From affirmative action to cultural pride, public to private, we judge, and are judged, based on physical characteristics.
We use things like race and sex to identify ourselves and even claim membership to a particular group. Humans have a tendency to classify and categorize things into neat, ordered groups, but when people can’t be put into just one of these groups, or these groups otherwise intersect, there is conflict.
While on personal and private levels, we will always use characteristics like sex and ethnicity to define ourselves. We must—at least at a political level—determine whether or not we ought to use these factors in judgment. We cannot expect to use our identities as political platforms and still not be judged, or even be discriminated against, for them.
Using affirmative action as an example, race/color and sex are still considerations in employment, admissions or whatever the case may be.
One particular episode of All in the Family in which a character, Michael Stivic, is applying for a teaching position in the late 60s, exemplifies this. He is applying along with a friend and colleague who is black.
In the end, the colleague gets the job over Michael just because he is black. Michael asks him if he is bothered by having his race considered, to which he responds that no white man ever turned down a job he was offered on the basis of him being white.
To this extent, using race can be perceived as a balancing of the scales, as a means of equalizing power groups. But, while it often times works in favor of the typically oppressed group, it is still considering those factors we don’t want held against us.
Bringing the issue closer to home is the University of Utah’s recently instituted scholarship for economically or educationally disadvantaged students. This essentially translates into minority recruitment in attempt to bring diversity to the U, which means, once again, social status is what makes a person valuable.
Like affirmative action, this can be viewed as a positive form of race recognition, but nonetheless, a socially constructed status is dictating our position and worth in society.
Consider interracial adoption. When it comes to this issue, we seem almost adamant about keeping lines, however arbitrary, drawn around race. Arguments, such as a child being able to know his true roots, are given as reasons for racial segregation in adoption practices.
Now, largely by choice on the part of non-white groups, there is a demand for race to be recognized and categorized. Is segregation by choice any better than segregation by force? When, then, can we integrate? At what point does a line get drawn distinguishing all of us as a common American people from those separate groups we say our ancestors were from?
In this time of political correctness, when an appropriate label for any given group seems to change daily, how are we, as a society, to know when we may or may not have done something wrong?
We, as humans, for lack of a better word, think in black and white. We are not very capable of dealing with the gray areas that have developed as a result of situational segregation or sexism. Our arbitrary distinctions in race and sex issues only serve to further complicate our ability to unify as a society.
If we were an ideal society, we would be living and breathing the fundamental principles of our Constitution, and indeed, justice would be colorblind, while at the same time we would all retain a sense of personal heritage. But because we can’t, we also can’t necessarily be expected to be "prejudiced" some of the time and then not at other times.
We cannot want to be integrated, and then say, "Oh wait! Let’s keep adoption segregated." Similarly, we can’t want affirmative action as well as the right to not be discriminated against for characteristics like sex and color, if we are going to use those very characteristics for judgment in the first place.
Let it be understood, however, that these principles apply to everyone, across the board, and majority groups still have a large responsibility in dispelling discrimination.
Part of the problem seems to be the way in which we define ourselves. We do tend to assign ourselves categories into which we may fit, but that alone cannot describe the totality of a person.
By defining ourselves with one word descriptors such as "male" or "female" or "black" or "white," we become an idea, a political concept that lives outside of what we may personally embrace in those terms.
We politicize our being, so we can continue to categorize each other into groups, which ultimately are formed around tenuous and socially constructed bounds rather than any real biological differences in us.
Coincidental characteristics alone are not necessarily the basis for commonality. The fact that the above mentioned issues of affirmative action and interracial adoption are not cut and dry, with "majority" versus "minority" taking stances against each other proves this.
Politically, it is more sensible to align ourselves with interest groups, especially in America, where we claim to be so individualistic. Groups as broad as sex and race can’t possibly fulfill the multitude of needs of all their many members. Equality must come about, because it is the right thing to do, not because we manipulate public policy and force administrative equity.
However, until we can actualize this, we are to wade, if not ultimately drown, in capricious group classifications. Political correctness will become so confusing as to only further tensions among "groups."
Instead of blindly clinging to ideals which, in reality, serve little or no purpose, we ought to strive to align ourselves in common goals and interests, namely that of fulfilling the promise of America so it can be embraced by all.
Anne welcomes feedback at: anicksich@chronicle.utah.edu or write a letter to the editor to: letters@chronicle.utah.edu.
