Outsiders may be surprised to learn that American anthropologists commonly believe that "race" is biologically meaningless, nothing more than a social construct (i.e. the American Anthropology Association's Statement on Race). Medical doctors would risk having their licenses revoked if they were to put such a belief into practice, but it is a doctrine accepted by the majority of American anthropologists, and the doctrine influences every related field. Such professors when they express this doctrine tend to encounter skepticism from their students and from the public, because it comes off as ludicrous on the face.
When I fully examined the various arguments backing the doctrine, I found that the doctrine is even more ludicrous than it comes off at first glance. The arguments are nothing more than varying logical fallacies. On top of that, the concept of race is an indispensable component of the theory of evolution, as multiple races are the way that one species diverges into two or more species. A race is simply any subset of a species with phenotypes that differ in frequency from the remainder of the species due to either different geography or a different ancestral mating pattern. Races are the way that evolution works within any species, and the human species is plainly no exception.
Suppose it was popular among canine biologists to believe that breeds are merely subjective, no more than an illusion popularized by breed partisans. Such a doctrine would corrupt the whole field. Their research would be preoccupied with reconciling the various absurdities that emerge. Anthropology could be the most important science for every human society, providing key data and theory to inform accurate answers to every socio-political question. Instead, it is not much more useful than a religion.
The most popular argument in favor of the doctrine seems to be the continuum fallacy: if a spectrum exists between two types, then the distinction between the two types is somehow less real. We would laugh at this argument if it were applied to the claim that no objective difference exists between the color red and the color yellow, but this argument is routinely presented with a straight face and elevated by the highest academic authorities in premier scientific publications. The argument is given weight by the assertion that the traditional idea of races is non-overlapping types; however, I can find no expression of this idea within any writing that supports the concept of race either in the present or in history. The continuity of human races is expressed as far back as Blumenbach, the grandfather of scientific racial theory, and Darwin made it necessary. The idea of races being non-overlapping types seems to exists only in the minds of the critics of the concept of race. It is a straw man.
The following recent blog post by a respected biologist, in particular, seems to be an elaborate expression of the fallacy.
On teaching genetics, social evolution & understanding the origins of racism
I was reminded of the corruption of science when I read the following statement in that blog post:
...this fragmentation of the human population is being reversed (or rather rendered increasingly less informative) by the effects of migrations and extensive intermingling.
No footnote was provided. I have often seen the claim that human races are merging through miscegenation, and perhaps races will eventually disappear. Is it true? This is a question that I expect can be easily answered through simple research. Is the Fst (standard metric of genetic difference between populations) increasing or decreasing between American blacks and whites? Between whites and Asians? Between South Africa and South Korea? But, the academic literature seems to be completely mute on this topic. I would love to know the future of the human species if current mating trends continue, but we have nothing more than various ill-informed assertions. We can't even begin to answer such important questions if posing them is at odds with a dogma entrenched in academia.