Race as a Means of Classification

Race, for the purposes of this blog, can be thought of as a family, tribe, or people depending on its use.  I believe that it is not a useful tool in classifying people for the reasoning that it tends to put people in boxes.  When you start to say what people are, you also start labeling them what they are not.  Different associations are made depending upon the labels that you give them (which is what has happened historically) and this starts to severely affect not only the identity that they create and the self-fulfilling prophecies we set, but the way that reflected appraisals of others as well as the actual way that others will see and judge us.  For example, if a little mouse was born and his family always told him that because all mice were small, they were also helpless and insignificant, eventually the mouse himself would start to see himself that way and also act that way because he thinks that is what is expected of him.  However, if he grew up being told that he was strong and brave, he wouldn’t necessarily consider his size an indicator of his strength and he wouldn’t expect others to think of him that way either.

As far as the Census Bureau allowing Americans to define themselves by indicating more than one race, no, I do not think that they should allow people to select more than one race because I do not think they are necessarily useful as a tool.  Excuses are thrown out that they are good indicators for neighborhoods and schools to receive grants but I think it is more of a tool to see what neighborhoods and schools they can target and discriminate against.

I volunteered at a 1^st grade elementary school near my college for a community service project.  My kids were bilingual and all of them could speak both Spanish and English, but there were a few that had not yet learned how to write in both languages.  The teacher I assisted spoke of the financial difficulty she faced in preparing for the school year explaining that she received and allotted $200.00 for supplies over the course of the entire school year.  She was one of the luckier instructors, only having 25 students in her classroom compared to the 35 other instructors had in their rooms.  She said that once the schools started providing money solely on test scores, teachers were caught helping the students (aka cheating) to make sure their schools were not shut down.  These kids are VERY smart and they usually have to drop out of school early because they have to help baby sit their siblings because their parents work two jobs each to support the family.  Every test had a bubble in race form…  Can we really be so naïve as to think these schools overcrowding and lack of financial assistance to both the parents of these children in form of childcare and lack of assistance in form of cut P.E. programs, after school programs, and school supplies are not based on race?  This is a serious issue occurring right here in our own backyard.  It’s time for us to wake up and make a difference in our community.  The world is a big place and there is no better place to start making a difference than right here at home.