"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

Today's word is divisive
August 28, 2008 - 10:12 am

The first article I saw about it was, of course, on fark. The blurb said something like the first African American has been nominated to be President.

And... I sighed.

I've been struggling on how to get into words why I sighed without getting off into pointless tangents. I can't seem to do it. So.. I'll just go for the very blunt approach:

The term African American is divisive.

In fact, I dislike the use of any X American.

Why?

We are all Americans. Putting some word in front of the term is way to try and... I don't know... show some pointless 'special' feature about yourself. It's setting a group a people apart. It undermines the very notion of 'one nation'. You can't have one nation when the people of the nation are unduly preoccupied with stressing how they are different from each other.

It just doesn't work.

In the case of Obama it's also.. not quite right. He's only half of African (Kenyan) descent. The other half is... his wiki just says 'white'. It doesn't describe his mother as European American -- in fact, who uses such a term?

Generally speaking, the only time you'll hear Irish American or Italian American is if the person strongly identifies with that particular ethnicity or if they are relating their ancestry.

If his father was a white man from South Africa and his mother a Chinese woman... would we call him an African Asian American?

Anyway.

My point is... the more we use terms that focus on the pointless ways in which we are different, the longer those differences will matter (both negatively and positively) to people. It's a hindrance to notion that all people are created equal.

Of course.. one day as more and more movement occurs, the skin color of the world will slowly start to homogenize.

Anyway... my point really is... something like...

People will vote for him and others against him simply because of the term 'African American' and that's no way to pick a leader.

Just like there are many who wanted Hillary to be the nominee due to her gender.

Neither description has anything what so ever to do how good either would be as President.

It's said McCain may well pick a female VP just to offset some of the 'power' of Obama.

Once again, an American election proves itself to be more of a farce, more of popularity contest, than a real choosing of capable leadership.