they aren't just bowing to some ivory tower overlord of political correctness
And how do you know that? Social science academics are very skewed politically.
...with membership in three arbitrary sets of humanity
I don't think AmagicalFishy specified the number of races. In common usage "race" is a fuzzy term and the number of races has historically varied from two (us and barbarians) to the traditional European four (white, black, yellow, and red) to many.
It might be useful to taboo "race" in this discussion. The question then becomes "Do genetically similar large groups of people have different distributions/frequencies/averages of certain qualities of interest?" and the answer is, of course, "Depends on what you're interested in, but often yes".
For example, IQ tests have been administered to a lot of people of different genetic backgrounds and of different cultures. The picture is diverse, but there are clear patterns.
"Social science academics are very skewed politically." So shall we discount any concept of expertise based solely on our biases towards the suspected biases of others based on their reported political affiliations? I don't have the time to get my own PhD in every subject. I don't claim they have the gospel truth, but, as I said, it's a good place to start, from which a cursory examination of geographic population variations pretty much puts the the idea of race to bed with very short work.
Tabooing race, I think your paraphrasing doesn't quite ...
The most recent post in December's Stupid Questions article is from the 11th.
I suppose as the article's been pushed further down the list of new articles, it's had less exposure, so here's another one for the rest of December.
Plus I have a few questions, so I'll get it kicked off.
It was said in the last one, and it's good advice, I think:
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.