Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Which Box Should I Check?

I came face to face with the insanity of race the other day as I looked over my kids' school registration papers. Among the usual papers was an "ethnicity survey" that I presume is used for federal reporting or funding or something. I've got no problem with that.

But here is what we had to fill out.

The first section for "Ethnicity" gives you two choices - Hispanic/Latino or non-Hispanic.

What the...?

So now ethnicity is either Hispanic or non-Hispanic. That is it? And you can only check one box. So since my kids are half Hispanic and half non-Hispanic, which one box should they check?

Then comes the second section where you check your "Race." Here they say you can check as many as needed. Which of course is a big improvement over many years ago where even here you used to be able to check only one box.

The choices included many Asian categories of "race." Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, you get the picture. So now these are supposedly different races and not just different countries of origin or cultures?

And of course there was the standard "White" or "Black." But interestingly no Brown category for race. I guess that was covered under ethnicity in the first section which means Mexican, Honduran and Brazilian people or simply Hispanic but Asians can have countries which makes them have races.

I am confused.

Now I get that Hispanics can be black, white and brown. But so too are there Asian Hispanics. And if my wife is Hispanic thus checking that box under the ethnicity section for example, what is she supposed to check in the "race" section where there is nothing available for her that is a "Brown" category. She is not White nor Black nor any of the Asian categories. Which also means what are my kids supposed to mark on this form? I am truly not getting this.

Race is so untrue that even when they tried to fix these forms, they have only served to make them even more useless and confusing.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

You Tell "Em Rachel!

You gotta love this from Rachel Maddow. If you haven't seen this, her rebuke of Pat Buchanan who made the statement that "white people built and made this country" you should watch it.

I love Rachel Maddow.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Paris Jackson's Debut A Beautiful Thing For The Blended Family


One more thing about Michael Jackson I promise. Despite the fact that his kids are clearly not his biological kids, seeing his daughter, Paris, really for the first time unmasked and speaking, was so so wonderful considering she and the family were broadcast to the entire world as a family that was certainly not mono-racial. Even if adopted, they are still his kids and still a good example of a blended or Mixed family.

I loved seeing her and look forward to seeing more of the kids. I just hope they get a shot at a normal life, at least as far as normal can be considering.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Richard Nixon on “Interracial” Babies

O.K. we already knew Richard Nixon was a complete crook and liar. But now we can add to his legacy, complete idiot.

As you may have heard, the Nixon library released last week more recordings of this crazy man. Which by the way, I don’t understand why they keep doing this since they exist to honor the man, and yet the more we know about him; the more history will see him for what he was, a person totally unfit to run this country. Anyway, one of the things Nixon can be heard expounding on in this most recent batch, is his opinion about exceptions for abortion. In a nutshell he said that while he was against abortion generally, he felt that there were two exceptions that should be allowed, in the case of rape and in the case of Mixed, black and white, babies.

Yep.

That’s what the idiot said.

Need I say more?

What a fool he was.