Race

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This has always been a major irritant with me. I find that since my DX of Asperger's, this is the "race" I prefer to belong to. I cannot relate to people because of what they look like, at all. This is totally irrelevant, in my opinion. As I child, with mixed race parents, I was excluded from most racial groups at school. When my mother had to come to my school, the kids who had formerly accepted me, would then disown me. I couldn't be classed in any acceptable category, so I became the pariah.

I don't get it either. I have Scottish and German ancestry so I would be "white". The thing is I don't feel any meaning to the term and I think it is stupid to sort people according to skin color. I always, whenever possible, mark "other" or "decline to answer" on race questions as a matter of principle. The really dumb thing is I can't explain that to most people because the response is often "well, you don't get it because you are white". That's not why I don't get it.

Identifying with culture makes sense to some degree, but race is very arbitrary. Also the definitions of race change over time and depend on where you are located. Race is such a broad generalization to the point where things don't make sense.

I like being half Indian even after all the racist crap that's been thrown at me. Usually they get it wrong. But I love the culture and I love that my relatives live in a tiny village and make their own tea. I may even have some indigenous Bodoh blood in me. They were separatists and I'm very much an activist.

I've had people of other races be nice to me, like Aboriginal and Middle Eastern.

I think being of mixed race has made me not only tolerant of other ethnicities but more understanding of how they feel in a predominately white society, though my country is very multicultural.

I prefer not to label people by race. I instead take time to get to know them and decide whether they are nice or mean through talking. Obviously I do identify people as black, white or hispanic (etc.) but only to help me remember what they look like! I remember once reading about a police force in the UK who objected to having to fill in a questionaire about their race because they thought it was wrong. They all got together, had a little chat and everyone put their race down as 'Chinese'!

I don't like to say what race I am either. I am white, but that doesn't define who I am. I am not just plain British either because I have Hungarian blood too! Still I wouldn't write British/eastern european on the form!

I think it's important for some reasons to have a racial identity, and I never understood why there has to be animosity among various races. I do understand why there is religious animosity, since sadly some faiths shun others. I don't like having to feel awkward if I am trying to tell someone's description, and have to dance all around race without using it ("The guy over there near the tree, with the red shirt and jeans, standing next to the girl in the purple sweater", rather than to say "the tall Black man", or the thin Asian lady, etc"). I don't personally judge anyone except for how they treat me, and how they act in society, on a one-by-one basis only.

Where it gets ridiculous, is when law or etiquette doesn't even allow race or gender to be entered into an equation, such as now that in CA, men must sign a form that we are not pregnant, when getting an X-ray, because we can't be asked if we're men or women, and the tech is not allowed to guess, if it's not obvious. So by asking if we're pregnant, is somehow politically correct. Same with testing for racially exclusive medical things, like Sickle Cell or Haldemann's Knee Syndrome. They can't ask if you have any Black ancestry; they have to just quietly test you.

Charles