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The Race Card

What is the purpose of asking for someone's race? From job applications to media coverage of an individual, references to what apparently are their ancestral geographic origins are a distinctly used adjective. As an example the president of the USA is described as an African American male. Really? At what point do the origins not matter? I mean can I describe my grocery shopping experience as visiting a predominantly Anglo European owned (shareholders) and operated (management) enterprise in suburban San Francisco? Which happens to be a community made up of Asians (which make up half the planet today), Latinos, minor African American residences and about 50% caucasian of European origins? Bagged by a community made of largely African American and Latino populations who may or may not speak English? Distinctly missing are Finnish and residents of Vanuatuu as well as folks from the fine island of Tasmania. What purpose does elaborating on this nonsense serve? On the one hand in a land of the free who welcomes even the hungry and tired and wretched is it not hypocritical and insensitive to keep qualifying incidents and news by using the race card? A yellow and short burglar was spotted leaving the premises of a residence in San Francisco would actually help rather than calling him Asian. What - he was headed back to Asia? Catch him before he boarded a flight out of the North American jurisdiction? Yellow would narrow the search down to half the planet at least. Typically you do not hear the European Caucasian qualifier in any media broadcast. Why? Is it because they were the first settlers? Which is not true either since the Native (by default) Indians (why Indians is another mystery) were here first. Or the Mayans or the Incans or some such tribe depending on where you dig. So what is this obsession with continent tagging anyway? I can see for census purposes and defining stereotypes or trends and marketing purposes or catching criminals it may be relevant but to keep harping on it to describe folks involved in a car accident is no accident. Then again why not simply describe the person with the core attributes as in BLACK or WHITE or BROWN or YELLOW? Whites like to be described as just that - Whites. Why not get specific? Why not go 30% Dutch and 25% Welsh with some unknown percentage of Estonia and Slovakia thrown in. What is this African American stuff? Why not go part Senegalese with a healthy Congon bloodline thrown in? What the heck is a Latino? Even the Latinos use that term. No one speaks Latin as they harp in English. How does it matter? You are American now.
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