Delaware students can now choose their own race (Yes, RACE!) under new regulations.

[PSintend0]

 

Lets use this color thing as an example.

Biologists now classify species according to to their genes. From those they can see what elvolved into what, which species are animals, plants, archae etc. and how close different species are from each other. The platypus could have wings, beak and lay egg and it would´t still be nowhere near birds according to its genes. 

As for the races think about that color thing. Lets say that we have that for every species and the clearly different colors represent different races in that species. For dogs the yellow might represent chihuahua and the green could golden retrievers, two clearly distinct races. Now on to humans, look at a small section from the middle, humans only have that so there are differences, but they are too minor for us to have proper races (we still could have distinct races at some point). 

Should the opinions of random people change the way the taxonomic stucture is build? And what would happen if they changed it? 

It wouldn´t really change reality, but the system would change and former races and everything under it would have to be called something else and would have to be changed. Still people wouldn´t be happy as we would then have to have huge number of human races for example, at least two races of finns. People wouldn´t regognize different finns by just looking at them, but would need genetests to differiate them.

It would all be pointless and nobody would be happy.

People want things to be simple, visible and easily defined. More often than not  things just aren´t like that.

JWeinCom said:

I say that each school should hire a team of geneticists and researchers.  Through a combination of extensive genetic testing, family interviews, and archival research, we will be able to really nail a student's ethnic heritage.  

I figure that a school of about 1000 students could make due with a team of 4-5.  The median salary would be in the realm of 65K a year, so schools may have to sacrifice a few teachers, cut a few after school programs, or limit investments in technology for students.  However, this is a small price to pay for the peace of mind that comes with knowing all students' races are accurately recorded. 

That sounds like a good idea, as long as its only in USA as they already have a president who would certainly approve that. Also the schools there are generally already fukked up so it wouldn´t matter that much, just more of the same old same old, making america great again ;D