I know this question sounds incredibly ignorant but i have been trying to understand for some time. My main reason for asking is because if we have dna testing that can show someone’s ancestry is this much % Italian and this much % Korean, how is that a social construct if it’s in our dna?
Please understand I’m not saying race isn’t a social construct, I am just trying to understand how it is a social construct.
In: Biology
there are genes more common in certain areas of the planet, but all that shows is where some of your genes originated.
think about this, why is it italian? Italy wasn’t unified until the 1800s. So, why is that report showing italian and not something like sicilian or roman? Or even Etruscan (iron age) or Remedellian (copper age). If it wanted to show where the genes originated, it would be something like 42N 12W (the approximate location of Italy), the alps, or the Tiber river (major geographic landmarks).
“Italian” is a label that the people currently living in the areas mentioned call themselves. It’s just made up. If you reset italy from back before the copper age, you’d end up with a completely different group of people with a different history that all called themselves something different. Your genetic makeup would be the same (probably), but your report wouldn’t say italian.
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