Understanding the human race

Please check one: caucasian-American, African-American, Latino-American, Pacific Islander-American, European-American, Asian-American, Native American, Jewish-American, American. Confused? So am I. It's time we get rid of these terms that divide our country. We are Americans. \nSure I'm white. But what does "white" mean? I don't celebrate any white holidays. The holidays I celebrate are Thanksgiving and 4th of July. These aren't white holidays; they're American holidays. I cheer during fireworks just like any American, regardless of ethnicity. \nAccording to the 2000 Census, blacks and whites are considered the two biggest races in America, but they are merely groups that have been constructed with the boundaries of money, power, and skin color. After all, the first European settlers had been living here for close for 200-300 years before the great European migrations during the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Yet descendants of Britain from 1620 and descendants of Russia from 1920 would both be categorized as white today. \nIf anything positive has come out of Sept. 11th, it is the way we have embraced our country and all it stands for. Seeing the flags the past month has made me feel like an American first, and a 19-year-old Jewish male second. Even with all of the hypocrisy, injustice, poverty and violence in the country, I would still rather live here than any other place in the world. We are a country made up of people from all over the world, and that makes us unique. Aside from Native Americans, everyone who lives here came over at some point from another country, be it by choice or by force. \nOne of the idealistic customs of this nation is to celebrate diversity, but we cannot do that until we first recognize what makes us the same. We are tied together by all that is American, both good and bad. We are tied together by American holidays and American values. After we realize that we are the same, we can then celebrate and discuss all of the ways we are different. I am not suggesting that people shut away their ethnicity.\nInstead, I would like people to stop seeing their ethnicity as something that makes everyone extraordinarily different, although an important part of being American is that we are so different from each other.\nRace is an issue that frightens a lot of people, mainly because when speaking about it one can unintentionally come off as "racist," when in fact they are uninformed. I am not an expert on the subject of race, but I am an expert on myself. Since the best way to solve a problem is by talking about it, I would like to give everyone the opportunity to share their thoughts. What does your ethnicity mean to you? Do you relate more to what makes you American or what makes you ethnic? What do you think about the terms black and white? Please write in to letters@indiana.edu to let us hear your voice.\nAs we have seen this past month, there are a lot of problems in the world. But there are also a lot of problems in the United States that must be addressed first so that we can be unified when we confront the world problems. The country is listening. Start talking.