when in doubt, ask the internets!

[kaigou]

ETA3: the comments are where it's really happening in this post -- the more comments there are, the less the above post really applies, since it's the discussion that's helping me clarify and articulate better ways to approach the goal I've got in mind.

Without getting into why I'd be asking such a bizarre question, I could really use extra eyeballs. My predominant exposure to the whole "what race are you" question is via the random HR-says-the-govt-wants-this stuff for diversity hiring, and in the US census, the latter of which is admittedly US-centric (well, duh, being the national census). But if you had a "identify your race" question AND the potential respondents are from all over the globe, well, then, centric is not so good.

So I have this list, which is a bit more than the usual in terms of what races are listed, but it seems a bit fairer to me:

Americas-Native
Arab/Middle-Eastern
Black/African
Hispanic/Latino
Northeast Asian
Oceanian
Pacific Islander
Southeast Asian
European/Caucasian

Can anyone think of an option I'm missing, or maybe can see where two should be combined? That is, if the distinction here is one that would be unfamiliar and thus even more confusing than trying to be fair.

Not to mention things like this always make me think: what if you're a member of the indigenous population -- is "americas/native" really the only option, so if you're, say, an Aborigine, then you pick "Oceanian" and hope that this isn't code for "click this if you live here, even if you're descended from white people who got sent here because some judge thought manual labor was good for the soul". I mean, if it's not obvious to everyone reading the list that the intention is (if not in so many words) to get an idea of what you LOOK like -- not WHERE you ended up -- then, okay.

But still, it just seems that indigenous populations are, in a way, their own kind of sub-set of race, and the local/domestic environment usually makes a very clear distinction between the native peoples and the main population, and to put them all together ignores the impact of this racial/sub-racial conflict. Frex, the fact that Sami and Swedish look very similar to me, but apparently most Swedes can spot, and discriminate against, a Sami at ten yards, easy -- just because as an outsider I think "gee, all you north europeans look alike!" doesn't mean that there aren't racial tensions, and doesn't mean that the former isn't a very much marginalized group, with all the difficulties that entails, who don't deserve the indignity of being lumped in with the majority population just to make it easier on some person with a list of checkboxes.

ETA: look! picture! maybe this'd work better... except this does require/expect you to have some idea of "where you came from" if you're not native to your region. I've met a fair number of black Americans whose family history only goes back so far... and before that, to know where in Africa their families came from? short of DNA testing, it's a big mystery -- so naming a region, especially on a map, might feel like you're being mocked for not-knowing, as though you're "supposed" to know. And that's not fair to anyone, and I sure wouldn't want to make someone feel like that.

So that said, maybe at least the map can be a starting place:



...but we're still sitting in the spot of conflating "ethnicity", "citizenship", and "race" -- when the three aren't always the same or even all that related. The first is your culture (at the most base level), the second is what name's on your passport, and the third is the color of your skin and what your eyes look like. To be really blunt.

Oww, I'm making my own head hurt.

---

I mean, in the US, our concept of race is really rather simplistic -- black, white, yellow, red, to be crude -- but there's a lot more to it than that. I just lack a good template for how to go about incorporating the "more than that" part.

Thoughts?

ETA2: as part of my attempt to get out from under simplified-US understanding... is it true that the Welsh are considered an indigenous population, or at least treated as (somewhat?) racially distinct from Anglo-Saxon, by most Brits? Just curious.

Comments

[troisroyaumes]

Most glaring omission that jumps out to me is South Asian, I think, which is usually grouped separately from Southeast Asian although there's a cultural continuum and a lot of migrations.

Hrm, another category that doesn't quite fit into what you've put down are Mongolian/Central Asian people who would probably not consider themselves Northeast Asian but also not Arab/Middle-East either. I also suspect that quite a lot of people in the Middle East would identify as Arab (e.g. there are a lot of Turkish ethnic groups, a lot of Iranians identify as Persian, all the Sephardic Jewish groups), so maybe there's a better way to label this area?

[kaigou]

I actually found a much longer list, but I didn't trust that the labels used were really the way the actual people within those labels would identify themselves. How to put it, how to put it...

Perhaps the addition of Eastern European (which usually includes Slavic, per branch, below, Russian, and other... erm, CEE -- central eastern european? no, wait, that's mostly former Soviet Union areas, right?) ... oh, man.

*thinks*

maybe a map would work better...

[whatistigerbalm]

Seems to me you're getting into ethnicities rather than races here. (I think ethnicity is a more useful term, so I'm not complaining here, but ymmv.)

