[Wonder Warthog]

"At some point you get into what percent a person is of one race or another and it gets down right silly."

Wrong---it is literally "deathly serious" (see below).

"For example, what percent of any race does Tiger Woods, or Baraka Obama have to be to be called either one race or another? 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/50th? Are there any people who are 100% Native Americna Indians? Even if we can decide on a percent, for what purpose?"

For treatment of illness, for one very important thing. There is already a problem in finding sufficiently close genetic matches for some mixed-race children for organ transplants, to name just one example. Some races have specific diseases to which others are more immune (sickle cell anemia for "blacks"--superior AIDS resistance for "whites"---I'm sure there are others).

[cyborg]

There was a story about a white Marine of a German derivation I think and an Asian woman who were a genetic match. He gave her a kidney or something then later they got married. It was on FR but don't remember when it came out. Sometimes I wonder if the organ transplant system needs to be more refined.

[Smartaleck]

"For treatment of illness, for one very important thing."

Can be. But it's not the race per se that is the determinate, as much as the bloodline. Hemophilia for example, prevalent to whites and only certain ones, could be passed to other races but the race isn't as important as the family tree. As you correctly stated it becomes even less useful as the "races" mix thus making the use of race even more irrelevant. While the use of race might have some use as a medical tool, it quite damaging when used for social purposes. For example, why the he** should Michael Jordan's kids get a priority acceptance to college over a brighter white kid from a poor family solely due to race?