For most of my life, I checked "White" on the demographics boxes because I was raised by a white family. But it's not true.
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Replying to @EmilyGorcenski
The details are complex, and it hasn't been until the past 4 or 5 years that I've felt comfortable selecting "two or more races".
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Replying to @EmilyGorcenski
I started this by easing into it, choosing, when I could, "prefer not to answer."
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Replying to @EmilyGorcenski
Three years ago, when my wife and I went to the county courthouse to apply for our marriage license, I was asked my race.
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Replying to @EmilyGorcenski
These systems, of course, provide important genealogical and historical information, often it's the only info about a person that survives.
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Replying to @EmilyGorcenski
As was my bend at the time, when I was asked my race I declined to answer. My identity was changing rapidly and this option mattered.
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Replying to @EmilyGorcenski
But the clerk told me she couldn't put that down. I had to pick something. I protested, saying that I didn't feel comfortable doing so.
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Replying to @EmilyGorcenski
"I'll just put down 'white'," she told me, unrelenting. "It's the default."
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Replying to @EmilyGorcenski
And that right there speaks volumes of how race is seen and handled in this community.
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Replying to @EmilyGorcenski
This incident was the first time that I've really been hurt by erasure caused by institutional bias. It wouldn't be the last.
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Defaultism is a horrible thing, so ingrained that it appears in our computer systems and algorithms and how we handle ourselves in public.
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Replying to @EmilyGorcenski
This is why tolerance isn't enough. Why we have to do better.
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