How in the world does anyone expect racial divisions to be eased, nevermind abolished, when one of the most powerful entities endorses and publicizes its own categorizations?
| American Indian or Alaskan Native: A person with origins in any of the original peoples of North America and South America (including Central America) and who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community attachment. Asian: A person with origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent. This area includes, for example, Cambodia, China, Japan, Korea, the Philippine Islands, Malaysia, Pakistan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander: A person having origins in any of the peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands. |
| Black/African-American: A person, not of Hispanic origin, with origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. White: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino): A person who identifies with more than one of the above five races. Hispanic or Latino: A person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. |
Keeping in mind that the government derives its power from the citizenry, can the citizens rightfully be held responsible for permitting these divisions?
While racial divides (social reality) and divisions (group-think creations) may pre-date the establishment of the United States government, none have been scientifically proven by any criteria beyond phenotype and no set of racialized belief systems have withstood even minor exploration into distinguishing rhetoric from objective reality. In other words, race and racial divides and narratives are entirely the creation of imaginations of people and structured through social subconscious.
So why does the United States do this and how do they get away with publicizing it?
First of all, the United States derives power from dividing the citizenry based on race. At any moment that they feel like they need to gain credibility as an authority, they do so by reminding the divided citizenry that they are in power. It is a mystical thing and totally obscure. It has a very high return on investment, meaning that they can put a small number of “national guard” persons on the streets with limited expense, and send the message to the world that they have “big guns” and can easily deploy military people to engage in affairs as they deem necessary. Nevertheless, the reality is that the government operates on a tight budget…most governments do.
Ultimately, however, the intention is a creation of the law—the realm of lawyers responsible for crafting policy—who have decided to use these questionnaires to gain data, generally and specifically. The idea is that the aggregate data can be used to see whether or not economic policies are being implemented in a non-race-based manner. Basically, since hiring practices of many American companies have been discriminatory in the past, the government hopes to shift this. To this extent, it seems the government is doing a righteous thing. After all, laws and governmental policies that require equal employment opportunities is a good thing for anyone who finds diversity in alignment with utopian ideology.
The information may also be used in an individualized context. Basically, if someone is a perfect candidate for a job and doesn’t get hired and it appears that the only reason is because of their race, then they can file a report. I suppose the idea is that if these reports build up, that an employer can get penalized somehow. Maybe an EEOC lawsuit, maybe a negative rating from BBB or something. Whether these are with regards to the specific instance, or a series of instances, is hard to say and will be very circumstantial.
Personally, I find this all very problematic. For starters, the government is re-enforcing the concept of race as a social construct. If one accepts the idea that human beings are conditioned and not fully autonomous, then being conditioned on the belief system that race is real is going to be perpetuating something that isn’t utopian at all—it goes against the spiritual nature of equality that the founding fathers described when writing the Declaration of Independence. I know the idea that humans don’t actually have autonomy from a biological standpoint is difficult to grasp for laypersons, but there is significant amounts of scientific evidence that human’s entire identities are biologically and socially constructed far beyond any inherent deep sense of a spiritually autonomous ‘self’. Just because the concept might not be well accepted by people doesn’t make it untrue.
Part of the confusion or dilemma stems from the relationship between a highly educated, sophisticated, social science background, interacting with a layperson, who may be very well rounded and intelligent, but isn’t highly trained in a particular area. Unfortunately, in the modern world characterized by a massive population and highly intricate division of labor, the nature of social discourse is distorted by varying degrees of endeavors in knowledge, and the relationship between specialists or authorities and laypeople or even people highly established in their respective fields.
To decide the issue of whether inherent “common sense” or “formal” education is better is another aspect of whether human beings are indeed autonomous. I know that I personally am aware of when I am receiving formal education, versus a layperson version of my self: put differently, my identity in my extensive academic background was not my identity morphing, but merely an intellectual and knowledge base…my true self didn’t change (other than the fact that years passed by and I felt like my soul deviated from its true course, but that’s not to blur the lines between formal education and my personal understanding of the world of people). I did learn a tremendous amount that made it obvious to me how little autonomy people really had…in other words, people are under a constant state of forming habits, as the entirety of their existence is largely habitual and non-thinking. Using this to our advantage, we can try to form “good habits” by repeating things consciously until they become second nature. This is a very useful skill that can be used by individuals but also works well in groups or pairs or any other setting…its like a universal law that can be applied in innumerable ways. For this and many similar experiences, I believe formal training is essential to human development, as long as people don’t totally lose their openness to the moment and sense of time and the universe.
This should also illustrate the idea that varying levels of knowledge can make for a difficult time for people dealing with a topic such as what might be biologically true divisions of human beings…or any other category including pure mythology, for that matter. How can we ever truly determine what makes moments of joy and unity versus what causes divisions and hatred? A sociology and law degree has led me down a very deep intellectual pursuit that ought to provide insight into that question, but even if I make suggestions, they will be misunderstood and ridiculed by whoever hears them…demeaning and diminishing significant portions of my life’s work that I could actually use to benefit those very people who demean and ridicule what I say. Interestingly, in Europe, the social sciences have been put to use by governmental policies far more than the United States and will likely continue to be utilized increasingly for the benefit of the people of their future world.
Finally, aside from perpetuating the concept of race, my biggest problem with the American government’s policies regarding race is that they never actually say anything. There is no substantive statements that have ever come out of the government’s or their officials mouths. When it comes to race, they beat around the bush, talking about police policy or making some vague utterance about unity. One of the most substantive statements about race from an American president in the modern era is Obama’s statement about the divides among Sunday worshipers being seen in daily life. Referring to the fact that churches are segregated by race across the southern states (perhaps all states), he didn’t actually say much. There was no call to action, there was nothing really clear or specific, it was just a general statement that kicks the can of ambiguity down the road.