[Redcloak]

There are differences between groups, but these arise from either geographic isolation or mating practices. There are differences between Hawaiians and Tahitians, but most people would call them both Polynesian. There are differences between Chumash and Tongva, but we still call them both Indian. In one case, miles of ocean caused differences to arise; in the other, it was mating practices. If you're going to make minor genetic traits the basis for assigning race, then you'll slice-n-dice the species into groups so small that individual families would count as distinct races.

[Pharmboy]

No--you're going backwards, starting with the genes and going to the phenes. What I'm saying is that once we assign race (admittedly based on appearance and geography)--and look at protein polymorphisms or SNPs in the DNA--we find differences between groups. How they arose are likely due to multiple causes, eg., natural selection, founder effect (esp. on islands), sexual selection, neutral effetcs (Kimora) and genetic drift.