The first of several fallacies about race is that it has a precise scientific meaning. Biologists sometimes use the term “race” synonymously with “subspecies” – the lowest taxonomic category, which is created by dividing a species into formal subunits. An example close to home would be the four genetically differentiated populations of Pan troglodytes, the chimpanzee. Other biologists reject the subspecies as a taxonomic category altogether.

But whether or not you believe in formally recognized taxonomic human subspecies, as biologists did up into the 1960s, race has always been about the idea that there are a few basic kinds of people. Race is a device for meaningfully sorting people, and we can summarize the idea of race with four properties. First, that there are only a few of them. If there are 700 races of people, then it’s not very useful as a classificatory device.