Accommodating the outliers

Thinking about the Census data and any other form gathering demographic information, often the choices of ethnicity or race are limited to large groups that don’t account for smaller populations. Even as a Latinx person, on numerous occasions I have to mark myself as ‘other’. Grouping people into pretty little boxes serves a few different persons. One use is just knowing the kind of people in a setting and accommodating for some specific needs. For example, if there is a large percentage of people that identify as Jewish in a college or university, the college, or the students, can use this information to provide those religious services. Statistical significance in research is needed so it is easier to have large groupings. Worrying about accommodating others is not considered as much. Another use of demographic information is accounting for representation. In a school, having teachers of different identifiers can be incredibly beneficial to supporting students in an array of ways.

As we have discussed in class, people of multiple ethnicities are considered a problem. Interracial families show that people of different ethnicities can exist and reproduce in a civil manner. The lynching of innocent black males is one example of the efforts to keep blood lines clean. Whiteness is treasured in the United States. Today, we have come to the point where interracial couples are reasonably socially accepted. There’s more push back on having mixed race children. Unless that child has a white complexion, that child is seen as primarily a person of color. White Americans do not like ambiguity. Mixed race people are continuously questioned of where they belong. Race is a social construct. Today, there is not a dominant ideology in every space so there is ambiguity in where people outside of the binary will wonder their inclusion. We currently occupy a time where social ideologies are being questioned so it is not always obvious the qualifications of personhood in different spaces.