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Beck: African-American 'Is A Bogus, PC, Made-Up Term'
Glenn Beck
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Glenn Beck has found another reason why Americans shouldn't fill out the 2010 Census - it's too confusing! Especially if you're black.
On his radio show today, Beck and his co-host discussed the difficulties African-Americans will face when identifying their race on census forms. "There's a little confusion because there's three boxes you can check if you're a certain race," the co-host said, "I don't know what the race is because there's three different terms for them. Black, African-American, or Negro."
Beck took offense at the very suggestion that "African-American" could be used to refer to a racial, and not an ethnic, identity.
African-American is a bogus, PC, made-up term. I mean, that's not a race. Your ancestry is from Africa and now you live in America. OK, so you were brought over -- either your family was brought over through the slave trade or you were born here and your family emigrated here or whatever but that is not a race.
Listen to the full audio clip here.
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greylox
January 7, 2010 6:58 PM
**Huh? Beck makes my brain hurt.
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Dan
January 8, 2010 1:28 AM in reply to greylox
You most-likely have the same reaction to simple math, and proper grammar.
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docrocktex
January 7, 2010 7:45 PM
Technically, there's no such thing as race. It has no genetic or biological basis. But having said that, does Beck also have a problem with the "White" category? White people are either French or Italian or Scottish or German or Irish, etc. so why are they only classified as White?
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FebM
January 7, 2010 9:25 PM
He is right, for once I agree with Beck. There is only the human race, thats the only slot there should be, the rest is mixed jabber jabber ancestry depending on the time you were out of Africa, millenia, or in this millenium, doesn't matter.
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David
January 8, 2010 7:48 AM
This whole nonsensical rant about something as ambiguous and poorly defined as "race" seems like a way of communicating to his followers what blacks should really be called.
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JohnW1141
January 8, 2010 8:04 AM
I remember Philly in the 40s, 50s, and 60s with all the Italian American social clubs OSIA, the Irish American clubs AOH, the Polish American clubs, the German American clubs, but hyphenated nationalities didn't become an issue until African Americans started using it.
Philly still has a Polish American string band in the Mummer's Parade.
With all the real crap facing this country Beck is again simply creating an issue where there isn't any.
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lindiana
January 8, 2010 8:40 AM
Beck is jerk but he is right. The categories that the federal government requires are nuts, not sound, and derive from a kind of laid on variations of PCness. If you could see the way its sliced and diced (eg for the NIH in medial research), you would feel you were living in apartheid. The problem is "race" matters, but race is a social construction (why it matters). Race, tribe, people I like, whatever, these forms just make it up and have folks check it off.
Beck is wrong, race does not exist (no matter what you call it). Beck is right; the overlapping terms and the meanings on the fed's racial and ethic category froms are wierd (and I think offensive). Some day we have to get brave enough to talk about this stuff and fix it.
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SqueakyRat
January 8, 2010 8:46 AM in reply to lindiana
How people identify themselves ethnically or racially is a perfectly legitimate piece of census information, even if ethnicity and race have no biological significance (which is not quite true anyway).
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