[branchandroot]

I'd be inclined to add Slavic also, that being my best guess at how a big wodge of northern Europe and Asia would identify.

It all kind of depends on what you need it for, though. I mean, as you say, indigenous peoples may well have some very similar discriminatory experiences from Sami to Ainu to Hopi, but grouping very disparate cultural and racial groups primarily by oppression seems... dubious to me. So what is being correlated? I mean, one of the things the census does is indicate (loosely and unreliably) what language groups are in the US, in what concentration, which has an impact on how many languages federal document instructions get printed in. See again, re the intersection of race and ethnicity and citizenship. I think the only way to approach the question, short of Include Everything, is to ask what you need it for.

*has her pragmatist tag showing*

[kaigou]

I figure the question would work best if combined with a question of residence/citizenship -- so that effectively the two (or more?) might become a way to triangulate a person's place in local and global cultures: to determine whether the person a member of the dominant culture per their residence, and then to measure that against the global (which seems to generally be whiteness, frankly).

Frex, a white person in New York City, and a Japanese person in Tokyo ... the former would identify with major media per white-ness, while the latter would identify on a local/domestic level but per global would, to some degree, have less identification with the global emphasis on whiteness. In contrast to a white ex-pat living long-term in Hong Kong, who's part of the dominant global but on a local level would qualify as a minority.

I mean, you can't actually just ask people (not because you can't, but because the majority of people don't always critique themselves enough to see such in themselves) whether someone has local or global privilege. Even when ignorant, it still affects us in some way, so I'm trying to come up with a means to (at least on a basic level) measure that -- but without the rather simplistic view of race that comes with the US-centric approach.

[tesserae]

South Asian, definitely, and I wonder if your Black/African would be considered appropriate for people of Arabic descent from North Africa, or, say, people of Beduin ancestry?

Also, what about the Rom?

[kaigou]

South Asian, definitely, and I wonder if your Black/African would be considered appropriate for people of Arabic descent from North Africa, or, say, people of Beduin ancestry?

From what I can tell, Sardinian and North African are apparently put with Arab/Middle-Eastern (if they're not just lumped, oddly, into a subset of Caucasian). Maybe I should expand the titles to include more details about who'd be included, like your example -- except that then you get into respondents getting confused/angry that their sub-group is not included, as though this means they're being excluded entirely. Some people take "no mention" to mean "it's obvious I belong in this group so there's no need to explain" and some take it to mean "if you outlined these examples then you need to outline every single example or else you're dismissing/erasing me". Which I get, but it really makes it hard to make anything concise, and I already have a problem with excessive wordiness.

As for the Rom, wow. Hmm. I seem to recall they're usually counted as one of the sub-types of Caucasian... but that's also a group I'd count as a type of indigenous/marginalized, in that regardless of where they are (for the most part), they're almost always treated as a minority group with all the indignities that contains.

I guess the TL;DR is: cripes, I have only the faintest of notions.

[whatistigerbalm]

Central and South Asian seem to be missing. I'd also separate African into several categories but I'm not sure what terms to use other than the north, west, etc. Or would you incorporate North African under Middle Eastern?

[kaigou]

Apparently "north african" is usually considered part of "middle eastern", based on the lists I'd found so far. But see, now, there's map! ... and that raises entire issues on its own, specifically for black citizens of the US whose family came here by way of slave ship. Hell, for that matter, any major population who arrived at a shore and had no way to retain family knowledge of their past -- at least with a broad question you can say, "well, I look like people who live there, so I'll pick that," but the more the question gains details (like Central vs North vs South vs etc), the more it can become baffling, upsetting, even offensive to feel like you're being put on the spot because you just don't know which part of goddamn Africa or Asia or whatever that you should be clicking on.

And, like I've said above, I'd really hate to make a person feel like that, but the simple fact is that race does impact our lives. Sheesh, maybe I should just go for blunt and ask people to pick a skin color!? ...no, that's probably not much help. But still.

On the other hand, maybe this is one reason the US census still has so few boxes, given just how much of this nation is composed of immigrants (and how many of us came here, at one point or another, unwillingly or just plain with nothing but clothes on our backs). Hmmm... *snaps out of it* Woah, for a second there I was almost feeling sympathy for US civil servants! Excuse me, I need chocolate.

