“”Who are your people?”“

I’m coming to the conclusion that is not a well formed question, at least how many people would want that question understood.

Today I propose that the question to be asked is “With whom do you want to identify?”

Passing is one of those American bits of history that really stand out as a kind of road sign on the path to understanding American society.

Nearly all people who would self-label as African American or Black will also have significant European ancestry. And on the other hand there is non-trivial portion of self-identifying “white” Americans who have colonial era ancestors of color, not from Europe but from Africa.

Our biological admixture is ahead of our constructing of social descriptions, i.e., labels, we want to put on each other.

The NPR story is a good reminder of the horror of the past, which some Americans want to sweep under the rug.

This gets to the problem of identity and how there are still some antiquated ideas about such floating about in our society.

Last night I wrote a comment about a blog post of a fundamentalist seminary professor: littlegreenfootballs.com
in which said professor was trying to playa Dolezal card against Caitlyn Jenner. Among the many problems with this professor’s approach is his belief in “biological identity” which for him means not only gender but also “race”. To people like him, identity is something essential, ordained by God.

That is an old way of thinking of and I wish we had more leaders who would tackle head on the meaning of “identity” in America today.