Fiona Adams wrote: > I'm sorry, but you are incorrect. Ethnicity is in fact cultural. However, > race is a socially constructed term and there is no shred of scientific > evidence that there are any other races other than human. There is > absolutely no biological, and by that I mean evolutionary, etc., difference > between human beings. You may choose to use "race" how you wish, but you are > in the minority if you claim that there are biological differences among > humans. Biologically speaking, humans are not a race--they are a species (as far as I know, race has always been a sub-category of species during the time it's been used biologically). Contrary to the statement that there is "absolutely no biological, and by that I mean evolutionary, etc., difference between human beings", there obviously are. If one can maintain there are no genetical differences between, for example, a population of South African Bushmen (substitute your preferred terminology) and, say, Icelandic populations, one would seem to be using a different genetics than that used by biologists. It's arguably counter productive to maintain there are no differences, since it merely gives one more opportunity for racists to snigger about political correctness. That being said, there is considerable evidence to indicate that the differences among human populations are local evolutionary adaptations that are, as far as "racism" goes, insignificant. Indeed, humans seem to be less variable genetically than most mammalian species, and the "core" of being human is in the overwhelming genetic similarity shared among all populations. "Race" as commonly used is cultural in the sense that people have seized upon a few, prominent characteristics (such as skin color, hair texture, etc.) to form definitions of race that have little to do with biological reality. Denying that race is meaningless except as a cultural construct is one thing; denying that various populations differ somewhat due to evolutionary processes is something else. Cheers, Art Harris -- Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968-0915 phone (915)747-6985; fax (915)747-5808; [log in to unmask] http://www.utep.edu/leb http://nasa.utep.edu/chih/chihdes.htm ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).