Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Race and Ethnicity
A reoccurring conversation around Chez Girl the past few months has been about “White People.” There was an Asian woman on TV talking about “Caucasians” when she really meant Anglo-Saxons. I think most people make that incorrect assertion, and I suppose many people don’t know the difference, after all, I think even the census reports use Caucasian to mean White. When I fill out forms on job applications I enter that I am Hispanic even though I am White as a Race and Puerto Rican as an Ethnicity, because the United States (and employers trying to fulfill quotas) has very clearly decided that as someone of a Hispanic background I am not also White.
I think there should be three options: White, Brown, Black. But the forms won’t use those words, instead they should use the categories of Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and Whitney Houston. Then people have to choose who they most resemble. Bruce, oddly, would fall behind Ms. Lopez as would I. However, my sister, my mom and pretty much my entire maternal family will have to stand behind the ol’ Britster. All of my Indian friends would have to be strong with Crack-head Houston (the irony of it is killing me, one of my Indian friends could never come out after work because her father believed that bars were where prostitutes hung out. I don’t know where he got this idea, or what he thought those women in thongs and fishnet stockings were doing on the corners, but that’s what he thought).
Americans seem to be the ones so caught up in the Race versus Ethnicity. I’m sure this is the blowback from America being the crock pot that it is. Whenever I meet people from other places and I ask where they are from, they tell me where they live or where they grew up. British friends might differentiate between Scotland and England, but not one of them say, “Well, my mother is French and Italian, and my father is Dutch, Indian, and Venezuelan.” When people ask where I am from I always say America, usually to be met with a response along the lines of, “No, where are you FROM from?”
I think the next time I get the “No, where are you FROM from?” bit I am going to say I am from Sweden.