Post-Label

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

There's been a certain level of brouhaha over the inclusion of the descriptor "Negro" on this year's census form. The census bureau included it because some older people identify themselves using that term. And predictably, other people are up in arms over it.

Here's the two issues I have with all this.

First off, I'm really getting tired of our national obsession with being a victim. People whose ancestors were victimized and oppressed do not automatically become oppressed themselves -- and getting upset because a term only a decade or so from common usage is included on a form? Please. There are so many other things to be outraged about. Like, that coffee you got this morning might not have been made with low fat milk like you asked.

But really, the victim mentality is what informs issue two: no matter what people say, we are most certainly not living in a post-racial nation. Everything separates us by race, everyone feels the need to be labeled by race, and people seem to enjoy being referred to as an adjective pressed into service as a noun. And even the labels are never good enough and must continually morph to fit fashion. I don't think the day will ever come when forms no longer ask us to identify ourselves as a collection of traits such as skin color or national heritage. And to claim that we're past such things just because we finally, hundreds of years later and long after the rest of the world, elected a non-Caucasian (in part) leader is a bit disingenuous.

I am a white, Irish-Mexican-American, gay, Virginian, right-handed, height-challenged, brown haired male. You can label me Gene, a person.

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