Race in America

 
The Issue of Race

Americans are all immigrants of different vintages. Don’t write and tell us we are all of one race—the human race. We know from the study of DNA we all came out of Africa. But physical appearances, cultural identities, national borders, and social attitudes continue to attach some meaning to the term “race.” And the U.S. is still very much a race-conscious country. For more information on evolutionary genealogy, refer to “The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey” (Princeton University Press, 2002) by Spencer Wells.

The Wacky U.S. Census

Since the first census was published in 1790, the U.S. government has tried to classify its population by race. Different terms were used over the years; the Census Bureau has settled on these five familiar categories:

- White
- Black
- Hispanic origin (of any race)
- Asian and Pacific Islander
- American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut

If you had published this “population by race” data in a scientific journal, you would be ridiculed by your peers because it’s almost like mixing apples and oranges. By its own admission, the Census Bureau promulgates four (supposedly) distinct racial groups and one (Hispanic) that comprises multiple races. First of all, why do we need the Hispanic category? Presumably, people in this group can select one of the other four categories.

The answer is Mexico—or more precisely, mestizo. If the 100,000 Mexicans who were living in those territories ceded to the U.S. after the Mexican War (1846-1848) and the millions who emigrated north in the last 150 years all looked virtually indistinguishable from the early European settlers and colonists—from the British Isles, Germany, Netherlands, France, and Sweden—the U.S. government would never have insisted on this label. The definition of Hispanic excludes Portuguese, which is another anomaly since Brazil is definitely considered a part of Latin America.

White and black are unabashedly color-conscious categories that purport to follow the outdated anthropological terms Caucasian and Negroid, respectively. But the keyword here is “white.” The white category refers to Caucasians from Europe, North Africa, West Asia—but not South Asia. Indians, Pakistanis, and others fall under the Asian category, a term relating to one of the continents.

So there you have it—the U.S. census is a hodgepodge of labels: two colors, a non-race-specific term, a geographical term, and a catchall for indigenous Americans. Some people have lobbied for a mixed-race category as interracial marriages increase. Of course, interracial unions have a long history in the U.S. Many genealogists estimate that 90 percent of African Americans have white ancestors in their family tree. Moreover, 80 percent of them are just as likely to have an American Indian ancestor in their family tree. (It follows that white Americans, especially those from the South, may have black relatives and don’t know it—or refuse to believe it. Thomas Jefferson and Strom Thurmond are but two public examples.)

In spite of all the inconsistencies in our census nomenclature, we still disagree with those who want to abolish racial classification altogether. California’s Proposition 54, which would have prohibited state and local governments from classifying any person by race, was defeated in 2003.

Does Race Trump Religion?

The U.S. war in Iraq may be a lot of things, but it is certainly not a religious war. It’s interesting that the people who make the anti-Islam accusations conveniently overlook the fact that the U.S. came to the aid of the Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. What were Arab countries doing when their Muslim brothers were dying in the former Yugoslavia? Perhaps they felt closer to the Muslims of Afghanistan than the Muslims of Europe? Or they only became concerned when the bad guy was the former Soviet Union. Of course, some critics would turn around and argue that the U.S. intervened precisely because the victims are Europeans. The U.S. government has admitted it could’ve done more in places like Rwanda.

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Labels: current events, essays, opinion, race relations

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