Participation in Multiracial Identity Research Survey

[Hartwig Valerian]

Greetings fellow residents!

I would be honoured if you would take a little time to complete a survey I am using for data in an article I'm writing on "multiracial indentity" in Second Life. The only pre-requisite is that you consider yourself of multiracial descent and (of course) participate in Second Life. The link follows (with addtional instructions and privacy information), and while I am not currently offering any perks for your participation (as the link has been active for quite some time now, and I am wrapping the survey since my article deadline is due at the end of November 2011), you will receive my heartfelt thanks and a copy of the survey results (if you wish):

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?authkey=CM-XnL4M&hl=en_US&formkey=dGlqRGRVRjdqdVBRNG9RWk1mR3c1ZUE6MQ#gid=0

 

Thank you and regards.

 

Hartwig Valerian

[Void Singer]

does only considering myself as human "sometimes" count? =X

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Hartwig Valerian wrote:

Greetings fellow residents!

I would be honoured if you would take a little time to complete a survey I am using for data in an article I'm writing on "multiracial indentity" in Second Life. The only pre-requisite is that you consider yourself of multiracial descent and (of course) participate in Second Life. The link follows (with addtional instructions and privacy information), and while I am not currently offering any perks for your participation (as the link has been active for quite some time now, and I am wrapping the survey since my article deadline is due at the end of November 2011), you will receive my heartfelt thanks and a copy of the survey results (if you wish):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?authkey=CM-XnL4M&hl=en_US&formkey=dGlqRGRVRjdqdVBRNG9RWk1mR3c1ZUE6MQ#gid=0

Thank you and regards.

Hartwig Valerian

---

As race has no biological meaning, I'm afraid I see your selection criteria as "The only pre-requisite is that you consider yourself of multi-meaningless descent". I'd never thought of myself this way before, but I kinda like it! Nevertheless, I don't think that's what you intended, so I'll leave it to those who consider themselves of multi-meaningful descent to participate.

Good luck, Hartwig

;-)

[Hartwig Valerian]

Hi Void,

Thanks for your response and question. Hmmm, that's an interesting one. The answer to your question might be clearer once you've looked at the survey. Have you done that? Any data from responses will pose interesting discussion regardless of how you approach the issue, I think. So, "sometimes" human is, I suppose, relevant, but keep in mind that I am initially interested in your physical being as being of "racial" hybridity.  Once we get into the vitual realm, the world is your oyster. But again, read the survey first. =-)

Looking forward to your potential participation.

Cheers.

[JeanneAnne]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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As race has no biological meaning, I'm afraid I see your selection criteria as "The only pre-requisite is that you consider yourself of multi-meaningless descent". I'd never thought of myself this way before, but I kinda like it! Nevertheless, I don't think that's what you intended, so I'll leave it to those who consider themselves of multi-meaningful descent to participate.

Good luck, Hartwig

;-)

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Race has biological meaning, just not when applied to modern humans.

Homo sapiens sapiens & H. s. neandertalensis could properly be considered distinct races. There was a certain degree of gene flow between the races but not much. Likewise, mountain, eastern lowland & western lowland gorillas comprise three distinct races. Etc...

When I answered the questions I took "multiracial" to mean "multi-ethnic" and proceeded to describe how a Welsh coalminer ancestor of mine fathered a child by a Shawnee Indian "prostitute" (sex slave was more like it) provided by the mine owners, and how that child went on to become a more proximate ancestor of my father & myself. But you do bring up a good point Madelaine: If Hartwig is actually going to publish a paper about all this stuff, he needs to be more careful about the terminology he uses.

Jeanne

[Tiffy Vella]

I was taught that there is no such concept as race. It was just a convenient classification system made up by a group who found such a thing to be convenient for them, much like phrenologists liked to make meaningful distinctions between people with bumpy/smooth foreheads.

The survey asked pretty insightful questions though, and never once tried to pin anyone down as being a socialsexual weirdo in any way (hurrrah!), but I had to delete my response as I'm simply not multiracial enough.

