Quote Originally Posted by Pearlgem View Post
[I]...it leads to ideas like...
your type haven't the intelligence of 'my race',
your race is not as civilised as 'my kind',
I can tell just by looking at you that your inferiority to me is racial/ biological.
You can be just as cruel and 'racist' by replacing the term 'race' in those statements with the term 'ethnic group'.

Sure, social scientists downplay the term. They are SOCIAL scientists, more interested in social interactions than in biological development. And in social situations the term 'race' can be construed as derogatory or demeaning, if you think of it that way. Try thinking of it in scientific terms, biological, genetic, what-have-you, rather than in social or psychological terms. Biologically the term is quite well defined and bears no connotations of inferiority.