On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Jerry Barnes <critic...@gmail.com> wrote: > > "Race is a tricky thing to even define in America considering the amount of > intermarrying." > > Exactly. That is why it race shouldn't be a determining factor in the > fields we a discussing. Hell, Barrack is called black, but he's half > white. Why is he called black?
How do you determine your ethnicity? When the census form comes to you, how do you go about figuring out what to put down? I'm white. I know this, in spite of my frequent protestations that I was born a poor black child (which is one of my favorite movie lines ever, I might add). My next door neighbor Linda is black. She seems pretty confident in this and pretty comfortable with it. Are all of her ancestors black? I don't know, never asked her. Are all of mine white? Tough to say, honestly, we don't know anything about my father's side of the family. I can still say pretty comfortably that I'm white. I'm white because my family is white and when people see me they think I'm white and they treat me like I'm white. This matters. Know why? It is because my next door neighbor and I aren't necessarily going to be treated the same way. I understand that you want to move beyond race. I'd love that. Race shouldn't matter and I know there are a lot of people out there that feel like if we just try and treat it like it doesn't matter then maybe it won't matter. And a number of people want that time to be now. I can empathize. But wanting something to be true doesn't make it true. Race does still matter. There are still fundamental, systemic inequalities at play and every study into the matter shows that that is true. It sucks, but there it is. The reasons that programs like affirmative action were put into place originally aren't gone yet. There have been gains, yes, but they are tenuous at best. This isn't one of those situations where everything is going to be all better in 10,20,30 years. These are issues that span generations and generations take awhile. I know that people are going to fight to have affirmative action entrenched. Everyone, white or black, wants to see their advantages set in stone, no one likes to lose them. But just because we don't want to see the system entrenched does not inherently mean that it has outlived its usefulness. So think to yourself about what the goal was originally. Then ask how you will know when its been achieved. Then ask yourself, honestly, if we are there yet. I don't think you can find an honest answer that says, yeah, we've made it. I want to see a bigger focus on economics, on class, on structural inequalities in the system that aligns big business with big government to the detriment of 90% of the country. I think that there is more that we can find in common than that which may divide us. But I think that it is a mistake to pretend that race isn't a real issue anymore and that the attempt to try and take race out of the equation ends up pushing away a bunch of people who otherwise ought to be right there in the fight with you. Cheers, Ju ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:323399 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