(edited to add that it's too far back to discover if any of my rellies had ever had a fling with a neanderthal..but I hear that it did happen often )

[Hartwig Valerian]

Hi there, and thank you all for responding. It's good to see a healthy dialogue happening around my survery. Certainly, it's not my intention to confuse or be vague. It's difficult to describe race, ethnicity or culture. Nowhere can we find universal agreement on a standard defintion for any of these. Although I certainly don't consider myself an anthropologist or biologist either, my interest in this area of research stems from a personal connection to the topic: just like Hartwig, the person behind the avi is also of multiracial descent: Filipino, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Chinese... and so, of course, this issue is of importance to me. Another article I started collecting data for quite some time ago tries to delineate between the concepts just mentioned, but that's been collecting dust for a while now, and needs to be unburied some time in the near future.

Anyway, as Tiffy mentioned, I tried to make the survey as unobtrusive as possible, so that no-one (hopefully) feels caged in.

Thanks again for all your feedback.

Regards.

Hartwig

[JeanneAnne]

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Tiffy Vella wrote:

I was taught that there is no such concept as race.

---

Some biologists have drawn a technical distinction between "race" & "subspecies." For all practical purposes, however, I consider the two terms synonomous. Because of racist connotations, I'd just as soon the term "race" be dropped from usage. There are no distinct modern human races. This is because there had been insufficient time for distinct races to have evolved allopatrically, or due to geographic isolation. Today, of course, there is so much gene flow between incipient "races" that the whole concept of different human races is meaningless. Whatever criterion one might choose for distinguishing between "races": skin pigmentation, blood type, mitochondrial or Y chromosome haplotypes, etc... is arbitrary. One could choose any given phenotypic or genotypic criterion and group humans accordingly, then chose another and another... and there wouldn't be any correlation between the groupings. For the concept of "race" to apply, as it does between the three races of gorillas I cited above, there would have to be such correlation. So the concept of race exists, it just doesn't apply to modern humans.

Jeanne

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

As race has no biological meaning, I'm afraid I see your selection criteria as "The only pre-requisite is that you consider yourself of multi-meaningless descent". I'd never thought of myself this way before, but I kinda like it! Nevertheless, I don't think that's what you intended, so I'll leave it to those who consider themselves of multi-meaningful descent to participate.

Good luck, Hartwig

;-)

---

This is the new way in which the white-power movement tries to destroy minority groups: Well the truth is, after 500 years of oppression, you don't really exist. Get over it, and stop acting funny and just be white like a normal person.

But they still won't invite you and your browness over for dinner.

 

I'm multi-racial.

And yes race is real. Its as real as saying you are democratic or republican or christian or muslim. Its a culture thing. And it is a shared ancestry thing.

And I come from cultures and shared ancestries of 4 different continents, equally.

And if you've lived with the harrassment that gives you from folks of many shades; you'd know its darn well real not just to oneself, but to how others label you.

 

Tell a Tusti, a Black Sudanese, a Tamil, a Tibetan, a Quechua Amazon, a 1940s Jew, a modern Palestinian, a Pygmy, a White Zimbabwian, A Black westerner, a Native American, a European Gypsy, etc... that they're just imagining being slaughtered and/or oppressed and see how well that goes over.

[ellerc]

Well said Jeanne.

Elle

[JeanneAnne]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

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And yes race is real... Its a culture thing. And it is a shared ancestry thing.

 

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Okay Pussycat, I'll buy that: It's a culture thing. But it isn't a biological thing, not with humans anyway.

Jeanne

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

As race has no biological meaning, I'm afraid I see your selection criteria as "The only pre-requisite is that you consider yourself of multi-meaningless descent". I'd never thought of myself this way before, but I kinda like it! Nevertheless, I don't think that's what you intended, so I'll leave it to those who consider themselves of multi-meaningful descent to participate.

Good luck, Hartwig

;-)

---

This is the new way in which the white-power movement tries to destroy minority groups: Well the truth is, after 500 years of oppression, you don't really exist. Get over it, and stop acting funny and just be white like a normal person.

But they still won't invite you and your browness over for dinner.

 

I'm multi-racial.

And yes race is real. Its as real as saying you are democratic or republican or christian or muslim. Its a culture thing. And it is a shared ancestry thing.

And I come from cultures and shared ancestries of 4 different continents, equally.

And if you've lived with the harrassment that gives you from folks of many shades; you'd know its darn well real not just to oneself, but to how others label you.

