Using Race to Classify

This post is going off of the discussion we had the other day about categorizing people by their race, usually in conversation. We discussed how people feel the need to say "my black friend" or "the new Hispanic director" or things like that, when they talk about certain minorities. I know that some people said how they didn't think this was as big of an issue anymore, and it made me think whether or not I have heard this lately. Well last night I was watching an episode of 20/20, and I cannot tell you how many times this one "big black guy" was referred to as"the big black guy". There were other times throughout the show that the detective or the investigator referred to other black people they were talking about as the "black man" and two other men as the "Hispanic men". I understand that when identifying people as a detective or police officer would, they might refer to the person's race more often than someone else would in a normal conversation. However I made a point to pay attention and see if they ever referred to other people in the show as the "white person" and they never did once. This is what I found interesting. I think that if people think it is necessary to use someones race to identify them, then it should be universal in identifying all people of all races across the board, even white people. Brigit May, Post 15