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what is race?

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hollowmoon
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22 Dec 2014, 1:52 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
"Race," to me, is a purely arbitrary concept. It is based, solely, upon a person's physical appearance. It has nothing to do with the person's mind, or the essence of a person or person.

Ethnicity is sometimes correlated with "race."


what are the specific characteristics that puts someone into a different race? How do you know which race someone is? It makes no sense!!



hollowmoon
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22 Dec 2014, 1:54 pm

SIDWULF wrote:
...caucasoid, negroid, mongoloid. So they could be from any region under those three sub species. No one wants to study any of this cause it would be "racist" its great to look like a good guy and deny everything too. What research has already done is classify into three groups based on differences in skull and facial bone structure.


how on earth do you know category someone is in?? In one continent alone there are SO MANY different skin colors and bone structures. It makes no sense!! How can everyone fit into three categories?? Can you tell what race someone is without talking to them??



SIDWULF
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22 Dec 2014, 3:53 pm

Ask science, science catagorizes things. You can read about the differences on wikipedia

Otherwise its easy to get a sense which group someone is in through physical features alone.



Adamantium
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22 Dec 2014, 4:07 pm

I just had a chat with science and science told me PBS had a good microsite on this subject:
http://www.pbs.org/race/001_WhatIsRace/001_00-home.htm



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22 Dec 2014, 4:14 pm

From my understanding it has a lot to do with environmental factors, like people in different geographic reasons with different weather have developed varying physical traits to survive those environments. As for where humans came from...well for all I know we aren't even natives to this planet, but who knows. But maybe there is a better term than race for these environmental/geographic evolutionary differences than race.

I know in the context of like fantasy novels/movies...humans are a race, elves are a race, dwarves are a race, orcs are a race ect., so in that context it would seem the term race would not be used to distinguish two humans from different regions who have physical appearances reflecting that.


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kraftiekortie
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22 Dec 2014, 4:48 pm

Yep, Marybird, that would have been interesting...seeing the Australopithecines in action.

We might have had to make some tough ethical choices.

As for playing video games, Neanderthals would have had a hard time playing games on smartphones--but would have done okay on the larger laptops.



kraftiekortie
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22 Dec 2014, 4:52 pm

We continue to think in terms of "race" because we want to categorize differences in appearance amongst the Human species.

In actuality, "race" is quite a superficial concept. And I don't believe it serves any useful purpose.

I believe, if we want to categorize people, that we should think in terms of "ethnicity," instead.