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When I was a little girl, we had to bring home various enrollment and emergency contact cards from school. My daddy would take the cards and, where the boxes for race and ethnicity were, do one of two things. He would either check "other" or cross out "white" and then write in "Central-European American".
At first, I thought he was just being technical Daddy. But he would exclaim, 'if all the other people get to be classified by their ethnicity, why don't we?!" But Daddy was on to something. "African-American", "Pacific-Islander American", "Hispanic-American", "Native American", "Asian-American" and "white", Why don't I get a hyphen, or an "American"?
As I've gotten older, I've come to agree with Daddy on this. (Not sure how often that happens.) And now I'm the one who gets to check the box. I usually select the newest addition, "Prefer not to say." (Which on on-line surveys is usually followed directly by "are you hispanic?") As long as everyone else gets to be classified by their heritage and I'm supposed to be classified by skin color (in mid-winter), I'd prefer not to answer. When there's a box to check for "German-American", or "Polish-American", then maybe I'll answer. It's not like checking "white" is going to help me anyway.
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