Seated upon a mildew-green sofa in the doctor’s office waiting room, I contemplate the form spread over my lap. There are tidy little boxes with labels like “Caucasian,” “African-American,” and “Latino” sprinkled over an entire page. The neat and formal text instructs me to put a check in all the boxes which apply to my race. I scrutinize all the tiny boxes, and begin the task of piecing my heritage together. A check in the Caucasian box and a check in the Asian/Pacific Islander box. Clean, unfussy, and comprehendible. At a single glance, my doctor will receive a summary of who I am. He might even make some inferences from this information: prone to lactose-intolerance (probably from the Asian half), and high blood pressure (most likely from the Caucasian side). Without even knowing my name, he will already have summed me up, just by skimming over the two boxes I hastily checked.

If I were obsessive compulsive or a perfectionist, I would have added more boxes. There would be boxes for every single country or province, ethnic group or tribe. I would tell my doctor exactly where I’m from, right down to the nitty-gritty details. I could even mention that my great, great Grandmother was Black-Irish, and that twenty-four generations ago my dads half of the family was Chinese. The number of boxes that I would check would be infinite. But if it were my world, there would be no boxes to check in the first place.

Everyone grows up checking boxes. We all have a set of general facts memorized about ourselves: our middle name, where we live, our birthday. These facts are considered to be the basics, a quick generalization of who we are.

When reading these forms, people envision a person who probably looks and lives a whole lot differently than they actually do. The way I look on paper cannot be a full or realistic representation of who I am. By having to select which boxes categorize me best, I am forced to leave out vital facts about myself that have been deemed “unimportant.”

Forms containing basic information are by every means necessary. Of course physicians, educators, and government agencies need to know gender and contact information. Of course the short and summarized answers make it easier for everyone. Of course race will always play into how we are identified. But not everyone identifies with the terms placed next to the boxes.

Some people identify as Black instead of African-American. Some people have a single country in Europe where they originate from, and don’t feel like the term “Caucasian” represents them. There is such a huge difference between being Caucasian and being Middle Eastern, even though I have seen boxes which claim to represent them both. The whole purpose of knowing someone’s race is to acquire a deeper understanding of them as human beings. Humans are living puzzles. Our pieces can be concentrated or scattered, like mine. It is not fair or even informative to ask people to cram their ethnicities into one or two boxes.

My dentist’s office has come out with some new forms. Now they have a space for an email address, and instead of boxes there are a few lines where people can describe their own ethnic makeup. This is a step in the right direction. Instead of letting a couple of boxes tell someone who they are, they get to describe themselves in their own words.

But after listing all the fragments which piece together my racial background, I still don’t feel right. The doctor will see me soon, and he doesn’t need a piece of paper to tell him what kind of person I am. All he has to do is ask.