Just had convo with labmate regarding an article about the US census finally updating the ethnic options and realized I've never really thought about all the issues there, since it's always been fairly straight forward for me. I mean for her son would that be like...Caucasian-Asian-Hispanic? But is Hispanic only in the sense of Spanish descent? What of the non-white Hispanics? Some Filipinos feel strongly against being called Pacific Islanders, others put that down because it makes more sense than Asian or Caucasian. It makes me think of Kurtz from Heart of Darkness and wonder what on earth do the Europeans do for this sort of thing.
My favorite past responses from people have been the people who wrote down things like "human-being". I choose to interpret it less as a sign of being smart-alec and more of a gesture toward universal solidarity.
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