Sure. But you're implying a nirvana-fallacy argument: that classification by race is not perfect. Of course it is not. It is, indeed, one of many many different ways. The interesting question is whether this classification reflects (imperfectly) some underlying joint in the territory, or whether it's an entirely arbitrary construct. It doesn't look like an arbitrary construct to me.
The use of skin color, as opposed to other criteria, is historical accident and entirely arbitrary. The importance placed on it, therefore, is entirely arbitrary. Does it look non-arbitrary? Well, I can only recommend you read the first book of The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson and consider how non-arbitrary the primary depicted culture thinks its sorting mechanism is. (Seriously, if you haven't read it, read it. Bloody good, and does for racial attitudes what The Wheel of Time does for gender attitudes.)
As for whether it reflects an underlying joint? In our sterile, "This set of clusters, and that set of clusters, have something like a joint between them, even if the joint has a spot-weld right in the center" sense, yes. However, people who talk about race are never talking about genetic clusters, as a rule, they're talking about skin color, and worse, the skin color of people in the middle of the damn spot weld.
Because we're not comparing the Hutu and the Zulu and the Sara and the Ovimbundu to the Aegeans and the Sardinians and the Bulgars and the Romani and the Magyars. We're comparing two groups of people in a country where every ethnic group that comes over gets dumped into a blender set on "chunky".
Haven't noticed it being a particularly weighty edifice. A hot button, a battlefront, a trigger, a minefield, a mindkiller, etc. etc., but an edifice..? :-/
Yes. Edifice. There is a huge volume of significance attached to something that doesn't support it.
However, people who talk about race are never talking about genetic clusters, as a rule, they're talking about skin color
Not quite. People usually call Colin Powell an African-American even though his skin isn't that dark.
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.