Letter: There is only one race - the human race

Monday, July 2, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.

With respect to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down voluntary racial integration plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., I can think of only two pertinent questions: 1) Will this ruling advance the integration of our multicultural society, or does it retard it? 2) Will this ruling help move our society toward the promise of its founding principles, or was it another Jim Crow decision that preserves the advantages of the status quo?

And while we're talking about race, what I would like to know is how long America is going to pretend that there is such a thing as race?

All living human beings, after all, belong to one species: Homo sapiens. Telling someone I'm white, brown, black, or red says nothing - nothing - about me. The concept of race stems from the now quaint idea that we can subdivide human beings into biologically distinct groups. Scientists, however, have found it impossible to separate humans into clearly defined races. Almost all scientists today reject the concept of biological race, seeing human biological variation as falling along a continuum.

Why should we permit the notion of race to persist as a powerful social and cultural concept that tries to categorize people based on perceived differences in physical appearance and behavior? The damage of clinging to such superstitions should be obvious when reading our history of genocide, slavery, segregation and continual urban strife.

Talking about the race of a person is akin to talking about a flat Earth at the center of the universe.

David Fredericks, Las Vegas