Now if we’re dealing with things, I guess that’s OK. But if we’re dealing with people, it’s anything but OK. Because what we insist on doing when we put people in groups is to assign characteristics to all the members of a group that go beyond the one that was the basis for they’re being included in that group to begin with.

For example, we classify humans into male and female on the basis of genitals and other parts of the reproductive system. That’s OK. But we don’t stop there.

On the basis of God-alone-only-knows-what, we then hold that all females are caring, sensitive, compassionate, etc. while all males are uncaring, insensitive, callous, and so on.

Now that’s a relatively harmless bit of nonsense. We make jokes about such stereotypes and that’s about it.

But when a classification system involves race, the nonsense is anything but harmless, because it comes only in the large economy size.

You see, for one no one knows exactly, definitively, what it takes to qualify as a member of any race.

And for another, no two members of any racial group have even one characteristic in common. Not even skin color.

Nor do they have any other characteristic in common that cannot be found among many members of every other racial group.

So why, then, do the folks in Washington insist on ramming down our throats what Ward Connerly calls those "silly little boxes"? You know, the check boxes involving race that you find on so many government forms?

Simple. As the Romans put it — divide et impera! Or as we would say it today — divide and rule.

I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

Think about it.