What “race” is your Oatmeal?
This morning I indulged in redeeming a coupon for a free cup of tasty oatmeal, flavored with cinnamon and chunks of fresh apple and walnuts. It’s likely that you also received this coupon in your mailbox this week too, courtesy of one of the most popular chains of drive in “fast food” restaurants (I won’t name names, but “golden arches” comes to mind.)
Since this has been a rather rainy and blustery day, a cup of hot oatmeal seemed to be an appropriate source of energy! I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this tasty breakfast staple. I found the serving I received to be as good as, if not better (no messy pots to clean) than homemade and I would recommend this breakfast treat to you.
Of course, you realize that I would not be writing about oatmeal, unless I had a specific gripe! Indeed, here goes…
Upon receiving the cup of hot cereal, the clerk asked me whether I would mind completing a survey and returning it to the “golden arches” in their pre-paid, self- addressed envelope. Why not? I was willing to be generous in sharing five minutes of survey time in exchange for a freebie breakfast!
The survey asked rather predictable questions,
Was the oatmeal tasty? Would I likely purchase it in the future? Would I recommend it to friends (I just recommended it to you!) Was the clerk polite, and so forth, and then we came to my “favorite” portion of the questionnaire….demographics!
Ahem, yes, questions about my age, my gender, my zip code….what language do I speak at home? And, of course, those of you who know me well, there was the question guaranteed to raise my blood pressure…
What is your race?
The usual followed…you know the categories of boxes offered to check off; so called colors, continents and ethnicities were offered as selections, followed by a box that stated “other.”
“Other?”
As in what? Hybrid? Mongrel? Half breed? Martian?
Exactly what answer is the golden arches and all other businesses and government entities that ask these inane questions looking for?
In my usual snit, when prompted by this question I checked “other” and wrote in “American” adding “this questionnaire would make Adolph Hitler proud! Who designed this “survey?” The Third Reich?”
Now, I ask you, just as I ask the charming volunteers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium who greet visitors and ask them to fill out a questionnaire with the very same racist questions, as do loan officers, “big box” stores, cruise travel agents, and so forth…
“What the fuck does my race have to do with my consumption of this oatmeal?”
Now before you start “educating” me about marketing strategies and how demographics are used to develop new products and improve our economy and so on and so forth, allow me the opportunity to cut you off at the pass and respond with two words:
“Bull shit.”
Or is that one word, as in “bullshit?”
Whatever. All I know is that in this enlightened year of 2011, the “melting pot” of the United States appears to become more racially obsessed with every passing decade.
Just as post WWII school children in Germany were conveniently shielded from learning the facts about depravity of their military/political/social history, it appears that younger generations, here in the USA, have also “forgotten” aspects of European history.
Have Americans lost sight of horrors leading to genocide that the Third Reich established through initially subtle, then eventually bolding requiring the populace to be classified by gender preference (hello LGBT “community”) health status (hello “disabled”) ethnicity, hello Poles, Dutch, Russians, Brits and so on and so forth) and religion (hello Jews, who now that some of you think the Holocaust can never be repeated, also toss “ethnic/racial” labels around like nobody’s business!)
Wake up America! Labeling the population for every little thing is dangerous, especially during times of economic instability. We need not look back 60 to 70 years to reflect on what happened with the Third Reich; we have countless more recent examples in the Balkans and throughout Africa, to name a few. Think it couldn’t happen here? Think again my friend!
Fill out a survey? Sure. Ask me my age, favorite color, preferred cuisine, why not?
But, please, let’s leave race out of my breakfast!
An excerpt from RTF: GG Speaks!
Copyright 2011© by Red Tailed Hawk Publishing/All rights reserved
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