking about. But if you insist, at least make your point clear. "African Americans" and "Africans" are wildly different genetic populations that get subsumed under the same "Black" racial category in the US. Which one were you talking about?
The latter is more genetically diverse than any other human population by an incredible margin. Making generalized statements about them is impossible (including this one). As for African American populations, ancestry estimates of how closely related they are to African populations vary massively for each individual. Many people are much closer to "white" populations than any African population, due to the history of African Americans in North America. If you really mean race as a geographic proxy, the "black" label is simply confusing what you actually mean.
I understand your point (although I find the babybathwater-ing to be tiring), and I didn't mean to be drawn into a debate about this. But that was entirely the point - that there's a debate. Wikipedia would have you believe that there isn't.
For what it's worth, I'm mixed as hell. European, Asian, Jewish, north african, and native american. I look white, though - and I am, in fact, majority European ancestry. Therefore in most studies (of anything race related), I would presumably be lumped in with white people. It's not a perfect "measure," but it's still the easiest proxy for geographic location of our ancestors that we have and on a population level it works just fine for studies.