Response to Jamaica Plain Census

(For anyone interested in the actual data I am writing in response to you, can find it at  

http://jamaicaplain.patch.com/articles/census-jamaica-plain-gets-whiter-and-less-brown)

This is a very murky set of statistics.

Exhibit A:  I make it a point to never answer the question of “race” except with the obvious scientific answer of “homo sapiens sapiens”.  A more accurate term when referring to various groups of peoples is “population”.  Even “ethnicity” has become too murky a term to use in conversation if the goal is to actually communicate ideas.

Exhibit B:  The statistics in the above article refer to those in the community who self-identify as only ONE of the choices.  This is murky within murky.  Self-identification is of no use for accurate data in this context.  And these statistics do not take into account all those people who refuse to honor only one of the choices offered because they know that it would not accurately reflect who they are.  Most people have very little idea about their origin past a few generations.  The constructs they are holding onto are cultural constructs.

Exhibit C:  is a challenge.  Send a cheek swab to the National Geographic Human DNA Project and learn about your more ancient past.  It can be illuminating.  This is how a Mexican priest learns that he carries the “Aaron” gene on his Y chromosome, or how a dark skinned man from the American south learns that his mtDNA (from mother to mother) is predominantly European.

Exhibit D:  Jamaica Plain abounds with people who have married outside of their population (“race”) and produced children that continue to produce children with others outside of each population circle.  How is this multitude reflected in the quoted set of statistics?  And how do these people react to a set of statistics that utterly excludes them, and yet is used to make points about the community they belong to?

There is (currently) only one human race.  It is homo sapiens sapiens.  Within this race, there are multitudes of ever shifting populations.  I believe that the statistics quoted above refer to the respondents understanding of what culture they identify with.  And that is useful.  But you must not say that it is something else.  It is not even a bad approximation of the diversity that is Jamaica Plain.  As a census of “race” it is poorly devised and utterly useless.

A new paradigm needs to be created to be able to actually study the population of Jamaica Plain and the rest of America as well.  It cannot include terms like “race” and “ethnicity”.  It cannot use peoples own self-identification regarding which population they see themselves belonging to.

While hair texture, eye shape and color and the amount of melanin we have are obvious identifiers, they are, after all, only skin deep.