Just to add to your point Eric, Charles Darwin had a second great theory, in addition to his particular version of the evolution theory. He also published his Theory of loveual Selection in which he posited that men and women choose loveual (and therefore reproductive) partners based upon how similar prospective mates are to the individuals family members. Lighter skinned people breed with lighter skinned people etc. This was his explanation of the different looking types of people (somehow this term "race" has crept into common parlance but it has absolutely no scientific basis). Although this aspect of Darwinian thought is virtually impossible to verify, there have been quite a number of scientific experiments carried out in the field of cognitive psychology. What was discovered was that male primates have a very powerful drive to breed with females that not only look as identical as possible to their mothers and sisters, but the drive even extends down to smell.

If a baby male monkey is constantly exposed to a particular fragrance from it's mother or mother surrogate, that male will respond loveually to that fragrance as an adult. I suppose that at some point in our evolution this may have been a helpful trait in preserving tribal allegiances or something of that nature. But certainly in humans it is just a throwback to earlier stages of evolution, much the same as allergies to milk products suggest that humans never completely adapted to the hunter gatherer lifestyle from our vegetarian past, or the different human blood types probably evolved as an attempt to provide us with immunity to disease (as sickle cell anaemia was an evolutionary attempt to immunize humans against malaria). Indeed I have read theoretical musings that most of our DNA, the stuff referred to as "garbage" may have it's origins in ancient genetic responses to long gone diseases etc.

So this recurring human male problem of constantly wanting to breed with sisters and cousins (remember that all human societies have banned incest because it is such a strong drive) or at least with females that strongly resemble them is a holdover from the past. Unfortunately evolution, like reproduction, is far from perfect. The entire species doesn't necessarily all inherit all features that have evolved and that is why we have different blood types, different heights, bone structures, allergies, genetically inheritable diseases, personality types, love drives, fat people, skinny people etc. Darwinian style evolution works precisely because our very inefficient genetic copying mechanism, which we call reproduction, produces such a wide variety of human types that it would be almost impossible for a single cataclysmic event or viral disease to eradicate our entire species.

So this idea that there are so-called "races" is ludicrous and flies in the face of all scientific theory and evidence. But further, even the desire to preserve such a childish concept seems to spring from an evolutionary dead end, which is the desire to breed with one's mother or sister or those resembling them. From time immemorial, all humankind has placed strict taboos on anything resembling incest (the taboo is so strong that even same love incest is regarded as sick even though there would be no children). Closed societies will go to extreme lengths to keep introducing new blood into their groups. Perhaps the most well known are the Hutterites and Mennonites who will provide local farm boys from outside the community the opportunity to have anonymous love with female members of the community in a completely darkened room. Despite their religion they have discovered that closed societies often don't have the critical genetic mbutt to survive without the dangers of inbreeding.

I can only surmise that those people who still think in terms of races are holdovers from a less scientifically enlightened time so many millennia ago, before the dangers of inbreeding were known, before genetics or evolution were discovered. Conceivably the fear of other humans who looked different served well for wandering tribes of hunter gatherers who had to contend with a hostile environment as well as the constant raiding of other human tribes (all primitive human societies and indeed many primate societies such as our closest genetic relatives the chimpanzees seem to have engaged in this constant raiding such that other humans have always been more of a danger than the rest of the environment...the Vikings being a good recent example of this ancient practice). In such a primitive environment sticking with one's own would be paramount to survival. However it is sad that this primate holdover has survived and persisted until the present and still seems to have a strange illogical hold over so many individuals of our species. Tribalism or nationalism or racialism or call it what you will, this may indeed be so instilled in our species that it's genetic roots may be impossible to correct in the same way that male loveuality is tied to male aggressiveness and a huge portion of our laws and societal practices are designed to attempt to separate the number of instances where male aggressiveness and male loveuality occur at the same time.

The saving grace in all of this is the new intellectual disciplines of Cultural Evolution and Memetics (ideas such as religion, logic etc. that seem to survive and reproduce in a compebreastive intellectual environment where ideas are subject to a form of intellectual natural selection.....the term "meme" is used for these ideas as "gene" is used for the biological version). Obviously people who think in terms of "race" or "racial superiority" are both memetically and genetically throwbacks to our days of living in caves. Somehow these primitive intellects must either be "weeded out" of the genetic pool (perhaps the women's movement could get all women to agree not to breed with men who suffer from this genetic disease...yes I do mean disease) or at least modern enlightened societies could solve the problem memetically the way the incest taboo has created an almost vomit type of psychological response to the concept of breeding with one's mother or father.

I see racialism as a genetic problem and a memetic problem. People who suffer from such genetic or memetic diseases are akin to crack babies or the mentally retarded who just cannot cope with the modern world because they do not have the physical or psychological ability to deal with the world as it exists. They must therefore withdraw into a small little world where they are safe within artificial confines. Much the same as a modern society would not allow a mentally defective person to obtain political power, people who suffer from the genetic and memetic disease of racialism and incestuous should also be banned from the political world. I'm not suggesting that any of these people should be mistreated. As a free and caring society, we should care for all invalids, whether their disabilities be physical, psychological, genetic or memetic. Racialism is a genetic and memetic disability and those who suffer from it deserve our pity, sympathy and help. Paranoid schizophrenics must be medicated and kept safe to protect society from them and to protect them from themselves. I suggest that the same treatment be applied to the genetic and memetic disease of racialism-incestuism-inbreeding.

Ken