A question of race

[norsegirl]

I'm starting to get touchy about this question... it's on every thing I fill out. What "race" am I? What does it matter? And whose business is it anyway? I am very aware that I am entrenched in the South, high seat of privilege for those of us who happen to have been "blessed" with milky white skin, but do we really need to be reminded of it on a daily basis? Does reinforcing the whole outdated notion of "Black", "Caucasian" and "Latino" and the simple categorization of a person by skin tone really help anyone? Is this part of the social machine that keeps racism alive and well in this country while it seemed much less pronounced North of the border?

I can see where this might become somewhat relevant in pre-natal care. But are there really that many who could claim some sort of genetic purity to one group or another? If you've got even a drop of something other than the group you're identifying with, guess what, you might be a carrier for whatever that other group has too. So if you identify as "black" but your great, great, great ancestor was Jewish (or Cajun or French Canadian), you should be taking the Tay-Sachs test like all the rest of us with Jewish blood. However, that doesn't answer why my GP or my Chiropractor would want that info. What possible use could my self-identification with one "racial" group or another serve to those practitioners?

If we take it as a given that skin tone alone is not really helpful for health care, and it can't possibly serve any other purpose, why does everyone want to know? The only time I ever got asked this one in Canada was on the federal census and whether I was Native American for the purpose of University applications/scholarships. So why does it seem like I'm asked this one every day down here?

I also get asked my highest level of education and I'm not sure what relevance that has to my health care either. As if education is some magic cure-all against disease and poor lifestyle choices, or financial disaster, especially in this economic climate. I'm somewhat less insulted by that question because at least that achievement is the result of a choice on my part. But I still fail to see how it's any of my HMO's business.

Comments

[much-ado.livejournal.com]

it all has to do with charting demographics and evolutionary (longitudinal) changes in those demographic charts. HMOs use the facts and figures from those questions to determine where and how to alter benefits based on demographically chartable risks, with the sad fact that demographics such as education and race *do* have some bearing on risk predictability over large groups of people.

it's all a stats game, which totally removes the individual humanistic element, but insurance doesn't work that way at any level, unfortunately. it can't, being an odds-playing gambling industry.

[eve-the-just.livejournal.com]

How useful are the stats when I have the option of not answering if I feel uncomfortable with the question (which is what I opted for)? Also, with the whole black/white thing being really arbitrary, how useful is it really? By which I mean that the only truly black people in this country are the recent immigrants from Africa, and the only 100% "white" people are from places like Iceland where the immigration rate is so low and the genetic pool so shallow that scientists study it. Anyone whose family has been here (or continental Europe) for a generation or two starts getting really blended.

And anyway, it still doesn't answer why my Chiropractor wants to know.