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Notes -
One of the problems is that terms like this often succumb to a kind of definition creep. Any postulated definition for 'HBD' shifts as the term is used.
'HBD' stands for 'human biodiversity'. The minimalist definition of it is something like what you said - being aware that there is genetic differentiation among modern human populations. That minimal definition is obvious, uncontroversial among all but the most radical blank-slatists, and also useless for most practical purposes. More importantly, it's not the way the term is used in practice. The category 'people who agree that there is genetic differentiation between human populations' is so vast and expansive as to massively outrun the term itself. When people talk about "being aware of HBD" or the like, they appear to mean something beyond just the motte of the term.
I would take a middling definition of HBD to be something more like, "1) there is genetic differentiation among modern human populations, 2) that differentiation more-or-less, if imperfectly, maps on to popular understandings of race, and 3) this has consequences for public policy". It seems to me that anyone who denies any of those three points is not really an HBDer beyond the most minimal sense of the term. There's room for debate about exactly what the differentiation is, how significant it is, what sorts of policy conclusions should follow, and so on, but the basic point is that race, in a genetic sense, both exists and is important.
And then past there I think there's a maximalist definition that accepts everything in the middling definition, but runs with specific implications for policy - this is the sort that just openly says that black people are genetically less capable and there's a dysgenic issue and so on.
The problem is that anyone criticising HBD (or more pertinently, HBDers-as-a-community) has a very strong incentive to portray the whole group as following the maximalist definition, and anyone defending HBD/HBDers-as-a-community has a strong incentive to portray HBD as only the minimalist definition. Probably most people who identify as HBDers are somewhere in the middle. Minimalists are unlikely to use the term even if they agree with the minimalist definition, because using it lumps them in with the others (including the maximalists, who most minimalists surely recoil from), and then of course even true maximalists have an incentive to water their views down and present themselves as moderates.
Anyway, realistically I just don't think it's a useful term. 'HBD' is too broad to be useful. I think it would be more practical if maximalists and the top end of moderates just ditched the euphemism and called themselves racialists or something - that's a more accurate label for what they are. Maybe they could use 'race realists'? That's a term that's gone around the block a bit. But as it is I feel like 'HBD' is a silly euphemism that people use mostly in order to avoid saying the word 'race'. Even though that is clearly what it's about.
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