Two Questions

Yesterday I had an interesting discussion with a good friend about the difference between Paint and Pinto horses. Basically, there is no distinction between the two colors, but there are two separate breed registries in the US, with different requirements.

Then we talked about color in horses in general and what exactly, constitutes a breed? And because my brain moves in funny ways (hey, I'm a writer) I started thinking about two questions I was recently requested to answer on a form to see a new medical doctor. Two questions that really, really irk me.

You've probably seen them before, on all kinds of forms. They are:

Race: ____________________________

Ethnicity: _________________________

As an amateur genealogist who has studied my family's roots back several generations, I've discovered that I am German, Danish, English, Dutch, maybe Irish, and quite possibly Cherokee Indian. And who knows what else?

Lots and lots of us are many, many things. So why do we have to be categorized at all? For what earthly reason?

(Which leads me to another things that upsets me - not being a "person of color." Is white not a color? (Oh, right, white is the absence of color. But wait, I get really, really tan in the summer. Like, brown. So then would I be considered a person of color?) Okay, I'll stop now.

But in general, I really hate being pigeon-holed in any way, especially on a stupid form. Which is why I do not answer the second question - ethnicity - at all. And as the the first question, I always answer it like this:

Race: ___Human_________


I mean, aren't we all??