HOW DID IT HAPPEN..

Legit question: why is "race" such a big deal?

In practice, it makes no difference if your genetic makeup is a collection of recessive traits or if your skin cells inherit instructions to knock themselves out making melanine.

The only relevant and useful application of a related concept (it's not race per se,) is perhaps in global epidemiology, and in a limited way since it's been demonstrated that certain genetic groups are statistically more or less suceptible to catch a certain bug or respond in a slightly different way to environmental stimuli.

But at an individual level, hek even at local community level, if there is something that makes a group of people different than others it's not race that is relevant, but cultural heritage or economic background, even educational or academic history are factors that far outweigh and influence an individuals needs, expectations, aspirations and behavior than simply "race"

I grew up ignorant of the supposed importance of ones race, because it was simply not relevant to anything, in a place where diversity was a given fact and it was way more important and people were more often judged by their education or lack of it.

For example, I had a couple of friends of Jewish heritage and the only way in which they were different was that they would not accept if I shared my lunch time sandwich, and somehow we didn't see much of them on Saturdays.

The Japanese neighbors talked funny but we figured it was because they had just arrived and were still learning the language, but otherwise the whole gang got about the same grades and went to the same school and liked the same TV shows, played the same sports and all got bikes for Christmas the same year.

So what gives? Is it useful for anything other than artificially grouping or labeling people in categories that are useless even for marketing purposes, where grouping consumers by age and income is far more useful than prevalent phisical traits? I'm really curious if there's an actual useful purpose nowdays for the concept of "race"

because airplanes and travelling are a rather novel thing to do... a chinese farmer from the year 1000 didnt really think about visiting west africa

Because long ago when people left to settle elsewhere they would be the races we see today, they all mixed in their respective areas until they became one with their surroundings and also homogeneous as a race from interbreeding.

because geography