Who the hell is “white”?


When I came here from Europe so many years ago I was puzzled.
I had to choose into what race/ethnicity category I would fit:
White
Black or African American
American Indian
Asian
Hispanic or Latino etc.
I had never identified myself by a color or a category.
And it wouldn’t have been white.
German or maybe, possibly, European by a long shot.
I have never felt comfortable choosing the “White” category.
It has made no sense to me.
The only category standing by itself as a color rather than ethnicity is “white”.
By following that pattern it should be:
White
Black
Yellow
Red
Brown
Only two categories measure skin color even though neither white or black are accurate descriptions.
Nobody is really any clear color. White is not white.
It can be reddish, tan brown and anything inbetween.
Black is any shade of brown.
By choosing the statistics categories partially by color and the others by ethnicity and continent of origin, is the assumption supposed to be drawn that white people are the real Americans?
Nothing is further from the truth.
All of us are Americans, either by birth or by naturalization.
The census and all the other statistic-collecting entities are a set-up for prejudice and racism.
I will be an “Other” from now on.

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