Thanks for posting that, Karen.
Race as it is presently used as a classifying/sorting/discriminating tool is a concept which I hope soon becomes outdated. Cultural heritage, which often mixes current concepts of "race" with geographic or national "origin", will probably survive even as the notions of "race" get updated or are replaced entirely. I've written before about how the intermarriage among traditional "races", especially in America, may one day so blur the distinctions we now draw as to make them meaningless. Which perhaps they always were.
If my kid, a product of an Irish-Scottish background on one side and an Asian Indian background on the other, marries the kid of a close friend of ours, whose one parent is Chinese (Taiwan) and the other parent is from the Philippines, what are they supposed to put on the census form? And when the child of that marriage, who is 1/8 Irish, 1/8 Scottish, 1/4 Indian, 1/4 Chinese, and 1/4 Philippino, marries someone whose grandparents are some other combination, at some point I think we just give up and call them what they were all along, "human". Maybe the dream will be that the content of our character really will be the determining factor someday, and maybe it will be looked upon favorably to have the cultural ancestry and heritage of six different continents in one's family tree.
I want to see that PBS show, and appreciate your bringing it to our attention. We'll put it on the big screen in the living room and cater in some food for the event. |
