Eh? What is this thing you call "race," Earth Monkey? We used to think the answer was obvious. You know, it's obvious what "race" someone is, isn't it? Until you start to look at the details. Race is a cultural convention. There is a science of population genetics, and it isn't about "race." Rather, people use population genetics to infer the social marker called "race." I adopted an African girl. What "race" is she? What determines this? She has tribal markings on her eyes -- or the scars from tribal medicine for conjunctivitis, hard to tell -- but the markings are characteristic of her region and tribe, so someone who knows could tell where she comes from, as to the region. I once had a friend tell me that my Chinese daughter was, of course, going to be more intelligent than the Ethiopian girl. The Chinese daughter is no slouch, intellectually, but her younger sister is definitely smart as hell. My friend was a racist. Lots of people are racist. That is, they believe that race is a biological or even a "spiritual" reality. He wasn't being mean, he was just being ignorant.

Better than, say, poverty? Source please.