 An important point here is that linking genomics and race does not mean that researchers search for, or even that there are, any ‘genes for race’, even if we consider the many different ways in which this term can be interpreted (Dupré 2008). The discussion about the possible genetic basis for race is now more subtle, as it is not simply concerned with the presence or absence of specific genes or DNA elements and hence some sort of biological essence of races, but rather with the variation in the frequencies of alleles in the population of interest (Gannett 2001, 2004). The question is therefore not whether DNA element X is absent or present in one population or the other, but rather which variant of X is present at what frequency in a population (in the context of the HapMap researchers will talk of SNP frequencies).