"Brett Robson" <deep_m_m@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:cm4rhi$ou6$1@nnrp.gol.com...
> Brandon Berg wrote:
>> "Brett Robson" <deep_m_m@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
>> news:cm4ouu$o7s$1@nnrp.gol.com...
>>>To use your analogy that means classifying every single color as either 
>>>red, green or blue or Asian, Black, White.
>>
>> It means classifying some colors as red, green or blue, others as cyan, 
>> magenta, or yellow, and yet others as various and sundry combinations 
>> thereof.
>
> I'll give you a hint, there are only 3 primary colours.

I'll return the favor: I know that. Is your argument, then, that color is a 
useless concept because not every color is a primary color?

>> The existence of innumerable shades of gray does not negate the existence 
>> of black and white.
>
> It's interesting you changed the analogy from colours to shades.

I thought it would clarify the point. It's the same principle, but with one 
primitive instead of three.

>   How many colours are there in the rainbow or how many shades of gray? 
> Nearly infinite, and that is the point.

And yet we have a scheme for the classification of every one of those colors 
in terms of three primary colors.

> Classifying people as a race attempts to turn a continuous variable into a 
> discrete variable.

You're tilting at strawmen. Is using words like "red" and "green" an attempt 
to turn a continuous variable into a discrete variable? No one's claiming 
that every person is a racial archetype.

> Is yellow red or green?

It's a more or less even combination of red and green, just as there are 
people who are more or less even combinations of two races. Race may not be 
a terribly useful concept, but it's just silly to claim that it's 
invalidated by the existence of people of mixed race.

-- 
Brandon Berg
Fix the obvious homonym substitution to reply..