Re: Owed Explanation I (Was Re: Ebonic Xmas)

hoensch@SOFTHOME.NET wrote:
> Races: the scientific term is "sub-species", for humans
> there are three which are clearly distinguishable, colloquially;
> asians, blacks, and whites.
Uh, no.  There is ONE subspecies of Humanity, Homo sapiens sapiens, as
distinguished from the extinct Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.  Races are
not scientific, they are cultural constructions, altho there are
differences between people in different continents, there is no rigid
division.  There is no point at which you can say "east of here, you
have Asians, west of here you have Europeans", nor could you analyze DNA
and say "this is Asian DNA" or "this is African DNA", unless, I suppose,
you were to concentrate on the areas responsible for skin coloration and
the like.

And as John Cowan has already pointed out, the difference is quite small
between the varieties of humans.  Indeed, the difference WITHIN a group
is greater than that between groups.  That is, the difference between
two unrelated whites is greater than the difference between blacks and
whites, which consists almost purely of appearances, plus a few small
genetic differences like sickle-cell anemia among blacks or cystic
fibrosis among whites.

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