Hamitic etc - too Biblical for me. Also, Ethiopian USED to be the term for black - see the Just So Stories, How the Leopard Got Its Spots, for instance. Just a few comments on prior posts. I find this very interesting, and I do agree with some that "groupifying" is very, very human. Actually, it's very, very mammalian - think of prairie dog colonies, territoriality, etc - all mammalian tendencies (hey, think about ants! Maybe it's just "all social animals") to distinguish between ingroup (you and your fillintheblanks = We) and outgroup (They). Nothing inherently wrong with it - nor is there anything inherently wrong with treating members of different groups differently. That is common sense, you don't relate to your children the way you do to your parents, of course, come on! The trick is in not ASSUMING anything about INDIVIDUALS based SOLELY on their group membership. That is, meeting a new child should not raise your "children should be seen and not heard" hackles till you find out if THIS individual child can speak politely in company and has anything interesting to say.

Besides, people ARE different, and that's why I like having them around. Wouldn't it be boring if children/blacks/men/straights WERE just like parents/whites/women/gays, instead of just having the same humanity? Can't they be entitled to the same rights and privileges without having to be treated the same in ways that have nothing to do with the legal system? For instance, say I'm heterosexual. That doesn't make me SEXIST for excluding all same-sex individuals from my bed! Now, were I to assume that anyone of my gender is no fun to be with even out of bed, THAT would be sexist.