Is 'Race' Meaningful? - Letters in NYT - 0 views
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Frederick Smith on 22 Jul 13Letter 'trigger': "When we look at someone and automatically think about that person's "race," we must realize that we are not seeing "race" but instead seeing an arbitrary and harmful societal classification imposed on a continuum of physical differences. When we want to ask how someone is classified by the myth, we should always put "race" or "racial" in quotation marks (as I have done here). Such questions still need to be asked, for example, on applications for college or a job, or for the census, for the answers provide the data needed to maintain diversity in education and the workplace and to monitor and remedy the harms the myth has caused and continues to cause. The long-term goal, however, is to make these questions obsolete.