I seriously doubt that it's realities are lost on me. As "old school" racists, and for all my parents' efforts to try to ensure that I don't become one, they aren't ever not going to be racist at their core, meaning they are not about to reject their connections to the racist institutions they have been part of for their whole life. A pig in a mud wallow knows he dirty, but he's comfortable there, and there is where he'll stay.
When my father maintains memberships at two exclusive (in more ways than one) clubs, and Mother at one ladies club, that as long as they have their token black, Asian and Latino, won't admit racial minorities (too, as far as I know, none has yet accepted a gay man or woman), and when I observed first hand a former friend of mine expressly deny a black guy housing solely because he was black, and when I, rather than my daughter, had to "break the news" to my parents who in turn went complete apoplectic over it -- I'm talking about 90+ year old people whom I can't tell you when was the last time they raised their voices at all, let alone in combined rage and sorrow -- that she intended to marry outside her race, it doesn't take any more for me to see that racial bias and its attendant discrimination, even today, is held and practiced by white folks for the advantage of white folks. And I'm quite aware of the ways in which discrimination manifests itself.
You and others may see discrimination as something directed on an individual level, and often enough it is, and there is probably little that can be done about that so long as folks hold dear to beliefs about their primacy due to their own race or social status. But that isn't especially what AA attempts to deal with. AA is about ensuring equality of access to opportunities for people on a class level, and that means that, yes, some individuals in the majority class will not get access to opportunity when they desire it, but as a class, the majority race is not worse off for AA's having been implemented. I think AA is the currently offered best solution attempt to ensure equity in access across classes of people. If and when something better comes along, I'd be glad to reject AA and advocate for that better alternative.
Red:
You realize you are accusing folks of lying and manipulative prevarication. Has it occurred to you that those same tactics are the tools of majority-race "DL" racists ("DL" because it's not today in vogue to be seen as an unabashed racist) who want to re-enable class level subjugation of minorities?
Blue:
Assuming that is so, please show me how whites, as a class of people and based on their race, are today missing out on opportunities as did minorities, as a class of people and based on their race, for some 200+ years in American history.
Orange:
Who paid reparations to minorities for 200 years of having been denied access to opportunities in education, housing, employment, and more, so much more that it was carried to the extent of where minorities could sit on a bus or lunch counter, that is if they were even permitted in the restaurant?
Purple:
You aren't alone as an Hispanic self-identifying as white. (Also:
Opinion: Why are Hispanics identifying as white? - CNN.com) I'm not Hispanic, so I can't offer a personal viewpoint on the matter. The most I can say is that in my mind, one's race, with regard to its relevance in the U.S., comes down to one thing: what one looks like. Because
racism in America is about what one looks like, people of color have long understood that they will gain access and advantages if they look white, regardless of the extent to which they are white. That's no different now than it was 100 years ago.
I'm not suggesting that any of those people actively denied their racial background or attempted to pass when it suited their aims, and whether they have isn't the point here. I'm trying to point out how (1) how silly this matter of racial labelling and "giving a damn about one's race" really is, and (2) that as interpreted in the U.S., race is just about how one looks, that if one looks white, or black or Latino, one effectively is.
Many Hispanics, like Marco Rubio, and unlike the vast majority of blacks, look white.
Go to Argentina and you'll find a whole population of those folks; they align themselves with Italian and Spanish ancestry.
Lucy and Ricky (Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz) weren't seen as an interracial couple; they were viewed as two white folks even though Arnaz was Cuban. Why? Certainly a part of it was that televisions were black and white back then and, quite frankly, even light skinned blacks (blacks who passed
the "paper bag" test) looked white on television.
Another factor, however, is that most of white America didn't and still doesn't have a racial problem with seemingly Spanish (European) Hispanics; it had/has a problem with brown skinned Hispanics.
You mentioned that you are a half Hispanic. In my mind that gives you three options on those "what race are you" questions: Hispanic, white, and mixed. You check whatever box seems right to you. I don't care what box you check, and I don't think anyone other than you should. The thing is that HIspanic and white aren't mutually exclusive -- just ask a Spaniard or an Argentine. I haven't paid enough attention to those boxes, do they offer an option called "Hispanic white" to distinguish between "Hispanic non-white?" (Looking at the black folks who aren't seen as black, one has to wonder whether there should also be "black non-white" and "black lookin' white" options....)
Out of curiosity, seeing as you volunteered why you tick "white," why don't you instead tick "mixed?" Does "mixed" trigger the same AA provisions as does "Hispanic?" I don't know; I can find out, but I don't know.
Sidebar:
As an aside, I've long had "issues" with the race questions we are asked to answer:
- For employment, I don't think the question should even be asked, but I realize that for employment one must generally appear for an in person interview, so it's not as though the employer won't find out, or at least be able to make a decision about what they believe is a person's ethnicity.
- For college applications, the question doesn't really need to be asked, but the reality is that other information on an application can easily imply with a fair degree of accuracy what a person's ethnicity is. That said, some universities use in person interviews. I don't know to what extent those interviews do so today, but as per my parents, aunts and uncles, all of whom are alums of elite colleges and universities, they existed mostly to make sure "the right kind of person" gained admission. There were multiple dimensions to "right kind of person," but make no mistake, race was among them.
- There are only three human races: Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasian. Obviously, "mixed" is something one can be, but it's not a race, but rather a mixture of races. All the other labels we assign are ethnicities and/or cultural discriminants.
- Frankly, for the purpose of AA and racial equity, the questions asked, if any, should be "do you look like you are white, black, etc?" I think that because whether one is depends more on what one looks to be than on what one is. The fact is that if one looks, for example, white, U.S. society will interact with one as though one is indeed white.
- It's just silly to me that if a person happens to have a fairly recent black ancestor, one is black, regardless of what one looks like. I was equally astounded to learn just how many ostensibly white folks have black ancestors. (The percentage is ~4% overall, I think, but in some states it's considerably higher, and either way, given the overall population size, that's still a lot of people.)
- It makes no sense to me that a person born of a black and a white parent is black.
- It makes no sense to me that a person born of Hispanic and white parents can be either Hispanic or white.
- It makes no sense to me that a person born of Asian and white parents is either Asian or white.
End of Sidebar.
