http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_classification)

Oh dear.

"Race" is a first level operationalization of human geographic variation.

See here for a detailed discussion:

http://old.richarddawkins.net/discussions/...debunked#page11

Of course, understanding that makes one a "racist", which trumps "the truth" in most peoples minds.

So we have a dumb wikipedia article sourced to lawyers, journalists and PBS rather than scientists, containing paragraphs like:

"It is demonstrated that race has no biological or genetic basis: gross morphological features which traditionally has been defined as races (e.g. skin color) are determined by non-significant and superficial genetic alleles with no link to any characteristics, such as intelligence, talent, athletic ability, etc. Race has been socially and legally constructed despite the lack of any scientific evidence for dividing humanity into racial baskets with any generalized genetic meaning.[16][17][18][19]"

These sources are from 1998 and such and are based on fallacies such as the idea that "more variation within than between races" invalidates the concept, despite the fact that there is more variation within chimps and humans than between them. If the traits which define race are "superficial", it does not mean they have "no biological or genetic basis" (of course they do). Whether the real genetic morphological differences that define race are correlated to unequal genetic intelligence distributions is currently debated rather than settled.

http://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpres...07/lee-2009.pdf

"Race" was constructed based on skull analysis by Blumenbach and has been corroborated by modern genetic studies that find major discontinuities between Negroids, Caucasoids and Mongoloids. eg.

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3...al.pgen.1000500
http://humpopgenfudan.cn/p/A/A1.pdf

All of these sources are ignored. Race is a biological reality. In short, this article is a pile of PC garbage.

But at least it's not "racist". (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/rolleyes.gif)

This post has been edited by mikemikev: