I'm not at all shocked by this outcome.

Race, many sociologists and anthropologists have argued for decades, is a social invention historically used to justify prejudice and persecution. But when Samuel M. Richards gave his students at Pennsylvania State University genetic ancestry tests to establish the imprecision of socially constructed racial categories, he found the exercise reinforced them instead.

One white-skinned student, told she was 9 percent West African, went to a Kwanzaa celebration, for instance, but would not dream of going to an Asian cultural event because her DNA did not match, Dr. Richards said. Preconceived notions of race seemed all the more authentic when quantified by DNA.

“Before, it was, ‘I’m white because I have white skin and grew up in white culture,’ ” Dr. Richards said. “Now it’s, ‘I really know I’m white, so white is this big neon sign hanging over my head.’ It’s like, oh, no, come on. That wasn’t the point.”

But what Richards fails to consider is that for the last few decades we have been awarding benefits and burdens based upon race and ethnicity. We've been setting up special scholarships, cultural centers, and other programs to help folks understand what it means to be authentically [FILL IN THE BLANK]. having now been sorted into ethnic group X, why would these students seek out some other culture? Isn't that defined as "selling out" to the evils of "assimilation"? Unless, of course, you are white, in which case you are expected to embrace every culture except your own evilracistsexisthomophobicfascist culture in the name of diversity, multiculturalism, and political correctness. We've sowed balkinization for decades -- why wouldn't these results lead to further balkinization?

Posted by: Greg at 02:58 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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