what does it mean, though?

you've probably heard these statements, no doubt tersely.

"race has no scientific basis", "race is not a biological concept", "there is no scientific meaning to race", etc.

what?

what it means is that your ancestors aren't as homogeneous as you probably think they are; what it means is that we migrate widely and always have, that we all fuck each other and always have and that any one of us, as individuals, has ancestry all over the world, regardless of our phenotypic expressions.

what it means is that, because genetic diversity is highest in east africa due to it being our ancestral homeland, two black women from africa are likely to have more genetic differences between each other than either are likely to have with any random white people.

what it means is that you can't build generalized genetic relationships based on observing how people look, that phylogenetic relationships are not strongly correlated with phenotypes.

what it means is that you don't just have ancestors that look differently than you, but you have ancestors that look any way imaginable.

but, mostly, what it means is that it is impossible to build rigorous, data-based categorizations of humans based on their appearance; all you get is noise and contradictions.

it's not like they didn't try to do it, but they failed.

as a scientific concept, race is just wrong.