Is Race Following Gender in Becoming a ‘Fluid’ Identity Construct?

Among many careerists and politicians, tweaking one’s ethnic identity is becoming increasingly widespread.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

 

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12 thoughts on “Is Race Following Gender in Becoming a ‘Fluid’ Identity Construct?

  1. I don’t know about wearing DNA authentication badges, but it isn’t pleasing to hear about all these frauds, and that’s what they are…..frauds. The left constantly installs race and gender into everything, so tired of it.

  2. An old joke goes:

    The Lone Ranger and Tanto, his trusted Indian companion, are surrounded by hostile, angry, shooting Indians.

    The Lone Ranger says, “Tanto, It looks like we are surrounded!”

    Tanto stoically says, “What you mean WE, white man.”

    As the old proverb says, “Evil takes every advantage.” (Until Western Enlightenment stops it, dead in tracks!)

  3. In grad school a mate of mine was awarded Hispanic student of the year. A blonde haired blue eyed man with a Scottish name who spoke not a word of Spanish, had never been to Latin America or the Iberian peninsula or the Caribbean or Mexico but by virtue of the fact that his mother was a white German born naturalized Chilean citizen fell backwards into the ‘Hispanic’ category. I suppose it all comes down to gaming the system for your own ends and nothing else.

  4. Some assume a certain personal lineage due to a list of documents containing the names of parents, year by year, location by location. Such faith might be fraught with problems if the names on the documents aren’t the same as the people who actually engaged in the reproductive acts. Other people have few if any documents to begin with. None of it is a problem for those who will confess that they had absolutely nothing to do with selecting their own parents. That admission makes any pride or guilt about race a simply silly exercise.

  5. Ethnicity slush can be annoying too.

    I have friends with the last name “Armes”. They are not hispanic, they have no hispanic roots I know of. Moving to Modesto, they had a hard time getting Pac Bell to send them bills in english, not spanish.

  6. “”” man made disaster: critics say california drought fox news.”” Cite your work and the dirty deeds of Brown, Feinstein and Boxer

  7. I read that in Brazil, the degree of intermarriage is so great, that it makes it very difficult to fill in the ethnicity section of official forms, thus they find that section offensive.

    Maybe the US can learn from Brazil, and instead of crowing about race, be offended by attempts to attribute it.

  8. The saddest part of this whole story is that our government institutionalizes ethnic identity. I have grandchildren who are half of one thing and half of another. Should they check the box that gives them the most handouts? We will be better off when none of us are quite sure of our ethnic background. I am not quite sure of mine, since most of my family was in the US before the Civil War. It should not matter today.

  9. The left has succeeded in manufacturing identities to go along with the priviledges they have invented–all the while preaching egalitarianism with elitist money. Republicans would do well to remember that populist rhetoric on the right is no less important than on the left. Self-righteously dismissing the populism of conservatism is to play a tune for an empty concert hall. The left openly touts the sky is falling unashamedly, but let us speak out about ISIS and all we here is “It’s Bush’s fault.” Dr. Hanson brilliantly inspires the point that if we can be what we want to be, then the whole categorization of humanity is one big subjective free-for-all leading to a world where the latest protected (and privileged) class is open to all who apply. Thus, proving the open, dirty little secret that the nonpriviledged, oppressive class is in reality a fiction we take on with little resistence. That is how straw men are defeated.

  10. The hyphenated ethnic identifier seems to be another purely American invention. Americans seem to have an amazing fascination in desperately trying to stand out as unique individuals, in a country that prides itself on being the melting pot of the world.

    In Europe, no one is anything but German, or French or British. Even Turks, and other foreigners, who have immigrated here and hold German passports are not, and do not themselves, identified as Germans but as Turks. The idea of check box to identify someone as a German-Turk, or Dutch-Russian or an African-Czech is impossible to even consider.

    You are what your passport defines you by the citizenship you hold, regardless of heritage and the country your parents came from. While you might define a person by their national language, the Swiss always confuse everyone by having four recognized national languages; German, French, Italian and Roma.

    We in Europe take pride in our individual countries and identify ourselves accordingly. Our languages, cultures and our heritages are individually unique and are thousands of years old. The idea of being hyphenated anything is just impossible even to the most liberal minded European.

    I once heard someone describe the idea of the American melting pot as a food blender; where meats, fruits and vegetables are all thrown in and mixed together. The results, as one could imagine, are not so appetizing. However in Europe, we prefer the idea of being more like a garden salad; where we appreciate the individual flavors and how each contributes in it’s unique way to the variety and flavor of the whole.

  11. We will be better off when our government throws out the institutionalization of racial identity. I can trace some of my family to Virginia in the mid-1600’s, and I know that I have a lot of Scots-Irish ancestors, but I do not really have much of a clue as to my varied racial/ethnic makeup. I have grandchildren whose parents are of East Indian and of Portuguese descent. What box do they check?. My father was a tradesman. Sometime in the fifties, he asked a fellow employee on a construction job what his background was, and the man said something to the effect that he didn’t know and didn’t care, and that since he was an American citizen, it should not matter. My father used that story to argue that we should not even be interested in where our ancestors came from, but only in what kind of characters they were. When I was younger, I did not agree with him, but I now think that he had it right. A few years ago, my wife and I hosted our son,s high school football team for dinner at our house. These boys were talking about racial/ethnic backgrounds, and an African American kid said, “I don’t really know what I am. What am I, anyway?” My wife suggested that he was an American, and that should be enough. He proudly said, “Yeah, I’m an American.” That should be enough for all of us.

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