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a classification system to be both useful
and effective it must be internally consistent. For example, it wouldn’t
do to put automobiles and houses in the same class. Or billiard balls and
oceans. Right? Well, maybe.
Let’s take a look at the classification system currently in use involving race and ethnicity. If you’re born in this country, you’re not necessarily a Native American. To be one, your parents have to be American Indians. And, if they are, it doesn't matter where you were born — Poland, Tibet, Tierra del Fuego. You're still a Native American. Now I was born in this country as were all my children. But that doesn't make us Native Americans; it appears that we are all Foreign Americans. OK. Now if you were born in Africa to white parents from the United States, then you are an American. But not an African-American. However, if you were born in England — or France or Australia or some such place — to black parents who were American citizens at the time, then you are an African-American even though you or your mother — or your father — never sets foot on either the Dark Continent or in any of the Fifty States. Continuing the craziness, if you’re white, born in this country, and your parents came from Belgium, that doesn't make you a Belgian-American. No, indeed. It just makes you a plain, ol' American. Unless, of course, your parents came from Argentina or Peru or Cuba. In which case you're an Hispanic-American. And then there’s this business about Orientals being really Asians. According to an encyclopedia I consulted, Asia includes Turkey, a good part of the USSR, Israel, the Philippines, China, India, Pakistan, and Iran. So it might just surprise an Hasidic Jew born in Wyoming to know that he's really an Asian and not a Yank. And that he, Yasir Arafat, Ferdinand Marcos, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Nikita Krushchev, Mustafa Kemal, Mahatma Ghandi, and Mao Tse-tung are — or were — all brothers under the skin. Even the term “person of color” sounds as though it came from semantic never-never land. It holds that if you’re black, brown, red, or yellow, you’re a “person of color.” And if you’re white, you’re not. But everyone is a person of color. Because if your skin had no color, it would be invisible. You know, all this makes the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party look like a Mensa summit meeting by comparison. Think about it. |
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Is freedom from the tyranny of words, which means regaining control of your life, worth the price of a good dinner? If you believe that it is, click on the image to the left. (Don't worry, doing so isn't going to lock you into anything.) If you don't believe that it is, then I can't help you. No one can. But remember, you only get one shot at life. And if that one shot is spent in unhappiness, frustration, under continual stress, in poor health, and so on, well, it's your own bloody fault for not doing anything about it. |
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| Addresses (US Mail and e-mail)and telephone numbers (voice and fax) of the Mens Sana Foundation. |
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