I keep up with Conservative thinking just to make sure I know what exactly is going on in their fevered minds. On the other hand, keeping up didn’t mean I wanted to spend too much time exploring their murky depths. I decided to pick one website and to read that website religiously. I can’t recall exactly why but I choose Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit site. I wasn’t disappointed. Reynolds is easy to read and links to a wide variety of Conservative and Libertarians writers that range from the slightly unbalanced to the completely wacko. He was clearly connected to Conservative and Libertarian thinking so I felt a wise choice in my pulse taking endeavor.

Instapundit also serves as an alternate to a cup of coffee in the morning. Every day Reynolds and company serve up some tidbit that will spark my rage. Yesterday I was jolted awake when I read Reynolds discussion with David Bernstein regarding race classification. Bernstein believes that the present racial classifications are dated, arbitrary and eventually going to be meaningless with the increasing popularity of intermarriage between the races. He claims that in the not so distant future 80% of all Americans will have some minority status that will qualify them for minority business enterprise designation. Because of this racial mixing, racial classifications will cease to have any meaning, much less any use.

To a point, I agree. What percentage of racial makeup makes someone black? Does one grandparent make one Black or must someone have four grandparents one Black? What if you have significant black heritage but your pigmentation is white — can you still be called black? If you have to wade through a your gene pool to determine your race, what is the point of racial classification?

The future sure sounds great. The problem is we aren’t quite there yet. People still use racial classifications because people still see race. I googled Black incarceration statistics and quickly found an example. Eugene Volokh wrote in Reason about the difference in incarceration rates between Blacks and Whites. Volokh says Blacks commit more crimes than Whites which explains why they are jailed more than whites. Well, then, how is Volokh defining race? Is it anyone with any black heritage? Is it one, two, three or four grandparents? Or is it someone who has black pigmentation? Or is the person self-reporting? You can’t say racial classifications are meaningless when people still use them when discussing issues like crime and poverty because Racial classification definitely mean something to Volokh. More importantly, his audience understands what he means when he uses racial classifications. Are Reynolds and Bernstein suggesting eliminating racial classifications when discussing crime and poverty? Would elimination of these classifications help us to understand the best way to address these issues?

The problem here is that, while making progress, Americans still see racial differences. Maybe 50 years from now Black and White won’t mean anything. Right now they have a powerful meaning. It isn’t as if Blacks created the distinctions. Whites did. First to distinguish slave from master and then to know when to practice discrimination. To suddenly say these are now meaningless lets White history off the hook. Discrimination is illegal now so racial classifications no longer have a purpose. To White conservatives maybe, but not so for Blacks.

Racism didn’t end with the passage of Civil Rights Legislation in 1960’s although many Conservatives like to think it did. It still lingers on and has an effect of Black people’s lives now. Slavery happened. Discrimination happened. Lynchings happened. Blacks, the largest minority group for the most of American history, suffered horribly . In didn’t happen in quite the same way to the Irish or to the Italians or to the Japanese or to the Pakistanis. These other groups undoubtedly experienced difficulties but they don’t compare to the crucible that Blacks endured. So until people stop seeing race, how do you measure racial discrimination? People will need to see that things are getting better with data, how would you prove your point?