A common argument given by certain politically correct advocates trying to incite peace between races is that “there is only one race: the human race”. Now this might seem as some sort of liberal rant to some. Of course races within human beings exist, certain humans have distinct genetic traits vastly different from other ones. Modern genetics reveals: maybe not.

One might say that the classification of races is the same as that between subspecies of dogs or tigers. In reality, an algorithm was created to define a subspecies called the Fixation index. This value is a measure of how genetically different organisms are. Humans are measured to around 11 per cent. This means that 89 per cent of the genetic variety across humans is shared among us. So only 11 per cent of humanity can be genetically slotted into subgroups. Sewall Wright, creator of this index, proposed that for species to be a subspecies of another the index must exceed 25 per cent. Humanity has no genetic subgroups.

A cline and deme are the terms given to other subdivisions of a species. These groups are even more genetically close than a subspecies. Demes can be populations of species which can interbreed but are geographically isolated from each other. With time demes can turn into subspecies. If the differences between these demes vary across land or sea, then it becomes a cline. This is what appears to be the case with humanity.

If you might think that this would be a cause to explain races. Here we run into a stumbling block. What is defined as a cline is very subjective. Such small classifications of genetic differences are completely arbitrary and man-made. When populations are so genetically close they can be classified into either 300 human races or just one.

The genetic differences among human beings may be considered broad, they are not great enough to form classifications that go beyond simple rudimentary properties, such as skin colour. Simply put, genetically we’re not that different from each other. There isn’t any more difference between distinct skin colours than there is between eye colours, but people haven’t been mistreated because they had brown eyes.