 

Tell a Tusti, a Black Sudanese, a Tamil, a Tibetan, a Quechua Amazon, a 1940s Jew, a modern Palestinian, a Pygmy, a White Zimbabwian, A Black westerner, a Native American, a European Gypsy, etc... that they're just imagining being slaughtered and/or oppressed and see how well that goes over.

---

Skin color is as arbitrary a distinction for prejudice as religion or politics, but I think you do a disservice to your argument over prejudice against color (or other indelible distinctions) by comparing it to either of those. One can change and hide one's religious and political views. There are still a great many people who think "race" may be an indicator of intelligence, including possibly (as there is disagreement over the interpretation of his remarks) Nobel Laureate James Watson of DNA fame.

I don't see how my refusing to recognize these arbitrary distinctions leads you to presume I'm ignorant of the atrocities committed daily using them as a pretext.

Pussycat, you are welcome to dinner anytime, even though lacking opposable thumbs you are likely to fumble my good silverware.

;-)

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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JeanneAnne wrote:

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Tiffy Vella wrote:

I was taught that there is no such concept as race.

---

Some biologists have drawn a technical distinction between "race" & "subspecies." For all practical purposes, however, I consider the two terms synonomous. Because of racist connotations, I'd just as soon the term "race" be dropped from usage. There are no distinct modern human races. This is because there had been insufficient time for distinct races to have evolved allopatrically, or due to geographic isolation. Today, of course, there is so much gene flow between incipient "races" that the whole concept of different human races is meaningless. Whatever criterion one might choose for distinguishing between "races": skin pigmentation, blood type, mitochondrial or Y chromosome haplotypes, etc... is arbitrary. One could choose any given phenotypic or genotypic criterion and group humans accordingly, then chose another and another... and there wouldn't be any correlation between the groupings. For the concept of "race" to apply, as it does between the three races of gorillas I cited above, there

would

have to be such correlation. So the concept of race exists, it just doesn't apply to modern humans.

Jeanne

---

While I agree that the concept of race is quite meaningless when it comes to human populations, I disagree that the terms race and subspecies are interchangeable. Historically, some biologists have used the word race in this way, especially botanists. But nowadays, subspecies is the lowest rank in both the botanical and the zoological taxonomy, and race is no longer a term that has any place in science.

"Race" has always been a breeder's term. There are many races of dogs, for example, but there is no subspecies called Canis lupus doberman or C. l. labrador, simply because there is no wild population of these domestic breeds. Let them out into wild, and before long, all those different races are history. You'd probably end up with something resembling Canis lupus dingo, which unlike dog races is a genuine subspecies by now.

The fact that humans are not domestic animals makes the notion of different human races all the more offensive and is one reason why the word is no longer used by the science community, which is nowadays taking a clear stance against scientific racism (including the governmental racial stereotyping that is still common in the USA and other parts of the English-speaking world. Think of the race question on the U.S. census, which is in itself racist).

[Ishtara Rothschild]

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

This is the new way in which the white-power movement tries to destroy minority groups: Well the truth is, after 500 years of oppression, you don't really exist. Get over it, and stop acting funny and just be white like a normal person.

---

That is one way to look at it. But if we want people of all skin colors to be treated equal, wouldn't it help if we no longer saw them as different minorities and paid as little attention to skin color as we do to hair color? Technically, blond and green-eyed people are minorities too, but they are not discriminated against. In order to end the discrimination against ethnic minorities, we need to put skin color in the same category as other personal traits instead of making a big deal out of it.

Of course I can see that this is not possible for as long as the majority still discriminates against those they perceive as racial minorities. The realization that we all belong to one big species without subspecies has to happen on all sides. 

 

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And yes race is real. Its as real as saying you are democratic or republican or christian or muslim. Its a culture thing. And it is a shared ancestry thing.

---

Of course culture and ethnicity are real concepts. But race is a different concept that, as far as the notion of human races goes, has its origin in the so-called scientific racism of the 19th and 20th century. It's time that we abolish this racist idea.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

Some cultures (such as mine) have come to see the idea of human races as racist. Please understand that SL is an international platform and that you might offend some people here with this kind of "research". It's generally not a good idea to bring RL ideologies into this virtual world.

