...Check All that Apply...

I want for all multiple choice questionnaires to have instructions to check all that apply. It might also be helpful if one were always allowed to have graded answers according to which are most true. It seems fairly rare that absolutes occur so often in real life. So why have it in practice for standards of intellectual rank? While on the subject, I would especially like to necessitate the need for the ability to check all that apply on the demographic portion of standardized tests. I often find that the items I open even before the cover of those booklets are the most perplexing. I can remember not being prepared to answer such questions because it appeared to me that the obvious answers for me to fill out were not available. It is trivial yet mildly frustrating, but mostly relevant in the world today.

November 4^th, 2008 America finally voted a black man in to the presidency. Where most view the accolade as a modern achievement, everyday it reminds me of how much we’re the same deeply-rooted prejudiced society. The president is just as much a black man as he is a white man, yet this is still a concept that most choose to not acknowledge- saying to me that the bigoted one drop rule hypothetically still applies. Of course, by hypothetical I mean actual as the presidents’ opposition continuously to tries to illegitimatize his citizenship. I am proud of the fact that my president represents a minority not often recognized in traditional demographics. So in 2008 by electing the president simple changes were made, that were ineffectual for most. But resolved immerse quells of frustration for me. We graduated to include the option to be “Two or more races (not Latino or Hispanic).”  Yet what if you are Latino or Hispanic, in addition to being two or more races? When will that bubble arrive?

The racial forecast of our nation predicts that soon enough the coming generations will have no finite racial identity. So much of the United States social system is based on stratification circumferences around race and creed. I could not imagine who I would’ve come to be if my heritage didn’t shape my identity. I have struggled daily with the conceptuality that pervades me. The most defeating lesson learned is that it doesn’t matter so much what or who you are in actuality. What impacts our lives most is how we are perceived. It is easier to see the past in the present, in that, viewing how the times have changed truth and reality are relevant only in that moment.

In the past, I could only be of one racial origin.  I was either Black (non-Hispanic or Latino), or Asian/Pacific Islander. This concept perplexed me in my adolescence. In reality I was never just one, if any of these ill-fitting descriptions. The more immature your age the less your understanding resembles a gradient spectrum but more of a contrast between opposites. Good and evil, right and wrong, yes and no, and black and white are idiomatically demonstrative of the archetypal antagonists in language. Back then I could not understand why I was supposed to fill in these unmarked bubbles. Furthermore, why was I only able to choose one if none of them were truly descriptive of me?  For me the answer is very open-ended and the option to fill in other wasn’t there in the early 90’s. So yes while you may say that I am black, my Grandmother was born in Cuba so wouldn’t that make me Hispanic?  Anyways for the sake of time… to be concise I have descended from Africa, Arawak Indians (Jamaica’s Native inhabitants before Columbus), Hakka-Chinese, a familiar British privateer for which Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum^® is named after, and somewhere else I’m told there is a redheaded German- Irish –Jewish Lady in the mix.

Last year when the 2010 Census workers knocked on the door for our household contribution the old white guy was quite perplexed. He had a few questions but I had more answers that he’d counted on. When he inquired what demographic I most appropriately belong to- I had to ask what my options were and how many he could fill in for me.  I could tell by the end of our interaction he was more frustrated by me than I was of him waking me from my mid-shift nap. I’m almost positive he grumbled something about me while walking down the stairs because I made him bubble in every little circle I could say yes to. I should’ve given him a pen he may’ve ran out of ink. After years of trying to fill in the one most advantageous demographical attribute for whatever perception I am trying to conceive, I no longer have to be one or the other. Victory!