Race

Jesse Owens beating the Nazis in a race

A race is a competition of speed. This typically involves a group of individuals attempting to reach a destination point faster than their opponents (often according to a predetermined path). There are many types of races; sprinting, marathon, swimming, bicycle. Race enthusiasts (racists for short) are people who like races — especially whatever particular race style that they themselves identify with. Self-styled race specialists (a.k.a. racialists who adhere to what they call "scientific racism") are so interested in racing that they've made a whole new sport out of trying to categorize "types" of races.

Other definitions

Separately from the above, race may also refer to:

• An informal classification in taxonomy, typically below the level of subspecies.
• An alternative term for "breed" (e.g. dog breed), an even more informal classification based on what traits the breeders arbitrarily decided to breed into the animals under their care.
• A super-informal term used in fantasy fiction to denote morphologically distinct groups of beings who may be very closely related (e.g. Orcs being corrupted Elves) or wholly unrelated (e.g. Elves and Dwarves were created separately by different beings). A character's alignment/moral perspective is often wholly predetermined by race, except with humans. (Totally not racist.)
• An ambiguous term used to racially categorize human beings, often synonymous with "ethnicity", implying some degree of shared ancestry, history and sometimes culture.
• A political race, also known as an election, sometimes known as a circus and too often as a farce.
• An arms race, also known as the lead-up to a war.

See also

• All pages beginning with "Race"
• All pages beginning with "Racial"

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