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Old 11-02-2012, 01:45 PM
Daldolma Daldolma is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 645
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This is a ridiculous discussion. Race is shorthand. If you think humans are actually broken into cookie cutter genetic subgroups like "White", "Black", and "Asian", you're an idiot.

But saying "race doesn't exist" is pretty silly, too. The majority of people that use the term aren't using it as a genetic marker -- they're using it to refer to the social construct or just a general physical appearance. If someone asks you to describe Tupac, I think we're all pretty cool saying "Well, he was black..." without necessarily taking the time to qualify that he shares a vast majority of his genetic makeup with every other human being and may or may not be more similar genetically to certain people with lighter skin than to other people with darker skin.

It's just not realistic to expect the basic outline of race to go away -- at least not any time soon. Even if we stop collecting 'racial' data and asking about it on forms, nobody is going to stop referring to other people as black, white, Asian, Hispanic, etc. It's a fairly natural phenotypical distinction.