Thread: Love & Race
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  #37  
Old 06-03-2009, 09:23 PM
custer custer is offline
 
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Columbia KY
Posts: 74
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Maybe this is too simplistic, but...

How can "race" be a "Darwinian concept," when Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary defines race as
"1. The lineage of a family, or continued series of descendants from a parent who is called the stock. A race is the series of descendants indefinitely. Thus all mankind are called the race of Adam; the Israelites are the race of Abraham and Jacob." ???
According to www.aboutdarwin.com, a website "dedicated to the life and times of Charles Darwin," in 1828 when Webster had already formulated the above definition, Darwin was in school and "did not take his studies very seriously, spending much of his free time collecting beetles, reading Shakespeare, and having dinner parties with his friends." He didn't start publishing scientific diaries until 1836 and the Origin of the Species wasn't until 1859. I'm just saying that the idea of a "race" being a line of people couldn't have originated with him.
Interestingly, the Bible terminology is the "generations of [so-and-so,]" and one of Webster's definitions of a "generation" is a "race."
It seems like this discussion got off course by confusing race with nationality. It is only in a NEW dictionary that "race" has been expanded to include the word "nation." And still, when you are asked on an application to give your race, they're not asking where you're from!

Pam
www.custerfamilyfarm.com

Last edited by custer; 06-03-2009 at 09:45 PM.