There are traits individuals can have, some of which are immutable, and some of which correlate with what we call "race". But race itself is, even taking the most benign meaning possible, at best a surrogate.
The sooner we get rid of that awful meme the better.
I agree it isn't "race." However, there are groups of people who have similar characteristics where it might be beneficial to look at the group as a whole not just individuals. For example, it may be that a certain group of people, with a common background and in a particular geography have specific notions about whether they trust that education will work or that health care will be honest. It might help to look at those communities and have discussions about what can be done for them at large. I think it would be very difficult to only look at individuals. Obviously, we then get the problem of group labels and stereotypes being used for malicious purposes...
> white people are the only ones who think this way
Not really - Asians are pretty quick to point out that lumping Japanese immigrants in with Indian immigrants makes for a pretty meaningless classification.
Are you from the UK by chance? That's the only place I've been that considers Indians "Asian". I've also never heard any of my Indian-American friends call themselves Asian, they're very proudly (sometimes obnoxiously so) "Indian".
And of course the Philippines, Japan, China, Korea etc all have very different cultures/customs. However in my experience at a fortune 500 my Korean and Filipino coworkers still organize an "Asian Culture Club", in fact one of them is the president of an Asian advocacy group that interacts with the city for events around Asian American And Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
All that's fine, I'm not bashing anyone, just saying that from what I've seen it's seemingly only white people who are averse to any kind of ethnic organization.
Isn't it true though that you can tell someone's race by their genome, skeletal structure, and other physical traits apart from skin color? Additionally, is it not also the case that race is generally agreed to result from geographic isolation, and that if that persisted long enough, speciation might occur?
Not stating this is reality. I'm genuinely curious what the science is on this.
No, unless with "race" you mean something other than the ordinary meaning of the word. You can find those differences and draw lines between populations, but they don't overlap very well with the folk interpretation of race.
The traditional concept of race (i.e. the one where "white", "black", "asian" and so on are well-defined terms) is scientifically untenable (fact) and socially harmful (opinion).
There are some narrow use-cases where the concept can be fruitfully applied. For example, some diseases are correlated with genetic characteristics themselves correlated with race. If you are a physician making a diagnosis, the patient's race is usually very apparent; you can and should make use of that information. But that's just keeping the English friar happy, correlation does not imply causation.
There are traits individuals can have, some of which are immutable, and some of which correlate with what we call "race". But race itself is, even taking the most benign meaning possible, at best a surrogate.
The sooner we get rid of that awful meme the better.