by Brett Stevens on February 28, 2005

The official narrative tells us that race does not exist, that it is a social construct, and that mixed-race individuals disprove race. It turns out — as usual — that the opposite is true: people can reliably identify their own racial mixture.

This comes to us from a Stanford University study on self-identified race and genetic race in which most people knew their rough mix of racial groups:

For each person in the study, the researchers examined 326 DNA regions that tend to vary between people. These regions are not necessarily within genes, but are simply genetic signposts on chromosomes that come in a variety of different forms at the same location. Without knowing how the participants had identified themselves, Risch and his team ran the results through a computer program that grouped individuals according to patterns of the 326 signposts. This analysis could have resulted in any number of different clusters, but only four clear groups turned up. And in each case the individuals within those clusters all fell within the same self-identified racial group. ‘This shows that people’s self-identified race/ethnicity is a nearly perfect indicator of their genetic background,’ Risch said.

In other words, race is not just race, but a vital component of identity. Each of us knows roughly where we fit in the hierarchy and, despite Leftist proclamations of a post-racial world, find ourselves drawn toward the identity that a genetic line in history provides.

This means that race is not arbitrary, but important to us. We crave the identity that tribalism provides. And so, even when mixed-race, we keep track of the ingredients so that we can identify with the most visually obvious group. Race confers membership, and membership confers status among a tribe among many.

The Left tries to deny race in order to make everyone equal, but what we want is not equality so much as a place which belongs to us. We want solidity and permanence to our roles in life, and this can only be conveyed through the mosaic of race, religion, ethnic group, caste, class, culture, customs, and region.

Any interruption in that leaves us without an anchor, and it makes us more miserable than our racial identity, even if the latter is seen as negative by some.

Tags: ethnic identity, identity, miscegenation, mixed-race, race, racial identity, tribalism, tribe

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