Race is much more than skin colour

"Race can be determined by skin color alone, whereas ethnicity cannot be. " Ethnicity is a hodgepodge term that doesnt mean genealogy (race) and is not entirely separate from it either. From Wikipedia: 'An ethnic group, or an ethnicity, is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, language, history, society, culture or nation. ' So it could mean genealogy, but it could also not. It is highly ambiguous and thus slightly meaningless, please refrain from using. Secondly, race is not determined by skin colour, it is simply a strong indicator. Race is determined by groups of alleles, not a single one. The method of sampling from many alleles allows us to place an individual in a particular race very accurately. Your points on people having different quantities of identifying alleles (dark skin genes) seems to suggest that race is quite abstract and not a useful set of classifications because of it is set on a continuum with people on all parts of the spectrum. However, just because there are people we find that are roughly in the middle of 2 generally accepted races, does not mean those races are meaningless. Firstly, the people found between common race groups are of lower quantity than those from the primary race groups. This is because, as I explained in my first argument, geography has placed limits on human movement and intermingling for long periods before mass transit was made available. Secondly, we are aware of people regarded as 'mix-race', the product of miscegenation. Many examples of those found on uncommon points on the spectrum are made of of mix-race peoples who are more common these days due to travel and immigration, where different races can come together. These people exhibit the characteristics expected of someone who is the average of two racial extremes. They exhibit the expected IQ levels found in the mid point of blacks and whites (. https://www.news-medical.net...) Quite similar to how we have trucks and cars. There are some vehicles that have traits found in both cars, and trucks, and may be hard to tell which category they belong to. There is also much crossover, in that trucks have a lot of the same things that cars have. This does not mean that trucks and cars are useless classifications, and it is still important to treat them differently, such as using different fuel, and different driving behaviours. My opponent goes on to say something along the lines of: Asians have epicanthic folds, but other races do too, they just lose it as they mature. Therefore using epicanthic folds as a racial marker is useless. Since we can use this logic for many traits, races are not very different. ' Obviously not a direct quote, just trying to give clarity to observers. Unfortunately, my opponent fails to grasp the underlying concept of race, which is (I am reiterating what ive already said here) common alleles at the GROUP level. When the only difference between people is the colour of their skin, which may only be 1/3 alleles different, or an epicanthic fold, of which the other used to have before coming out of the womb, then I can see why you might think race is not a big deal. But there are other differences, many others. When one person has an epicanthic fold, and yellow skin colour due to higher levels of subcutaneous fat, and straight hair, and black hair, and little body and facial hair due to neotonous evolutionary selection, and are short in stature, and have large skulls with large cranial capacity, and short flat noses, and are lactose intolerant, and have an IQ of 105, then it can be readily determined that this person is East Asian (Korean/Japanese/Chinese). This is what broad racial differences mean, and this is how DNA tests work, how your race can be determined quite easily just from a saliva sample. Geneticists take a lot more into account that these basic differences I have given as examples. Racial differences are far greater than skin colour. Doctors understand it is important to treat patients of different races differently, and prescribe medicines that they do not have adverse reactions to, because of their racial differences. Differnet races are susceptible to different diseases, due to biological differences in quantities of chemicals, and different immune reactions, and different organ sizes, and different brain pathways and responses. These are all evolutionary behaviours and responses. I hope this satisfactorily covers the physical broad differences between races.