More than White or Black

One thing I realized during the readings and classes, is that everyone seems to define race as basically black and white. Be it in person, or on paper applications. That brought to my attention the question of what are the alternates?? So I went on a search. Maybe I'm not very good at searching on the internet? However, I was unable to successfully come to a consensus. Finally I found something semi-helpful. The races listed were:

• American Indian or Alaskan Native. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment.
• Asian. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Phillipine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.
• Black or African American. A person having origins in any of the black racial groups or Africa. Terms such as “Haitian” or “Negro” can be used in addition to “Black or African American.”
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.
• White. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa
  

This makes much more sense to me. When people think it is just black and white, and only consider black and white in conversations, I was always semi confused. This is much more how I break down racial differences.

The area where it can get confusing is for Hispanics/Mexicans/Latinos. I feel like these people are missing from these classifications. The "classification" for race is always changing, and we should keep up with it. Personally I believe that Milano is an effective term, however in the US we do not recognize such as a race. This is brought up in Navarro's article, saying most Hispanics chose other, white, or black.

Also, because race is such a confusing area, I think it is necessary to provide descriptions next to choices, as above. It would clarify for many what to put down in context of what the application, census, ect wants.

In the US, we view everything as plain black and white. But its obvious that it is more complex than that, even when looking at people in the physical sense. We need to bring that complexity to the public knowledge to lessen racial naivety.