"At a time when our society is deeply divided and when a surge of antisemitic, anti-Asian, Islamophobic and anti-Black racism threatens the social fabric, it feels urgent..."

"... that we develop new language for discussing the relationship between identity, ancestry, history and science. DNA analysis could help create that language by offering more nuanced ways of looking at individual origins and a more unifying narrative about our shared heritage.... [But race will not] magically disappear anytime soon.... [T]he social reality of race is undeniable. And genetics — or, for that matter, any science — has the potential to be misused, co-opted by racist ideologies and employed to bolster harmful narratives about racial purity or biological superiority. But if we can, at the very least, embrace the understanding that race (a toxic social construction) and ancestry (a shared genetic history) are not only distinct but also fundamentally opposed — and teach that in our classrooms — it could go a long way toward freeing us from some of the binds in which scientific racism have trapped us."

That's from "We Need a New Language for Talking About Race" by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Andrew S. Curran (NYT). Gates and Curran have a new book, “Who’s Black and Why? A Hidden Chapter From the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race.'"

I added the boldface.