[Dragaera] Boing!

[Maximilian Wilson]

On 9/8/06, Jon_Lincicum at stream.com <Jon_Lincicum at stream.com> wrote:
> "Many contemporary biological definitions of race conceptualize races as
> evolutionary lineages within the human species. Genetic data can be used
> to infer population structure and assign individuals to groups that often
> correspond with their self-identified geographical ancestry."
>
> Using this definition, it may be akin to an analogy of colored marbles.
>
> If I have 17 white marbles, and 17 blue ones, then I can divide them into
> two groups: blue ones and white ones.
>
> Now, while this is certainly a superficial distinction, since the marbles
> are otherwise identical, I fail to see how it is an "artifical"
> distinction. It seems to me it is based on an objective observation.

That's pretty one-dimensional; the marbles are identical in all
aspects except color. In this case, the choice of what division to
make is obvious. Not so with humans, and if you try to divide humanity
into broad groups based on common traits and inferred lineages you
still have the problem of defining how strict you're being about
commonality and how much weight to give to various traits.
Colloquially, "race" is determined by (AFAICT) skin color, facial
features, and language spoken; these features exist objectively but
the decision to rely on them for classification is not so objective.
"Artificial" strikes me as a very reasonable word to describe the
division.

Dragaerans are more like marbles than Easterners are, particularly
because in their case the lineage groups don't interbreed and so can
be divided cleanly.

-Maximilian

-- 
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.