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The problem here is that "black" can mean anybody with dark skin from anywhere in the world.

The sickle cell stuff is likely related to the fact that most "black" people in the US are descended from slaves that pretty much all came from the same small region in West Africa.

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My point here is that this problem only seems to be brought up when the research has to do with intelligence. If you talk about genetic differences between "black," "white," or any other racial grouping on any other metric nobody ever brings it up as in my example above. So, while I acknowledge the fundamental weaknesses of the category, I have to conclude that the real objection here isn't the categories, but the topic of the research.

Most of the examples that you've used gain very little from added specificity. It's essentially linguistic laziness. That linguistic laziness is not identically consequential in all contexts.

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