[Void Singer]

I honestly meant that in the literal and physical sense... and no, not a prank (most of the time I'd like to think that I'm better than what passes for human)

[Tiffy Vella]

It's ok..it's just that this is "general discussion". And so the people here will like to discuss anything posted here. A good thing, in my book.

[JeanneAnne]

>>There are many races of dogs, for example, but there is no subspecies called Canis lupus doberman or C. l. labrador, simply because there is no wild population of these domestic breeds. Let them out into wild, and before long, all those different races are history. You'd probably end up with something resembling Canis lupus dingo, which unlike dog races is a genuine subspecies by now.<<

Well Ishtara, I'm not even sure how to respond to this. Since all individuals of all "species" of the genus Canis are fully interfertile, as are their offspring, I'm not even sure how the concept of "species" applies to dogs, let alone subspecies & races. There's like, what? 20 some odd "species concepts" out there... Mayr's reproductive isolation concept being but one among them? How's that supposed to apply to canines, leta lone to clonal "species." With modern humans & Neandertals I'm not even sure this much is true. While there was limited introgression, current evidence suggests that most hybrids were sterile. Coyote x jackal hybrids apparently deserve to be considered the same species more than human x Neandertal hybrids do. Yet the "official" systematics don't reflect this. As with so many things, Darwin himself seems closest to being correct when he says that "species" (& by extension subspecies, races, & varieties) reflect whatever the person most familair w/ the taxon says it reflects. It's all just arbitrary anthropocentric categorization.

>>The fact that humans are not domestic animals...<<

Oh! I couldn't disagree with this sentiment more. Humans are the epitome of domesticated animal. In fact, "domestication" means nothing if not in terms of artificial selection, which humans have practiced on themselves LONG before every dreaming of practicing it on other species. Today, undomesticated humans are virtually extinct. Perhaps this is why you can imagine that humans are not domestic animals; because you are unfamiliar with undomesticated humans to compare those of us today with.

The bottom line on human "race" is that for there to be sucha thing as distinct human races, there'd need to be more variation between than within races. This is not the case. Hence, "race" as a concept that applies to humans is meaningless.

Jeanne

 

[Hartwig Valerian]

How could anyone not bring in first life ideologies into SL? You look around anywhere you go in this virtual world and there are first life ideologies everywhere. It's the foundation of this virtual world is it not? When Teen Grid was cancelled and when educational platforms were not provided the same kind of support sex shops receive in SL, wasn't some type of first life ideology implemented? When Birgadoon Island was created in SL in order to give those with Ausperger's syndrome a chance to overcome their emotional and social fears wasn't some kind of first life idealogy envisioned? There are businesses in SL that cater to multiracial communities by creating skins that take on a more multiracial look--should we ban those residents because they dared to acknowledge that race does exist (in both SL and FL)? It is exactly the "international" nature of this platform that allows discussions like these to occur. I find it just as "offensive" that anyone here would try to put a cap on the open dialogue intended on blogs and forums. So far I've not noted any offense to my research, and from the hits this post has received, there's been a lot more interest than offense taken. Up until here, Ishtara, your comments have been sound. But I think by the time you got to the end of your string of feedback, you may not have thought this one through very well. The multiracial community put the "other" / "tick more than one" / "mixed" boxes on the 2000 Census because not only was there an acknowledgement that race does exist but it exists in more than the black or white that has normally been discussed in the past. I understand your stance on the term "race" itself, but you try telling a child who is Chinese, Mexican and Filipino all her childhood that race does not exist and then watch what happens when she leaves the protection of her family one day, goes out into the "real" world and gets called a ch**k or sp*k. Tell her then that race doesn't exit. Or watch an African / Irish child all his life get turned away by both his communities because the Africans say he's not black enough and the Irish say he's not white enough. Or, instead, watch one side force him to choose one side or the other. Tell him then that race does not exist. But what does a child like that do in the face of this of ignorance? She finds others just like herself, who have embraced not just race, but multi-faceted race. If you read works by Heinz Insu Fenkl, Chandra Prasad and Neela Viswani you'll see how alive race is, but discussed on a much more intelligent level than in the past.

