Re: Race and malaria

On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Elson wrote:

>Thank you for explaining the mechanism of the mutation (and the possibly
>more accurate estimate on when the sickle-cell mutation emerged).  This
>corroborates the idea that so-called "races" is itself a non-scientific
>notion.

It sure does, which was why I wanted to show how quickly the frequency of
traits can appear (and disappear) among populations. The actualities of
human variation are entirely inconsistent to the concept of "race." The
reason for this is simple: "race," as a biological category, is a
prescientific construction based on typological thinking. As such it is
worthless natural-scientifically. However, as was noted earlier, the
system of *racism* is a sociological reality, and it is the myth of
biological race that helps cement the social realities of race.

Andy Austin