You can count me among those trying to de-racialize America. These categories are largely fictional, and upholding fictions a second longer than necessary allows for delusions to rule the day. They incline people toward bizarre generalizations rather than being curious about individuals. Ethnicity and culture are beautiful, and we don't lose anything by jettisoning "race" here. You'd have a hard time traveling through south and central america and find people who cling to "hispanic" over their regional identities (eg Argentinian, Ticos, etc.) all of which are very distinct to them and not fungible with that general term. Not to mention that European "white" Spanish and Portuguese people are included here, and "latinos" come in every shade of the crayon box. Brazilians have a huge percentage of their population originally from the transatlantic slave trade (far more than America). etc. etc. I can do the same for most any of these ridiculous categories. The fact that these are the pillars for social policy and, increasingly, medical policy(!) is obnoxious and myopic. If there are "disproportionate harms" then an intense focus on individual suffering and class-based grievances will help a disproportionate number of the "right" people. I'm all for relentlessly debugging policies to make sure they're fair, but vilifying achievement won't help this nation grapple with it's many grave dangers in energy, medicine, etc. I see the counter-argument, and am "mixed" race myself, but it ultimately fails the utility test for me.
You can count me among those trying to de-racialize America. These categories are largely fictional, and upholding fictions a second longer than necessary allows for delusions to rule the day. They incline people toward bizarre generalizations rather than being curious about individuals. Ethnicity and culture are beautiful, and we don't lose anything by jettisoning "race" here. You'd have a hard time traveling through south and central america and find people who cling to "hispanic" over their regional identities (eg Argentinian, Ticos, etc.) all of which are very distinct to them and not fungible with that general term. Not to mention that European "white" Spanish and Portuguese people are included here, and "latinos" come in every shade of the crayon box. Brazilians have a huge percentage of their population originally from the transatlantic slave trade (far more than America). etc. etc. I can do the same for most any of these ridiculous categories. The fact that these are the pillars for social policy and, increasingly, medical policy(!) is obnoxious and myopic. If there are "disproportionate harms" then an intense focus on individual suffering and class-based grievances will help a disproportionate number of the "right" people. I'm all for relentlessly debugging policies to make sure they're fair, but vilifying achievement won't help this nation grapple with it's many grave dangers in energy, medicine, etc. I see the counter-argument, and am "mixed" race myself, but it ultimately fails the utility test for me.