Supposedly it's to make up for the discrimination in the past. I would think affirmitive action based on "class" would be better. Do you really think in 10 years that Barrack Obama's daughters will need help to compete getting into college with the daughters (who for example purposes are equally intelligent) of some guy living in a trailer park? If someone still suffers due to past discrimination they are likely poor and would benefit this way at least as much, if not more.

Realistically, a poor white woman in the inner city has more in common with a poor black woman than she does with a wealthy white woman living in Beverly Hills. And a wealthy black executive has more in common with a wealthy white executive that he does with a poor inner-city black man.

Yep. I just finally paid of my student loans in February, about a month after turning 34 - and I went to a State college in the early-mid 1990s (of course Pennsylvania is one of the worst states in terms of student aid. ) Ammount of money one has/makes would be a much better way (and someone shouldn't need to be utterly destitute to get a grant. )

Does higher IQ mean more or less benefits? I have recently tested as a higher IQ than 99% of men my age. Not that I want to go on welfare, but someone more emotionally stable of average or below intelligence has an easier time getting hired than me.

Um, what?

So does this mean that I can declare myself whatever I want and get minority scholarships, grants, and such, and they can't do anything to stop me?

I find that hard to believe.

OK, I tend to agree with you in substance but not in detail. I don't see race as a relevant distinction today. A case in point will serve to illuminate where I stand:

A few years ago, I had a mixed race couple living next door to me. The father was a light skinned black man and the mother was a hot blond. The kids were about as black as Paula Abdul. Their kids went to the same school as my kids, they had the same teachers and curriculum as my kids.

When it comes time for college admissions, should my neighbor's kids be entitled to check a box on a form and move ahead of my kids in the queue?

If the answer is yes, then the next question should be why that is so. If the answer is that fifteen generations ago, some ancestor was kidnapped, taken to America and used as forced labor, then I think that something is seriously wrong.

Do you mean that they have a better chance of working as a high energy physicist? Or do you mean to say that your career goal is to say “Do you want fries with that?”. Really Matt, you can do better than that.

Racism is racism. Reverse or not.

Forty years ago is one thing. Today is another. We must all live in the world as it presents itself to us. What is the problem right now is a question that begs an answer.

Well, If I had my druthers, secondary schools would be filled with smart people. Additional classifications may well serve a purpose but the primary one needs to be if one is smart. Not if one has a skin color that meets the federal government's definition of “diversity”.

I understand what you are saying. Your point has some validity. However, it can't be absolute, as race distinctions are absolute. At the top of this post, I made the case that check boxes on forms are inherently unjust. I submit that it is injustice that is the real issue. If someone is denied a fair chance at something because of a bogus classification, then something needs to be done to change the situation.

However, if someone is being moved ahead because they are part of some class that is granted a special privilege, then there is a problem. Holding people back for being black is really not that different from advancing people because they are white.

Don't get me wrong on this, there are ignorant fucks in the world. However, there are ignorant fuck on all sides of every issue. Where I stand on the matter of race is entirely with myself. I distance myself from the KKK every bit as much as I do from the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

That's my point. Except there's no "reverse" to racism. The phrase "reverse racism" has no meaning.

Agreed that lynchings are no longer common. Economic and social divisions are palpable. Recent visits to Youngstown, Ohio and Nashville, Tennessee, reveal a startling solidarity among the white population as to what represents a "ghetto". Hint: it's a normal neighbourhood, except black people live there. That's what makes it a "ghetto". In Youngstown, when this was pointed out to me - among muffled shrieks that the women in the party were scared for their lives - I nearly gagged. The only black people I saw were women and children playing on the lawn, and these women were mock terrified because they were in a terrible place. That's not 40 years ago, that's last year.

You know as well as I do that the original purpose of trying to push diversity was that black people had a disadvantage getting into schools. Don't pretend like that's not the case. Criticism of the result is reasonable, considering policies like that are rarely successful. Try your best to help out, and you may find that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But "smart people"? You're asking a lot of administrations if you think they can actually allocate the "smart". I believe Yale accepted George Bush.

