A post I made on Yahoo on story "Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American'"

[johnlucas]

6. And that's the problem with labels

Human beings by design cannot understand any concept without making a label for it. A set of sounds called a word, a set of scribbles or gestures called a symbol. It's the way we're designed to be, programmed to be.

But each label we produce always misses the entirety of the concept.
Take a common orange.

Oranges are round? Yes. Oranges are spherical? Yes. Oranges are sour? Yes. Oranges are sweet? Yes. Oranges are orange? Yes. Oranges are yellow? Yes. Oranges have textured peels? Yes. Oranges are fruit? Yes. Oranges are seeds? Yes. Orange are reproductive organs? Oranges are life? Yes. Oranges are food? Yes. Oranges are drink? Yes. Oranges are cleansers? Yes. Oranges are makeshift baseballs to hit with a stick? Oranges are toys? Yes. Oranges are business? Yes. Yes. Oranges are cheap...in price? Yes. Oranges are cheap...in quality? Yes. Oranges are plentiful? Yes. Oranges are lightweight? Yes. Oranges are heavyweight? Yes (if they fall on your head). Oranges are paperweights? Yes. Oranges are fragrant? Yes. Oranges are smelly? Yes. Oranges are natural? Yes. Oranges are bio-engineered? Yes. Oranges are healthy for you? Yes, Oranges are unhealthy for you? Yes. Oranges are tangerines? Sort of.

With all the examples I gave there are even more truisms about a simple orange that one label simply cannot encompass.

Like I said in the original post, we ALL descend from Africa. All of humanity originated in Africa so EVERYBODY's technically African. But that doesn't help us when we need to distinguish one group from another. The Africans who migrated to Europe eons ago gaining light skins, light straight hairs, light eyes, & narrower sharper facial features; The Africans who migrated to Asia eons ago gaining somewhat lighter skins, dark straight hairs, hooded eyes & wider flatter facial features; The Africans who stayed in Africa maintaining their dark skins, dark curled hairs, & broader rounder facial features. Does the label 'African' capture all of these realities simultaneously?

In fact, does the label 'African' even capture all of the realities of the dark people OF Africa? Because with each of those groups who migrated away eons ago, you see the lineage represented in the diverse gene pools & phenotypes seen in Africa. There are full-blood Africans with narrower facial features, there are full-blood Africans with flat faces & hooded eyes. You could deduce how a certain group with a certain set of phenotypes migrated away & concentrated their features as the outside environments they moved to shaped their features even further.

So we got the labels of "European" & "Asian". But do THESE labels capture the reality of those under this classification? The slightly tanned Spaniards, Italians, & Greeks along with the nearly albino pale Norwegians, Swedes, & Danes? And wait some of those Europeans have curly hair too! The Chinese, Koreans, & Japanese along with the Filipinos, Indonesians, & Vietnamese? Some of those Asians have skins almost as "white" as the Europeans while some of those Asians have skins as brown & bronze as some Africans? And then what about the Indians from India? They live in the continent of Asia yet have dark skins, dark straight hairs, & sharper facial features. What about the Israelis, Persians, & Afghanis? They live in Asia but they don't resemble the Chinese or the Filipinos very much. What about the Russians & the rest from the former Soviet Union? They live in Asia but some look like the Europeans they directly descended from while others look more like the Asians with their hooded eyes & wide flat faces. And Mongolia is right next door. That's where those typically "Asian" features are said to come from, those Mongloid features as they once called them.

The one-drop rule is bull. In biological reality, you are the offspring of EVERYONE who made up your ancestry. Genes do their own thing & sometimes the stereotypical features of a "race" may not show up on the surface. But those genes are part of your biological makeup nevertheless. Biologically Tiger Woods is not being false when he calls himself "Cablinasian".

Socially though, what you appear to look like is what you will most likely be treated as by outsiders. Barack Obama having a "Black" father from Kenya & a "White" mother from Kansas came out with a tan skin tone, curly hair, and broadness in his nose. The educated eye could see the "White" in him on his features but without knowledge of his background, he would be treated like an everyday Black American. The Black Americans known to be mixed somewhere down the line with multiple heritages.
The social category in my opinion is less than the biological category but since social overlaps with political for obvious reasons, it's no surprise that the first "multiracial" multiethnic President of the United States is often claimed by Blacks (and others too) as the first Black President of the United States.

You being Black & Asian (formerly called Oriental) are biologically BOTH. Not one instead of the other. But I bet you're treated as one or the other based on how people see you in their personal classification system.
If you have thick African-type curly hair naturally (whether straightened artificially or not) & a skin tone about peanut butter color or darker, I bet most people see you as just "Black".
BUT if your eyes have that Asian 'hooded-eyes' appearance, your skin is in that ambiguously brown area (see TVTropes.org) & your hair is sort of curly but sort of straight/sort of thick but sort of thin, you probably throw off a lot of people's classification systems & they say "What ARE you?" "Where are you from?" "What's your background?" "Are you Latino?" "Is your mother {fill-in-the-blank}?" "Is your father {fill-in-the-blank}?

That's what makes the issue so confusing. It's because the labels applied are not fully understood & furthermore not understood to be incomplete by definition. Most people don't have the time to sit down & have hour long discussion on the ins & outs of this issue if they have no interest in it. They just want a simple quick label to signify somebody.

To me, that shows distance. They WANT to be strangers & don't WISH to learn about people's intricacies. All of our "racial" labels while defining a group's kinship & similarities also erects barriers between those not considered part of that group.
The movie called "White Men Can't Jump". How do you know that? And if there IS a White man who can jump does it shatter the whole belief system? Will this rare White man now be considered Black because he CAN jump.
"White folks can't dance" "White folks can't sing soul" & then we get Teena Marie turning out Fire & Desire with Rick James.
"Black folks are dumb" "Black men are sex crazed & have the largest penises" & then we get this prudish Urkel-like rocket scientist who's a little small downstairs.

The quick label is just the beginning of the conversation. We SHOULD want to know about others. All Southerners are not racists. All Southerners are not rednecks. All Southerners are not rural. All Southerners are not Bible Belt religious. All Southerners are not back-asswards & regressive. There's something wrong with being a racist but is there something wrong with being rural? No. That rural Southerner may be religious living in the so-called Bible Belt but does that make the Southerner back-asswards & regressive? No, not necessarily. That Southerner may be a reformer or even progressive in his/her community wanting to change his/her church. And does redneck necessarily equal racist? Wasn't redneck a term applied to poor White farmers who opposed the elite White bourgeousie? Basically laborers fighting the aristocracy?

Lester Maddox, the once-governor of Georgia, was a segregationist racist. Jimmy Carter, his successor, was EVERYTHING EXCEPT a segregationist racist. And that's quite a feat considering some of his ancestors fought on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War.
Lester Maddox was born in Atlanta, GA, Jimmy Carter was born in Plains, GA. Both Georgians, both Southerners but with totally different views about the world.
While it does exists strongly here, The South does not necessarily equal love for the Confederate Flag & the legacy it represents.

We can't come to those conclusions if we just stop at the quick label "White" "from the South".
We can't understand what "Black" "African-American" "Colored" "Negro" mean & why they came to be if we just stop at the quick label. The label is just the beginning of the discussion.

Even the label of "human being" is incomplete. No label captures it all.
John Lucas