"I'm a minority business owner"
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When Ralph Taylor was born in Sacramento in 1963, his birth certificate indicated that he and his parents were Caucasian. But, like many white Americans, he grew up hearing vague family lore about long-distant Native American ancestry.
“I’ve always known that I’m multiracial,” Taylor, 55, told The Washington Post.
In 2010, Taylor took an AncestryByDNA test, he said, “just to confirm what we’d already known.” The results said that he was 90 percent European and 6 percent indigenous American, as well as 4 percent sub-Saharan African.
Whether the test was accurate is an open question. Scientists have long critiqued ancestry DNA tests for being imprecise and lacking transparency. The company that manufactured Taylor’s test is no longer conducting ancestry genetic testing, according to the Seattle Times, and in 2014 one genealogy blog suggested that AncestrybyDNA tests were so outdated that they were best used as paper airplanes.
Still, the results were enough for Taylor to update his birth certificate last November: It now says that he is black, Native American and Caucasian.
Taylor acknowledges that he looks white. But despite being “visually Caucasian,” as he puts it, he considers himself to be multiracial.
“I’m a certified black man,” he told The Post. “I’m certified black in all 50 states. But the federal government doesn’t recognize me.”
After he was rejected from a program for minority business owners that would have given him an advantage when competing for lucrative government contracts, Taylor sued. His case, which raises complicated questions about how race is defined, is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
The legal battle got its start in 2013. With the test results in hand, Taylor applied to get his insurance agency certified as a minority-owned business by Washington state’s Office of Minority and Women’s Business Enterprises. As the Seattle Times first reported, he was initially rejected on the grounds that he wasn’t visibly identifiable as a minority.
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DNA? Who cares?! How does he self identify?
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@lufins-dad said in "I'm a minority business owner":
How does he self identify?
Multiracial! That's what he's claiming.
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@lufins-dad said in "I'm a minority business owner":
DNA? Who cares?! How does he self identify?
Self identification is no panacea as pesky problems will emerge. Here we go.
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@loki said in "I'm a minority business owner":
@lufins-dad said in "I'm a minority business owner":
DNA? Who cares?! How does he self identify?
Self identification is no panacea as pesky problems will emerge. Here we go.
Hallelujah!
Hopefully, this silliness will tear itself apart...
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We had a thread about this on the old site when he first started the process.
Go Ralph, Go.
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Education is extremely important.
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@horace said in "I'm a minority business owner":
Personally, I'm an african american transgender female.
But you like women, too, so you can add lesbian.
Me/rry/Christmas
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@lufins-dad said in "I'm a minority business owner":
@horace said in "I'm a minority business owner":
Personally, I'm an african american transgender female.
But you like women, too, so you can add lesbian.
If only he was also blind and Jewish...