Of course!

Exactly. Just don't expect that solution to be perfect.

That's pretty much what happens. But I wouldn't consider it some kind of conspiracy or anything. People are comfortable around people with whom they can relate. It's easiest to relate to those with a common culture. So it's no surprise that white people would hire a culturally white person before a culturally black person, and the same can be said for culturally white universities.

Of course, but the minority remains at a disadvantage. If you honestly think it's a gigantic injustice that the occasional black kid might get into a school when her marks are lower than a white kid's, I'd say you're overreacting to a policy that isn't exactly handing over the keys to the vault.

Right, further illustrating my point: it's an almost intractable problem, not just a matter of "if we do this, it's wrong, and if we do this, it's right." You can speak reasonably about ignoring race, but a great many people are, in fact, already treated worse because they are black (either culturally or because their skin is dark).

And apparently, we say it should play a very large role. So how does one deal with that?

Listen, you're absolutely right about race: it doesn't exist in any rational or reasonable form. What has become the problem isn't race, it's the social dynamics surrounding a perception of race. You're also right that it's all in our heads. But the fact remains that for now, the problem still exists, and granting a pass to a small number of black people isn't going to put the white people at a disadvantage. 

My point was that your example itself is simply racism. There is no "reverse" to that. Bringing race into an equation where it has no value is racism, so it doesn't have to be reverse. Your example hints also at a prejudice, but the prejudice is based on race.

Sure, I see it. I see people behaving in ridiculous ways all the time. The only reason I'm dwelling on the semantics is that it illustrates the disadvantage being played upon by the majority group. You see the acknowledgement of that power dynamic "definitely", so you must understand that it comes from an actual place of disadvantage being perceived.

It's only that I take this problem seriously that I wouldn't want to address it in strictly contrasting terms.

About the time the book was published my girl friend was a social worker. She agreed with the idea. Those who were smart enough to get a job were those smart enough to avoid being thrown off welfare and who could "recite section and paragraph" of what they were entitled to.

So Mr. Three Sigma, if you want to go on welfare what would you rationally do? You would head to the closest library with your state laws and study them. You would construct your life to fit the requirements of law. The law does not say too dumb to hold a job. A guy who looks down on Mensa can certainly find a way to behave that prevents holding a job. You might even head over the medical section of the library for a set of symptoms and leave via the arts section for some books on drama and acting.

But the welfare class doesn't have it that hard. They have mother and grandmother and maybe great-grandmother as role models. They have neighbors to learn from. There is community wisdom on how to get on and stay on and get the most out of welfare. As with everything else, the smartest learn the best and implement what they have learned the best. And they have been in it all their lives.

And if there are any questions, just play the stereotype, I jes caint hep it.

Here is a great quote on people who group others by race, regardless if whether or not they mean to help others by doing it:

“Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called “diversity” actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.”

I have to agree with this. People who use racial classifications in what they think is a positive manner are only contributing to racism.

People cry wolf over racism so often that it has lost all meaning to me. So much as implying that another culture has problems can earn you the label of being a racist. People need to be less sensitive about racism and people need to stop banking on racist institutions that were abolished before their birth as a justification for being overly sensitive. Every time I hear someone say "but what about slavery" or "but what about Jim Crow laws" I am disgusted that someone would capitalize on past injustices as a justification for their actions. Unless someone lived under Jim Crow laws (these people exist, and I give them and them alone a free pass on this matter) or unless someone was enslaved in the nineteenth century, I will not accept past injustices as an excuse for their behavior.

Most of the students at my university are not white and are female, should the university use affirmative action to try to increase the number of whites and men that go there? Or perhaps all students deserve to be treaded equally by the admissions board, regardless of race or gender.

