There are blacks and then there are Blacks – IOTW Report

There are blacks and then there are Blacks

Tuesday, 14 March 2023, 16:15 Claudia Uncategorized 31

What do race and ethnicity mean? The US government is asking.

AP – Nyhiem Way is weary of people conflating African American and Black. Shalini Parekh wants a way for South Asian people to identify themselves differently than East Asians with roots in places like China or Japan. And Byron Haskins wants the U.S. to toss racial and ethnic labels altogether.

“When you set up categories that are used to place people in boxes, sometime you miss the truth of them,” said Haskins, who describes himself as African American.

Way, Parekh and Haskins’ voices are among more than 4,600 comments pending before the Biden administration as it contemplates updating the nation’s racial and ethnic categories for the first time since 1997.

There’s a lot to consider.

Some Black Americans want their ancestors’ enslavement recognized in how they are identified. Some Jewish people believe their identity should be seen as its own ethnic category and not only a religion. The idea of revising categories for ethnic and racial identities, both in the census and in gathering demographic information between head counts, have fueled editorials and think-tank essays as well as thousands of written comments by individuals in what is almost a Rorschach test for how Americans identify themselves.

Read the rest HERE.

h/t Jason

31 Comments on There are blacks and then there are Blacks

  1. What do race and ethnicity mean? The US government is asking
    By MIKE SCHNEIDER

    Nyhiem Way is weary of people conflating African American and Black. Shalini Parekh wants a way for South Asian people to identify themselves differently than East Asians with roots in places like China or Japan. And Byron Haskins wants the U.S. to toss racial and ethnic labels altogether.

    “When you set up categories that are used to place people in boxes, sometime you miss the truth of them,” said Haskins, who describes himself as African American.

    Way, Parekh and Haskins’ voices are among more than 4,600 comments pending before the Biden administration as it contemplates updating the nation’s racial and ethnic categories for the first time since 1997.

    There’s a lot to consider.

    Some Black Americans want their ancestors’ enslavement recognized in how they are identified. Some Jewish people believe their identity should be seen as its own ethnic category and not only a religion. The idea of revising categories for ethnic and racial identities, both in the census and in gathering demographic information between head counts, have fueled editorials and think-tank essays as well as thousands of written comments by individuals in what is almost a Rorschach test for how Americans identify themselves.

    The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is set to decide on new classifications next year and is hosting three virtual town halls on the subject this week.

    Some conservatives question the process itself, saying the overarching premise that Americans need more ethnic categories will only accelerate Balkanization.

    “By creating and deepening sub-national identities, the government further contributes to the decline of one national American identity,” wrote Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, in his personal comment posted on the OMB web page seeking public input.

    That view contrasts sharply with those who say previous categories have overlooked nuances.

    “This is certainly a singular moment and opportunity to greatly improve and enhance the accuracy and completeness of the data,” Mario Beovides, director of policy and legislative affairs for the NALEO Educational Fund, said during a recent forum.

    The proposed changes would create a new category for people of Middle Eastern and North African descent, also known by the acronym MENA, who are now classified as white but say they have been routinely undercounted.

    The process also would combine the race and ethnic origin questions into a single query, because some advocates say the current method of asking about race and separately about ethnic origin often confuses Hispanic respondents. With the revisions, the government would try to get more detailed answers on race and ethnicity by asking about country of origin.

    Another proposal recommends striking from federal government forms the words “Negro” and “Far East,” now widely regarded as pejorative. The terms “majority” and “minority” would also be dropped because some officials say they fail to reflect the nation’s complex racial and ethnic diversity.

    Several Black Americans, like Way, whose ancestors were enslaved, said in public comments to the OMB that they would like to be identified in a category such as American Freedmen, Foundational Black Americans or American Descendants of Slavery to distinguish themselves from Black immigrants, or even white individuals born in Africa, as well as reflecting their ancestors’ history in the U.S.

    Way, who is president of United Sons & Daughters of Freedmen, which describes itself as dedicated to restoring the broken promises from Reconstruction, also recommended substituting the word “population group” for “race.”

    Conflating “African American” with “Black” has “blurred what it means to be an African American in this country,” Way, who works for a pharmaceutical company in Athens, Georgia, said in a telephone interview.

    Haskins, a retired government worker from Lansing, Michigan, suggested eliminating race categories like “white” and “Black” since they perpetuate “deeply rooted unjust socio-political constructs.”

