Classification is defined as the systematic arrangement of groups or categories according to specific criteria. Classification is a ubiquitous tool found in a variety of disciplines. Biologists use classification to organize the millions of species scattered throughout the world. Psychologists classify mental disorders through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, an ongoing standardization project for clinicians, currently in its 5th edition (DSM-5). Finally, social scientists classify people through race & ethnicity.
According to the United States Census Bureau, you must self-identify as White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or Some Other Race. For some, this may be straight-forward. My best friend was born here and is visibly white as snow, and can automatically check off the ‘White’ box. For some others like myself, it’s not so simple. I was born here but my country of origin is Turkey, a country found in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It’s located in the Middle East. My parents (quite ironically) hail from both Western and Eastern Turkey. I don’t really identify as white, but according to the U.S Census, a White person is defined as ‘A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.’ As muddling as all this is, it gets worse. The Census Bureau advises you to pick what you identify with the most, but I can’t seem to find what I do identify myself as according to their limited criteria. I’d be happy (and amused) if there was an ‘Olive-Oiled Skin’ category, or even an ‘American’ category. I’m left checking off the ‘White’ category.
Although I find this system very frustrating, I doubt that I’m alone. Others with culturally diverse backgrounds, heritages, and identities are left wondering what to check off. Can’t there be a simple ‘I am Human’ category because in the end this classification of people is a social construct. Over the years in U.S Census history, every decade we see new categories of classification entering our ethnic/race criteria. The one which amused me tremendously was in 1930 ‘Mulatto’ was discontinued as a category and ‘Black’ became ‘Negro.’ Just the capricious nature of our Census Bureau’s classification criteria over the years is indicative of this social construction of race/ethnicity. It’s all hogwash. Every single one of us is a person with blood flowing through our veins, part of a world whose sedimentary rocks, eroded soil, polluted air, irradiated water, and limited resources we all have to share.
Thankfully, “because of advocacy groups pressuring the Bureau to create a separate geographic category for people of Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) descent, the bureau is recommending that MENA be added to the 2020 census.” Huzzah! That’s potentially dozens of millions of people of Middle Eastern descent like myself having their own potential checkbox! In 2015 alone, the bureau conducted an experiment where it included the MENA category and found that people who identified with this category were highly likely to check it off. This is important because when the census can account for minority groups in certain communities, that increases the fundings that schools or institutions can acquire. For example, identifying a large minority group within a specific county can lead to an increase in funding for English as a Second Language (ESL) programs! It can also bolster funding to Anthropological, Sociological, and other studies through universities.
Although this might seem a step forward in our currently imperfect census criteria, there remain problematic elements and consequences that could arise from such a category. When placed in context of the current political environment and anti-Immigrant/ anti-Muslim/ anti-Middle Eastern rhetoric being thrown about in the air, the MENA category could be used against the very people it’s trying to identify. Looking back at the past few weeks alone, we have seen president Trump attempt to ban muslims from seven different countries, launch airstrikes which have silenced the voices of many people, taking the lives of civilians in the process, result in an increasing fear as to what he may do to the very citizens which identify as that which he tries to exclude from the country.
The thing is, that fear of what may be done to Middle-Eastern citizens of the U.S. is already well-established. One must look back at the former national crisis of WWII, wherein the U.S. government used census data to locate and target more than 100,000 Japanese Americans residing within the country. Since there were a lack of civil and equality rights, this large denomination of people were incarcerated legally. It’s frightening then to think what could happen in a modern time of national crisis under president Trump.
The importance of the census cannot be highlighted enough. It’s a tool that can classify certain groups of people and bolster policies and laws that can help those communities to grow. In the case of the Japanese incarceration though, it wasn’t a question of who was Japanese and who was not, but rather, where were the Japanese located and how many of them were there? According to Kenneth Prewitt, a former director of the U.S Census Bureau who is now a professor at Columbia University, “Yes, census data can be inappropriately used to target for attention particular neighborhoods where persons of MENA ancestry are concentrated,” “But,” he said, “doing so would not be any more illegal than targeting places where elderly people live, to know where to send rescue vehicles in case of flooding or power outings or where veterans live in order to place VA hospitals nearby. So the issue is not who clusters where but for what purposes is that information used.”
See, here’s the rub. That aspect of our government which has always leaned towards surveillance practices and tactics will always find a way to do so. Remember the New York Police Department’s so-called Demographics Unit, which the NYPD hoped would be an “early warning system for terrorism” but never yielded any leads and was disbanded in 2014 as a result of public outcry? Yeah, that one. Concerns about census data being misappropriated for these kind of measures are fair but the MENA category “would be an opportunity for the community to get of policy makers to show more of their needs in areas including education, voter protections, language resources.” However, we can’t forget that even the MENA category would be an imperfect, monolithic existence for another decade that groups together many different people, languages, and ethnic groups. Even then, this issue of classification is one worth exploring and debating.
