Quote:
But isn't there biological differences between caucasians and asian, for example? Facial features, skin tone, height...all biological.
Categorizing people isnt necessarily a bad thing, it's using this categorization to discriminate people in a negative way thats the problem.
|
Quote:
|
Yes there is a biological difference, but its not sufficient to make two different races incompatible. It's like in dogs. A basset hound and a St. Bernard are very different looking dogs, but they're still the same species.
|
I must emphatically disagree with these assessments...
As the late and great anthropologist Frank B. Livingston once wrote: "There are no races, there are only clines."
The point is twofold. First of all, there is no genetic difference between the races, it has been found in fact that a 'caucasian' can have more genetic commonality with a person with black skin than another person of their so called race. The cheif difference is
phenotypic, that is how those genes are expressed...
Though phenotypic expression is to some measure a 'biological difference', the second point is that the racial categories have no real purchase in their division of humanity. For instance, there are people living in South Africa, such as Nelson Mandela who have less melanin in their skin than people living in southern Italy. Similarly, in places like East Timor, people have what are generally called 'asian' features, such as straight black hair, but also have very dark skin. In short, no matter which particular set of attributes you decide to label a 'race', there is nowhere to draw the line, no set of people who fit that label easily. If you go by skin colour, hair, eyes, bone structure or any combination of these, there are people on earth who will not fit into the categorisation.