I like to note that I wrote my last post prior to reading GUEST,lox -PM Date: 18 Dec 08 - 07:31 PM post and the ones that came after that.

I'm pretty much in agreement with what Lox said except that it's not always true that "different races are clearly recognizable."
Physical clues such as skin color, eye shapes, facial features, and hair texture can often be used to determine another person's racial group. However, there are people who are of "ambiguous race or ethnicity". You can't tell by looking at them what race or ethnicity they "belong" to. This can be very difficult for these children, youth and adults-particularly in settings like school where unfortunately, racial divisions still occur.

Also, some racial groups look like other racial groups {for instance some Latinos and some Middle Eastern people} and the prejudice that people have toward Middle Easterns now because of 911 has also affected some Latinos. Furthermore, some people who are members of one racial group look like they might be members of another racial group. And I'm not necessarily speaking of people who have a biological parent from two different racial/ethnic groups. To return to my comment about skin color, some people who have two Black birth parents may be much lighter than a person who has one Black birth parent and one White birth parent. For that reason and more, referring to a person as "biracial" may be informational, but in real life in the USA, those racially mixed people who have one White birth parent and one Black birth parent are considered Black. {Barack Obama, for example}. Of course, that one drop of black blood rule is inherently racist...

My main point is that using physical clues such as skin color to determine a person's race can get real complicated and does create difficulties for those people in part because of internal and external racial assumptions and racial rejudice.