As travel and immigration become easier and easier, and more and more people marry and/or have children across the race lines, will we see a gradual drift towards a single, more homogenous “race”? What would it look like? What would this do to race-ralations? What characteristics would bigots use to hate those of other groups?
In posing this question, I am interested in the gradual change of racial features like skin/hair/eye colour, lip/ear/nose size/shape, etc. Moving to the UK recently, where there are a large number of mixed-race relationships in the area that I live, it struck me how similar looking the children of these relationships were…
Exactly the topic of a story that I started writing a few years ago, and abandoned. I think it would be a wonderful thing, myself, though I recognize that it would probably mean the loss of some fascinating cultures.
And I have no doubt that bigots would continue to be bigots, and this “one race” would still have classes. But at least one of the most common excuses for bigotry would be gone. Also, I’ve always thought that “mixed-race” children tend to be really beautiful.
Well, let’s see… ethnicity, country, state or city of origin, religion, sexual preference, social class, employment type, foreskin status, language, fashion, political leanings, peer group… seems to me that there’s plenty of things for bigots to get worked up about.
As far as skin color goes in this scenario, there will always be very light-skinned people and there will always be very dark-skinned people. The majority will be somewhere in the middle. The continuum of colors will roughly match a normal (bell-curve) distribution. This is due to the way the genes that regulate skin pigmentation work.
One of my dearest girlfriends is from Ecuador. Now, if you ask me, Ecuadorians are a pretty homogenous mix or European, Indian and maybe a touch of African.
Not being able to distinguish any real differences by appearance, they have decided that the costenos and the montenos will forever be biased against each other. That is the people who live on the coast against the people who live in the mountains.
In the Latin community in New York, especially amongst the older people, the Puerto Ricans can’t stand the Dominicans and vise versa.
Seems as if that old Star Trek about the people with the black/white faces was pretty close to true.
Unfortunately, I think Biggirl has it just about right. Even if we all look basically the same, people will find an excuse for prejudice.
That ol’ genius Dr. Seuss was right. Remember the story of the Star-bellied Sneetches? (sp?)
But to answer the OP, yeah, I do think we are becoming more homogenous. In the US, you see a lot of kids around these days to whom it would be very difficult to ascribe any particular race.
As an aside, anybody here ever been to Portugal? I think many generations of seafaring and exploring and colonizing (with all the resultant intermingling) have turned them into something of an early experiment in homogenization. They are noticeably darker-skinned than their Spanish neighbors.
On an historical note, I seem to recall that Alexander the Great dreamed of uniting all peoples and creating a racially homogenized society. (Any students of ancient history who can confirm or debunk this?) Perhaps Alexander’s dream is slowly coming true.
Dunno. If you ask them they’ll tell you how obvious it is. The way they walk and talk. The things they eat, how they smell. There is no real logic to prejudice.
*spoke, I’ve always said that if you mix any distinct-looking peoples, you get Puerto Rican. Puerto Rico is a teeny, tiny island through which have passed just about every kinda nationality western culture can come up with.
No matter what, where, how or when, there will always be at least one person with too much time on their hands and nothing better to do than think up stuff to be offended by, pissed off about or just be contrary to stir up the pot.