Race and Scary Hair

Bleh.  I totally accidentally slept through my Sociology class this morning, but I am not terribly upset by this fact.  I expect I will tell you why at a later date.  All I know is that I went to sleep looking like this:

And woke up looking like this:

 

 

 

Hey. It's a hard life out there for a college student.  I didn't even party last night!  I actually don't party ever! How is this possible?!!

 

You may be thinking, "Why were you so dressed up if you weren't going anywhere?"

You may not have been thinking that at all, but I shall be like a teacher and answer the question that I wanted you to ask.  Answer: Because of Halloween.

Because of Halloween?

Yes.

But Halloween isn't for a week now.

I know. I'm practicing.

This year, for Halloween, I am going to forgo my usual zombie costume

in favor of something a little sexier.  I wanted to go as a pin up girl, but I'm not ready for the full slut appeal, yet.  I know it's weird, but I like to dress conservatively. So there.  Anyway, this year, I am going as a piece of Roy Lichtenstein Pop Art.  Like this.

It promises to be lots of fun and hopefully I will look cute rather than creepy.

 When I was in high school, my choir made shirts every year, and one year it had the above picture on it with the subtitle; He said I had to choose between him and choir...I'm sure gonna miss him.

 

I would say that Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol were the most important artists to come out of the 60s, not including musical artists like the Beatles or...the Beatles.  Actually, one of Roy's original paintings was destroyed when the World Trade Center fell.

I do, however, have a favorite.

On other, more serious subjects, I was just doing an assignment for Quantitative Reasoning class, and I have an open ended question for you.  If I am white and my family has lived in Mexico for 5 generations and I speak Spanish, am I Mexican?  Am I Hispanic?  If I move to the U.S., what should I put on my census? 

These seem like easy questions or questions that don't matter, but the government makes it very difficult for some people to answer questions like these.  They try to categorize people, not just by race, but also by ethnicity.  The rise of technology has made it easier to visit and move to different places.  This means that people are more likely to be a mix of all sorts of different races and ethnicities.  Is it even possible to categorize people based on these standards?  Is it still relevant?  Why is this information important for the government to want to know?

<-Racial ambiguity

Self identification is becoming a large topic in today's society.  My roommate is a mix of Puerto Rican, Mexican, Irish, and other things, but chooses to identify as Mexican, when asked.

A teacher once gave me an example of self identification that I think is...interesting to say the least.  There was a man, lets call him Bob.  Bob was adopted as a baby.  He lives in New Orleans, now.  Bob looks kind of racially ambiguous.  People always assume that he is black, so he acts black.  He dresses and speaks and behaves in a way that is commensurate with black culture.  One day, he sends his DNA to a company that traces people's lineage.  Bob discovers that he is a mix of all sorts of different races.  He is a partially Asian, Hispanic, Caucasian, Native American, and Pacific Islander.  He is not, however, black.  He has no black family history.  In the end, Bob decides that he will continue to self identify as black.  He continues to check the African American box on federal documents when prompted.

Is this wrong?

If so, what box should Bob check?

What will be influenced when Bob checks the wrong box?

 

These are not rhetorical questions.