Despite our recent sad conflicts here in the U.S., there really is no such thing as race.

[kpete]

"we all have to work together"

peace,
kp

[Blus4u]

1. Regrettably some of us lack the ability to feel empathy.

Eom
Good post, kp


Peace

[frizzled]

2. That would be news to doctors, who often treat different races in different ways

For example, estimating kidney function depends on whether you are African-American or not.

http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-communication-programs/nkdep/lab-evaluation/gfr/estimating/Pages/estimating.aspx

Saying there are "no races" sounds good, in a wishy-washy kind of a way, but it's really not biologically true. Humankind is the product of hundreds of thousands of year of diversification.

What is true is that everyone must be equal under the law and recognizing the enormous amount of human diversity does not diminish anyone's humanity. Quite the opposite, IMO.

[kpete]

3. we are all made of the same stardust

all of us are carbon based life forms
way more alike than different....

peace,
kp

[frizzled]

4. Damn right. But I often think the differences are interesting, too. What's wrong with diversity?

The spirit of your post seems to be "Let's enjoy solidarity, because we're so similar".

But if we came across, say, a bunch of aliens, or even an artificial intelligence, something not even based on matter, I imagine I could feel solidarity and kinship with them, too.

Sorry to be contrary, but that's just the way I am

[LanternWaste]

6. Many people predicate their daily decisions and their character on the imaginary

Many people predicate their daily decisions and even their own character on the wholly imaginary; e.g., race, national borders, religion, politics, etc.

[MisterP]

5. just LOOK at this hot haplogroup mess

so the Chippewa are genetically basal to the Indo-Europeans, the Russians are the closest to South Asia's "Aryans," the rest of the Native Americans are in turn related to the Chippewa-Indo-European complex, the "Nordics'" closest relatives are the Balkans and then the Greeks/Anatolians/Semites, and the Aborigines are closest to the Mongols, Kazakhs, Tangut, and Athabascans ...

most telling, of course, is that it doesn't line up with the female chain of mutations (on mtDNA), so the two halves of the ladder (male-only and female-only transmission) are pretty far apart and the rungs are nicely jumbled: "race" is dead and buried, despite the initial fears about the Human Genome Project

of course there's plenty of "race realists" still infesting science and arguing that we originate from the same stellar nebula can only take you so far--you gotta bring in monogenesis and hylozoism, which are philosophical rather than scientific (the boundaries can be mushy, tho)