[patrice]

That person is an American who is a part of the HUMAN race. This conversation only exists because our country is so twisted about ‘race’. What is ‘Black’? What is ‘White’? Why make the distinction? If someone asks for a description, I tend to say he/she is an American with fair/dark skin. And I’m always tickled by the response I get especially if the person I’m describing is of ‘darker’ skin color. For the record, I’m an AA female whose skin color is not black, I’m brown; I don’t accept the black or white ‘race’ distinction because no one has ever bothered to capitalize the B or the W (except for Ebony and Essence, correct me if I’m wrong). If the B & W aren’t capitalized, how can [B]lack & [W]hite be considered a race. A race is a proper noun which requires a capital letter. It sounds trivial but it makes a difference in one’s mindset. One doesn’t write [a]sian American or [l]atino American, etc. because Asian and Latino are cultures/races. [w]hite and [b]lack are colors and they don’t describe one’s race they just make the distinction in trying to describe one’s skin orientation and they (unfortunately) come burdened with a history of distinctions which are in desperate need of change. If you think I’m just babbling, consider the checklist on various forms, e.g., Hispanic-white; Hispanic-non-white. This is just one example but if white is a race and Hispanic is a race, why does one have to make a distinction between being a white or nonwhite Hispanic? Some might say that there is a distinction. I only see that there may be someone whose parents are Hispanic and they were born in America so then that makes them, Hispanic American. If they were born in the Caribbean or elsewhere, then hyphenate the place with Hispanic. Why make the [w]hite/[b]lack distinction? This is what I mean by the fact that [w]hite and [b]lack need to be eliminated as race definitions. There is nothing wrong with describing a person’s physical attributes using appropriate colors, but, that’s all those words are–colors–not racial distinctions. And as more and more people become interracially mixed, what’s the next step on a form>> asian+hispanic, non-white; asian+hispanic, white; hispanic+ Caucasian, black; hispanic +caucasian, non-white;hispanic+caucasian, white; black, non-white; white, non-black–you get the picture–it gets ridiculous–oops, it already is ridiculous.

User Detail :  

Name : patrice, Race : American, City : washington, State : DC, Country : United States,