Where Pew and Trayvon Meet A Question Arises

I had dinner last night at a sea food place that, being Holy Thursday, was less crowded than I expected. Still, there was a low-level din – we were sitting outside, near the kids play area. To our left sat a couple with three typically active boys – squirming, moving about, laughing. The mother looked Indian (I didn’t ask), the father looked African-american. I say looked because of the point I want to make. Looks can be deceiving.

NPR asked a poignant question recently, in reference to the Trayvon Martin case: Who is considered white? The question refers to George Zimmerman, the man at the center of the controversy who happens to have a Latina (Peruvian) mother. Is he white, Latino, both? The answer to the question brings serious repercussions about how we treat the man and the case. Is this white on black violence? Latino on black violence? Would it be treated or reported differently in the media, depending on the defenition? Would it matter? Should it matter?

I’d like to take it a step further and ask: Are the old definitions of race too limiting for our growing multi-racial society? Isn’t that what the recent Pew Hispanic Center study about Latino identity showed us? That definitions, as they now stand, fall short of reality?

What we need is a new set of words, a new paradigm for definitions about who we are and how we classify ourselves.

Political boundaries are strongly set in ink and emphatically enforced, so those of us within the boundaries of our particular nation are (by default, by choice, by luck or by pride) defined by nationality or citizenship.

But the boundaries of race and culture, especially within the boundaries of the United States, are blending to a point of being indistinguishable. We refer to our president as the first black president, but he is half-white; we refer to George Zimmerman as a white assailant, but he is half Latino; the boys at the dinner table to my left last night looked black, but they were half-Indian.

The most practical paradigm about race and culture in the U.S. gives us the most useful term to use as a definition: we could start calling each other human. Wouldn’t that be refreshing.