Race registration proposed in Real ID

If you aren't outraged enough at Real ID yet, read this on Cato's website. Homeland Security has proposed a standard for Real ID barcodes that would include every American's race or ethnicity in the new "not-a-national-ID" card. This would be optional on a per-state basis, but if states adopt the standard in full (after all, we have to be "uniform"), then every person in those states will have to register their race with the government and make it available to anyone who reads the card.

The article notes that race information on ID cards in the past has been used to facilitate genocide. This is unlikely to happen in the USA, but it is likely that racial information will be used to grant better treatment to some people than to others. What would be the point of including it otherwise? Homeland Security and the Bush administration howl that this tyrannical measure is necessary to keep us from being blown up by terrorists; the use of race registration to "fight terrorism" gives an idea of what they're really after.

This post linked from: Why Don't You Blog