h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>>I suppose my argument is that the biological understanding is - by dint perhaps of it's very modernity - superior and should be privileged in our discourse to the misunderstandings preserved in linguistics.

>>>Also can I quibble human race / human species?
There is one species of humans, granted, and there variances within that accord broadly with geographical and national constraints of population isolation so there regions of genetic alleles that are divergent but similar and probably the result of a mix of selection pressures and sex selection. So in this sense we have a worked out understanding of human variance in terms of species and sub/species - what is gained with co-joining of this as equivalent with race? It seems to me superfluous.<<<

Quibble away, Clive, it's your journal.

The word race seems to date from the 14th century (according to my dictionary, your milage may differ) and perhaps some non-scientific misunderstandings have been preserved in the word.

However, the term race was used in the biological sciences until recently. The 19th century anthropologists attempted to categorize humans by such out-dated and offensive classifications as Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid. Early biologists used "race" in taxonomy, but later dropped the word in favor of the more accurate terms subspecies and variety.

So our current classification is:
Genus: Homo
Species: Sapiens
Subspecies: Sapiens

Our current understanding of human evolution has been shaped by numerous discoveries, including some which lead to the inescapable conclusion that we're all very closely related. (Hi, Cousins! ) There is surprisingly little difference between any two humans. Why is that? The working hypothesis is that all Humankind descended from the very same woman, the so-called African Eve.

As biology has been advancing, so has the newer science of sociology. Some anthropologists still use the term race in certain contexts, but for the most part the idea of race is now understood to be a social construct, without biological basis. Thus the study of race and racism moved from the natural sciences to the social sciences.

If the term racism is being used to describe a social ill, if the term race is being used to describe one of these social constructs, aren't these words being used correctly?


HN

(Here's to Aunt Flo! and Uncle Erectus!)

The definition of the word /race/ is notoriously hard to pin down, but I'd agree with you that anti-English sentiment is not best described as "racism".

TRiG.