Race. Color. White and black are colors. Caucasian, Asian and Hispanic are examples of races and/or ethnic groups. This is the year 2012, but how far have we really come from the age of slavery in this country, when mixed-race individuals were considered by the government as less than “whole human beings”, depending upon how much of their lineage was of African descent?
This week has had mixed blessings for us. On the one hand, Tabitha had some good news in that she was accepted into a local Girl Scout troop after we had previously not been able to find her a troop. She also was excited that I was coming to her school for the open house that took place Thursday night. She started the advanced class at her martial arts school, after completing the requirements necessary to advance.
Then there's been the bad things. I found out that I have exhausted my unemployment benefits and I've been scrambling to find work during the day, during the week, so that I could go back to college for an Associates' degree to be a paralegal and keep up with my daughter's needs.
On Tuesday, after school and before dinner, Tabitha took her scooter outside to ride around on the sidewalk. The sidewalks run adjacent to the buidings and amongst the courtyards here, and they are really the only area that is just for the kids, because the management company here refuses to improve the allotted spaces for the kids. Adult residents are supposed to be barred from driving their vehicles onto the grass and sidewalk areas because it is against the House Rules and it would jeopardize the lives of the many children who live here and play on the grass and sidewalks. Some of the residents feel entitled to do as they wish, however, and I have long advocated against their irresponsibility. Tuesday evening, an incident occurred with my daughter.
As she was riding her scooter, a vehicle driven by an unremorseful woman in a large SUV drove around the south side of her buiding (directly north of ours), between the buidings and came very close to striking my child with her vehicle. When my daughter came in to tell me, I observed the woman driving off the grass and onto the pavement of the parking lot and out to the street. Upset at her disregard for my child's life, I called the management office and then the police, to see if there was a law against such reckless driving. The 20-something Caucasian patrolman showed up about 10 minutes later, listened to what we had to say, incorrectly told me that there was no such law, and incorrectly reported what we said into a report.
Here's the thing that bothers me the most, though. Upon receiving the “Case Report”, I became upset that this young Caucasian patrolman got much of the information wrong. I was told to wait and speak with him directly about what was written in the report and upon arrival, the officer looked annoyed that I was upset and stating that he didn't report the facts as I told them to him originally. He stated that he had a witness (another man with a “Police” t-shirt on whom I am assuming is a rookie) who could back him up. I kept looking at my daughter, who was just as stunned as I was. He assured me that he would rectify the situation and as we were leaving, I noticed something. Under the description section entitled “Subjects”, he stated our names, ages and address and such and then there was a title called “Race”. Apparently, my daughter is “Black”. This upset me because it occurred to me right then that this was a judgemental description of a color of a person's skin, not their ethnicity.
Evidently, there is quite a bit of laziness on the part of the police officers in this town because they feel that “Race” is equivalent to skin color. Actually, then, my daughter's “Race” would be tan, because that is the color she is. Her ethnicity is bi-racial, of African-American and Caucasian descent. I wondered, though, why the police department is given the latitude to make these kinds of statements, instead of the more accurate descriptions of someone's race? For example, how does that cop know that I am fully “White”, and not Hispanic? What if I were ¼ or 1/8 Asian, Hispanic, Native American, or African-American? What about the many people in this world who are multi-ethnic? How do people classify them? Are they to tan to be “White”? What if my daughter were ½ Hispanic? How would they classify her “Race” to be then? Why, in 2012, are we still describing people based on the color of their skin? I also thought, so what am I, a turtle? What contribution did this guy feel that I made genetically to my daughter's lineage? What if her skin was lighter, and mine was darker? How can someone make that determination without asking?
What happened to Dr. Martin Luther King's ideal of his dream, ...that no man shall be judged based on the color of his skin, and instead on the content of his character? Doesn't it make you sick that people still must be classified by the government when really, isn't this classification racist? Why is this open racism tolerated by the people? With so many people in this country alone of dual or multiple descent, when are the people who are supposed to “serve and protect” us allowed to put such racist classifications on public documents? Who will stand with me? I am going to start an online petition, and I am going to head a protest, and my slogan is going to be, “White and Black are colors, not races”. Let's move on America, and stop labelling people based on their skin color. We're capable of so much more.
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