re: #312 iceweasel

Nonetheless, human beings persist in identifying themselves as members of one race or another. The whole category of ‘race’ (as we know it) was essentially unknown in the ancient world.

Completely agree. It’s an artifact of advanced navigation techniques that allowed sailors to travel directly across seas to distant shores, rather than follow the older, slower coast-hugging navigation (or even slower overland travel) that never revealed an abrupt change in characteristics, but the more realistic, slow and gradual shift in characteristics that actually exists.

Typically, there is much, much more variation within a given “race” than will ever be found between two “races”. It’s an illusion. And a society that is striving to remove the reflexive perception of race oughtn’t be pigeonholing itself in this manner in the first place.