Experiences With Microaggressions

My family and I were recently having a discussion about the boxes you are asked to mark regarding your ethnicity on certain applications. The discussion started because of the fact that my daughters, who are ¼ Japanese, both mark Asian. Sometimes there is a disconnect however, because one of them has more characteristics of an Asian person, while the other has more Caucasian characteristics.

Anyway, during this discussion, my son-in-law pointed out that on recent applications that he had filled out the category of Black/Hispanic was no longer an option. He was adopted as a child, but was told that one of his natural parents was Black and one was Puerto Rican; so he has always marked Black/Hispanic. He complained, “Now I don’t know which one to mark.” The problem is that the new system wants him to choose between those two identifying markers; but he always viewed himself as an amalgamation of the two. I think it would be a different scenario if he had grown up in a household where one of these two cultures existed; but, as it is, he is left feeling that there is no category that truly identifies who he is.

There are so many different ethnicities in the world that it becomes impossible to capture them all in the confines of the few choices offered on these applications. In order to address this reality, the powers that be have included the category of “Other”. But what message is sent to those who have to mark “Other” because nothing else truly describes them? I think it says that they are somehow not normal, which is unfair and inaccurate. In reality, very few of us fit entirely into one category or another. Perhaps we should all start marking “Other” until the powers that be realize that the answers are pointless and stop asking us to place ourselves into categories.