Put me down as having attended the artbrooks school of racialized realities, please.

Azizi, what I balked at in utter frustration was your conflating the *classification* of racial identities by the Census Bureau with *legal standing*. They are two entirely different kettles of fish.

In my opinion, that shows either ignorance, or a tendency to operate with a hidden racial agenda in internet forums. Since I don't know you, I'm perfectly happy to assume it is the former in your case.

But frankly, I find your preaching tendencies about "the race" pretty off-putting in a condescending, patronizing way.

Hence, my invocation of Chapelle.

The United States no longer has laws that define a person's legal standing based upon their race, except in affirmative action. Which is why affirmative action is such a lightning rod in conversations about race.

There is plenty of irony here. The ways the Census Bureau chooses racial identity categories is one, but so is the fact the Census Bureau (a bad ironic joke in itself) isn't allowed to ask what religion it's citizens self-identify with. The bottom line for everyone though, is none of us lives in that sort of disturbingly bizarre, neat and orderly, highly categorized world, regardless of what our background or community is.

A horse of a different color in a horse race is still a horse, isn't it? That was Nader's point. And this sort of obfuscation of that point causes people to lose the plot entirely.

It really is that simple for most folks. But if you want to continue to torture and twist Nader's words to fit this level of outright absurdity, just so you can give the class yet another lecture on race, you go right ahead.

But I'm skipping out, and choosing truancy over boredom in the face of some really didactic shit talking (that is a play on the words of your thread title, Azizi) in your lecture hall.

Thanks for not smoking.

Hummer