And I quote, a white person is “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as “White” or report entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Arab, Moroccan, or Caucasian.”
I find this to be quite interesting, as (1) this means that our government is currently bombing “white” nations full of “white” people and (2) the Middle East is just a Euro-centric definition of a geographical point where the continents of Africa, Asia and Europe meet, and (3) it wasn’t that long ago that the Irish, Germans, Italians, Polish, Ashkenazi Jews, etc.—all European immigrants that are considered to be white today—were (legally) considered to be black. The social construction of whiteness is ever changing, no?
Thoughts?
this confuses the hell out of me, but just consider how Colin Powell is apparently considered “white” in many non-Eurocentric parts of the world when people are asked.
thanks for institutionalizing “race” people.
I worked for the Census back in 2010, and the #1 thing that pissed me off is that there was no option or variation of “Hispanic” in the race/ethnicity box. The lines of what race was what made no sense to me. There was an entire separate question for asking whether or not a person identified as Hispanic, but when they asked what race you were, there was no option. Whatsoever. There was, however, an “other” box.
Most of my work was in Franklin Township, NJ - in the parts of town that were predominantly Hispanic and black. When I would ask the question - I remember that it was question #5 - I would get confused looks 95% of the time, followed by “but I’m Hispanic/latin@/from [this country of origin]”. I would then suggest that maybe they have me write something down in the “other” box, though I wasn’t supposed to make suggestions or infer anything. Otherwise, I felt like I was erasing their identity, and that was the absolute LAST thing I wanted to do.