It really pisses me off when I’m listening to the radio or read something on the web and I hear someone say something like, “People of different races have more similarities than differences.”

What the fuck does this mean? If we list off all possible properties (natural kinds?) there are more people of the different races share than differ on? But if this even makes sense surely there are more similarities between a person and a rock (both made of matter, primarily fermions etc..) than there are differences. Even ignoring the obvious difficulties of comparing arbitrary members of extremely non-uniform groups this assertion just doesn’t make any literal sense.

Of course I realize that effectively this claim is just a place holder for the belief that ‘racism is wrong’ or ‘the differences between the races aren’t very important’ but I object to the way it is asserted as a fact to support this position as if it was some objectively verified fact rather than a mere restatement of you conclusion. Sure racism sucks but that’s no excuse to pointlessly use misleading arguments against it. If you really need to cite some fact at least say something meaningful like: the genetic variation inside ethnic groups is larger than the variation between them.