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Had an interesting conversation with Devon and Denise regarding race. In the wake of the Charleston shootings by someone whose stated reason was that he wanted to "kill black people" in order to start a race war, we're once again forced to look at America's issue with racism and bigotry.
But what is race? Is it even a valid, measurable concept? From a genetic standpoint, we can place types of living creatures into species -- and one trait of species (as I understand it) is that species are sufficiently genetically different from each other that they cannot produce offspring.
But then, for humans, we further subdivide the species Homo Sapiens into "races" (who obviously can interbreed), and generally that's done either by markers such as skin color, or sometimes by simply nationality (all Irish people are alike, y'know...) or religion (all Muslims are alike, y'know). But are those valid signifiers? Is there actually such a thing as "race" at all, or is it an artificial distinction?
According to Devon's instructor in his Genetics class, it's the latter. Many scientists would agree, though there is some division on the subject. Here's an interesting, non-confrontational Pro/Con article on the subject.
I tend to think that "race" is more a sociological distinction (or perhaps even a class distinction) than a biological one. What do you think? (And please keep comments civil or they will be deleted...)
But what is race? Is it even a valid, measurable concept? From a genetic standpoint, we can place types of living creatures into species -- and one trait of species (as I understand it) is that species are sufficiently genetically different from each other that they cannot produce offspring.
But then, for humans, we further subdivide the species Homo Sapiens into "races" (who obviously can interbreed), and generally that's done either by markers such as skin color, or sometimes by simply nationality (all Irish people are alike, y'know...) or religion (all Muslims are alike, y'know). But are those valid signifiers? Is there actually such a thing as "race" at all, or is it an artificial distinction?
According to Devon's instructor in his Genetics class, it's the latter. Many scientists would agree, though there is some division on the subject. Here's an interesting, non-confrontational Pro/Con article on the subject.
I tend to think that "race" is more a sociological distinction (or perhaps even a class distinction) than a biological one. What do you think? (And please keep comments civil or they will be deleted...)