Its probably because people don't like the Biblical literalist, see christians as their largest local problem, and would prefer to argue with them.

Your not obnoxious enough to be taken into consideration

To get back on topic.

A scary answer you could get is the one The Mormon church had.

That the darker skinned races got their colour as a punishment from god for being sinful.

Though I doubt any church would openly hold such notions I wouldn't be to surprised to find a few that held them.

On a more humorous note this was sort of the topic of a boondocks episode.

The Passion of Rev. Ruckus

http://www.tv-links.co.uk/show.do/2/130

Funny, I was gonna mention the same thing about the Mormon view of how races were created. 

The explanation in a nut shell goes:

Nephites = were righteous and remained light-skinned for their righteousness. 

Lamanites and Lemualites = were wicked and were cursed with dark skin and "coarse" hair. 

The spelling of the names may be off, I haven't been apart of the religion for 4 years now.  

I had written a bit to explain it, but was unsatisfied with my laymans layout. Deludedgod would be the best person to ask I think. You could PM him just in case he doesn't see this thread.

The version we learned in Baptist Sunday school is that the three races  (somehow there were three) decended from the sons of Noah.

Shem begat the Semetic people (hence the name)

Ham begat to dark-skinned Africans

Japeth begat, IIRC, everybody else, or maybe just Europeans.  Sunday school was a long time ago.

I do remember, however, that the "Curse of Ham," that is Ham's descendants being cursed to serve the other two because Ham accidentally saw Noah naked, was still vaguely referred to.  Since then I've learned how this tradition was used to justify slavery in the U.S. in the 18th and 19th centuries (the reason why Southern Baptists originally broke away from the other American Baptists was because of the civil war and the slavery question).

But this tradition of the origins of races is now, I believe, very old-school and probably not remembered or taught most places anymore. 

 First, we don't come from monkies. We share a common ancestor with other primates - there is a very distinct and very real and important difference.

Human skin color is a trade off between getting roasted by the sun, making vitamin B and manufacturing vitamin D - where there is not a large availability of VitD or VitB in the local food sources (fish for example are an abundant sourse of D - so Inuit people have comparatively darker skin than other indigenous populations who don't have an animal rich diet on similar latitudes). Humans, and any other related organisms, require exposure to sunlight to manufacture VirD. The amount of melanin in the skin regulates how much UvB is absorbed to make our bones strong and how badly UvA burns. On the other hand, too much sun robs the body of folate (vitamin B).

It is believed that as human ancestors had light skin under their hair. As we evolved to began to lose this hair (it allows for better thermal regulation and reduces parasitic infestation), the skin darkened to reduce VitB deficiency. Cancer would probably not be a selective pressure, as one probably would not develope skin cancer due to UV exposure until after breeding age. Then as our ancestors moved out of Africa, the skin lightened to accomodate VitD production.

 Skin color is easily varied, because it is controlled by several genes - like eye color. 

One can look at the skin color of indigenous populations and see that as one moves away from the equator, the skin gets lighter. This is due to the selective pressure exerted by the need for VitD and the deletorious effects of over-exposure to the sun.

Now one must make an important caveate here concerning the terms we're throwing about.

There are those in the biological community who will disagree with what I'm about to say, and I'd be happy to discuss the matter with them, but in my opinion and the in the opinion of several prominent biologists, race classification in humans is erroneous.

I do not believe there is a solid biological reason to use the race classification for human beings.

When one uses the term race in a biological sense, they are taxonomically implying subspecies categorization – there is absolutely no basis for such categorization in humans.

To understand what a subspecies is, one must first understand what a species is. Famed evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr put it succinctly enough that his explanation is still quoted frequently by other biologists to this day: species are "groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups". A subspecies is a taxonomic group that is a division of a species and is distinguished by:

1) Members of one subspecies must be reliably distinguishable from members of other subspecies. (You could make the argument that skin pigmentation phenotypes apply here, but you'd be wrong as explained below).

2) The exchange of genetic material between subspecies must be minimal, and expected to remain minimal even if the two groups were placed in close proximity to one another.

3) In order to be regarded as subspecies, rather than a single varied species, the difference between subspecies must be distinct and NOT simply a difference of CONTINUOUSLY VARYING DEGREE. (For example skin color in humans).

Differences of continuously varying degree are called clines, and they are clear evidence of gene flow between populations and thus cause to question subspecies categorization. It is also important to note that the biological definition of subspecies and race are interchangeable; however the biological and colloquial definitions of race are VERY different. To qualify as a biological subspecies or race, a group must meet the above requirements. Examples of human subspecies (two of which are now extinct) are homo sapiens, homo sapiens sapiens (no, the extra sapiens is not a typo) and possibly homo neanderthalis.

1. Skincolour is not this, but some say facial structures can be or could be sutch a feture.

Richard Dawkins remarks this in his book The ancestors tale.

He specifically uses Collin Powel as an example. His skin is more or less as white as Bush or Cheiny, butpeople still call him "black"

2. In some parts of the world this would still aply, atleast where race and religion are closely realated. Remember interbreeding between races was and may still be a negative even in some western countries.

3. see point 1.

While I agree with you and dont think human's realy have subspecies, I wouldn't say that sutch a trend is evident, and can posibly evolve to fully fledged subspecies if not cultural change can stop the speciasion of the human species.

Probably due to other traits like curly head hair - which are also continuously variable. I'm not saying such phenotypes cannot tell us where a person's ancesors came from - they can and do. I'm saying such traits in and of themselves, strictly speaking, are not grounds for such categorization.

I would think any degree of intermixing only supports what I've said, and the culture that do not intermix due to cultural reasons certainly do not counter my point.

I'm arguing from strict taxonomy here. It is a technicle quibble more than anything else.