Race

One four letter word.  So much complexity.

Odds are, for the first time in a presidential race, another definition of the word will come into play:

1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.
3. A genealogical line; a lineage.
4. Humans considered as a group.

An awful lot of words - but - can any of us truly agree upon what it all means?

The dictionary entry offers this disclaimer:

Usage Note: The notion of race is nearly as problematic from a scientific point of view as it is from a social one. European physical anthropologists of the 17th and 18th centuries proposed various systems of racial classifications based on such observable characteristics as skin color, hair type, body proportions, and skull measurements, essentially codifying the perceived differences among broad geographic populations of humans. The traditional terms for these populations—Caucasoid (or Caucasian), Mongoloid, Negroid, and in some systems Australoid—are now controversial in both technical and nontechnical usage, and in some cases they may well be considered offensive. (Caucasian does retain a certain currency in American English, but it is used almost exclusively to mean "white" or "European" rather than "belonging to the Caucasian race," a group that includes a variety of peoples generally categorized as nonwhite.) The biological aspect of race is described today not in observable physical features but rather in such genetic characteristics as blood groups and metabolic processes, and the groupings indicated by these factors seldom coincide very neatly with those put forward by earlier physical anthropologists. Citing this and other points—such as the fact that a person who is considered black in one society might be nonblack in another—many cultural anthropologists now consider race to be more a social or mental construct than an objective biological fact.

My guess is that if you gathered groups of individuals to explain what they understand "race" to be, you would receive few answers that matched identically.  Race is a complex, deep, scientifically unclear, emotionally charged, and historically significant issue for the ages.

In my Twin City, St. Paul, an exhibition goes on display demonstrating what can happen when humans seek to classify other humans by "race".

"Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race" is the story of the eugenics movement implemented by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and '40s. The exhibit, created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., opens Wednesday in the downtown St. Paul museum.

Eugenics is the belief that the human species could be improved by discouraging or stopping reproduction by people with genetic defects or undesirable traits and encouraging reproduction among those believed to have desirable, inheritable traits. It was carried out to its most horrifying extremes in Nazi Germany.

But the exhibit, which includes artifacts, photos and video testimonials, shows that advocacy for eugenics predated the rise of Hitler and that many in the scientific and medical communities embraced its use.

The theory also was promoted and practiced in places beyond Germany, including the United States and Minnesota.

Susan Bachrach, the exhibit curator with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, said the exhibit was created to try to help understand how the Holocaust happened

in the most educated society in the world.

It turned out scientists lent a helping hand.

Not long after it first opened, I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.  If you wish to be chilled to the bone, visit this shrine to dissecting human evil - or the display in St. Paul - and see what happens when we humans take a wrong turn with notions of race.  Suddenly, the shape of an eye, the pigment of skin, the definition of a nose all become reasons to commit torture, murder and genocide.

Which brings me to this:  a comedy show on television.  Yes, humankind's sick relationship with race even infects our ability to laugh at ourselves and our condition.

Are actors restricted from impersonating real people if they do not have enough melanin in their DNA?  Do we need Nazi doctors to weigh whether or not someone is "black enough" to make us laugh?  Or should we instead decide that what really matters about an individual is their characterisitics and beliefs, their mannerisms and morals?

Sometimes I marvel at how much progress we have made in judging our fellow citizens on who they are, rather than what they look like. 

Other days, I think that we have learned nothing.  We are back in another century, studying the lips, noses, skin color and eye shape of one another, trying to determine who is really "worthy" and who is not.

I truly pray that this election, we can study this race and vote for a candidate based upon what policies he wishes to implement, what philosophies he values, upon his experience and actions and character.  Let the other kind of "race" be more and more relegated to museums, demonstrating how small we become when we allow our choices to be made by insignifcant matters of genetics.

And perhaps, too, we can laugh at our foibles and faux pas, irrespective of just how dark or light our skin tones happen to be.

My thanks to HotAir for the Saturday Night Live link.