"Whites" and "Blacks" are as much different races as are collies and poodles.

I agree and noone would consider collies and poodles to be of just one race.

There are several definitions of the concept of race. It could be via DNA, but the peresent knowledge doesn't allow a classification along that line. I expect that'll change in the next few decades. Another definition is behavioural: If humans are able to visually differentiate with a high confidence between people(animals) of differing appearences within one species then one might use the concept of races.

This concept will be used by nearly everyone (including you) under some circumstances. If your grandchildren, Amos, will use your announcement to be of African-American descent in order to be treated differentially at university admission, someone will tell them that they just do not look like deserving the preferential admission treatement reserved for African Americans. If one of us is a victim of assault and battery I expect we will use labels along racial (sexual, linguistic) lines to describe the perpetrator. Why do we use such labels in these circumstances? Because we trust that others know what we mean. If I describe a perpetrator as white, male, 20ish with a Hessian accent, and with no visible hair on his head, that excludes a lot of people from any suspicion.

I think many of the contributors here confuse two very different things. Since in the past so often these racial labels (Aryan, for instance, in my country) have been abused for completely undeserved political discrimination up to state sponsored murder they (the contributors) want to get rid of the labels used for discrimination when if fact it is discrimination along racial, sexist, sectarian,... lines is what we have to fight against. You wouldn't want to eliminate the labels male/female, would you, just because the second part of this label has so often been used for discrimination in jobs, payment, admission to scarce resources?

Sometimes it is useful to eliminate a previously used label, but the argument that in a verbatim sense that label is wrong is a very weak argument. Pars pro toto like in "Caucasians" is a very common practice in labeling. 'The "Romans" have conquered the Southern half of the isle of Great Britain' you'd accept without missing a heartbeat as a correct descrition of what happend some 2000 years ago. Or would you really want to object that most of them did not come from Rome, actually? Many labels we use daily are wrong in a (historic) verbatim sense but we know what they mean. "Germans" is a historically wrong label, "African American" too for obvious reasons, and "antisemitic" as well. So what? We use the words and we know what we mean.

I think I share with most of you the noble feeling that has led to your posts but I consider your arguments to be dismally weak.

Wolfgang