The New York Times reports on the inconsistency of how various government agencies count the races:
The federal Department of Education would categorize Michelle López-Mullins — a university student who is of Peruvian, Chinese, Irish, Shawnee and Cherokee descent — as “Hispanic.” But the National Center for Health Statistics, the government agency that tracks data on births and deaths, would pronounce her “Asian.” And what does Ms. López-Mullins’s birth certificate from the State of Maryland say? It doesn’t mention her race.
Why don’t we just stop counting? What purpose does it serve anymore, other than to perpetuate racial divides and entitlements based on criteria which no longer have meaning.
My neighbors are a mixed race couple one of whom was born here and is white, while the other immigrated here from South America. Both are physicians. Their children bear the Anglo-father’s last name, they spoke only English at home, speak English without an accent, went to private schools and elite northeastern colleges. Their skin color is no darker than most of their schoolmates, and they do not even “look Hispanic.”
Yet one day when one of those kids was applying to college a post card mistakenly was put in our mailbox from the multicultural recruitment office of an Ivy League university inviting the neighbor’s kid to visit a campus multicultural event. I assume the child had checked the Hispanic box on the application. Why does that child get recruited while mine do not?
My wife’s side of the family were the descendants of Jews who were expelled from Spain and fled to Turkey. all the while retaining the Spanish language over the centuries, with Spanish spoken at home in New York as recently as the mid-20th century. Should my kids have checked the “Hispanic” box in order to gain favorable admission treatment?
Our system of racial and ethnic categorization is outdated and now serves a negative purpose. Get rid of it.
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Comments
I'm a English-Welsh-Irish-Scot-Dutch-German-Indian(Native American)-American. When will someone stand up for my rights!
Ah, but then the leftist-progressives wouldn't be able to pander to particular groups then would they?
The Democrat party started down this path with racial "set asides" (quotas), gender specific laws favoring/protecting one sex over the other and finally "hate speech" (their penultimate victory over the 1st Amendment).
Without all the disparate "victim" groups and their narrow interests, the Democrat party would be as marginal as the CPUSA.
They chose this path because it retraced (somewhat) their so-called triumph in civil rights in the South and the accompanying ownership of the loyalty of the majority of Black voters.
Simply put: Divide and conquer.
Republicans get into trouble when they try to emulate them but they invented the game and are masters at it. With the Phony Press as their willing accomplices they can always trump anything the Republicans say or do even if the Republicans have the facts on their side.
Until people stand up to this nonsense and see it for the divisiveness that it is.
remember the root of the word "diversity" is:
derived from the Latin word diversitas (difference)
derived from the Latin word diversus (opposite; separate, apart)
derived from the Latin word divertere (to turn aside; separate; divert, turn away)
This is the opposite of United as in
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
The Democrat party in it's actions and rhetoric is borderline treasonous.
They have always been antiwar.
They have always sought to tear down the foundations of the U.S. and its Constitution.
They are fundamentally opposed to personal liberty, free speech (except for themselves), rights of self-defense, religion, the press (except theirs) and the capitalist economic system which powers the U.S.
They are a threat to the existence of freedom in this country and any and most all of their aims are anti-American.
"Our system of racial and ethnic categorization is outdated and now serves a negative purpose."
Not if you are a Democrat politician currying votes.
Too bad about your children being overlooked but there just aren't many grants and scholarships handed out to "veit" children. There is such a thing as being TOO much of a minority.
If we stop counting, how will leftists know which race to pander to?
Not paying attention to peoples' race is racist.
We can't stop counting because discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity is official government policy. The only difference between the past and now is that different races and ethnicities are the favored ones.
My mother was born in Latvia. After she married Dad in Germany (post WWII), she studied and became an American. She did not teach her children the four languages that she knew because she wanted to be American.
Whenever someone asked where she was from (because of her accent), she always said Michigan.
"Our system of racial and ethnic categorization is outdated and now serves a negative purpose. Get rid of it."
That can't be done. The Left uses this divide in order to use identity politics. If we didn't have this anymore, they couldn't buy votes and would have to stand on facts and a platform. They have none except for the fact that they want to re-distribute wealth and have social justice to "minorities". It really doesn't matter what group. They will just keep breaking down American's into more and more "diversity" groups so that we feel isolated from the whole and can claim to be a minority.
It is the only tool they have to stay in power. Divide and create a "victim" group.
Wow, wish I would have read jakee308's response before posting.
Strange how similar they are.
Amen! We should be "so past that" by now.
"Our system of racial and ethnic categorization is outdated and now serves a negative purpose. Get rid of it."
Sounds like something Dr. King might have said. In fact, sounds like a paraphrase of his "Dream" speech. I believe he would agree with you on this score. As do I.
I always enter Native American when it asks for ethnicity. I was, after all, born in the USA which makes me a native American in terms of the Constitution.
It drove my moonbat ex-wife nuts as well, a nice added benefit to irritating bureaucratic drones.
Strong concur!
Is the Spanish of Sephardic Jews called Ladino?
One of my oldest and closest friends is Sephardi, both parents. Born and reared in Rhodesia and came, as a child, with parents to America. Claims to be an African American. And she's right, of course, with the prophetic bite of Sephardi ironic humor.
She looks Iberian and is exactly that, plus African, plus American, etc. In other word, your point is well-met.
To be hispanic you need to come from Latin America, persons form Spain and Portugal are not Hispanic, in law at least. Go figure.
I've been known to enter 100 yard dash in the RACE box
My mom just died last week and on her death certificate there was a box asking if she was Hispanic. I put "decline to answer."
"So there!" I thought. She was an American, descended from many different people of different nationalities and origins. How far back do they want to go anyway? Creation?
I refuse to answer when asked my race or if I really get feisty I put NOYFB.