"The White Cops Killing African Americans are the Recent Descendants of Africans".

Not even wrong.

@1 I could agree that it's a kind of lame race-baiting (then, this is the Stranger) but how does it meet Pauli's admonition? The three paper cited do indeed indicate that non-Africans left home rather recently, mostly in one big wave.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/deceden…

1. Cops are not only killing African Americans
2. The cops killing (mostly) minorities are not all white
3. The kind of racism behind these killings is far more complicated than some reductionist belief that Africans are far distant relatives from whites
4. The studies in Nature made no assertions about "white cops" or African American shooting victims

When you have this many fallacies bound up in a single assertion, "not even wrong" is the only thing you can say.

@4: Agreed.

There were hominids already in what's now Europe and the far east when other hominids traveled up from Africa.

@6, I sort of was thinking that too. Perhaps our resident archeologist (hey cutey!) would like to comment. I guess Ethan was referring exclusively to H. sapiens, and not erectus or neanderthalensis?

Also, way to conflate two disparate issues! And to what effect?? Smart people already know all humans are African. It doesn't stop us from seeing those small differences referred to as "race," and using those meaningless, superficial differences to be assholes to each other (looking at you Posse).

@6 & @7: Correct, the research I'm referring to only deals with H. sapiens -- "anatomically modern humans" -- not Neanderthals or Denisovans.

@7 (I believe she meant paleontologist).

@8, thanks for clarifying. And sorry for yelling at you. I just prefer my science to be unbiased (as in, apolitical). You were sounding like Charles there for a minute. But I really do appreciate everything you contribute here. Good science writing is so rare, and to have it here, for free, is a huge treat.