Jeff Stahler for June 17, 2015

How about: American?

There is only oen race-HUMAN

Until we add one more category: “Human”, we are getting nowhere.

The Bible, information from the Creator God, says there is ONE HUMAN RACE. One Blood. Every human is a child of Adam. Adam’s genes and DNA are in every human. There are many types, and many colors of hair, eyes, and skin.-“identity” is a modern psychosis. Insanity. An evil method of pretending to be “Superior” to other people. Inane.

Back in my younger days I was told that the term “colored people” was wrong and that “people of color” is politically correct. Then what does NAACP stand for?

I was also told that the term “non-white” was racist as it implied that the white race was the standard by which all other races are compared,. Now when I fill out a form, I have to check “White (Non-Hispanic).” Hmmmm.

And what do you call a person whose heritage is apparently sub-Saharan African? African-American is quite presumptuous, The person might African-Canadian, or African-Mexican or African-Chinese. What are these people called in other countries?

Also why do Whatever-Americans get to be called Americans when the rest of us are supposed to be called “People of the United States” since other residents of the two continents are also American.

How about we just call each other “people?”

The only ones who seem to be in an uproar over this issue is the media. Must be a slow news day.

Let her play make believe and forget her , for in the grand scheme of things this is not news.

Maybe she should write a book, hmmm maybe call it “Black Like Me”

Is “American” a race? Is “Russian” a race? Then why is “Mexican” a race? Or “Asian”? There is only ONE ‘race’; HUMAN. Why in the world are we looking so hard to find divisions? If you want to separate people by ethnicity, then we need to find new words.

Popular category from early 1990’s: “Dances with Wolves”

Dummies……Of course American isn’t a race, but she as an AMERICAN should just consider herself an American not some pseudo racial name!

Race is essentially a continuum. What troubles people about Rachael Dolezal was her trying to be at more than one place in that spectrum, depending on what advantaged her at the moment. Also that she played “activist” so cynically.

Thanks for the article.I’ve been interested in this story since it broke because I was not only curious of her motivations, but also what everyone [along the ‘racial divide’] would say about it.On South African FB pages this very American story has reignited debate there as well. The SA ‘Coloured’ (still current SA for mixed-race) communites have especially found her tale resonate with them.I must admit, although I now know more about her background, motivations and little deceits, I remain sympathetic.It reminded me of a few activitists of my time, in the ‘80s, who really wanted to show how they were empathetic to the plight of oppressed South Africans. Their awkward attempts often came across as paternalistic.One of my earlier comments on this story mentioned ’Die Koperkan’, an Afrikaans book by a white South African writer from the ‘50s, about a South African woman passing as white. Annoyingly I cannot get a copy easily nor did I find its English translation. I think my brother had the English version at home.(probably lying in stored family belongings in Portugal :p). I would love to revisit that story, see how I would now react to it and how relevant it might be.

As for saying race is a social construct, I see it now, too. I wouldn’t have understood it as such a few years ago. Remember, I grew up in a very prejudiced era and society, and I sometimes subconciously react in a prejudiced way. Understanding why, I hope, is making me overcome it.But this extract from that article:“To say that race is socially constructed gives it an air of make-believe. Race is quite real to those who live with it. Ask the families of the black men and women who have lost their lives during tragic encounters with the police. The choices about “who” they were, were not their own.”

Perhaps her empathy crossed a line when she got to choose.

All of the above.

Imagine a landscape with mountains and valleys; the mountains are of various heights, the valleys at various depths. Now take a horizontal section about 10,000 feet up. You will get a few isolated mountain tops. From this section you would say that there are a few distinct regions with no connections. Now take a section at 5,000 feet. You will get a few more regions with less space between them, but still no connections. Only when you get down to ground level will you see that everything is connected. And if you take your section at an angle you will get quite a different picture. Two different sections, at different heights and different angles, will show very different pictures of the same landscape. So your analysis creates your reality. Something like this could happen with races. The numbers and kinds of factors you select will give you different races, and you may not see that there are in fact smooth transitions rather than sharp breaks.