I just took the "Racial Sorter" that was posted on the side of anamericanstudies.com. I have to admit, I thought I was going to get them all correct. But actually I got maybe half of them wrong. I also found it quite interesting that there was a game like this, I would think some people may find it offensive because some people don't like to be categorized. I then searched that website for more information about race and 'sorting'. I found the US Government's correct definitions for different types of race. It listed all the different types of race and gave an in depth definition. For example, the definition for American Indian was, "a person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains tribal affiliation or community recognition". I couldn't help but ask if people actually use any of these definitions when using self-identification. Why does the government even have these definitions if laws passed in 1970 said that citizens could choose their own classification? Do these definitions come in handy when people are 'sorting' themselves or are they there to actually categorize people?
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Caroline,
ReplyDeleteNice job here and throughout the blog! It's especially nice to see you develop points more fully on later blogs. Here, for example, it's great that you "search the website for more information." How people -- and institutions -- self identify also has huge implications in areas such as school admission, federal funding, etc. So, the classifications are hardly benign.