    Instead, he said people should be able to self-identify as they wish. When his sociologist daughter points out the difficulty of aggregating such data into something useful to address inequalities in housing or voting, or tailoring health or education programs to the needs of communities, he tells her, “Go crazy at it. That’s what you’re being paid for.”

    “You need to search for the truth and not just stay with the old categories because someone decided, ‘That is what we decided,’” Haskins said.

    Parekh is asking the government to distinguish South Asians from East Asians.

    “When these groups are assessed together, one loses a lot of important granularity that can help differentiate issues that are specific to one group and not another,” Parekh said.

    The MENA community appears to be having a related problem, based on several comments to OMB. Without its own category, the group’s political power is diluted. People could benefit from cohesive representation, especially if identities were taken into account in drawing political districts, advocates said.

    It comes down to something even more personal for Houda Meroueh, who described herself to the Biden administration as a 73-year-old Arab American woman.

    “When I go to the doctor’s office I do not feel they have the information necessary to understand my medical history or my culture,” she said. “For all these reasons I want to be counted as who I am. Not as white.”
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    Nigga PLEASE!

    ———
    Cleaned it up just a little – Claudia

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  7. “WHOA! I didn’t mean to copy the whole article!”

    No worries, I figured it was just another SNS tome 🙂

    “When you set up categories that are used to place people in boxes, sometime you miss the truth of them,”

    Is “the truth” a dog whistle for categorizing a disenfranchised history that somehow grants social currency?

    If every single American traced their ancestry back far enough, we would find an instance of oppression as well as oppressor. Those that are here now in this time have the freedom and the capacity to either be productive and prosper, or roll over and give up and it is those choices that define our path through life.

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  11. If you focus on race, you’re racist. If you focus on sex, you’re sexist.

    Treat everyone with respect. Most of the time you can walk away, or just ignore them, if they’re a-holes.

    Good to be armed for the few rancid encounters.

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  17. What these monstrous idiots crave is a dysfunctional society where the corrupt leaders of aggrieved groups of citizens are constantly lobbying corrupt politicians for favors against other, endless, ever more granular groups of aggrieved citizens, pointlessly, to everybody’s pain and to no one’s advantage except the corrupt.

    If we don’t get back to the idea that we were all created in God’s image and are equal, this is gonna get ugly, Kathy Griffin ass cheeks ugly.

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  18. I work with dark complected people from all walks of life, from the projects of Ohio and the hills of Haiti to the ports of Ghana and the streets of Senegal, and I don’t call them Black or African or African-American.

    I call them Mike and Nick and Ababacar and Abdul. Savannah and Nikohl and Julie and Genni.

    I call them by names, not groups, not classes, not races or nationalities, because they are people to me with their own abilities and handicaps, their own weaknesses and strengths, just like me and all the other people that work there, all shades and hues and sizes, and they return the favor.

    The only time I lump people into groups is when they do that to me first.

    Otherwise, I know them for who they are.

    And not some arbitrary category that is used to divide.

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  19. When they put African in front of American I just drop American and consider them to be African! That is where they should have been repatriated back too hundreds of years ago and where they now deserve and need to be back in their own country of origin!

    6

  20. I have a friend whose Mom and Dad were Missionaries in Africa.
    He spent 14 years growing up in Africa. Same with a friend from South Africa who immigrated “legally” when he was in his 30s. Both are white.
    They would get agitated when American Blacks said they were African Americans. They always challenged them by stating they were more African American than those who have never set foot in Africa. Both are white.
    Our former Pastor, a powerful man of God, entered the US “legally” from Ghana in his late 30s, proudly called himself an “American” by the Grace of God. He was Black.

    Either you are American or not. Color and ethnicity has no bearing.

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  25. A pretty black woman called me a “Gem” the other day for insisting she go ahead of me in line. What a compliment! I was ready to ask her out for coffee but then I realized I was over twice her age. (I do wonder how she would have answered, however. Many of us gray haired Irish – formerly blonds – are normally attracted to brunette/brown/dark and mysterious women, from Mediterranean/Italian to African.)

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  26. If someone is born in Texas, they are considered a native Texan. But if you’re born in the USA you can’t say you’re a Native American unless you’re, for lack of a better word, Indian.

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  27. I live in NM. The local tribes don’t use Native American, because that describes everyone born in the USA. They use Injun to separate themselves from South Asian Indians.

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  28. Lance Boyle, it’s all in the way you write it. You wrote native Texan and then compared that to Native American. To be more correct you need to use native (small n) American. I’ve used native American a few times, no repercussions, but no advantages either.

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