Developed to keep the melanin deficient in charge over those that are blessed with more melanin...

There is only the human race...anything else is a construct meant to seperate.

...because they imply an acceptance of the concept that we actually are not all the same race, which biologically, we are. I've always thought better words for biases against darker skinned people would be "colorism" and "colorist." It's more accurate, plus it makes more clear how silly and arbitrary the distinction really is.

… the answer is that we really have only one race. In the future, everyone will be "mixed race" - maybe we are, already.

Most people in the world have some Neanderthal and/or Denisovan in them. That's what I call a different race -- other branches of the Homo tree. I don't think of colors as being synonymous with race. Black, white, Asian, Melanesian, or whatever are just variations of Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

The Russian poet, Alyeksandr Pushkin was proud of his partial African heritage and features, and history doesn't record much being made of what had to have been the interracial marriages of his ancestors. My brother is one half of an interracial marriage because his wife is considered to be of another race by both their societies. Were it not for that, only her accent would have been the distinction.

Their sons have facial features that heavily favor their mother, but are culturally as American as we are. I have no idea what box they check when confronted with the occasional form that asks the person filling it out for "race."

When skin color is just as important as hair and eye color. I can see that day coming when I see children playing. They don't see color, they see a playmate.

Yes, it will be great day.

Education is the key point.

Words are powerful. As you said, kids don't see color but a playmate. To keep them on this way, We should not point something non-existent.

Just saying.

maybe one day it wont .

Racism is a real concept, not a construct, because there are so many people who are racists, but even more importantly because laws and institutions in this country support racism. Racism is not just random bigotry practiced by assholes; it's a structural system that perpetuates harm against individuals of color.

Terms like "inter-racial" marriage are still important because the experience of being married changes if you're part of an inter-racial couple. Within memory, it wasn't even legal. Inter-racial couples face discrimination and abuse, challenges that other couples do not. Having a term to explain why those things are STILL happening to them is important. Take away the term for it and you erase acknowledgment of the reason behind that abuse.

Being black is more than just a darker shade of skin color. It is intricably entwined with a rich cultural history, as well as the harsh realities of what it means to be an oppressed minority. Erasing that heritage in some vast "mixed-color" melting pot is not the solution to racism. We can recognize "race" as a short-hand unscientific term for different cultures/histories/traditions and celebrate those differences, respect them, not erase them.

the idea of interracial doesn't exist in reality. If anything, we're a very inbred species. Even our primate cousins show far more genetic diversity than Homo sapiens. Of course, some humans, like the Huckabee clan, are more inbred than others.

Someone made a comment about interracial dating and he stopped class to give us a lecture on humanity and "our glorious wonderful genetic variation that small-minded people refer to as 'race'."

...then we can ignore stuff like racism and institutional oppression of minorities.

If I was ignoring racism or minorities oppression, I wouldn't ask.

We have to start somewhere. A good start would be to remember the power of the words and thus, to avoid distinction where it is unnecessary.

It is not the word itself that is problematic but its use.

Removing the word has no meaning, however, insisting on the fact there is only one race, one and only one is important.

Words are powerful and if they are taught right from childhood, we can, at least if not eradicate xenophobia, move in the right direction.

What do national borders mean?

Then why use a formulation both false and ridiculous, to name a disunion between two like-regions?

After all, when I look at pictures of the planet, I don't say, “there's the demarcation between Canada and Alaska.”

So why should we make a meaningless distinction when talking about the planet?

The more interesting question is why we need a wall between Mexico and the US to define a border, but not between Maryland and West Virginia.

The comparison is not relevant.

However, borders are no longer meaningful in our globalized world, but it is another subject. We can open another thread and discuss it further.

Differentiating humans on the basis of an imaginary multitude of races is harmful.

I once again mention the power of words. Words have to be given their meaning and used adequately.

Once we hammer the existence of a single human race, we will move in the right direction to end xenophobia.

Can't get away from that by cancelling a word or the definition of a word.

It's a significant qualifier precisely because so many undies get bunched over it, because so many haters keep othering it.

to fuel their hatred of others

Didn't you ever watch Star Trek?

I loved the show when I was a kid!

You just gave the exact definition for interracial marriage.

In Voyager, the Klingon woman married the human guy.

Everyone is so intermingled now (as all those DNA test prove) that it is just marriage now...plain and simple.

anybody can be an asshole

i was too methodist for them.....

one couple in particular was upset because we were supposedly unevenly yoked......
i thought it had to do with eggs

any subgroup that tries to demonstrate an elitist self image is an area for concern

I'm proud to say I have never broken that pledge.

Because you've never met an alien, who knows?

You might have changed your mind !

You're right, although I've met some very, very strange human females during my relatively long life.

How do you call the strange human (?? ) male who's squatting the Oval Office ?

My White Wyoming Wild West grandpa, married a White Wild West San Francisco girl, had fits that I was marrying, in his words, "a Mexican girl." Men in his family simply did not do that. He boycotted our wedding. (To his credit he got over it before he passed...)

My wife has Native American heritage. Her U.S. Southwest ancestors were driven into Mexico by the U.S. Army and later returned to their ancestral homelands as farm worker "immigrants." My wife's dad was born in a farm labor camp within easy walking distance of a small farm my parents once owned, and a place my grandfather had boarded his horses.

Race is a very real thing with serious consequences to those who believe they are of some sort of superior race.

That's why we can't ignore it.

I've very little patience for "colorblind" political ideologies. Most are championed by people who haven't yet recognized their own racist tendencies.

issue.