Here's a fascinating article about a student who was African-American - but couldn't get an award because he was "too white".

http://www.wnd.com/2004/01/22929/

Just what is African American? If someone has to look back to their great-grandfathers to find the African connection, should we really still be calling them African American? Would another term be better?

yeah - human.

any form of racial distinction is ultimately racist. i think coulourblindness is the way forward.

Janimal -

I'm in general fully in favor of all humans marrying each other, getting any job, and so on. So in general I see no need for a "race designation". Race designations are fairly arbitrary anyway. If someone has an Italian mother and Kenyan father, what are they supposed to call themselves? It gets confusing very quickly.

The one area that race still seems to "matter" is in scholarships. I think it's the only place I can think of where there are restrictions by race. Is that true? And if so, is that a good thing? Maybe it should be just based on income levels? I.e. what if someone is an African-American (black) child of a millionaire? Should they get a scholarship because of their skin color?

no they shouldn't, but i dare say that there is many a privilege metered out according to race, be it the exclusion of blacks from much of the western ruling classes, or the positive discrimination which awards scholarship and social aid to ethnic minorities in the governments attempts to fulfill its social obligations. on the face of it some of these things can appear to have positive effects but any form of discrimination is ultimately limiting sections of society by a variety of means.

the fact that these distinctions still exist is the most damning illustration of the puerile and infantile nature of the collective human psyche. we will never advance fully as a species until we grow up and leave behind us any distinctions of race, faith, creed or nationality. the trouble is many people treasure these distinctions - from the jews with their 'gods chosen people' shite, to the arians with their blood purity bull, many people treasure their own way of saying 'we are the most special' and unfortunately very few people are big enough to cast all this aside.

ultimately its all racism, and its a long road before enough people realise. great christy moore song seems appropriate here:


I want to reach out over the Loch
Feel your hand across the water
Walk with you along an unapproved road
Not looking over my shoulder
I wanna see, and I wanna hear
To understand your fear
But we're north and south of the river

I've been doing it wrong all of my life
This holy town has turned me over
A man on the run from what he didn't understand
As the wind from the Loch just blew colder and colder
There was a badness that had its way
Love wasn't lost, it just got mislaid
North and south of the river

Can we stop playing these old tattoos
Darling I don't have the answer
I wanna meet you where you are
I don't need ya to surrender

There is no feeling so alone
As when the one you're hurting is your own
North and south of the river

Some high ground is not worth taking
And some connections are not worth making
There's an old church bell no longer ringing
And some old songs are not worth singing
North and south of the river...

ok - he's talking about irish sectarianism here, but this song rings true from so many angles.

the sooner mankind sorts this crap out the sooner all the undiscovered einsteins in indian villages and schweitzers on the african plains can join mankinds efforts to advance instead of being held down by a tiny minority of stupid white men who want all the glory and get all the cash...

We've had long discussions about this in several of my ethics classes now, and it's always fascinating to me. I think we can probably agree that we're better in terms of reducing racism than we were years ago - but that we're still not at a zero-racism level. We're in some sort of in between grey area.

So if we acknowledge that we're still in a grey area, what would happen if we just across the board eliminated all race related language everywhere? No more scholarships based on race. No more quotas based on race. No more checkboxes on forms where children have to figure out which box to check. No more reports for voting where the reporters say "and person X got 55% of the African-American vote".

If we did that, what would be the "down side"?

for truly egalitarian people there wouldn't be one. we get asked all those kinds of questions on census forms, and i was threatened with a £5,000 fine for refusing to answer any of the ethnic origin questions beyond saying that i was a human from planet earth. since i pointed out to the authorities that i found the questions inherently racist, and that a truly egalitarian society should have no need of those questions i have heard no more about the matter. as far as i'm concerned they were lucky to get the form filled out at all - for years i have been dutifully feeding census and electoral register forms to my shredder. i don't see why i should be forced to take part in their silly bloody games whilst they enforce 'democracy' by threatening huge fines.

Wow, Janimal, it's amazing that they would try to fine you such a huge amount for refusing to reduce yourself to a check box. What if you honestly couldn't check a box because none really applied to you?

oh, there is always a 'other' box. what winds me up is if the system is supposed to be so equal opportunities based these days why are the questions even needed?

Janimal, Lisa,

That was a great post/conversation. Let me tell you a word that I have struggled with from time to time, though actually it can be two words depending on how one uses it.

Black Dutch or Melungeon. . .

The Maternal side of my family transplanted from Ireland to Estonia a few hundred years ago and then came to America in the mid 1800's.

However the Fraternal(Christian) side of my family seem, or at least some of them, to have "always" been here. With this mystery came the term Black Dutch. I made the mistake of asking my third grade teacher what Black Dutch were right in the middle of class and when the teacher asked me why I wanted to know I told her that they were my family.

After the principal got through with me I went home and got a whippin there, then a whippin at my papaws oh and then the fun really starts the next day at school.

I guess I did not finish my post eyyy? The term "Black Dutch" is something that was told to me when I was very little by my Great Grandmother, who was my Papaws mother. Black Dutch is just another term for Melungeon. Both are terms meant to describe short people, of dark complexion, usually from the Mediterranean Area having High cheek bone structure and muscular build. In our area people of “Black Dutch “ were originally thought to have originated from the Ukraine but there is no formal record. My papaw never has liked that term, he has always considered it an insult. I assume that any term can be an insult if you consider it as such. I don’t like being called white because my skin is more like a peachy color during the winter and I brown up much like a well done steak during the summer so white is not a good term for me. HeHe :/