Racial equality once meant tearing down barriers, not doing a DNA test | Kenan Malik

The right to be treated differently based on pseudo science is entrenching divisions

Until about five years ago, Ralph Taylor did not consider himself black. He lived as a white man and was seen as such by friends, colleagues and clients. In 2010, he took a genetic test that estimated his ancestry to be 90% European, 6% indigenous American and 4% sub-Saharan African. Four years later, he applied for his insurance business to be certified as a “disadvantaged business enterprise” to make it easier to win government contracts. He was turned down. Officials could find “no persuasive evidence that Mr Taylor has personally suffered social and economic disadvantage by virtue of being a Black American”. Now Taylor is suing the US government because he considers himself to be “black based upon DNA evidence”.

Taylor is, by any rational definition, white and the attempt to have himself officially declared black seems little more than a money-spinning exercise. Yet, absurd though his claims are, his case speaks also to our times. Navigating racial categories has today become increasingly fraught and many of the ways in which we commonly think of racial and cultural identities are as hollow as Taylor’s claim to be black.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2O1WYMK