At one time, the official academic terms were "Caucasoid," "Mongoloid," and "Negroid," but in the light of relatively recent discoveries, such as "Mitochondrial Eve," I think these terms are essentially defunct.

My wife and I have been watching a continuing program on our local Public Broadcasting Channel entitled "Finding Your Roots," with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Each episode runs for a hour, and Gates traces the lineage of two or three people, including a few well-known people. He also does a DNA check, which proves to be most interesting.

A surprising (or perhaps not so surprising) finding is that almost all the African-Americans Gates has traced have a great deal of "White" DNA, traceable to European ancestors. These turned out to be Southern slave owners, many of whom, obviously, "had their way" with many of their female slaves.

The DNA tracing has also established that there is no such thing as "racial purity." We're all mixtures.

Those who complain about the "mongrelization of the races" are just plain out of luck. They'd better learn to live with the fact that what they detest so much already happened many millennia ago.

There is one race: the Human race.

And even that is a bit fuzzy around the edges. There are only a relatively few genes that make us human. I once heard on a science program about genetics that humans share over ninety percent of their DNA with the giant Sequoia—otherwise known as the California redwood.

Meet a few of your cousins:    Big suckers, aren't they?

Don Firth