The 2010 Census, Race, and Denigration

The US Constitution requires that a US Census be taken every ten years (including in 2010). As we discussed here on 11/28/09, the counting of Americans based on their purported biological "race" could be a critical factor in 2010, since this will be the first US Census since the US Department of Energy Human Genome Project announced that race does not exist. According to the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Program: "DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other." Does this mean that it is impossible to capture the diversity in America? Absolutely not. When whites look at Blacks, they know who is Black and who is not by their skin color. When they encounter Latinos, they also use such cues as name, native language and native county, as well as native country of ancestors. As you can see from this paragraph, it is entirely possibe to gather the same information without resort to the disproved word referring to the disproved hypotheses of "race and ethnicity. Yes, "race" is also the term used to refer to a social construct, and "bitch" is also the word used to refer to a female dog. Both terms are inextricably linked to their origins and cannot, (let's be honest) be used without stigmatizing those against whom the words are used. The US Census has always stigmatized Blacks. The original Article I, Section II of the Constitution provided that Blacks would be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of the census and Congressional representation. With the Fourteenth Amendment, the three-fifths language was removed, but the Census still counted Americans according to their "race", which was also the primary difference between those who had been slaves and free just a generation earlier. Now, that the US Government U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Program has announced that biological "race" does not exist, does the US Constitution's Equal Protection Clause require the Government to remove the word "race" from Census forms, because the word "race" stigmatizes Blacks, refers to stereotypes about Blacks, a hypothesis about skin color that has been scientifically disproved (the stereotype that we Blacks are fundamentally biologically different from whites)? Laws referring to "race" and separating people on that basis must pass the US Supreme Court's strict scrutiny test. Not only does the Census refer to "race" but it stigmatizes Blacks, Latinos and Asians by telling us and whites that we are fundamentally biologically and substantively different because our skin color, facial morphology, hair color and hence "race" are not the same. Isn't the argument against the word "race" just a question of semantics? No, it's not. The unemployment rate among Blacks is typically twice that of whites. When we minorities are seeking employment, how can we ever overcome employers' sense that minorities "don't fit the company culture" while the US Government, the media and the Constitutionally mandated US Census are telling the nation that minorities are from a different subspecies? It's almost laughable, if it didn't contribute so greatly to the controversial nature of skin color in America and Blacks' inability to find our place here. Can people who are not from the same subspecies ever "fit in" at a corporation as well as people who are from the same white subspecies? If I were a white-skinned employer, following the Government guidance that minorities are from a separate subspecies, then I might consider it my OBLIGATION not to hire minorities, in order to avoid bringing in employees who could never fit into the company culture. Would you feel entirely comfortable hiring someone if you were told that they were from a different subspecies? It sounds like a push-poll question, doesn't it? And yet it is the conundrum posed by the US government that quietly announces that race and ethnicity do not exist, while continuing to use the words ubiquitously, even in the Census, as if the nation were full of people from distinct subspecies of humanity, like multi-colored aliens from various planets walking the streets.

francislholland :: The 2010 Census, Race, and Denigration

At best, the US Government is giving mixed and scientifically unsupported messages on the issue of minority hiring. On the one hand, the Government seeks to require employers to hire applicants without discriminating on the basis that some applicants are from a different subspecies. Do you perceive any internal contradiction in that? I do. To hear the US Census tell it, it's like telling people that Blacks and whites are as biologically different as poodles and German shepherds. Different racial subspecies. And then the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires that, even though Blacks are from a different "race" (subspecies), and Jews from a different "ethnic group, nonetheless, people from distinct subspecies must be given equal access to employment opportunities, just like poodles and German shepherds should be given equal access to police dog jobs. The exaggeration of the difference makes the law itself seem unreasonable. The words "race" and "ethnicity" in the 1964 Civil Rights Act greatly and unscientifically exaggerate the differences between whites and skin color groups and sociological ethnic groups, because the science available when the law was written had not disproved the hypotheses of "race" and "ethnicity". Since race doesn't exist, and since any use of the word is as offensive as the word "bitch," which has a perfectly valid and unoffensive meaning that will inevitably be confused with it's outrageously offensive meanings, I propose that we excise the word "race" from the language of each of us, just as the Human Genome Project has excised the words "race" and "ethnicity" from our understanding of who we are as human beings and all that does not separate us. I've prepared the chart below to show how we can get more information from the census by avoiding stigmatizing and overgeneralizing people with the word "race" and instead asking questions about those biologically obvious characteristics that do exist: Please check your skin color/ethnic identity group below: Whitish, but not Latino. (people know if they identify as "white" Whitish and Latino Black/brown/coffee/beige/vanilla, but not Latino/Hispanic. (Only people who are from what once was called the "black race" are going to choose this alternative, and yet the alternative includes and implies that various colors are present within the "Black" sociological group. This resolves the problem of those who want to state that they are bi-racial, which science has rendered biologically meaningless. And people who believe they are bi-racial would probably discover through DNA testing that they have poly-chromatic and poly-ethnic heritage. DNA has taken the guess-work out of this.) Black/brown/coffee/beige/vanilla, AND Latino/Hispanic. etc. If anyone can help me to understand and correct why I cannot make the CorelDraw graphic below appear larger, without losing definition, I would very much appreciate it. I think you'll find it very interesting once you can read it.

Tags: Race, (All Tags)

US Department of Energy Human Genome Project Anounces 'black race' Does Not Exist

Over at Pam's House Blend, we have been discussing the relatively new Department of Energy Human Genome Project declaration that the "black race" does not exist, the "white race" does not exist and, in fact, the biological hypothesis of "race" itself has been disproved by the total mapping of the human genome, showing that there is no genetic difference between Blacks and whites sufficient to constitute separate subspecies ('races') within in the human species.

As a matter of biological science, biological science has disproved the age-old hypothesis of race which, we must remember, was never anything more than a hypothesis developed long before DNA was discovered. And so "race" was a hypothesis in search of proof rather than the result of an empirical search for truth. We have to remember that the hypothesis of race was born before doctors became aware of bacteria and began washing their hands before conduction surgical operations. So, it ought to be no surprise that a theory of genetics developed before genes could be seen and identified turned out to be, quite simply wrong. As the march of science progresses, we develop new tools for ever more minute analysis of human matter and these new tools have demonstrated the falsity of an old hypothesis.

That really ought not surprise anyone, since we all know that a guess as to the length and width of a piece of wood is rarely as good as measuring the wood with modern tools. And a guess as to the age of a statue is not quite as good as carbon dating. As our tools become better our knowledge increases.

Rarely, however, has a scientific discovery had so many important ramifications for the United States of America. For example, the US Constitution requires that a census be conducted every ten years. As the following citations show, the Census is an integral part of determining the representation that each state will have in the US House of Representatives, and the Fourteenth Amendment modified the Constitution to make it clear that Blacks could participate more fully in US electoral rights.

The US Constitution's Article 1, Section 2 originally provided that.

(Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.) (The previous sentence in parentheses was modified by the 14th Amendment, section 2.) The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

The US Constitution as modified by the Fourteenth Amendment's Article I, Section 2:

2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.