Some contemporary liberal progressive black people with a sub-Saharan African origin take stances against the idea of race and believe it unworthy of being taken seriously since race is only about arbitrary skin color and no substantial commonalities. Ethnicity (people of the same local culture and language), they say instead, is an identity which is real and only what should be embraced.

In reality, race doesn't seem to only constitute skin color/tone. Racial groups when examined have several other phenotypical differences... including hair type (texture, length), general body height, the size and shapes of different body parts (skull, eyes, nose, ears etc).

By phenotypical differences, there are huge similarities between people of different ethnicities around the same geographical environment. There are these similarities for example between (Senegalese, Ghanian and Gabonese) people, (Eritrean, Somali) people, (Korean, Japanese) people or (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish) or (Syrian, Saudi Arabian) people.

These clearly are real phenotypical differences in people in different parts of the world. And the fact of their consistent replication over several generations proves these differences are genetic. I don't think progressive black liberals who refute the idea of race would dispute that fact. Consistently reproduced similarities in phenotypes of people in different parts of the world are real, and that is what 'race' is. Could the word 'race' have lost its original meaning, but the concept we have just described be real? Yes.

What we may wonder about having agreed on that is: why do some progressive black liberals dispute the idea of race (consistently reproduced similarities in phenotypes)? Could it be because they belong to the most maligned, lowest-status race? Or could it be due to a corruption of the word 'race' itself?

A black skin tone clearly isn't enough to define a race since other phenotypical differences matter. A white skin tone doesn't either (northern europeans and eastern Asians have the same skin color but are of different races).

Might this mean there might not be a monolithical black race? Western and central Africans have basically the same phenotype. Some Eastern Africans (slender and tall with an oblong face OR predominantly caramel-skinned, less kinky-haired) can be easily told apart in a lineup which includes a mix of eastern, central and western Africans. Southern Africans too do not look too disimilar to western and central Africans, aside maybe ethnic groups like the khoi-san who are famously light skinned and steatopygic. All these groups are dark-skinned sure, but some are different in some ways from the others.

Why then do all sub-Saharan Africans get classified as 'black'? Might these be references to a believed cultural backwardness, or lousy technological development which they imagine is illustrated in these groups being left "in pitch blackness" at night? Or might 'black' be a harmless term referring to being "blacker than the other races"?

If consistently reproduced similarities in phenotypes of different people in different parts of the world are real, why do some black progressive liberals then try to dismiss its existence? Might it be that they are embarrassed to be associated with poor, black people in poor, underdeveloped countries?

Related: Why does racial discrimination against black Africans exist?