When I was basically told off by some people who thought I was ‘looking for a cookie’, then dug into the history and growth of ‘Some Other Race’ in the U.S. Census, I was surprised. I had no idea how many people didn’t fit neatly into the categorizations of race existed in the United States, and how much they had grown.

It’s a far cry from when I grew up. Of course, because the people who claim some other race are so diverse, there is not much to connect them other than the U.S. Census which is as flawed as the concept of ‘race’.

Speaking for myself, I just don’t like being pigeon-holed, sent into a color-coded box to make someone else happy. That’s not my identity and it never will be.

It is simply extraordinary that there are so many people out there with their own stories. People who group people together diminish the stories of individual identity, of not feeling like one fits in to a system that tries to force people to fit in. It begs the question why the system exists in the first place.

In perusing around some more on the topic, I came across the famous Timothy Leary quote, the last 3 sentences of which are in the pictures.

I could not find the source of the quote, which bothers me a bit because it’s something that, before reading the quote, I lived.

“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”

Timothy Leary (attrib), no source found.

The others. Generally, the most interesting people I have found could resonate with this quote. The ‘others’. The ones who defy the need to fit in, who identify more as themselves than what others expect them to be, either by peer pressure or societal pressure to belong to a group. Those in groups are at least partly defined by the groups they identify with, and all that comes with it.

It’s not about ‘race’, or any of that other nonsense – and it is nonsense. To be defined by a color or nationality or a job description is limiting. If all you are is defined by society, then you have been shaped by society more than you are shaping it.

Leary was right. We do need to find the others, the gente real, the real people out there who don’t want to be defined by someone else’s hatreds or acceptances. Maybe, just maybe, if we connect, we can create a better system, more granular, of people who have more to contribute to us solving our puzzles than attempts at hierarchy that implicitly demean.

We have more original cookies, I think, or at least we don’t pretend someone’s cookies are better than others based on categories.