HisWillness: If affirmative action programs are so insignificant why do we even have them? If all they do is cause a few token minorities to get into schools that they normally wouldn't, then I think those programs have failed at their objective. Though since I am against affirmative action I suppose that is what I want to happen. If they are so ineffective as to be virtually harmless, then perhaps they are too minor of an injustice to fight against.

I'm from California, so perhaps my perspective on race in America is skewed towards that view. All my life blacks and Hispanics have lived in the same neighborhoods as I have. Whites are the majority, but I would say about 10% of homes in my neighborhood back in high school had non-white families in them. Since I now live in Orange county most of my class mates and most of my neighbors are Asian. My school literally has more than half of the student body being composed of Asians and another 10% or so composed of other non-whites. I don't get shows about the OC that have all white people in them. I see more Asians every day in Orange county than I did in all my life before I moved here. I don't feel like I am exaggerating when I say that. Having written that, I understand that this is likely a uniquely Southern Californian experience that will not translate to what life is like in the rest of the US.

I think that constantly being surrounded by members of other races makes it hard for me to view them as being some different and scary group. I go to classes filled with Asians and Arabs, I go to metal shows filled with Hispanics, I go to gun ranges filled with Hispanics, and about half of the roommates I have had in the past two years weren't white. I think it is just desensitization. If most Americans had minorities around them at most social activities they would eventually stop noticing it. You can't really see them as being all that strange or scary if you live with them and engage in most social activities in their presence. Perhaps if I lived my life isolated from other races I would see them differently.

In California ghettos are filled with illegal Mexicans. I know of black ghettos in LA and Oakland, but all of the ghettos I have seen personally are Mexican. If you ever want cheap workers go to a Home Depot and tell the illegals hanging around in front of it that you need help on some home project.

The way I see things, all Americans are our brothers and sisters. The only legitimate form of collectivism in my opinion is nationalism (but not the bad kind of blind, submissive nationalism, I wish that word didn't carry such a negative connotation). I think the point is that pro-racial groups are as divisive and racist as some guy in Nashville commenting on the 'stupid nigger' that stole his computers or a white woman being frightened that she is in a safe middle-class black neighborhood.

I guess you are joking, maybe. Or do you think that I really advocate killing Jews and Arabs? If you could write a serious version of your comment that would be nice, because I don't think that the sarcasm is transmitted well over the internet. And I am pretty sure that quote was about American racial politics and not the middle east. I just can't tell which parts of that comment are sarcasm and which parts are literal.

It terms of college, they do take you at your word for consideration but you do have to provide proof before receiving the check, so to speak.  I have no idea how this situation is handled in the workforce however.

Race is 100% culturally determined and 0% genetically determined. That is the fact of the matter. I can not stress that enough, race has nothing whatsoever to do with physiology. That being said, if everyone acts on the culturally determined racial classifications there will be real world consequences regardless of the lack of a physiological or genetic basis of race.

 Yes, I agree with your statement.  It's pretty true, but don't go saying that around other people or you're in for a surprise mugging.  Personally I don't really think race is the issue, I think that culture is more invasive.    

Thank you for mentioning this statistic.  One can certainly inject classism into the discussion, but I see Jim Crow having much more to do with the matter. 

Don't you think that having you parents' live under threat of death for the color of their skin would affect them psychologically enough to impact a large amount of their decisions in life - including economic and parenting decisions?  Although Jim Crow ended 40 years ago, that is not really a very long time.  Don't forget that Jim Crow was not just separate drinking fountains, but lynchings for daring claim the right to be considered human.  I think affirmative action (as imperfectly as it is sometimes implemented) is a pretty minor way to make up for this legacy.

