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Originally Posted by raveneye
Yes: it is arbitrary where you draw the line, and the traits you use to make any delineation are also completely arbitrary. I agree completely.
That is why your "best definition of race" doesn't have much utilitarian value.
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I asked my friend, a former tissue-typer at a human organ transplant facility, about this. He said that you could call it arbitrary, but that they had very well-defined guidelines for what is commonly called a "good match."
Less well-defined is the definition of a "dark" individual, versus a "light-skinned" individual, but that concept is useful as well, in regard to predicting skin cancer.
Both of these would appear to have utilitarian value to me.
Getting back to earlier statements, some years ago I saw a study whose results concluded that many American immigrants are what could be called "overachievers," and that it often carried over to the second generation.
By the third generation, statistically, there was very little difference in their performance in comparison to those whose grandparents, etc. were born here. I haven't seen this in years, and a brief seach didn't locate it. Sorry.
So now I'm on both sides of the genetics debate.
