Does race exist?

[dan]

To say race does not exist would be to ignore the adaptations of the Inuit that allows them to stick their bare hands in icy water and still be able to feel what they're doing. I whole-heartedly agree that race should never be used against anyone, but you can't pretend it doesn't exist, either.

Race does not exist, and there is no proof to the contrary. White people can get sickle-cell. They can also get SARS and every other disease attributed to one ethnicity or another. Race in the distant past was determined by nationality. A Greek was a different race than a Germanic person, even though they both qualify as the same race today. Race was determined by the country on your passport up until the Catholic church came around [SIC].

The Catholi church set out to show that certain races (or nationalities) were better than others. They came up with "the great chain of being." this website shows the actual "Great Chain of Being":

www.stanford.edu/class/engl174b/chain.html

They used this chart to find a link between blacks and our primate "relatives." They felt that this would justify their maltreatment of them. This theory is the basis for slavery in our time (before anyone and everyone was made a slave, regardless of their skin color), and also led to Darwin's famous theory.

Our society has defined race and created this idea that there is a genetic difference. There is absolutely no difference in the genetics of a black man, a chinese man and a white man. The American Anthropological Association has commented repeatedly on this and holds that there are more genetic differences within any given "race" than between any two "races."

www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm

All the differences you and your buddy can spend all day conjuring up can all be attributed to other factors besides race. Regional, diet, activity, cultural and other differences contribute to the many factors that seem to isolate one race or another. The Inuit grow up with a different conditioning regiment than we do. Race has absolutely nothing to do with it, and any study that says it does is just wrong.

 

[robtex]

I have read genetics stuff saying there is no such thing as race too but its one of those instances where my senses tell me otherwise.

To me I can say that a black male looks different than a southeast asian than a far east asian than a latino or a middle easterner.

I find an asian as a different smell than a black or a white.....oriental skin is smooth to touch...afro american thick not as smooth.....

I mean I know what genetics is saying about DNA but either my senses are lying to me there are noticable diffrences.

 

[painted wolf]

yes, but just what does a black male look like?
Dark skin? How dark? There are numerous variations in skin tone among native Africans from light skined Moraccans to very Dark skinned Nubians and so on.
Nose shape? Again there is huge regional variation from one tribe to another. Some have short broad noses some have long thin ones.
Hair? Again the same differences from one tribe/ethnic group to another. From almost strait to extremely curled/kinky.
Other ethnic/racial groups also show this sort of variation.
White people.... brown or blue eyes? Meditaranian tan or Nordic pale? Red, blond, brown or black hair? Tall, short, Roman nose or button nose? So on and so on endlessly.

We have different shapes and colors, this is natural for our species as we are globally adapted. All differences are simply your sences fooling you. Race is a societal construct.

wa:do

 

[dan]

What you see leads you to believe one thing, but what you don't see makes up a vast majority of these "races." Like the AAA says, there are more differences within each ethnic group than between them. We are all different, that is true, but we could divide the race lines by hair color, eye color or even which is your dominant hand if we wanted. There are a plethora of ways we are different, but that does not mean we have to separate ourselves. Race is a man-made classification that has no scientific basis.

 

[Fluffy]

Thankyou dan and painted wolf. I had no idea that the division between my idea of the human "races" was so small genetically as to amount to nothing.

However my question would be this: How, in other animals, is race determined scientifically? Are there any other instances of this happening other than in humans or is this truly unique that an animal should be subdivided over differences so small?