Taxacom: So-called race and taxonomy

[John Grehan]

One aspect of recent discussion about race attitudes is the relationship
between race concepts and taxonomy. Evolutionary biology is replete with
statements that race is an artifact (I quite agree) as there is no unique
unity for any such constructs. But all the time here, in the US at least,
one is forced by politics to define oneself by race (sometimes substituting
ethnicity). It is bizarre to say the least. All the time I have to fill
out forms stating my race/ethnicity. Where I can, I put down 'South Pacific
Islander' (even though one knows damn well that the racist construction of
these forms assumes only non 'whites' for this category). At least in NZ
one was (at least when I lived there) considered either Maori or a Pakeha
bum (me) even though Maori also have Pakeah ancestry. I ran into the
quandary when teaching at school in the US where I found the race identity
as reality so severely entrenched among the students (in the not so diverse
region of New Hampshire) that it was impossible to make any headway on
that, at least in the limited time I had. At one point I did a
presentation on NZ, and one student was quite shocked that 'not everyone
was white" (this from a 12 year old). Evolutionary biology and taxonomy has
a long, long way to go in this country.

Cheers, John Grehan

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