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To: A.J.Armitage
Perhaps if I had used colors as races and red, yellow, and blue for the peoples would that have a made a difference? Does the fact that there are intermediary colors invalidate the existence of prime colors? Nothing in nature exists an a prime color. Everything is a variation. But the difficulty of determining if teal is more like blue or more like green does not mean that there is no true green or true blue. Determining if an individual fits one racial category or another is difficult. Like colors or certain animal species, these determinations are based on judgement and definitions. But given that, one cannot deny that there are objective and quantifiable differences between blue and yellow even though there may be intermediary forms. You cannot also deny there are objective and quantifiable differences between Scandinavians and Sub-Saharans even though some may try.

But keep in mind that those differences are of no concern to government. We should all be equal under the law. The government has no right to ask me my "race."

86 posted on 12/21/2002 7:28:21 PM PST by FreedomCalls
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To: FreedomCalls; All
All of this is, of course, related to the evolution issue. Creationists are always declaring that there are no "intermediate" species, as if that somehow disproves that two species have a common ancestor. But the example of human races is an interesting rebuttal to this. If (as someone earlier said) we hadn't developed ships, the races of men would eventually have remained so genetically isolated that they could have become different species, unable to breed with one another. It could have taken perhaps a thousand generations, or more, which is virtually no time, geologically speaking. And if that had happened, where would the "intermediates" be? There would be no "true" intermediate specimens, yet all the different species of humans would have been descended from common ancestors. And so it is with all the species on earth.
87 posted on 12/21/2002 7:37:21 PM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: FreedomCalls
The primary colors literally exist in the eye of the beholder. Our eyes have three types of color receptors. But the actual colors, in themselves, have nothing special about them.

Now, I'm as far from denying that Scandanavians and Nigerians exist as I am from denying that red and blue exist. But insisting that there are X number of races and everybody simply fits in his immutable category is as wrong as saying there are exactly three colors. Your own example refutes you.
91 posted on 12/21/2002 8:27:14 PM PST by A.J.Armitage
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To: FreedomCalls
You cannot also deny there are objective and quantifiable differences between Scandinavians and Sub-Saharans even though some may try.

There are ---I don't think anyone could argue that ---but the variations within a race are actually greater than those between races. A Scandinavian doesn't look much like a Sicilian. A Japanese doesn't look much like a Vietnamese or a Siberian.

94 posted on 12/22/2002 8:14:10 AM PST by FITZ
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