It seems to me that the modern concept of race is one of the most ingrained illusions in our culture. Discussions of whether some person or some group is "white" or "black" or whatever have no more rigor than asking whether someone is a "jock" or a "nerd". First, there is no clear definition of "white" and "black" or anything else, and even if we take the most common conception of it, most people don't fit neatly into either category. For instance, by US census standards, both a Norwegian and a Yemeni are "white". What about the racial gradient in the region of the Isthmus of Suez? Where do people stop being white and start being black?

Furthermore, most racial conceptions obsess with superficial features that may not correlate with large differences in DNA. There may be two people that look more similar but have wider differences in their DNA than two people that look different.