Is the "white race" a biologically coherent concept?

[StonyArabia]

Yes and no. If white refers to Europeans then the answer yes. However there are some white looking groups that don’t cluster with Europeans and are genetically Middle Eastern or central south Asian. Thus the best term is European

[bvnny]

No, it's not

[Blondie]

Yes and no. If white refers to Europeans then the answer yes. However there are some white looking groups that don’t cluster with Europeans and are genetically Middle Eastern or central south Asian. Thus the best term is European

This

[coolfrenchguy]

White means of European descent, and Europe being the traditionally defined area that is separated by the Mediterranean, Bosporus, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Ural mountains. It doesn't matter whether or not you can find exceptions on the borders and argue over whether Europe is a social construct, because that is the definition. It's like asking if Pizza isn't real because some people call things that are less pizza-like pizza, or saying that all pizzas are really pretty different when you get down to it.

Everyone knows what it means (European) and everyone knows what European means, even if they don't like it. Until we come up with another ancestrally-minded ethnic term for the different European-Americans and other European diaspora new-worlders, "White" will have to do. Arguing semantics over definitions is just about the dumbest thing you can do, no definition is watertight. You will never find a border or limit to any species, concept, place, thing, or idea that is perfectly watertight. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

the main problem it's than somes racist WASP eugenists have introduced the term "caucasian" for refering to the whites in north america and you couldn't defined the whites europeans and their descendants to the caucasus area because it's absolutly not true ,and truely, Carleton Coon was completly out of his shoes
i prefer the term leucoderm meaning white of skin from the greek root ethymology than purely white because "white race don't exist" ,there is no races,stricto sensu in the homo sapiens gender but the human species

[SouthDutch7991]

the main problem it's than somes racist WASP eugenists have introduced the term "caucasian" for refering to the whites in north america and you couldn't defined the whites europeans and their descendants to the caucasus area because it's absolutly not true ,and truely, Carleton Coon was completly out of his shoes
i prefer the term leucoderm meaning white of skin from the greek root ethymology than purely white because "white race don't exist" ,there is no races,stricto sensu in the homo sapiens gender but the human species

"Caucasian" just means "having a skull similar to people from the caucasus" and that actually does have a good genetic basis. In the broader range of things, the people originally classified as "caucasoid" (meaning similar to Caucasus people) fall under one of the major genetic super clusters in the human population, this tends to be referred to as "West Eurasian" in genetic research circles. Race as in actual race does exist, or at least the original racial classifications mesh very well with the groups that we have found genetically.