because "race" isn't a well-defined category system
That seems a very straightforward example of the Fallacy of the Gray.
a spectrum of individuals who can't be sorted in any meaningful way.
Really, just can't be sorted? That's a silly position.
the categorization at play is the product of cultural historical accident
That categorization is strongly correlated with your genes. Black people, for example, have strikingly different prevalence of certain diseases compared to white people. And East Asians have yet another prevalence. You think it's just because of a "cultural historical accident"?
You seem to be hung up on the word "race". Replace it with "gene pool", see if it helps.
That seems a very straightforward example of the Fallacy of the Gray.
It isn't. I am not saying "The existence of a spectrum makes it impossible to tell where someone is on the spectrum between white and black". I am saying the notion of race is cultural rather than referring to anything like an innate property; I recall a documentary in which an American black man went to Africa to investigate farming techniques, and was made fun of for calling himself "black" when he was clearly white. http://lesswrong.com/lw/o0/where_to_draw_the_...
This sort of thinking seems bad:
This sort of thinking seems socially frowned upon, but accurate:
Similar points could be made by replacing a/b with [group of people]. I think it's terrible to say something like:
But to me, it doesn't seem wrong to say something like:
Credit and accountability seem like good things to me, and so I want to live in a world where people/groups receive credit for good qualities, and are held accountable for bad qualities.
I'm not sure though. I could see that there are unintended consequences of such a world. For example, such "score keeping" could lead to contentiousness. And perhaps it's just something that we as a society (to generalize) can't handle, and thus shouldn't keep score.