How can checking a box reveal anything of culture?

Check one: African-American, Caucasian, Asian, Latin American, Other.

Lately, I’ve been… Check one: African-American, Caucasian, Asian, Latin American, Other.

Lately, I’ve been reconsidering my ideas about questions like this. It seems to be human nature to need to classify things; whether we’re classifying birds, movies, or ourselves, that desire is always there. Yet humanity seems to defy classification.

Racial classification is especially problematic. Here, in the United States, almost 50 years after the civil rights movement, we still subscribe to the same “one drop” rule that was a tool of oppression for so long — the “one drop” rule stating that if you have one minority ancestor, you can be officially classified as a minority.

This is where racial classification begins to defy logic. Most people just don’t fall so easily into categories of (quite literally) black and white. My own ancestors were from half a dozen separate countries. Yet I get to check only one box. And this box is supposed to sum up who I am, how I was raised, what kind of schooling I received, and the amount of opportunity I’ve been given?

The more anthropology classes I take, the more I begin to question the whole notion of race in America. Contrary to what these check-boxes would have us believe, the differences between groups of people are not based on skin shade, but rather on culture.

Culture encompasses a much broader spectrum of ideas than ‘race’ ever will. Culture is where you grew up, what kind of music you listen to, your family’s income, what traditions you were raised with and what school you attended. Culture, as a term, is the sum of the circumstances around you.

Unfortunately, many people attribute these personal details to race.

Prejudice feeds on the idea of race, on the idea that someone can be classified by a check-box so easily, and that underneath that check-box is a list of traits that fit that particular color of a person. Because this person has light/dark skin, he must have been raised in this environment with this set of circumstances. Racial tensions stem from this misguided type of classification.

A truly open-minded person would recognize that the lines are blurred. It is not so easy to separate people into groups. Simply because two people have the same skin color doesn’t mean that they have anything else in common.

The flawed idea of race affects other systems, as well. Affirmative action and other attempts to diversify depend on color and not culture to create diversity. Affirmative action takes for granted that a white student cannot come from an underprivileged background, just as a black or Latino person cannot come from a privileged background. It is, in that way, a very prejudiced system.

Clubs form on the assumption that all people of a certain color will have some similar interests, goals, backgrounds, and ideas, when this is not true.

True diversity is not so much a survey of how many different shades of skin are present, but rather, how many different backgrounds and ideas are represented.

When we seek so diligently to classify ourselves, we perpetuate a system of separatism, a system that divides people based on assumed differences instead of actual similarities. The longer we continue to classify ourselves by one word, the longer division will exist among us.

This is not to say that no one should be proud of his or her heritage, but, please, identify heritage as what it is: the culture you were brought up in, not the color of your skin. Skin color is only one part of the equation and is not an accurate indication of deeper aspects of personality and background.

The truth is, there is only one race: the human race. And we are all a part of it. Diversity is based on different systems of belief, traditions, religion, and economic status, not on color.

Ginger McCall doesn’t like being boxed in by man-made distinctions, such as Caucasian or Liberal. She can be reached for comment at gpm5@pitt.edu