Whoever we are and whatever we do in life, we are all being asked, many times over the years, to choose our race from a given list.
It may be a job application, health insurance or medical form, driver’s and marriage licenses, or school form; the list goes on and on.
No matter what justification is sometimes given, such as the need to identify individuals having a predisposition to certain diseases, the true purpose may lie elsewhere.
As recently reported in The New York Times marriage announcement section, a couple applying for a marriage license in Virginia refused to provide their race on the marriage license application, of which there were 200 choices including Aryan, Mulatto, Nubian and Octoroon (a person who is one-eighth black by descent).
The couple found the terms to be offensive and scientifically baseless.
They joined a class-action lawsuit which resulted in Virginia’s attorney general ordering court clerks to eliminate the “race” requirement.
Georgia and Louisiana, however, continue to require “racial information.”
We should never forget the use of racial profiling by Adolf Hitler and his attempt to create a superior Aryan race by eliminating those he deemed “inferior” such as Jews; Roma, also known as Gypsies; etc.
Who among the non-Jewish German population spoke up as their Jewish neighbors were disappearing during the Holocaust?
The “alt-right” White Nationalists, KKK, American Nazi Party and their ilk thrive on the concept of racial superiority. They even have referred to Jews as a race rather than a religion.
Renowned sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, more than 100 years ago, expressed concern that race was being used as a biological term for what he felt were actually social and cultural differences.
The greater science community today agrees. Scientific scholars state that racial concepts in genetic research need to go.
Many people today, as they investigate their ancestry, are realizing for the first time that their family roots reveal a multiethnic heritage.
There has historically been tremendous assimilation through the centuries of various ethnic groups. There is no “pure” or unmixed group.
We should celebrate our ethnic heritage, whatever it may be, and bury the racial stereotypes forever.