what is race?

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1. How many races are there, what are the specific countries to specific races?
2. Is it by skin color, eye color, hair texture? If so, is a person from india the same race as a person from africa. Is a thai the same race as chinese although the thai have tanner skin and wider noses? Is a swede the same race as an italian? Is a southern african or a mauritian the same race even though they have different features? The khoi of southern africa have almond eyes just like the Japanese are they the same race? Is someone from papa new ginueua the same race as someone from sudan even though they are far away but have the same skin color? How you define these people when these features inter collide? What is the difference between race and nationality? How do you know what race someone is? If race is simply what you look like why does it even matter?
3. I am very confused by this, my literal brain isn't grasping the concept. Can someone xplain it to me?

"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."

I'm with KK on this one.

The concept of "Race" in humans is analogous to the concept of "Breed" in livestock - arbitrary categorization by cosmetic variations within a given species.

All which you mentioned are "ethnic groups," or perhaps even parts of ethnic groups.

from taxonomy; a "race" is a group of creatures that can only interbreed with select groups; aka, if they are a race, they can interbreed, if they are not a race, they cannot.

seeing how all human ethnicities can interbreed without problems, they are all the same race (although there are enough differences between some ethnicities to allow sub-races).

i see it like dogs, looking clearly different, but being generally the same.

human ethnicities do have real notable differences, we aren't 100% the same; for example: europeans (and by extention, americans) are the only ones normally able to digest lactose genetically.

Agreed--the concept or definition of race is largely a human construct: people can be grouped by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, and/or social affiliation. In my life, I've seen it used to describe a kind of culture or sub-culture, but obviously a lot of people use it to justify discrimination, unequal treatment, war, genocide, etc.

Since it's so much easier to interact with one another across various divides--including space--nowadays, I think it will become harder to put people into tidy little categories. Even so, it's natural for most people to gather together with people they have more in common with, so perhaps whatever differences can be found will be used to divide people anyway. I think it's ridiculous and even disgusting that some people use any difference they can find to suggest or insist that x is better than y. People have far more in common than some would like to admit, and they can be dangerously immature about it.

Personally, I like diversity, but I think I've been fairly lucky to have lived in a place where it doesn't really get in the way of peaceful interaction, and I'm really thankful for that!

Wrong.

You have confused "Race" with "Species", which is the largest taxonomical group of organisms that is capable of interbreeding and producing inter fertile offspring.

For example, dogs are a species, while german shepherds and sheepdogs are "Races" within that species.

Besides, "Races" is not even a taxonomic category, being an entirely human idea that was developed to support the practice of "Racism".

Lets be practical here...

Race = breed = type = sub species

Humans have been seperated from eachother for long enough to evolve different body size, facial structure and skin color. Race is still a legitimate term even with increased racial mixing, the majority can still be traced by common physical features.

No member of any "race" is part of a separate subspecies. All humans today are Homo sapiens sapiens.

India was invaded by Aryans a long time ago. They set up the caste system.

Indians seems to be a mix of aryan and African.

Aryans were an ethnic group (or perhaps groups) who seemed to have migrated out of the Caucasus region, into the Indian region--rather than Africa. Perhaps, THEIR distant ancestors migrated out of Africa.

In general I think it is used to denote groups of people that lived separated from the others long enough to develop distinct physical characteristics (normally in response to the environment).

It isn't practical. It's a rubbish classification system. Fnord correctly defined the purpose.

"Everybody" knows in a practical way what it means, until you test it and discover their categories don't work.

Seen from Turkey, the peoples of Khazakstan are "obviously" very chineses/east asian. Seen from China, the same people are "obviously" arabs or turks...

Are the Finns properly White? What race are the Inuit? How about those straight haired, sharp nosed, dark skinned people from south Asia?

Race is a cultural product with no practical utility. The general ideas people associate with the term are better served by actual description of indiviuals or more precise concepts like haplotype.

...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.

Last edited by SIDWULF on 22 Dec 2014, 12:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Different populations of people constitute a gene pool with genes mixing and combining with each generation. Mutations that are beneficial or preferred stay in the gene pool of a population, such as dark skin to protect from sun and light skin to absorb more vitamin D in areas with less sun.
populations that are separated can evolve similar traits, especially if the climate is similar.
All humans today are the end product of over 6 million years of evolution from our common ape ancestors and the differences in modern humans are mostly superficial adaptations to different climates.

Genetic variation is not the only difference in populations. Cultural difference, different belief systems and ways of life that help humans adapt and survive are probably create more barriers between populations of humans than genetic difference.

To complicate matters, modern communication and transportation technology results in less separation between different populations and the human race is becoming more of one shared gene pool with a lot of variation in superficial traits.
Humans like to label things and obvious differences like skin color and facial features are an easy marker to identify someone as belonging to a different group, even though they are part of the same culture and gene pool.
A lot of genetic variation is a good thing though.

I wish there were other species of hominids still surviving on earth so we would not be alone and we would have a better perspective of our place in the animal kingdom.
I wonder how similar other hominids were to us.
I wonder if they were still alive today, if little Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, or Neanderthal kids would be playing video games all day long with the Homo sapien kids.

I wonder if Australopithecus were alive today if we would be able to communicate with them, I wonder if we would consider them apes or humans. I wonder how we would treat them.