Fixed or fluid, the argument is made more interesting because while there are very little DNA differences among racial categories, there are immense differences between the two sexes.  Such differences lead among other factors to different hormones and subsequent physical and mental development.  Yet these immense differences are considered fluid, while minute differences are considered fixed.

But many people who believe that gender is fluid believe that race is fixed.

There’s a growing belief in some quarters that gender is fluid.  At the same time, in the same quarters and beyond, there is a belief that race is fixed and not fluid.

Government agencies, courts, media, academia, activists, politicians, and much of the general public believe that race is fixed in six discrete categories:  White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American

This anthropological travesty forms the basis for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. It is just the latest in a long history of racial constructs.

Let’s digress for a moment for a four-question pop-quiz from the world of professional golf.  Answers follow.

1. Emiliano Grillo won the recent Colonial PGA tournament in Ft. Worth, taking home a purse of $1.5 million and a classic Bronco truck.Which of the six boxes does he belong in?  Hint:  He’s from Argentina.
2. Hideki Matsuyama is a professional golfer from Japan, and Im Sung-jae is one from South Korea.What are their respective boxes?
3. What is Tiger Woods’ box?
4. How about Tiger’s son Charlie Axel Woods?

Answers:  Darned if I know the answer to any of the four questions.  That’s because each of the foregoing people doesn’t fit into any one box. To wit:

1. Emiliano Grillo is from Latin America, but that doesn’t necessarily make him Hispanic (or Latino). He could very well be of Italian descent, given that there are approximately 30 million Argentinians who claim Italian ancestry.
2. It’s almost a certainty that Matsuyama and Sung-jae don’t see themselves as the same race, especially in view of the lingering hatred that Koreans have for the Japanese, a hatred precipitated by atrocities that the Japanese committed in the Second World War. Also, both the island of Japan and the peninsula of Korea have long histories of being racially homogenous and closed to immigration.  (Yet this lack of diversity hasn’t kept them from being successful in selling products to Americans.)
3. Tiger’s father is a deceased African American, and his mother is Tai and Buddhist.
4. The mother of Charlie Woods is Elin Nordegren, a blonde who is as white as freshly-fallen snow.

One professional golfer does fit into a box—well, sort of.  Top-ranked Jon Rahm is a Spaniard.  As such, he meets the original definition of “Hispanic,” namely someone from the Iberian Peninsula, or specifically, a Spaniard or a Portuguese.  These would be the people who brought considerably more slaves to the Americas than the English and Dutch, and were the first to do so, decades before 1619. They also brutalized indigenous people.

Yet Hispanics tend to get a pass for their atrocities and are even seen as disadvantaged victims and minorities worthy of DEI. Also referred to as Latinos and Latinx in the Americas, the Hispanic category actually encompasses many races, ethnic groups, and nationalities.  With respect to nationalities, most Latin American nations suffer from the legacies of the Spanish Empire, especially the legacy of an extractive economy, the legacy of political corruption, and the legacy of a two-class society of Spanish aristocrats at the top and the mixed-race poor at the bottom.

Closer to home, my extended family doesn’t fit into a box, either.  It consists of a mix of African American, Chinese, Filipino, Italian, Swedish, and Scots-Irish.  And in terms of religion, it has a mix of Catholic, Presbyterian, Mormon, and Deist.

The six categories of White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American are just the latest attempt at labeling Americans.

Early in the nation’s history, Americans of English, German, Dutch, Scots-Irish, Scottish, Irish, Spanish, and French ancestry were often characterized as different races.

To this day, many Americans refer to themselves by their ethnicity or the nationality of their immigrant forebears.  For example, as I experienced from living in the barrio of San Antonio for five years and in southern Arizona for 35 years, most Mexican Americans refer to themselves as Mexican, not Hispanic or Latino or Latinx, unless they are reporters, academics, or activists in the DEI complex.

Also coming into vogue early in the nation’s history were the labels of Caucasian, Oriental, Occidental, Indian, Negro, and the ugly derivation of Negro, the “N word.”

In the early twentieth century, Anglo-Saxon Protestants saw themselves as white and superior and saw Southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans as non-white and inferior.  Slurs came with the thinking, such as the ones for my “race” of Italian:  wop, dago, greaser, gangster, and mobster.

This prejudicial thinking about Southern and Eastern Europeans resulted in discrimination and even lynching.   Another result was the Immigration Act of 1924, which was designed to limit their numbers.

The act has been largely forgotten in American history and rarely mentioned in the media and academia.  Tellingly, however, there are frequent reminders of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

This fits with the current racial paradigm that white people have always been victimizers and not victims. Their victims are seen as the people in other five categories. Moreover, although there are more than one hundred unique ethno-cultural groups categorized as White, DEI dogma and certain race theories typecast all whites as homogenous in privilege, wealth, values, political power, and prejudices

Anthropologists, sociologists, ethnographers, and geneticists understand the fallacies in such thinking, know that the six categories are mostly specious, and realize that race is fluid and not fixed.  They are afraid to say so, however.  If they did, the DEI complex would collapse and the thousands of people who make a living from it would be out of work.