White is not a race: Or Why I Write “Human” on my Census Questionnaire

I have long been troubled with the question we find everywhere on various forms such as medical, DMV, census, asking us to label ourselves as White, Black, Hispanic, Asian… etc. Finally, about 30 years ago, I decided that I was tired of being forced into an artificial identity box and made the (to me) bold and audacious choice to self-identity as HUMAN from that point on.

I was sure the census police were going to come looking for me and throw me into some kind of cultural orientation re-training camp, but shockingly, nothing happened. No one batted an eye.

In retrospect, had the question asked me to identify my heritage or ethnicity, I probably would not have cared one whit. But the question: What is your RACE, followed by the listing of colors Black or White is really what set me off.

White is not a race. Black is not a race. Neither are Asian or Hispanic races. We’ve all seen the PassItOn billboard quoting Garth Brooks. We are all one race: humankind.

The original basis for my decision was purely Biblical: Genesis 3:20 states that Eve “was the mother of all living.” Revelation 7:9 describes the people of the earth as “nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues” ... no mention anywhere as to the color of a person’s skin. The closest they even get to the concept of ethnicity would be “tribes.”

And will someone please show me how I am supposed to fit into the 16 allotted spaces the fact that I am Norwegian, Swedish, German, French, Finnish, Irish, Spanish, Polish, Austrian, Portuguese, Scottish and English? And those are just the tribes with which I can identify. Throw the monkey wrench of untraceable adoptions a few generations back, and who knows the tribes from which I hail.

Frankly, if you live in the United States, or the Western hemisphere for that matter, unless you just stepped off the boat within the last generation, what tribe does anyone fall under? A simple DNA spit test is going to reveal that even if you think you are 100% Italian (or Greek or Egyptian, etc.) chances are you are going to be a mixture of cultures. Let’s face it, invasions have been taking place all over the globe for millennia.

And lest you are tempted to disagree with me and call me racist, let’s hear what people who happen to be of color have to say on the topic:

Thoughts by Morgan Freeman on racism in a 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace:

FREEMAN: …I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.

WALLACE: How are we going to get rid of racism until …?

FREEMAN: Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man. And I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You’re not going to say, “I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.” Hear what I’m saying?

Martin Luther King in his famous “I have a dream” speech:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The idea that race is nothing more than an artificial social construct is not a new idea. More than 100 years ago, American sociologist W.E.B. DuBois (himself a person of color) was concerned that race was being used as a biological explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people. He spoke out against the idea of "white" and "black" as discrete groups, claiming that these distinctions ignored the scope of human diversity.

In an article published February 4, 2016 in the journal Science, four scholars say racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out… "It's a concept we think is too crude to provide useful information, it's a concept that has social meaning that interferes in the scientific understanding of human genetic diversity and it's a concept that we are not the first to call upon moving away from," said Michael Yudell, a professor of public health at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

I can testify from personal experience that it doesn't matter what color your skin is: if you are raised in a different culture you are going to have a different outlook on just about everything when you compare yourself to someone else with the same skin tones who was raised elsewhere. Period. It's not about your skin, folks.

Apparently, I was not anywhere near as bold and audacious as I originally believed, which is completely fine with me. I’d never want to be stuck in a box anyway.