My research goes beyond culture, heritage, ethnicity--it *is* about blood, but it's about the multitude of different bloodlines that course through my veins and the veins of those who participate in my research. If not "race," then what term should I use instead?

But if you also actually look at my survey you'll notice that beyond the first life user's acknowledgement of having multiple bloodlines there is an interest in observing if this multi or hybrid identity is reflected in the avatar... and in this case it's no longer just focusing on race, but on identity in general.

And thank you for your comments, by the way. I appreciate the time you have taken to engage in this issue.

[Void Singer]

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Hartwig Valerian wrote:

How could anyone not bring in first life ideologies into SL? [...]

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I don't think that the argument there is that NO real life ideologies are brought in (that would be impossible for many reasons), but that ideologies that no longer have context are largely discarded in interpersonal relations strictly within SL.

I think the point that others are driving at is that while SL has a target pool of people who probably have relation to your focus, the focus of SL itself largely excludes it.

that's without getting into terminology, political correctness, or specific word valuations.

[Celestiall Nightfire]

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

Technically, blond and green-eyed people are minorities too, but they are not discriminated against.

---

 

I'm blond and green-eyed in RL Ishy.  

Perhaps it's also because I'm a petite woman, but I've experienced a lifetime of people pre-judging me based upon how I *look*.   Yes, some of is discriminatory, and by this I mean, that there is a pre-conceived notion of "cute, sexy, little dumb blondness" that permeates our western society (particularly in the US).  

This is something I've fought my whole life, and it irks me to this day that I still encounter people in RL, who instantly place me into a less-intelligent-child-like category based upon physical characteristics.  People who patronize, insult, and condescend to me, without even having half the brains that I possess. Sadly, it's not just men who do this. 

 

[Hartwig Valerian]

Hm, then I'm confused. If race has no place within the larger context of SL, then why is it that users spend hours and hours on end fixated on exacting the details of their skin tone and physical features? Why not just slap on a shade of blue on a shapeless mass and call it a day? Then again, there are users who purposely come online under the guise of a different race, but we'll never know this. That's what makes SL such an interesting place to conduct this kind of research. And I'm looking at your avi image right now, Void... seems pretty race-induced to me. =-)

I think race is rampant in SL... just most users don't acknowledge it or (want to) think about it. If one actually visits SL--I mean, *truly* looked around and moved beyond the confines of their comfort zones, we will see race heavily at play. Go visit the adult sims, Void, where avis engage in hardcore virtual sex (which, by the way, constitutes a massive portion of SL), and you will see race at play.

Then again, what is beautiful about SL is that race takes on an entirely different meaning here. And it is only in a virtual world that we can engage in different and more evolved discourses about race. When a user decides to appear online as a vampire, dragon, or a hybrid fairy / werewolf are we not then considering race at at level which is not possible in the physical realm?

But then again, maybe you are right in the fact that my particular brand of racial discussion is hard to elicit from SL users. I'm interested in "multi" racial identity, and many people are not equipped to talk about that, especially when they have been conditioned from an early age that their multiple heritage is non-existent or unimportant.

[Hartwig Valerian]

Thank you for your comment Celestiall.

[Void Singer]

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Hartwig Valerian wrote:

Hm, then I'm confused. If race has no place within the larger context of SL, then why is it that users spend hours and hours on end fixated on exacting the details of their skin tone and physical features? [...]

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I said it's largely discarded in user interactions, with good reason... what you see is Not controlled by what RL is, as you yourself pointed out. to Illustrate the example....

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[...] I'm looking at your avi image right now, Void... seems pretty race-induced to me. =-) [...]

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which one? I hope not the forum image (that's of a game character whose personality I feel akin to, so I use it to set the mood of my posts), if you're referring the the one currently in my avatar profile, that's a version of my original av (circa 2005?) that vaguely resembles RL me. I change that profile image out on a random basis, but I let that pic linger since I rarely use that av (lets me show of more avs). You'll more frequently find me in one of my themed avs, which includes a anthro clouded leopard, a monochromatic faun, a red green and blued steel robot, or a spiky black cloud. A newer favorite of mine is my starving artist, who has a patchwork frankenstein-esque skin of multiple skin tones. The only avatar of mine that even remotely was designed with racial considerations in mind would have been my child genius, and then only because she's been tweaked to fit into victorian era steam punk role play. She was originally modeled as a female version of a manga character, in a different time period (so retains an asian cast in a nod to her predecsessor)

you'll note none of that actually has any bearing on RL racial considerations (no not even my original av, because "me" trumps any categorization). in RL I'm quite the mutt, and freely borrow from all my ancestries, and even from those that are not part of my heritage (because there's always something to be learned from a different viewpoint, especially living in it, but one must remember that it's still not the same as being raised to it)

