This seems to be due to kilobug's self-reported language mistake. "race" in French actually means what "species" means in English, at least in common usage. I recall this as one of many particularly confusing examples for people learning English as a second language in more academic environments.

I don't think I've seen "race" applied to animals-- "breed" or "subspecies" is what I'm used to?

I have quite a bit, but it tends to be in writings from the 19th century or earlier (Darwin, Spencer, etc...).

This is the first time you've seen the claim, expressed as follows?

(1) "race" does not divide humanity according to any biologically justifiable criteria,
(2) "race" is used to provide a scientific halo effect to justify current social organization

(2) is obviously true - and is morally positive so long as the first assertion is false. (1) is controversial - but I've seen it expressed many times on LW and other places.

Offensiveness relies in the implicit premise that use of the halo effect when the underlying science is faulty is itself irrational / socially hurtful. That's isomorphic to asserting that the "Noble Lie" is immoral - which I thought was the consensus here.

I don't think I've seen "race" applied to animals-- "breed" or "subspecies" is what I'm used to?

I agree - I've never heard "race" used to categorize animals.

Do other major countries have analogues of that, BTW? If so, we could ask similar questions applicable to a couple more countries, such as the UK or Canada.¹ (The closest analogue I can think of in Italy is the score (out of 100) on one's high-school diploma.)

1. I'm assuming that LW's readership is distributed more-or-less like the English Wikipedia's.

And even though the names may differ, there are obvious equivalents in Italy (and I guess most of Europe) too.

I can't answer about the downvotes because I didn't vote on your comment.

In French, is there a polite way to refer to what would be called "race" in English?