Even though 'Race' is A Social Construct, Racism Persists

That's a stupid question taxonomic classification does not apply to race it applies to species all Races of people are the same species.

 

No thei're not. Indians and Iranians are Indo-Europeans. Sounds weird that a self-described 'anthropologist' doesn't know that.

 

The OP of this thread seemed to be surprised that because the differences in the DNA of various groups are not large, they can still be antagonistic to each other.

The premise is that only biology could explain deep, long-lasting antagonism. But this does not follow: competition for scarce resources can turn anyone against anyone. You look to your closest kin for support. If you and your kin, over time, diverge from the culture of the people you're competing with, so much the worse.

A significant part of the Left believe that the natural state of humanity is for us all to love one another. Or, that this could be so, given the right environment ('socialism'). The original draft of the founding manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society claimed that man is 'infinitely perfectible'.. They're not comfortable with the fact of human competition, antagonism, the preference of non-intellectuals for their specific traditional culture. This is one of the reasons why the far Left in power become tyrants... as Machiavelli observed about prophets, the armed ones succeed, the unarmed ones fail, and although the initiator of a new order of things may begin with a lot of popular support, eventually, he will have to make the people "believe by force".

We see this wherever the Left (whom I distinguish from liberals) get power -- not necessarily state power, perhaps only the power of the mob.

In the mid-70s, the distinguished biologist/ecologist E.O. Wilson published a brilliant book: Sociobiology -- the New Synthesis. It posited strong biological/evolutionary sources for human behavior. Of course the Left hated it, because it ran directly counter to their idea of perfectible (by the socialist state) human nature. Wilson faced physical violence because of his ideas.

Note that the social sciences are not really sciences. Or, better, we really ought not to use the word 'science' for the disciplines that study the human past and present. They are necessarily political; that is, it's practically impossible for their practitioners to approach the study of humanity, uninfluenced by their own beliefs about what should be the case with respect to human beings and their behavior. This doesn't mean that their work is worthless ... just that you have to take it with a grain of salt. If you don't believe this, see the controversy over the study of the Yamomami by the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, or the debate over whether or not Margaret Mead's description of the idyllic, sexually-relaxed life of Samoans was the result of her being told what she wanted to hear.