The point I'm trying to make about SL, is that most user interactions here are unchained from RL race, because it doesn't hold the same meaning or weight and none of the localized generalizations to culture or status apply in an environment where one can be anything.

I am not saying that racially (recte: "culturally" IMO) influenced behavior doesn't exist in SL, just that by and large it doesn't have much direct bearing on the interactions between people within SL, because it's generally not part of the focus. I don't actually have a horse in this race (pun intended), I'm just noting what I see as the the reason for the debate.

PS

I don't think that relating peoples personal personal tastes in skin tone to racial motivation does anyone justice, when such preferences are generally related more to familiarity of various kinds) than anything else. (the cultural disconnect of the beauty ethic fueled by advertising is an entirely different debate)

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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JeanneAnne wrote:

>>There are many races of dogs, for example, but there is no subspecies called Canis lupus doberman or C. l. labrador, simply because there is no wild population of these domestic breeds. Let them out into wild, and before long, all those different races are history. You'd probably end up with something resembling Canis lupus dingo, which unlike dog races is a genuine subspecies by now.<<

Well Ishtara, I'm not even sure how to respond to this. Since all individuals of all "species" of the genus Canis are fully interfertile, as are their offspring, I'm not even sure how the concept of "species" applies to dogs, let alone subspecies & races. There's like, what? 20 some odd "species concepts" out there... Mayr's reproductive isolation concept being but one among them? How's that supposed to apply to canines, leta lone to clonal "species." With modern humans & Neandertals I'm not even sure this much is true. While there was limited introgression, current evidence suggests that most hybrids were sterile. Coyote x jackal hybrids apparently deserve to be considered the same species more than human x Neandertal hybrids do. Yet the "official" systematics don't reflect this. As with so many things, Darwin himself seems closest to being correct when he says that "species" (& by extension subspecies, races, & varieties) reflect whatever the person most familair w/ the taxon says it reflects. It's all just arbitrary anthropocentric categorization.

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Reproductive isolation can be a purely behavioral (i.e. preferential) or geographical matter. It doesn't mean that two different subspecies or species are biologically unable to have viable hybrid offspring, in many cases even fertile offspring.

I'll go out on a limb and say that probably all mammals are interfertile within the same genus, unless there are major size differences that render hybridization physically impossible. Grizzlies frequently interbreed with kodiak bears and occasionally with polar bears. Big cats have been known to interbreed in captivity (see Panthera hybrids). And domestic cats, the descendants of African wildcats, naturally interbreed with the larger European wildcat.

Domestic cats (genus Felis) have even been cross-bred with different genera, such as Asian leopard cats (genus Prionailurus) and servals (genus Leptailurus), resulting in the fully fertile Bengal and Savannah hybrid breeds. Sheep-goat hybrids are also not unheard of, although they are infertile and often stillborn. But the cat hybrid example shows that cross-genus hybridization can result in fertile offspring.

There are also documented cases of snake and bird hybrids (not snake-bird hybrids, but hybrids of different bird genera and different snake genera) that have naturally occured in the wild. Hybridization is, after all, one important driving force of evolution. If the complete inability to interbreed was a requirement for species classification, there would be no species and we'd probably have to cut off the zoological taxonomy at the family level.

I also don't agree that our taxonomical categorization efforts are completely arbitrary. There are some debatable details, such as the genus Pan that should probably be merged with the genus Homo considering the close relationship between chimpanzees and humans, but the zoological taxonomy seems overall pretty sound to me. Especially when you look at the higher taxa. I mean, the class distinction between insects and mammals is clearly not completely arbitrary

 

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>>The fact that humans are not domestic animals...<<

Oh! I couldn't disagree with this sentiment more. Humans are the epitome of domesticated animal. In fact, "domestication" means nothing if not in terms of artificial selection, which humans have practiced on themselves LONG before every dreaming of practicing it on other species. Today, undomesticated humans are virtually extinct. Perhaps this is why you can imagine that humans are not domestic animals; because you are unfamiliar with undomesticated humans to compare those of us today with.

