Race is not a biological term, but a sociological term.
That’s complete BS. If race is only a “sociological term,” why is it that DNA testing can determine an individuals race, as well as the admixture of other races making up that individual. How come an anthropologist can determine a persons race from examining their bones. How come a dentist can tell a persons race by their teeth. Why do organ transplants stand a better chance of not being rejected if it is done with organs implanted in a person of the same race, and even better results achieved if it’s done within the same ethnic group.
If you line up 20 random people, don’t tell me you can’t identify which race most of them are by just looking at them.
You’re not teaching biology if you are actually telling students this load of crap. No wonder students are so screwed up.
What "race" are the people living in India? Technically they're caucasian, as are the people of the Middle East. Race is an arbitrary demarcation as eye color or height. It is nothing except inherited characteristics, an invention of the 19th century.
Race is a system of classification of human beings that divides human beings into large subdivisions based upon their anatomical, physical, ethnic, cultural, and geographical differences. There is no biological basis to this system of human classification as all human beings ultimately belong to the same species of Homo sapiens. Race is a concept that is subjective as humans belonging to so called different races can mate and produce human beings naturally.
The last sentence is the true biological definition of a species: a group of organisms that can produce viable offspring that are themselves capable of producing viable offspring. I am sure that you are aware of many examples in your own life of two different races producing a viable offspring which itself has reproduced. (Obama is a case in point.) I am not an anthropologist, but it is very difficult for one to be absolutely certain about the race of remains and it is also difficult for a dentist to do the same with teeth. As to your point about transplants, I am a Medical Technologist and have worked in a hospital Blood Bank. The race of the blood donor is not even known or recorded and the success of a transplant depends only on the ABO and HLA antigen compatibility of the donor and recipient. The following link describes a NHI study done on the effect of race on the survival of liver transplant recipients:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2954674/
I am not saying that you cannot distinguish among the various races and that those differences do not have a basis in heredity, but the differences are not great enough for the creation of a new species. Biologically speaking (and in the eyes of God), there is only one human "race".