Come Oh Ye Rational Thinkers...and explain race theory to me

[paulpablo]

There are gene lines, yes, and the East Asian Blush is true, but they don't track with 'races' at all. And, generally, they are mixed and mixed again, so that it'd be impossible to make neat categories.

What do you mean when you say gene lines don't track with races?

I'm just confused because I don't know what you mean by track with, and I don't know how you can find that something doesn't track with something you believe is non existent anyway.

I always thought race basically was genetic lines, different breeds of people. Obviously pretty much every different breed of human is cross bred because there's very few groups of people who are isolated totally from other groups of humans, there are no neat dividing lines but there are groups of people with different characteristics.

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Julial wrote

Race is a leftover cultural concept from the age of expansion of the English/French/Spanish/Dutch/Portugese used to rationalize the subjugation of pretty much everyone they met outside Europe. Other folks, like the Japanese, had similar xenophobic concepts, but were less effective in implementing their empires.

I disagree with this just because it seems like an over simplified too specific to be historically accurate to say that the concept of race if leftover from one specific era by one group of people for one specific purpose.

Ancient civilizations all over the world before many of the countries you mentioned even existed had concepts of race, egyptians and greeks for example.