Mohammad Yusuf, a 43-year-old Chicago police officer, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city because it refuses to allow him to change his race from “white” to “of color,” or something. The Chicago police department allows cops to change their gender identity according to whim, and he argues that this is a double standard.
Yusuf “currently identifies as Egyptian and African American.” When he first joined the force in 2004, the Great Stupid had not yet spread darkness over the land, and he only had a few race option to choose from, he says. Now he believes Caucasian is inaccurate, and besides, despite the woke Chicago police department claiming to have a race-neutral and merit-based promotion system, Yusuf claims he has been “repeatedly bypassed” for promotions in favor of less qualified black officers.
No, really? I don’t think Chicago would ever be a party to something like that, do you? Well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, as the saying goes.
Did I mention how much I love this lawsuit?
Yusuf even provided his 23andMe genetic testing results to prove he is mixed race and it all depends on which he chooses to identify as when it comes to tribal designations and their DEI rewards. Still, the police department obstinately refuses to allow him to be black. It’s strange, his lawyers argue, that other officers can change their genders on official records, since no genetic test would back that up. That Y chromosome is there for life. Is this not a double standard?
“While other CPD officers are afforded the opportunity to have their gender identity corrected to match their lived experience, Officer Yusuf and others in similar positions are barred from obtaining accurate racial designations that align with their racial identity,” the suit says.
Isn’t this great?
Ethics Alarms 
Interesting…Do you think he has a chance at winning?
Besides that, it was always clear this was where the trans-debate was going. I’d be curious to see how this plays out.
Yeah, I think he wins, and that it really screws things up. heh,heh,heh,
And when he wins, do are DNA tests needed to ‘transition’? I mean, they aren’t for changing sex. Many races don’t have identifiable DNA markers. The average American is 2% Native American. Is that enough, or will you need to government Apartheid card for that one?
Hoisted by their own petard.
This is an intriguing issue. It’s hard to tell where to start. Some thoughts, in no particular order.
If there are three racial groups (white, black, Asian), I’m guessing most Arab North Africans would self-identify as white. It is only when we keep multiplying the number of ethno-racial or ethno-cultural groups than an Arab North African could instinctively self-identify as a group that could be “African” and thus check the “African” box for the HR staff who are counting such designations.
It sounds like the fellow in question has remorse over which box he checked. Which illustrates how silly our system is. A topic for another day.
My discussion (regarding North Africans) cannot even engage the Berber Question.
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By the way, Egypt is complicated. Maybe this is a digression. According to conventional wisdom, Egyptians did not tend to consistently view themselves as “Arabs” until well into the 20th century. Before then the Egyptians who pondered such issues viewed themselves as their own unique race. Probably this is well known to regional experts.
I think the evolution of Egyptian identity is clearly described in Crawford Young’s _The politics of cultural pluralism_ (1979). There are probably shelves of books on this. It was probably President Gamal Nasser of Egypt who convinced Egyptians that they were part of the Arab World (and in fact the obvious candidates to lead the Arab World forward in history).
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Most multiracial societies have perspectives and tensions and “hangups” over race, but it’s a mistake to assume that the US perspective automatically aligns with views from elsewhere. For that reason, there is no reason to assume that the US categories are self-explanatory to people who weren’t socialized into our assumptions from an early age.
To discuss further, there is a “racialization process” that newcomers to the USA face. People who are culturally different and phenotypically ambiguous by the intuitive standards of the US educated public sometimes have some wiggle room in deciding how to self-identify. For example, I am aware of Arabic speaking Sudanese from the Khartoum area (not Nilotic Southerners) who prefer to check “Other” when asked to supply their racial identity classification on official forms.
Suggested reading for the curious with reading stamina: _Ethnic Groups in Conflict_ by Donald L. Horowitz. Prof. Horowitz is a man of impressive erudition. I just looked him up now and it seems he’s on the Law faculty at Duke.
https://law.duke.edu/fac/horowitz
cheers!
charles w abbott
Rachel Dolezal would like a word.