Poverty is important, but is not all that matters.  The 1st black family to successfully be able to live in my town moved in around 1990.  Previously when a black family had tried to settle in that area of Northern California their homes were burnt down and/or they were told to leave or die.  The rednecks in town were serious and no black family stayed very long.  They could live in large cities like L.A. or San Francisco (with their own forms of racism), but not being in the South did not mean that blacks escaped Jim Crow entirely.  The legacy that this type of obstruction to basic living leaves in a family does not disappear overnight.  Affirmative action tries to deal with this legacy that our society created and is therefore responsible for cleaning up. 

I don't really buy into the diversity for diversity's sake argument.  This is where affirmative action seems to run into trouble.  I do see the importance of integrating more fringe elements of a society (including poor whites) into something closer to the mainstream.  You definitely have a point in stating that the poor of any ethnicity turn more often to crime than their wealthier peers and that this issue needs to be addressed.  Affirmative action seeks to help more Latinos educate themselves and better integrate into society so that they are not filling California's penal system.  Do poor whites need more opportunities too?  Yes, as I see an integration issue there too.   However, it does seem to be easier to move yourself into a different situation if you are white.  From what I've seen, skin color helps - even in California (and Oregon and Arizona) - as racism is not dead. 

The people I hear complaining about affirmative action more often than not are middle class and white.  These people do not complain when their parents' connections or the extras they were able to participate in at their schools get them an internship, scholarship, or any kind of foot in the door that the minority kid simply does not have access to.  They don't complain about being able to play instead of work extra to help support family.  They don't complain about never having had a parent incarcerated.  These privileged folks get pissed off when someone else gets what they think is their own birthright.  It doesn't help that the someone else in question looks and/or acts different from them and can easily be labeled the "other". 

I think we would do better to look at where affirmative action works and what problems it causes and see if we can't change some of the implementation due to the results of this analysis as it is certainly not a perfect system.  We probably do need to look at slowly transferring to a more class-based system for the future, but we are not at that point yet.  There are still large numbers of people in this country that suffer from the legacy of Jim Crow because Jim Crow is not ancient history but in living memory.  Those who suffered and those who created the suffering are still with us and will be for many more years.

It is always amusing to see the extent to which believers will go to create their own, limited reality.

If you had bothered to read what I posted on the matter of races and in the process named most of them you would know the word race does not apply even if you were correct.

In this case you are describing the most common Jew in the US, the Ashkenazim, the eastern European or Khazar described as the 13th Tribe by Kaufman in a book damned never every Jew I knew was trying to get me to read until the subject was dropped upon realization it undercut all the claims having ancestral connections to bibleland. (Trivia: the Shield of David was a Khazar symbol.)

Genetics shows the Sephardic Jews and the Palestinians are the same people while the Ashkenazim are unrelated to either. The modest exception is the Kohenim gene which is the same in both Sephardim and Ashkenazim. Oddly that shows the priests are unrelated to either group which supports the priests and thus the religion was imported to both groups.

You should be careful not to jump into subjects you do not understand.

I find it more interesting you are unaware that is a reference to the Ashkenazi only. Of course if you like the idea of Abraham being an Iraqi Kurd don't let me rain on your parade unless you march in public.

You are a rank amateur on this and related matters. You are in error to think you know something simply because you quote what some simpleton told you to repeat.

As I said early on, you are defending the zionist invention of a jewish "people." By definition all Zionists are murderers and thieves as their earliest objective was to take over Palestine and drive out the native population. You can read it in Herzl's diary about "spiriting away" the native population. You can also read Jabotinsky's openly stated intention to, what we would call today, ethnically cleanse Palestine. You can read haaretz.com and jpost.com today and see that objective is still the most common assumption of the self-declared Jews in Israel and the criminals who live in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Syrian, aka Golan, Heights and the Shaaba Farms. They are in criminal violation of the 4th Geneva Convention and people were hanging for doing that at Nuremberg.

=====

n.b. It is Sieg not Sig, Victory as in Hail Victory. Also see, Siegfried.

I would submit, if it hasn't already been, that accepting a position or consideration based solely on sex or race and not merit only helps to reinforce and solidify the very stereotypes and predjudices such "affirmative" action programs are designed to overcome.

