Get an Update on “Race”!

This is an easy one: how would you state the race of a person born in the US by an African – whose mother was coming from the UK and father from Senegal, and a Chinese – whose father was from Italy and mother from Dubai? 

Not that easy is it? The why do magazines, newspapers and all those media organisations who are supposed to be fighting the economic crisis with innovation are still locking themselves up into tiny little boxes where no one on earth can fit anymore?

I’m talking about a specific case here, the Wall Street Journal, that once again offers us a graph to show how the college enrollment has changed throughout the centuries for four race (as they call it): white, black, Hispanic and Asian. Well, let’s skip the fact that whoever still trying to define people by race was born maybe a thousand years ago and let’s focus on the spotting the weird thing. I’ll give you a hint: white and black are colors, Hispanic and Asian are geographical definition … so? So, how is it that race has a different definition and meaning for white and black compared to Hispanic and Asian? And where in the world would you put the child mentioned in the first line of this rather annoyed post? Where?

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