Ahh, straight for the PC orthodoxy, PBS, no less... LOL!!!
Sickle cell is evidence of "african-ness", what a coincidence... It's found in the very regions of Europe which are nearest Africa, and have been shown to have African admixutre. Of course, it occurs at a much lower rate than it does in north american or west african blacks...
Notice the innuendo on the wicked and oppressive nature of whites- "they must be "polluted" with African blood". No one said that having African blood constitutes "pollution", it was just another Mccarthyistic pejorative jab to portray whites negatively.
No one in the population genetics world disputes that sickle cell is the result of a genetic mutation which developed in, and is rarely found outside of African or African descended populations.
This is all, of course, to ignore the glaring stupidity which is the notion that the entire case for race being a biological reality rests on sickle cell being an African genetic development (which of course it is).
This is of course to ignore the many other genetic disorder which rarely affect anyone outside of a certain racial group.
This is to ignore the fact that gestation period significantly vary between racial groups.
This is to ignore the fact that various racial groups experience the onset of puberty at differing ages, consistently and reliably.
All of this is willful ignorance, and selective reasoning, so as to wish away the fact of biological races, and replace it with the myth that races don't exist. A myth which is offensive to anyone who is proud of his or her own ancestry.
Quote from trendlover:
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-07.htm
And so to find sickle cell was to find evidence of African-ness by definition. It was typological. If a person from Italy had sickle cell, it must be because they had some African blood - they must be polluted with African blood
The right story - and I think the much more interesting story - emerged in the 1950s. And that was with a couple of discoveries. The first one was a discovery that sickle cell, which is a change in red blood cells that gives it a sickle shape, actually confers an advantage in fighting malaria. An individual who has one sickle cell allele, but not both - what we call sickle cell 'trait' - has a selective advantage in situations in which you have endemic malaria. Individuals who had sickle cell trait seemed to resist malaria better than other individuals. And malaria is, and has been, one of the greatest killers of humanity of all time. If ever there is a selective pressure, malaria is it. And so those individuals might actually survive and prosper, and then the number of subsequent individuals with sickle cell trait would increase in a population because that allele would be selected for.
Well, that's one thing. The other thing was to actually take a close look at where malaria actually arose and became endemic and severe. Then also to look at who has sickle cell. Frank Livingston did this, and lo and behold the two maps matched extremely well. Places in which malaria was endemic, and had been endemic for a long time, were exactly the places in which sickle cell was highest. Conversely, places where endemic malaria was rather low were places in which sickle cell was virtually non-existent.
He had more than a smoking gun there. He had a nice evolutionary story and a rather tight one about how, perhaps, 5,000 years ago, for instance, in West Africa, endemic malaria became a serious problem when people started cutting down forests in the origins of agriculture. And individuals who had sickle cell were selected for, and it expanded.
Sickle cell isn't an African disease. It is true that some Africans have sickle cell, particularly individuals who have ancestry around West Africa. That's one of the highest places of sickle cell. But, it's also true that East Africans hardly have any sickle cell. South Africans don't have any sickle cell. But, it's also a Middle Eastern disease, and it's also a Mediterranean disease. Individuals in Turkey and Greece and Italy, Sicily, have sickle cell; more than individuals do in South Africa, or in East Africa. So, sickle cell is not an African disease; it's a condition that developed in response to malaria."