What we need to do as a society is get back to a meritocracy - from the highest echelons of government to the lowliest fry cook. Excellence and drive is too often ignored in favor of status (and yes, these days your race and sex can mean higher status), which is why mediocraty reigns. Honestly, if as an engineer I made as many mistakes per task as the people who serve me lunch every day, I'd be in prison, because I would have killed somebody by now.

Part of the problem is as a society, we seem to have agreed somewhere along the line that subpar service is acceptable. That's why you don't turn around when they forget your fries. That's why we sit there on hold for 30+ minutes to talk to a person 4,000 miles away when a servive we likely pay far too much for isn't working.

And we also seem to have agreed somewhere along the way that everyone deserves a chance. But that's bullshit. Everyone DOESN'T deserve a chance. You should get opportunities based on your abilities. If you don't have a basic grasp of algebra and calculus upon high school graduation, you don't deserve to go to a highly ranked technology school. Period.

I don't give a fuck if you're smart and didn't have the proper opportunities. The fact remains, you are NOT equipped for a curriculum like that, and you entering it will likely see you fail miserably, or worse, slowly drag that program down to your substandard level. Sure, a small percentage of charity cases MAY have the talent to pick up years of neglected education in a few weeks, but not many.

I graduated from one of the top engineering programs in the country, and it didn't get to be one of the top programs by letting hardluck cases in unless they had the chops to handle the curriculum.

Standards should NEVER be lowered or compromised. I fully support giving scholarships to bright kids, but only the best of the best. IMO, at least 50% of the people in college today shouldn't be there. College is now necessary for a white collar job, when apprenticeship used to suffice.

If you are not going into medicine, engineering, academia, or the sciences, I contend you'd be better served by an a apprenticship rather than wasting your parents or the taxpayer's money.

Not quite true. There are caucasians with black skin like Gandhi. And there is the very old observation that two Wongs don't make a White. And when you get to Africa two Bantus do not make a Zulu. These are simply groups that started as a small group and marry within the group much more commonly than outside the group. Certain characteristics become dominant and stay that way.

These characteristics are nothing special. They just happen to be those of a group that migrated to a place that was remote way back when, like Europe or China or the Americas and multiplied. If you and your closest fifty to one hundred relatives were moved to your own continent someplace in ten thousand years or so you would have your own race. But it would be the same with any related group.

If it were a family a people good at some specialty like sports or music or science or some other heritable talent then we would expect in ten thousand years to a have  a new "race" which is good at that talent. But any trait across an entire family (tribe, clan) is rare. So if a different mix of three clans had populated Europe the people would look somewhat different, there would likely be a slightly different mix of things Europeans are good at but not much more.

The old idea of "survival of the fittest" humans might work but anthropology does not support that it happened. None of these clans appears to have ever had a  war to extermination with another so the survival of the fittest never applied. The Basques are in a small geographic area. They were as warlike as any other group but avoided getting into an extermination fight with anyone from the Gauls to Romans to Moors.

What one makes of the differences is something else entirely. What people make of themselves is something else. The French ideal comes from Caesar's writings about his war in Gaul. That's fine but ... There were three major groups of Gauls. Caesar was writing only about the smallest group -- he may or may not have known that. Yet today the French ideal is based upon that smallest group. Similarly the Greeks based their idea of the ideal Greek upon the good guys in Homer's Iliad. While one can say the French needed nothing but an excuse to indulge in the women, wine and bread image of the Gauls the Greek virtues were not as easy nor as rewarding.

I would say we have seen people are so willing to shape themselves socially it does not matter what their ancestors were really like.

That connection is one the very wrong reasons to take a position on race. The Germans were late-comers to the idea. On the British Isles there were centuries of talk about the English, Scot, Welsh and Irish races. As to the Germans ruling the world, the English had been openly talking about their natural fitness to rule the world since the mid 19th century. The Brits were way ahead of the Nazis. The Nazis only talked about ruling the world. The Brits did rule the world.

