Does our race have an important or relevant basis in our genes?

Obviously, skin color (which frequently is the trait by which race is determined) is a result of gene expression in the human body, but research has shown that variation patterns found in the human genome across populations do not correspond to our current racial categories based on skin color. Most of the variation that occurs between any two people actually occurs within a given group of people rather than between different groups. Statistically, 85% of variation occurs within a group, while only 7% of variation in the genome occurs between groups of different continents. In other words, my Sicilian grandfather is most different genetically from other Sicilians than he is from a person from Namibia.

So, is race based in genetics? Of course. Our genetic differences do determine the outward features that allow us to classify people as belonging to a certain race, but little else can be linked to these genes whether it's a susceptibility to disease, or a person’s intelligence or athletic ability. But not only do the genes for skin color have nothing to do with disease predisposition, intelligence, or athletic ability, they also have nothing to do with hair texture or eye shape. It turns out that due to their long history on earth and short generation time, fruit flies have more genetic variation than humans do. The human species is too young to have that much variation. Most of the variations that have been traditionally linked to racial categories are a result of environmental influences, not genetics. For example, sickle cell, although traditionally identified as a disease of the African continent, instead exists in populations as a result of selective pressure from malaria and actually has nothing to do with skin color. The selective pressure of malaria keeps sickle cell in the population because being a carrier for the trait yields malarial resistance. People in the Mediterranean and Middle East, where there are high incidences of malaria, are infinitely more likely to have sickle cell than people in East or South Africa where malaria is uncommon.

Take a look at this interesting website from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/race/