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Click here to visit the new home of Politics Daily!My friend and colleague Melinda's mouths-of-babes observation, that her 14-year-old daughter's cohort has developed a colorblind perspective, gave me little chills on my arms. We may still have a ways to go as a "post-racial" society, but teenagers now readily recognize that, though we each have our own skin shade, eye shape, hair texture and heritage, as humans we are all entitled -- based on merit, not mirror reflection -- to get the best education or job or mortgage rate available. Growing up in a Jewish community in Minnesota the 1950s and '60s (think: "A Serious Man"), I was so removed ...
First, we struggled for tolerance. Then, for acceptance and understanding. Then, for assimilation and recognition. Now, we struggle over labels. We are Latinos or Hispanics, Chicanos or Tejanos. Or we are black or African-American, or we are Asian Pacifics or Asian Latinos. We've got minority divisions and subdivisions, enclaves and tiny corners. We used to talk about the melting pot, the mosaic, the rainbow. That wasn't that long ago. Now we identify ourselves, or others identify us, with easy-to-stick-on labels, ethnic and racial Post-Its. Some of us prefer Latino to Hispanic, or the other ...
Thanks for pointing out the objections to the label "people of color," Luisita.As you know, newspapers are always struggling with race/ethnicity terminology. The latest discussion I participated in a few months ago was about how to identify Americans of Latino descent who may call themselves "Mexican" or "Puerto Rican" or whatever, but are American-born and should be distinguished from the Mexican or Peruvian immigrant. It was prompted by Justice Sonia Sotomayor's insistence on calling herself "Latina," which sparked its own discussion among reporters about what to call her ourselves. So much ...
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