Why Race Anyway?
As my son wraps up his AA he’s taking a Race, Class, and Gender class. He’s the third child of mine to take the class. Apparently, this teacher requires a weekly wrap up because the past two Wednesday mornings I’ve found a paper on my seat to read. This son likes for me to proof his work, though he hardly needs it. I have got to take this class! As I read through his paper this morning I was getting all riled up about how (and who) we’ve classified race for census purposes. I wasn’t fully aware that Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race – so now I better understand why it has changed over the years as they cry out for better recognition. But mostly, reading through my son’s recap of the week in Race, Class, and Gender class, made me think about how we’ve done this to ourselves. From the beginning we’ve singled out our differences. Originally, we defined our differences by our religion before changing it to race. Which does at least show some progress over the years. There ha...