Thyunda said:
Species, genius. Races are a division of a single species.
They're closer to sub-species which can interbreed.
At least, that's the most popular definition since "Race" is an outdated term that's a chaotic carry-over from an era before genetics was discovered.
Now "Race" is usually meant as a genetically discrete populations of the same species, but for most scientists, it doesn't really exist. There isn't really a place for it because you're essentially saying, "When does ancestry become phylogeny and an interbreeding population differ enough genetically to be considered a race?"
Nobody has answered that question with any veracity, and probably never will because "race" is a completely subjective term. This is in contrast to "species" - which is fairly well defined as populations which can only breed within/between each other and can't interbreed with other members of the same Genus and produce fertile offspring. Easy to test, easy to define. You can even find a solid genetic basis for it.
Knowing this, the rest of your post is bunk... but I feel like bustin' chops today.
Also. American may not be a race, per se, but Russian certainly is. Descendants of the original Rus and the nearby territories have a unique build. Nationality and race ARE intrinsically linked. The Irish, for example, are a race. The Scottish are a race. The English are a race. The Welsh are a race. Despite inhabiting the same landmass (not including Ireland here, obviously). Welsh people are generally shorter and stockier than the English, and the Scottish are often bigger. Compare the Bretons and Nords from Skyrim and you have the difference between a Saxon and a Norwegian.
Those are all nationalities. They are not races. Just because your brain conjures up a stereotypical example of people from the region based upon your personal exposure and associations between the words and images of people
doesn't mean they represent races.
You show this later on, but it's particularly poignant when you consider your second sentence. Americans aren't a race? Why not? Because it's only been a country for some ~240 years? Why aren't we English - since that's obviously where we came from? If you're talking Native Americans, why aren't they Asian - since that's obviously where they came from? What about Hawaiians? Are they Polynesian or American? How many generations in does it take to become "American" - whatever that actually means - instead of wherever their ancestors are?
While not everybody fits into these racial builds...
And this is exactly why nationalities aren't races (and really, humans don't have races at all)... but you don't seem keen on taking this point further because it clearly undermines everything you said.
...they are there, and there's no use denying them.
Phenotypic differences arise out of genetic factors interaction with environmental factors. Two people with the exact same genetics can look differently if they've been raised in different places, and two people who are wildly different genetically (well, as much as humans barely vary genetically) can look like family.
I'm not denying phenotypical differences, I'm saying that they're not a basis for race because they're unreliable. I have a friend who's Italian/Puerto Rican/Black. Guess what she gets called? Well, it depends on who's calling! In America she usually gets called Black, unless she's in the South or Southwest - then it's Latina. When she models in Europe, she gets called Italian. In reality, she's from New York.
Apparently she's 4 different races? How do you classify that taxonomically, again?
Homo sapien italias-dominicus-africanus-americanus?
Hell, even Americans appear to be developing their own, unique strand. Americans appear to have softer-looking faces and generally less pronounced features.
Brilliant. Is anybody really taking this guy seriously after this?
I mean, let's just set aside that Americans have higher-fat diets and will - obviously - have less noticable facial structure because of it (on average).
What about makeup? It's applied differenty depending on culture. What about hairstyles? What about clothing which emphasizes features? You, my good man, are saying that Americans appear to be a new race because women here eat more and apply their base layers differently.
That has to be it, not only because you're thinking exclusively of White Americans in your head (already a fallacy made fun of earlier), but it can't be anything else since most White Americans aren't more 5-10 generations removed from their "original" countries and that's an exceedingly short timeframe evolutionarily speaking.
If it wasn't a race, you wouldn't be able to recognise them on sight.
You can't. Not really. If my friend from New York doesn't absolutely blow your entire argument out of the water right here, I can find millions of examples where you - or ANYBODY - would be wrong in guessing their origin on sight alone.
I can guarantee it.
You're talking exclusively about cultural differences. Cultural differences are easily noticable on sight because each culture has its unique flairs. The USA has different clothing styles than Britain, which has different hair styles than Germany, which has different learned facial expressions than Sudanese, etc.
You are capable of noticing these, even on a subconscious level. The human brain is a MASTER at predicting and discerning subtle differences. This is why the Uncanny Valley even exists - if the reflection of a coffee cup in somebody's iris is different than the brain predicts it should be from a few feet away - alarm bells go off. If the brain can't discern multiple opacity values in skin tone, or hair-line wrinkles that aren't visible ten feet away, alarm bells go off. If your brain notices missing cues from refraction of light in the enviornment around the person that take up less than .01% of the entire image, your brain becomes suspicious.
Therefor, it is INCREDIBLY easy to see the differences in cultural style and the effects of varying nutrition across cultures. It's not hard to notice that the shirt some bloke is wearing has a different color scheme and pattern than the ones you've seen while shopping. It's not difficult to notice that the gal from Belgium has a different perfume.
It even varies in-country. Women from California on the sun-filled West Coast have a different style than women from my home state of Utah, which is nestled in the Rocky Mountains (and becomes inadvertantly hilarious when they realize it gets to be single-digit temps here [Farenheit] and SoCal doesn't normally dip below 60).
Are Utahns and Californians different races, then, just because I can tell the difference? Just because I have so much exposure to one that I can instantly and affirmatively tell the difference between Utah and not-Utahn? Could I then lump everybody into THOSE two races, Utahn and non-Utahn since I am sometimes incapable of telling where a non-Utahn came from, but definitely know they're not from Utah?
At best, your definition of "race" would last for maybe three generations, depending on the phenotype you were focusing on. It would be changing constantly, and any rule of measure that changes with the wind isn't useful.
Plus, where do people with Vitiligo fit in? What about Dwarfism - which arises from normal parents and gives birth to normal offspring whilst existing in every country known?
Your definition fits for you, and you alone. It can't be used by anybody else because it doesn't stand up to any sort of rigor or testing. It is not universal in any sense of the word, and can't be measured with any accuracy.
It is purely and completely subjective.
So yes. Nationality and race are very closely linked. If I can name real differences between neighbouring countries, then the OP has a fair point.
Right...
What have we been arguing about? Hold me close sweet thyunda, we can make it through this racially diverse minefield together!
