According to many of today's scientist the term race is outdated and imprecise. Why do we hold on to terms that were designed to be divisive? Even the most liberal people use the term race to describe persons of different ethnicity's. What about people who are of two or more ethnicity's, then we refer to them as bi-racial. This is the goofiest approach to a very human condition. Confusing!!! With the continuation of the separatist term it makes it very hard to move past insignificant differences and move towards understanding and reconciliation.
When I saw the remake of the movie Alfie, I was so excited because the ethnicity of the characters was irrelevant. The fact that Alfie's best friends girlfriend and his best friend were of another ethnicity did not come up. It felt so natural and real. And how courageous for all of the actors involved to step outside of Hollywood's neat little box of who should be with whom.
We have never learned to communicate about ethnic issues in a healthy manner. I believe that people have been conditioned by the race label and it continues to lead us down a path of dist ruction.
I am an African American woman, and this is the only term I know to express my ethnicity. I have dated many different types of men. I tend not to designate them as white or black, but by ethnicity as it should be. I dated a Scottish guy, which was fantastic, a Filipino/Mexican guy, an Italian, and many African American guys, even a Haitian guy who I married and divorced. Guess what, they had one thing in common, they were HUMAN.
2 comments:
Heather, this is a GREAT start you've made to elevating this discourse to another level--the human level. That's so wonderful. I want to live in this new world you're sketching out here, but invariably someone always comes along and tries to pulls you back down in the muck. LOL!
What's happening with most of the IR blogs is that we've had to turn them into "gated" sites, (smh) as you've already had to do with yours. This is also the reason why we can't live on the "human" level--beyond "race" and other nonsense characteristics. There's a segment of people out there . . . .
I think some people use the terms "black" and "white" because at this point, we don't have any other terminology that is commonly understood.
My husband and I were talking about this topic a couple of weeks ago and he pointed out that he's merely a lighter skin shade than me. My hair has a tighter curl than his. Those are the differences--that most people in the world simply CANNOT at this point get beyond.
"Race" is an illogical and scientifically 'imprecise' concept, as you said. Some people know that intellectually, but most people operate most of the time on an "emotional" level--not on an intellectual level. Unfortunately.
Yes that is true but I find the idea of dating out to be disheartening because the guy may be nice but what of his family.
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