Nazi euthanasia? They sold it to the German people by correctly pointing out it was practiced in all civilized countries and naming England, France and even the US as practitioners of it. And it is still practiced in US hospitals to this day. It is simply not talked about. Unless there is a lot of pain morphine is contra-indicated.

Well said and so very obvious. When people claim Jews are an ethnic group I simply ask for something which connects all Jews which is separate from the religion. Usually I get a response with the liberal use of the word nazi.

Even the idea that one can be a Jew by virtue of the religion of one's mother is a religious idea not an ethnic one.

And if the intermarriage is 1% per generation they are mixed in 1000 years. And if sex for love and/or money is only 1% there is something very different about Jews. Propinquity alone has more than a 1% success rate.

I just had a nerfbrain call me a nazi for not believing the religious traditions of Jews. Obviously there is an entire class of atheist which refuses to give up the religious superstition of membership by birth.

Jormungander,

 I think it would be best to define race before calling me a liar, especially when you neglect to comment on the numerous lies someone has stated about me regarding my supposed defense of a religion.

By using the clinal model of genetically inherited traits, Jews fall into a specific race of human variation. The links to various genetic studies I have presented in other threads outline this nicely. By localizing of population, as defined by E.O. Wilson, we can even break the Jews down to a subspecies which would be Dinaric-Armenid, Dinaric mountains being the Balkans and Armenid pertaining to the predominant clines found in Armenia, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. From here we can even whittle it down to the fact that they were in this area first by using European population cluster studies on the genetic heritage of Europe found in the link below. The various clusters can be broken down into Northern and Southern European habitation, and we find that the particular haplotype of Ashkenazi Jews in my earlier links to be demonstrated as having early association with the region they now claim as Israel.

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0020143

I agree that there is a genetic similarity between the Israeli Jews and their neighbors. In fact I all but screamed this in an earlier debate when I stated quite clearly that the Jews were Canaanites. My argument all along has been based on this conclusion. My less than honest opponent on the other hand is so racist as to deny that there was ever a race in the Levant other than the Phonecians/Philistines. Both archaeology and genetics prove him wrong, but he adamantly denies both, insanely insisting, despite obvious evidence otherwise, that I am making a claim for a religious group.

If we ask a forensic anthropologist, we will be given 5 races, but only after a politically correct lecture. By this definition the Jews would fall under the Caucasian race, and would once again claim equal habitation grounds to Israel.

On the flip side, should we agree that there is only one race, the Jews have exactly the same right to Israel as any group of humans have to any plot of land. They occupy it now, therefore it is theirs.

I do not refer to my less than worthy adversary as a Nazi sympathiser, but rather as a neo-nazi. I do this because of his insistence that I am supporting Zionism, because of his claim that I am making a religious argument on behalf of the Jews, and because of his much repeated claim that I was using the Bible for reference.  Anyone reading my arguments would find these claims to be outrageous lies. Due to these reasons, coupled with his fanatical obsession with assaulting the Jews on multiple threads, I conclude that he is a neo-nazi racist, and too much of a zealot to respond either to reason, or reasonably. Barring the possibility that he is a raving lunatic, I can see no other reason for his rabid crowing.  Were he a peer capable of rational exchange, he would likely learn that my views fail to support a nation of Israel. I see the authors of the Bible as a tiny minority amongst their Canaanite brethren that never possessed anything resembling a kingdom, and suspect that Israel was a fictional kingdom invented by revolutionaries, a Jewish Camelot, to rouse their ignorant followers into action. As it stands, the man is far too rabid to even accept the existence of a Canaanite population from which the Jews stemmed. How can I not suspect fervid racism as his motivation in light of this?

