To a biologist, “race” means a very specific thing. It’s essentially a synonym for “variety”, or “sub-species”, and applies, as the name implies, to a portion of a species. Now, defining species is a massively problematic affair, and one that’s never really been settled. Nevertheless, most biologists agree that species are “real” categories, whereas other categories in the taxonomic hierarchy (Genus, Family, Order, etc.) are pretty much arbitrary.
Species are remarkably hard to define, but most people just go along with the idea that species are marked by reproductive isolation. If organisms interbreed naturally and have fertile offspring, they belong to the same species. Clearly, then, all human beings belong to the same species (as evidenced by the very existence of coloureds). No problem there. (This definition of species is tied into the recognition that gene flow and the lack thereof is the core of biodiversity, incidentally.) Now sub-species are usually defined somewhat as follows: naturally occurring and geographically distinct variants of a species.
Now once upon a time, this might have been useful. After all, the San were different to the Bantu people, who were different to the Europeans, who differed from the Chinese. Sure, there was some blurring along the borders, but mostly you could tell where people were from just by lookngi at them. But over the last five centuries or so, the world’s been getting smaller, and now we live in a “global village”, where the term “black” applies to people who live in Africa, in Europe, in America, and whose ancestors came from a myriad of places (though ultimately, we all stem from Africa) – all over the place, really.
So does it make sense to speak of the white race? Or the black race? Or, heaven forefend, the coloured race (coloureds, being mixtures, mess any attempt to speak of human sub-species up totally)?
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A little apology:
For the life of me I can not remember where I extracted the above from. Please forgive me. If you do know, please inform me urgently so that I can link and give proper credit to the source and author.