Forgive me coming into the discussion in the 11th hour.

What *I* object to is the notion that discarding the word "race" and taking "racial" questions off our censuses (censi?) will somehow make racism -- that is, prejudice against persons of differing ethnic or national or bloodline* backgrounds from one's self -- go away.

It won't. We shall have to work harder than that. Creating a "color-blind" society will just be creating a society officially blind to the discrimination within it.

*well, you take away "race" and I need something else to use. Someone whose ancestors are (say) all Eskimos is different in some way -- which could use an adjective -- than someone whose ancestors are all from Western Europe. And people do, and have, and will continue to, discriminate against persons on this sort of basis, which is neither ethnic nor national, as both of these persons may be Americans of rather white-bread upbringing with no particular ethnic heritage other than "middle American" in their upbringing.

Now because somebody WILL misunderstand me, let me say quite explicitly that I think all these forms of discrimination and prejudice are WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Alex