Re:Slack got four of its black female engineers to accept a ...
by smt88 on Thursday February 11, 2016 @10:35AM
(#11080687)
There is no scientific definition of race. People do differ genetically and sometimes those differences can be found in certain ancestral groups, but there is no scientific way to draw hard lines between those groups.
What is someone who is 1/4 African, 1/4 European, and 1/2 Vietnamese? What does their "race" tell you about them?
Even if you could do a genetic test of every single person who, say, applied for a job or a college, you still wouldn't be able to determine their race with any certainty most of the time.
Race is just not an objective definition, and if you knew anything about US history, you'd know that. Most of the landmark civil rights cases were about proving that you can't identify race by appearance, behavior, or even ancestry, since so many blacks had mixed ancestry.
What is someone who is 1/4 African, 1/4 European, and 1/2 Vietnamese? What does their "race" tell you about them?
Even if you could do a genetic test of every single person who, say, applied for a job or a college, you still wouldn't be able to determine their race with any certainty most of the time.
Race is just not an objective definition, and if you knew anything about US history, you'd know that. Most of the landmark civil rights cases were about proving that you can't identify race by appearance, behavior, or even ancestry, since so many blacks had mixed ancestry.