[twistedpair]

To clarify, race is a construct too often abused to implicate stratifications of groups of people. "Races" don't naturally exist, rather only a continuum of ethnological and physical differences across the rainbow of the human genome [0].

As it's used today, race can be very divisive and polarizing. While I'm white, I've toured and been deeply moved by the Apartheid museum in Capetown and driven past the Townships that show how severe and pervasive the only recently struct down laws that ensconced the white elite in private neighborhoods while relegating everyone else to shanty towns were, and still are years after said laws were struck down.

While collecting racial data certainly plays a role in correcting for the still evident scars of past wrongs (and avoids denying the past), it strikes me as also reinforcing the existence of such racial constructs. I can only imagine what it feels like to be a teen in a minority group checking the box that they are that group on forms for every tooth filling, credit card application, warranty card, standardized test, and survey they take.

I sincerely desire my future grandchildren can see a title like this article and think it's a discussion of footrace algorithms, that we can live in a post racial society at some point. We certainly are not there yet. There is much inequality to resolve and too many latent scars to heal. Will we make it in my lifetime? That's on all of us to affect.

[0] https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-res...