Posted by
Doc Stephens on Sunday, January 27, 2008 11:45:30 AM
A few random thoughts about names and labels.
The planet we live on and call "Earth" should be called "Planet Ocean."
The state of Indiana is named out of respect for an indigenous people who were called Indians because Columbus mistakenly thought he was in India when he visited our hemisphere and found humans who looked different them him.
If anthropologists are right about the migrations of modern humans over the past 35,000 years, we are all "African Americans" although some of our ancestors left Africa much earlier than others, and for very different reasons.
All humans have the same skin pigment (except albino's who have no skin pigment). The differences between our skin color has to do with the amount of the pigment. Darker skinned people have more of the pigment than the lighter skinned people. The same thing is true about eye color and hair color.
The differences in skin color within the "races" is greater than the differences between the averages of the "races."
There is no such thing as a "race of people." All known living humans are the same species, and the goofy idea of "race" was invented to classify people who appear to be different based upon some visible characteristics, but not other visible characteristics. Defining a person as belonging to the "white" group is no different than saying a person belongs to the "tall" group of humans, or the "skinny" group of humans, or the "blue-eyed" group of humans, or the frekled group, the curly haired group, the bald group, or any other way of categorizing us humans. The classification based upon "race" took on political and emotional meaning and became part of our language.
Not all Christians agree on what is a Christian.
Not all Conservatives agree on what is a Conservative.
We can more easily agree on what is a Democrat or a Republican--in some states.
There is no such thing as "global climate" but we can certainly argue about how it has changed, and is changing, and might change in the future--it is a concept with many different descriptors and definitions.
Enough of this.