Re: Races of Man (was Re: Tolkien and the ruin of Fantasy)

Paul Ciszek (pciszek@nyx10.cs.du.edu)
9 Nov 1996 23:18:31 -0700

merritt@u.washington.edu (Ethan A Merritt) writes:

>You are responding to a statement that "race" is merely an attribute
>assigned by reference to superficial appearance.

No, I was responding to someone who claimed that race doesn't exist.

> You counter-claim
>that "real, distinguishable physical racial differences do exist".
>But your supporting evidence is basically just that some guy (the
>"forensicist" whatever that is supposed to mean) is happy to assign
>race based on the superficial appearance of reconstructed faces.

No, I refered to anthropologists who were tracing the migration of
people from one part of the world to another. You seemed to have
forgotten that part. The medical examiner was a more current
example; he was able to narrow the field of possible ID's for a
given skeleton based on racial differences in eye sockets, noses
(the boney part), jaws, and teeth.

>This is the sort of non-logic

What's logical about ignoring information that can be used to
solve criminal cases or answer questions about pre-historic human
activity?

Paul Ciszek "Evolution is a theory that accounts for
variety, not superiority."
pciszek@nyx.net -- Joan Pontius