http://takimag.com/article/then_again_maybe_im_a_black_man_joe_bob_briggs/print#axzz4gLf1ZhUU
....So here’s an idea. What if we declared, by law, that all Americans are the same race? We’ll call the race “American.” It’s a nationality, it’s an ethnic group, and it’s a race.
As part of this law, we would make it illegal to subclassify or hyphenate anyone. Therefore, no more Asian-Americans, no more African-Americans, not even any Native Americans, because that word would become redundant.
Wouldn’t this be the most egalitarian thing we’ve done since 1787?
Wouldn’t it be nice if, from now on, when you filled out an employment application or a bank-loan form or volunteered for the Peace Corps, you would be spared the question “Which race do you associate yourself most closely with?”
Because that is the way they state it. Even the Nielsen ratings people know you can never ask, straight up, “What race are you?” Which race do you associate with? The question itself implies that you can switch anytime you feel like it, that race is a sort of con game used by marketers to put people in categories without asking questions that are illegal.
As a backup plan, if Congress declines to do our bidding, let’s all start choosing an alternative race on the census form. People do change races—or, thanks to Ancestry.com, start thinking about them in a new way. Ice-T once told me that he considered himself white until the age of 10, when his elementary school classmates in New Jersey informed him otherwise. With intermarriage among the so-called races increasing over time, we’ll soon have such a mishmash of skin colors and body types that there won’t be much value in the broad DNA categories anyway.
And isn’t this the goldurn point? Isn’t this the very essence of America? After all, it’s called the melting pot, not the pot of mutually exclusive highly identifiable ingredients.
Why should America, of all countries, even allow the government to classify by race? We don’t allow the government to classify us by medical condition, or IQ, or income, except when we voluntarily participate in blind studies. And yet it’s okay to classify us by skin color? Are you kidding me?
In fact, the census currently recognizes six racial categories and two ethnic categories—and behold how worthless they are...
http://takimag.com/article/then_again_maybe_im_a_black_man_joe_bob_briggs/print#ixzz4gLlzJ89x
....So here’s an idea. What if we declared, by law, that all Americans are the same race? We’ll call the race “American.” It’s a nationality, it’s an ethnic group, and it’s a race.
As part of this law, we would make it illegal to subclassify or hyphenate anyone. Therefore, no more Asian-Americans, no more African-Americans, not even any Native Americans, because that word would become redundant.
Wouldn’t this be the most egalitarian thing we’ve done since 1787?
Wouldn’t it be nice if, from now on, when you filled out an employment application or a bank-loan form or volunteered for the Peace Corps, you would be spared the question “Which race do you associate yourself most closely with?”
Because that is the way they state it. Even the Nielsen ratings people know you can never ask, straight up, “What race are you?” Which race do you associate with? The question itself implies that you can switch anytime you feel like it, that race is a sort of con game used by marketers to put people in categories without asking questions that are illegal.
As a backup plan, if Congress declines to do our bidding, let’s all start choosing an alternative race on the census form. People do change races—or, thanks to Ancestry.com, start thinking about them in a new way. Ice-T once told me that he considered himself white until the age of 10, when his elementary school classmates in New Jersey informed him otherwise. With intermarriage among the so-called races increasing over time, we’ll soon have such a mishmash of skin colors and body types that there won’t be much value in the broad DNA categories anyway.
And isn’t this the goldurn point? Isn’t this the very essence of America? After all, it’s called the melting pot, not the pot of mutually exclusive highly identifiable ingredients.
Why should America, of all countries, even allow the government to classify by race? We don’t allow the government to classify us by medical condition, or IQ, or income, except when we voluntarily participate in blind studies. And yet it’s okay to classify us by skin color? Are you kidding me?
In fact, the census currently recognizes six racial categories and two ethnic categories—and behold how worthless they are...
http://takimag.com/article/then_again_maybe_im_a_black_man_joe_bob_briggs/print#ixzz4gLlzJ89x
