How to Change a Fruit Into a Vegetable

Easy. Ask the Supreme Court.

Mental Floss discussed the difficult history of the tomato. I discovered that it is legally a "vegetable" because the Supreme Court said so in a case on the Tariff Act of 1883. You see if it were a "fruit" it wouldn't have had a tariff on it. So in its profound wisdom they affirmed that botanically tomatoes are fruit, for tariff purposes they are vegetables.

Don't let science confuse the facts. It is what we say it is.

It made me think of a poster at the RACE exhibit currently at the Rochester Public Library. That one is about the avocado. In some cultures they view it as a fruit. In others it is a vegetable. Again, I guess it all depends on where you are and what political or economic benefit you can get from one or the other.

In other words, maybe people are not one thing in one place and another somewhere else. Perhaps "race" is a cultural idea supported by laws and custom and not science. For years(so-called) "science" justified race in many different ways. None of them have held any truth. None of them have been proven.

But it was a nice convenient way to separate some people as inferior or worse- less than human. It was an easy way to deny that there is, biologically, only the human race. If we say it's that way, well, that's the way it is.

And don't let biology get in the way.