Finucane wrote Eric, one thing we agreed on before we started writing this series is that our universe would be color blind, that by 2450 there'd have been enough intermarriage among human populations that race would no longer be a distinguishing factor in relationships.  Just look at the names of some of the characters, though, and you can tell what their origins are.  I guess we achieved this synthesis because it's hard to tell from the way we describe our characters what their ancestry was.  With McNeal and Dr. Bynum, for instance, it should be pretty obvious where their people came from but with other characters, you might be surprised when you find out their origins.  But Bass, in my mind, is Caucasian because in my mind he's based on a real person I knew in Vietnam.  He was killed there.

This is where Turtledove brings up an intersting question in Homeward Bound, the last of the Colonization books. What is going to happen if we spread out in the universe, but don't homogonize the human race before we do it?