Race/ethnicity is real in that there are real genetic differences between all human groups coming from different geographical locations.

But the way we -see- race is a bit weirder.

In the US, people are called "black" even if 2/3rds of their ancestors are European, because socially and culturally they are seen as such.

Someone from Somalia will be genetically closer to someone from the Yemen on the Arabian peninsula than to someone from Nigeria on the other side of Africa, and yet according to 19th century theories the Somali is black and the Arab "caucasian" of some sort.

Likewise, genetically a mixed-race person seen as Black in the US may share more genes with a German person than with someone from Madagascar.

A scientifically logical race-division for humans would be... difficult to make. But it'd probably have a bunch of different African races, since the greatest genetic diversity between humans is found within the African continent. (Logical, since we all came from there originally and only smaller and genetically more homogeneous groups left.)

The annoying bit is that these two aspects of race, the biological and the cultural, are mixed up all the time. The latter is a social construct, the former is not, and the categories don't overlap all that neatly either. This leads to a lot of people shouting at eachother and calling the other side mad (which to be fair, they sometimes are) and not much communication going on.

I suppose we could try adding new words and definitions, like changing race to ethnicity or vice versa, but that'll probably just lead to more confusion as some people will start using the new words and others will stick to the old. It's a bit like programmers trying to come up with newer and more logical standards only to end up fracturing the community even further.

I'm going to bet that if you take a black couple from Congo, bring them to Japan, and have them make a child there, the child will look considerably darker than the average Japanese. The DNA sequence might not have been identified, but I'm willing to bet a genetic difference that makes you black does exist there somewhere.

Yes, melanin determines skin and hair color and it is passed down from parents but it also seems to naturally mutate, since many dark skin parents may have lighter skinned / brown haired parents have black haired kids children or vice versa. Either way; I don't think any difference between races will go beyond ones determining physical features.

though I've heard Australian Aborigines are supposed to be able to handle a greater temperature range comfortably than most people. (don't need to bundle up so much for cooler weather & not sweat so much when it's warmer. I figure it's a good argument for evolutionary branching in living people.

So? And if I have chlidren with an Asian woman they won't have blue eyes.

Race isn't a skin color thing no matter how often people say that it is. Skin color is a relatively tiny piece of the puzzle and ultimately, there are plenty of Africans that aren't black. And I'm not just talking about the relatively recent immigrants either. Much of North Africa has been populated by white people for ages.

So it's genetical after all, even if we don't know where exactly that information is stored.

When two animals can reproduce among themselves (and their offspring is fertile, AFAIK), those 2 animals are of the same species. When an bunch of animals of the same species have distinct physical traits from each other, such as skin color, they are of different races. And that is an inherited trait. Of course there are mixed breeds, it's the same species after all, just like it happens to dogs.

Skin color has been a traditional trait for races to be separated by, but of course it's hard to tell the exact point when one stops being one race and becomes another. You can clearly say this guy is black and this other one is white; but what about that milk coffee colored one over there? Who knows. Maybe it's a mixed breed between black and white, maybe it's a pure breed of something else. Not that I care.

On the way of race, I've always wondered: what race am I? As most Basques, I'm white, or look the part anyway. Except, I'm officially Spanish, would that make me hispanic? What's the difference between whites and hispanics? Furthermore, as stated I'm Basque, and as such I've had many encounters with Spanish police where I've been poorly treated. From being stopped on an ID check for half an hour with absurd excuses (I was once held up literally because "it was too cold to wear shorts, and that was suspicious") to being held at gunpoint (with a machine gun!) by military police because I was deemed to have displayed too little respect. At least that one time in Madrid they were honest enough to outright say "We stop people from the north, and sometimes we get lucky". An asshole, yes, but an honest one; by far one of the better policemen I've had the dubious honor to encounter.

So yeah, I wonder: Am I the oppressing white male, or am I the oppresed minority? Help me out guys, I've got a bit of an identity crisis here.

No, it's not genetic, there are individual genetic components, but you can't point to any of them on the list that are both necessary and sufficient to make somebody one race or another. The 23 & me project demonstrated that conclusively years ago.

The whole idea doesn't even make any sense as there's been mixing of the various groups for millenia to the point where you can't really point out a specific line where one race ends and another starts.

EDIT: You're confusing race with ethnicity. Hispanic is a bullshit term that they use for people that grew up speaking Spanish. If you're really curious about where your family came from, I recommend Ancestry.com's test. I took that earlier in the year out of curiosity. Results were mostly as I suspected, but I was a bit disappointed that there weren't any particularly shocking secrets.

There may be a fuzzy area on where that line lies, but IMO there clearly is a distinction there somewhere. There's a bunch of people with white skin and another bunch with black skin; and I call that 2 races. If you do not, you probably use a different definition of race than I do.

That is where social justice trips; IMO. The characteristics that determine race are extremely vague and badly defined. I don't know what race I am either. I've read about at least 5 races of this region in sociology books and I don't fit any race solidly last time I checked. Trying to divide people based on race will eventually lead to questions of''racial purity'' and we all know that won't end well.

This might help. Canada is failing to reach its ideal state of perfect mixed marriages. http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/07/26/mixed-unions-the-ideal-or-brownwashing/ They need to indtoduce some sort of system to encrease intermarriages so it will happen quicker. The former President of France spoke of a similar idea a while ago. People need to be integrated especially in Europe where there are a lot of white suplremaceists!

The way I understand it, ethnicity has to do with the geographical area one was born at (or ancestry), while race is simply about physical traits alone. While skin color is typically the main differentiator of race, there are more points of course; plus there will be overlap on these trait among different traits and there will be no easy dividing line after all the mixing that has been going on. However, that doesn't invalidate the core concept of race.

I'll grant you that the trait definition of what makes a race is social, though, if that's what you where going at. Going by the deffinition of common physical traits, you could make the point there could be a joint eyebrow race or a prone to heart attack one; skin color and such are typically used as it's the more immediately obvious one and ethnicity also played a role on it.

As for the hispanic word... I don't know, I'll take your word on it. There's a bunch of words I hear Americans use and I don't really understand what it means for them, sometimes I get curious.

On the matter of race the point is. There are different races, breeds, or varians in the human species. That is true. And in some cases that leads to different needs (For example people with dominant African traits have congenital diseases different to those with dominant Asian traits). But that is no excuse to abuse or treat another race as inferior. And that is something we can all agree with. One thing is acknowledging that we are differnt without treating anyone with disrespect and a big different one is being a chauvinist.

Help on what? Reducing racism? Yeah, that would be cool I guess. I'm not a fan of world homogenization, but less racists is always good.

IMO there is two kinds of racism : positive racism where people associate positive characteristics with a race and negative racism where they associate negative characteristics with a race. What seems to be happening in the western social justice driven anti racism campaigns is removal of negative racism only. Just my opinion.

Anyhow, the government should not be able to sponsor any programs associated with racial homogeneity or any type of such vile ''breeding programs'' they dream up. That is favoring one race over another, whatever the others and the favored may be. What if someone had started a mixed race superiority genocidal empire? Would these idiots join them? Really; this is extremely intrusively uglily disgustingly authoritarian and it demonstrates the lack of evolution from the 40s where people were drawn in by ideas of a better race.