Who wins the race?

[sleigh]

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...)

Comments

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

The species concept is nowhere near as clear-cut as that. Plant species interbreed a lot. Some birds do as well - Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees are one example. Assorted ducks are another.

As for race, from everything I've read there simply isn't a genetic basis for the black/white/Asian idea of race. There's way too much variation within each of those groups. There is most definitely a social and cultural basis for the concept of race in the US and most other countries, although what constitutes a "race" varies from place to place.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

The usual dictionary definition of species generally goes like this one from the Cambridge Dictionary: "a set of animals or plants, members of which have similar characteristics to each other and which can breed with each other." But yes, you're right -- there are instances of what we have deemed as different species cross-breeding and creating hybrids. Hooded crows and carrion crows are another example, some trees have cross-fertilized to give us hybrids, and what do you do about things like bacterium that reproduce asexually? But by and large, different species don't interbreed.

And "race"... All I can do is shake my head at that one. It reminds me of what the late fan Bill Bowers used to say about defining science fiction: "Science fiction is what I'm pointing at when I say 'This is science fiction.'"