Thursday, April 07, 2005
Let's (not) talk about race
The Census Bureau has just released a first report ("We the People of More than One Race") on findings related to their innovation in 2000, allowing respondents to identify themselves as belonging to more than just one race.Casual observation suggests that mixed-race pairings are increasing -- as are mixed-race offspring. If the trend continues, as I expect it will, the politics of race in the U.S. may be upset, as I hope it will be.
The U.S. Census Bureau began collecting data on race in 1790, for all the wrong reasons. They continue the practice, in my view, for all the wrong reasons.
There has never been a discussion of race that has not been politicized. We scoff at Nazi and Apartheidist and Jim Crow race classifications but (read the report) continue to do much the same, straining to come up with pseudo-scientific politically correct definitions.
Self-assessments of race and national heritage have, in any event, been shown to be subject to fads and politics.
There is hope. As the increasingly ambiguously defined mixed-race population grows, as it will, many will begin to find the whole business laughable. And the race-mongers (mostly now on the left) will be put out of business.
