[simonh]

I think people in those days had a very exaggerated idea of the scale of genetic differences between people of different ethic groups. Nowadays we know such differences are a rounding error and that looking at differences in genomes between individuals, those attributable to ethnicity are generally a minority. Back then, this wasn't known.

EDIT - I had a bit of a laugh at the quote about the Chinese supplanting other races. I'm a WASP, but my wife is Chinese and our kids are pretty obviously half Chinese.

[uniformlyrandom]

Does knowledge of genome proximity help you to find women of other races more attractive?

[simonh]

I've always found Chinese girls attractive, long before I knew anything at all about population genetics. Not that I know a whole lot about it now, but still. I was lucky enough to go to a school in the UK, but with a large proportion of foreign students from all over Africa, the Middle East and Asia so maybe that had an influence.