Self-reported race, ethnicity don't match genetic ancestry in the U.S.: study

Genetic Ancestry vs. Self-Reported Race

• Commenters note the headline is overstated: self-identified groups like “African American” usually do reflect substantial African ancestry, but not cleanly or uniformly.
• The study is read mainly as showing that U.S. racial labels are coarse, self-reported, and often misaligned with the fine-grained ancestry visible in genomes.
• Some argue this just renames “race” as “African/European/Asian ancestry” rather than abolishing the concept; others stress that gradual geographic gradients and admixture make hard racial clusters scientifically weak.

High Diversity Within Africa and Limits of “African”

• Repeated emphasis that Africa holds more human genetic diversity than the rest of the world combined; “African” is seen as a very poor biological category.
• Discussion of population bottlenecks and founder effects when small groups left Africa vs. long, continuous diversification within Africa.
• Some point to Khoi-San groups as especially diverse, though it’s noted that overall genetic variance doesn’t necessarily translate to visibly different appearance.

Race in Medicine: Crude Proxy vs Precision

• Many want medical research to move from racial categories to direct genetic markers (e.g., for obesity, sickle cell, cystic fibrosis) and environment.
• Others counter that race still has practical value:
  • It’s cheap and fast to ask in clinical settings.
  • It correlates both with some ancestry-linked risks and with social/environmental exposures (e.g., discrimination, diet, access to care).
• There is disagreement over how strong a signal race provides, and whether it is “better than nothing” or dangerously misleading.

Social Construction, Culture, and Identity

• Several emphasize race as a social construct with real consequences: people live their lives as “Black,” “white,” “Asian,” etc., independent of DNA.
• Stories about Cajun/Creole identities, Italian/Irish, and Native American claims illustrate that “race/ethnicity” often track history, culture, and power more than genetics.
• Some describe choosing a single race on forms despite mixed ancestry, based on culture, family ties, or perceived advantage/safety.

US Categories, “Hispanic,” and Administrative Uses

• Many criticize U.S. race/ethnicity boxes as inconsistent and politicized (e.g., “Hispanic” as ethnicity, not race; Spain vs. Latin America; “Caucasian” vs official “White”).
• Others respond that these categories are designed primarily to track social inequality and discrimination, not to cleanly map biology.

Scientific and Political Disputes

• Debate over:
  • Whether humans have biologically meaningful “races” or subspecies (most argue no, some think genetically defined subgroups could be formalized).
  • Interpretations of Out-of-Africa vs archaic admixture.
  • Editorial pushes in major journals to treat race and ethnicity as sociopolitical constructs and to avoid using them as genetic proxies.
• Some see “race science” as discredited; others view it as evolving toward a more complex, ancestry- and environment-based picture rather than simple racial essentialism.