 

Somebody is going to have to write the FBI and tell them to quit making identifications based on skeletons, then. But seriously now, they are able, after determining gender, to determine race, though the accuracy of this varies based on the skill of the examiner. Many Forensic anthropologists will insist on three races while others will separate native American from Asian and Australian aborigine from African, giving the 5 race description. The basis for these ' races ' is osteometry, not cultural perception.

You seem to be confusing race with species, which would of course validate your claim. I make no such distinction however, and base race on genetics. If you wish to claim that we humans are too genetically similar to differentiate genetically, you must take into account that there is an 8% genetic difference between races. We find at most a 30% discrepancy in gene differentiation between humans and chimpanzees. Do you then reject the idea that chimpanzees are a separate species? If not, you must base speciation on some genetic numeration value discrepancy. May I ask what that number is, and what criteria do you use to arrive at a speciation number?

Medically speaking, I place little value on distinguishing between race. It does have limited value for certain diagnostics, but otherwise serves no purpose. It has become meaningful here only because the examination of clines allows us to settle an argument regarding who can claim older ancestral rights to a specific region. In effect, I am countering a racists accusations by using the loosely defined term race to demonstrate that a people possessing a haplotype indigenous through antiquity of a particular region are in fact the current inhabitants of that region. I am using race to counter, not promote, racism. Your criticism is confusing species with race and fails to address either cline or haplotype. I honestly cannot see the point in this argument, and worry that it might be the result of that nasty disease called political correctness.

To discuss race it is first necessary to consider species. Different species are those which can not or [b]do[/n] not interbreed. The latter is imporant. Speciation events among the class of fish called Chiclids have been observed. For no obvious reason a different set of mating rituals arises and the groups thereafter do not interbreed. After a few generations of interbreeding different markings appear in the new species.

Humans have many local varieties but have not speciated. All humans can interbreed. Similarly there are many varieties of dogs in the world and they can all interbreed. In both species they do interbreed if propinquity strikes at the right time which is once a year for dogs and once an hour for humans.

For the US wolves and coyotes can and do interbreed yet they have maintained their distinctive characteristics due to living in different environments with little overlap. The differences between the two phenotypes is caused by natural selection in their environments. Wolves, big dogs with shaggy fur have less chance to survive in hot, arid conditions than coyotes and vice versa. We can look to a third phenotype for dogs in temperate, non-arid climates, that of the feral dog, the domesticated gone wild. Given enough generations these come to look like small, short haired wolves which is like large coyotes.

Humans have done one thing the same over the last 100,000 years. They went to different climates. In both hemispheres the lighter skins are near the poles and the darker towards the equator. This is thought to be related to the need for sunlight to produce vitamin D. People do not travel thousands of miles north or south to find mating partners so the shading is maintained. The fact that humans use fire and make clothes has largely prevented the morphological differentiation that occurs in dogs. Having evolved in Africa humans were already at one climate extreme.

The other difference in humans was that groups on the order of a hundred or two left Africa at vastly different times. These groups had the Arabian savannah and forests and lower sea levels to spread from Africa to Austalia walking on dry land almost all the way.

Other groups traveled north and west along the shore of the Med and north into Siberia. At some point members of one or both these different paths entered northern Europe which is separated by the geographic barrier of mountains almost its entire length. There are two likely paths, the shoreline of Iberia-France and the Fulda Gap in Germany. The time from these guesses to historical times is still a blur. Another thing complicates it. Skulls found in Europe from the likely times of these migrations are of Heidelberg man which was Homo Sapien but distinctly different from all skulls of today.

What we do know is once these groups were established there was little breeding among them save where two areas overlapped. Because of mountains, oceans and large, open areas with little human population these original groups bred in relative isolation. This has lead to phenotype differences which for lack of a better term is called race.

These do exist. It is foolish to argue they do not. However it means no more than that.

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. If you took two humans at random, you would find they differed in approximately 2 nucleotides in every thousand. The generally accepted value for the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees is 98%.