Thoughts of race have always been on my mind because it is not something you can escape— especially discussions about it. A few nights ago, I was having a discussion about race and ethnicity with my friends. I realized and I’ve always known that I hate categorizing ourselves by race. Race feels less accurate a representation, in my opinion. We all know race is a social construct, and I know you’ve all heard it before, but I can’t help but reiterate it again. Race is just all about the physical characteristics; it’s something entirely based on appearance, and I feel that it’s an inaccurate way to identify. It really puts a lot of people in categories they don’t belong in, such as specific Asians and Africans being considered white because of their skin color. I hate that because I feel like that it erases their person of color identity and separates them amongst their groups.

So here’s a mini ramble about how I wish we could all identify by our ethnicities because it’s just more accurate. Also, it is something that is a part of us and is our heritage. I know people can choose which ethnicity or race they identify more with, but I guess I like that it's more than just black and white. Race seems like a lazy and convenient way to categorize people. I believe that it divides and separates us because with each race there seems to be an expected way to act and to be portrayed. It isn’t a fair argument, because groups in general have always been stereotyped and stigmatized. Anyway, I especially think about mixed-race kids who have to sometimes pick one race to identity with. Or how, when someone’s half black, they are automatically considered only black, and their other race doesn’t seem to count. For example, it seems people forgot that Obama is half white. Lastly, I think about my North African friends and other Middle Eastern friends who are considered white under the U.S. census. And it feels foreign to me because they are people of color; how could they be white?

Still, I can see the side that race can be unifying because it puts us in a group, a group we can feel closer to, but then I can’t help but hate how unclear and confusing race can be. This can be especially confusing, as I said before, for mixed kids and for people of color who can pass for white. In my experience, sometimes I don’t want to check the African American box because African American usually refers to people whose ancestors were brought here as slaves from Africa. I sometimes just want to check "other" and write Ghanaian American because that’s who I am, but then I feel that probably could be considered pretentious. All in all, I know I’ll figure it out and perhaps I won’t feel this way later on down the road. This rant could be useless and dumb, but it needed to be said as this is something I think about sometimes.