Onur Ayaz
Sources :
NYPD Demographics Unit Disbands
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From the Victorian to the Digital, Transformations in Energy
Just last semester, I read Charles Dickens’ Hard Times and was struck with the copious references to the abuse that Victorian England was suffering against the hazardous industrialization of the era. A heavy, asthmatic air exhales throughout the novel, reflecting the kind of pollution that England was enduring at the time, captured quite poignantly in this conversation between Mrs. Sparsit and James Harthouse.
‘Thank you. Allow me.’ He placed a chair for her, but remained himself
carelessly lounging against the table. ‘I left my servant at the railway
looking after the luggage—very heavy train and vast quantity of it in the
van—and strolled on, looking about me. Exceedingly odd place. Will you
allow me to ask you if it’s always as black as this?’
‘In general much blacker,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, in her uncompromising
way. (Hard Times, Dickens)
The ‘black,’ he highlights invokes the image of coal, of heavy smog billowing up from the chimneys of factories and homes throughout England. Just reading Dickens makes me want to cough up a wad of thick, soot-colored phlegm. I was thinking about Dickens when I read this article over the weekend about how Britain had its first coal-free day since the Industrial Revolution, “since the world’s first centralized public coal-fired generator opened in 1884, at Holborn Viaduct in London,” (BBC). By 2025, Britain plans to phase out all of their coal-plants and begin transitioning towards more environmentally friendly energy advancements – including natural gas, wind, biomass, and imported energy.
This shift away from using older forms of ways to fuel and produce energy mark a significant moment in human history; an eerie self-awareness of just what kinds of damage our efforts to create utopia (albeit, a Capitalistic-derived utopia. The words don’t make sense together, I’m sure you can agree) has caused. With the rise in innovation and application of electric energy by Tesla (spear-headed by CEO Elon Musk), it is a symbolic shift that is occurring. Tesla, named for the Victorian era inventor, is at the helm of an initiative that will see the end of the kinds of toxic and dangerous energy sources that was prominent during an era where Tesla and Dickens were both alive. It is moments of what Cordi O’Hara of the National Grid calls a ‘watershed moment in how our energy systems are changing,” that highlights the kind of threat that our own cut backs towards the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) may bring (BBC)
Exceedingly odd place. Will you allow me to ask you if it’s always as black as this?’ James Harthouse, an Englishman of known repute, is no stranger to the kinds of physical or environmental violence that humanity is capable of. When he asks Mrs. Sparsit this question, it’s laughable. He is a spiritual forbearer to the climate change deniers who now stand at the helm of our country. And like Mrs. Sparsit, we seem to passive to do anything about it. ‘In general much blacker,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, in her uncompromising way. Uncompromising, Dickens writes. Yet with the kinds of changes that Britain is making, as well as the work of men like Elon Musk and Tesla/SpaceX, perhaps the world’s Harthouse’s and Sparsit’s and their uncompromising ways will take the back-seat and we can cure the world of its centuries old festering wounds.
Christopher LaSasso
Sources:
BBC article, “First coal-free day in Britain since Industrial Revolution”
Bill O’ Reilly, Fox News, and Rape Culture
It is seldom that a person of such stature and prestige as Bill O’ Reilly is called out on anything more than falsifying facts. When news broke last week that he was out of the Fox News family, I was more than elated. Then it struck me as something that was not to be celebrated. I broke open a bottle of Kettle One and had my first cigarette in years. I became pensive, then sad. You can blame the alcohol if you want, but I was sober than ever. Sure, he was my ideological nemesis and I watched him to get my blood boiling because I am a psychological masochist. But it hit me: to celebrate this would be to celebrate rape culture finally coming to the forefront in the news.
Nearly a decade and a half ago, I remember listening to the recordings of a conversation (if one should call it that) between Bill O’ Reilly and Andrea Mackris. I remember the nasty, sniveling voice of his telling her the various sexually explicit things he would do to her. The one thing that stood out to me in the phone call recordings was his comment of how he would like to loofah her down, or use a “falafel thing.” O’ Reilly had escaped this incident with a $9 million settlement. That very week, he would go on the air and comment on the entire ordeal. It was not so much of an apology than a “I’ve been sued, so what, unfounded, let’s never talk of this again” kind of commentary.
Fast that decade and a half and we reach today, where Bill O’ Reilly is not faced with one, but many accusers of sexual harassment. In these times, one would never fathom seeing such a monolith of conservative spew being taken down. Let us not forget the Roger Ailes, the former ringleader of Fox News, who was finally ousted after several anchorwomen accused him of similar acts. What is horrific is that it took more than just a few incidents to bring this man down. It took years of women working in a stifling, sexually charged, man-centric environment before something was done. This is just an inkling of the accepted rape culture that pervades Fox News.
Having a former CEO such as Roger Ailes, allowed for rape-culture and its insidious behaviors to be okay in the workplace. It deeply disturbs me that it takes several women before anyone begins to believe in the claims. It is deeply disturbing that, today, women must look over their shoulders ever minute to ensure their own safety. This is reason, when I cracked that Kettle One open, I made my martini extra dry, skipped out on the olives, and forced myself to drink such a bitter mix. It was not a celebration, but just another example of women being treated like statistics when speaking up about bad behavior in the workplace.
Luis Roca
The Junction Journal 