 

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I agree that humans have self-domesticated. My poorly expressed point was that we don't get to establish breeding standards for humans the way we do with domestic pets and livestock. Some people tried to do that in the past and it didn't end well. Humans are free to breed with whomever they want (more or less anyway. There are still irrational laws against interspecies romances). 

 

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The bottom line on human "race" is that for there to be sucha thing as distinct human races, there'd need to be more variation between than within races. This is not the case. Hence, "race" as a concept that applies to humans is meaningless.

 

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I agree with the first statement. There definitely are no human races or subspecies. The variation argument, however, is an ultimately meaningless truism, because it also holds true when we compare the DNA of different deer species or the genome of dogs and wolves. Natural selection that leads to speciation often acts on a very limited set of genes, and the changes can be a smaller than the phenotypic variation within each species. Some quotes:

"In the deer family, genetic variability is greater within some species than between some genera." (Cronin, 1991)

"Greater mtDNA differences appeared within the single breeds of Doberman pinscher or poodle than between dogs and wolves. … There is less mtDNA difference between dogs, wolves, and coyotes than there is between the various ethnic groups of human beings, which are recognized as a single species." (Coppinger & Schneider, 1995)

"In terms of genetic distance, redpoll finches from the same species are not significantly closer to each other than redpolls from different species." (Seutin et al., 1995) 

"Among the haplochromine cichlids of Lake Victoria, it is extremely difficult to find interspecies differences in either nuclear or mitochondrial genes, even though these fishes are well differentiated morphologically and behaviorally." (Klein et al., 1998)

"Neither mtDNA nor allozyme alleles can distinguish the various species of Lycaedis butterflies, despite clear differences in morphology." (Nice & Shapiro, 1999)

And here is an extreme example of a pathogen that is genetically closer related to Beagles than Beagles are to Great Danes:

"Canine transmissible venereal sarcoma (CTVS) is a dog tumor that has developed the ability to spread to other dogs through sexual contact. It looks and acts like an infectious microbe, yet its genes would show it to be a canid and, conceivably, some beagles may be genetically more similar to it than they are to Great Danes." (Cochran, 2001; Yang, 1996)

This shows that the "greater variation within populations than between them" truism doesn't really mean anything. The problem in trying to categorize humans below the species level is a different one. If we merely had a few geographically and morphologically distinct human populations -- say, the Pygmy, Inuit, Japanese, and Swedish people -- that did not migrate and interbreed, we would undeniably be dealing with four different human subspecies. But that is not the case.

If someone travels from China over Eastern, Western and Southern Europe, then crosses the Strait of Gibraltar and keeps on going until he reaches the Ivory coast, he won't see any sharp morphological demarcation lines. Instead, he will find a gradual change in morphological traits that would require an almost infinite number of subcategories due to the high level of genetic exchange between neighboring human populations, not to mention the constant migration of small groups over larger distances.

People in Southern France are slightly darker skinned than people in Northern France. In Southern Germany, dark hair and brown eyes are more common than in Northern Germany, and Northern Germans also tend to be taller (I moved from North Rhine-Westfalia to Lower Saxony about a year ago, and I feel like a dwarf up here with my 174 cm / 5"8 ft). But it is impossible to draw lines anywhere through France or Germany and say "ok, up here we have the Frisian race, here the Bavarians, over here the Bretons and there the Basques", because you will still find countless nuances in between these ethnic groups.

And of course it makes even less sense to lump all ethnic groups in France and Germany together and call us "white" or "Caucasian". We range from pale pink to shades of olive, none of us is white, and most of us have never been anywhere near the Caucasus region Like the color gradient of a rainbow, it is impossible to separate and categorize us humans into a small number of "races", and if we make it a larger number of categories we wouldn't know where to stop. That is what distinguishes us from all other species and makes the one inseparable, global human race.

ETA: (There are also ethical considerations that are more important than the scientific accuracy that would be impossible to achieve in this case anyway, given the incredible degree of human diversity).