[whatistigerbalm]

even offensive to feel like you're being put on the spot because you just don't know which part of goddamn Africa or Asia or whatever that you should be clicking on

I admit, I tend to -- well, not forget about this, but seeing how the legacy of colonialism is a whole other world to me (yes, even though it impacts all of the globe) I think first of the people who live (roughly) where their ancestors lived, and then I remember the issues of in/voluntary migration. Which is a longwinded way to say: point taken!
But I do feel like there is simply no way for this questionnaire to exist in a single form globally; you can't ask people in the US anything more specific than the broadest definitions of race as they already exist in official ticky-lists, and at the same time - like you said - you can't apply US definitions to anywhere else either. I can't imagine people throughout Africa being pleased with having only one box while Asia gets several, etc.

[majoline]

Well... huh. There are a great many cultural tensions amongst Hispanics (especially since there's not a clear difference between upper class Mexicans and say, Spaniards/Italians) and the tendency is to discriminate based on how European you are. The more European, the higher status would be a really simplistic way of looking at that - and this is just the hangups about race.

Because there are still a lot of tensions in the Americas at least about not being blond-white, not being black, not being African, not being Chinese, and not being First Nations... and all of the fun ideas about how amounts and the different names for the amounts are all Hispanic as well :(

(That is not a comfortable topic to admit.)

[kaigou]

My awareness/sensitivity to the Hispanic-Latino-Chicano-Spainard issue is due, actually, to a NY Times article a few months ago, I think it was, talking about how the census is really stifling in the way it really only allows for black, white, yellow, and red -- because it's erasing an entire range of people who are of South or Central American ancestry and wrapping them up as "white" even though the same people experience daily discrimination for NOT being "white". So it doesn't seem right that if I'm trying to get a sense of whether or not one considers oneself to be, basically, part of the "dominant paradigm" that I then skip an entire group of people who -- for all intents and purposes -- are NOT treated as part of the dominant paradigm, not in that everyday sense.

Basically, in what I'm measuring, I want to figure out if a group's perceptions and attitudes shift, the farther one moves away from the central/dominant "white" position -- which means also measuring in which direction that shift occurs: Asian, South European, Central American, First Nation, and so on.

Unless I just say to hell with it and ask people for skin tone, eye color, hair color, and whether they have an epicanthic fold... which just feels to me to be REALLY rude. Strange, hunh, that I can rationalize asking "where did your family come from, oh, maybe like twelve generations ago" but not ask bluntly, "would you consider yourself white/black/red/etc" ... cripes.

On the other hand -- yes, I know I'm making it harder on myself by trying to allow for a person's right to actually be listed on a damn list instead of feeling, once again, like they have to settle for "I guess this is the closest thing" -- but I think I'd rather make it harder on myself than be one more person reinforcing the notion that anyone doesn't deserve the respect of seeing themselves in a list of options. At least, that's what might make it worth it, to me.

D'ya think I should just go with the map, and maybe say: "pick the region where the majority population looks the most like you?"

[majoline]

Using the map for Hispanics might not tell you anything, unfortunately. Because it's a really big deal how much of anything you are and what those things are. And we're really good at being able to tell you're lying.

That is the problem. There are many racial tensions and they depend on: what you are (say, white with black hair Hispanic and black) and how much (3/4th white and 1/4th black)... and so on and so forth.

That makes a big difference how people are treated. A BIG DIFFERENCE.

And many people don't understand that and aren't bothered to understand that there are fine-grained differences in discrimination in these cultures. And I don't know how I would ask that, other than asking for your family background after they admitted their Hispanic-ness.

They are really missing the point in how they ask if you are Hispanic. Because not all of those catagories are the same level and can be mixed with other things. (and the upper-class Hispanics will discriminate against being too white, too blond, too redheaded, etc. also)

[hl]

Oh! I commented without seeing this. Basically, yeah, I agree with this comment.

[law_nerd]

A lot of this depends on the purpose ... and how finely you're looking to measure. There are, for instance, both visibly and culturally identifiable sub-groups within Native North America -- an obvious one being the division between Inuit and First Nations. I would guess, given the size of continental landmasses if one knew enough about the aboriginal peoples of each continent (and I can't say that I do) one could subdivide both North and South America and quite possibly also Australia in much the same way Africa is divided regionally.

Map issues: The indigenous people of Greenland would not identify as "North American". Likewise the indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand do not consider themselves the same people. My understanding is that the Maori identify more with Polynesian culture than with Aboriginal Australian cultures.

One plea, if these questions end up manifesting outside of thought experiment, consider that it should be a "check all that apply" rather than "pick the one that best fits". On a personal level, I'm quite fond of having a choice marked "Other" -- I've found it far more comfortable than "damndifino" and at least as precise as "most of the above."

[kaigou]

One plea, if these questions end up manifesting outside of thought experiment, consider that it should be a "check all that apply" rather than "pick the one that best fits".

Well, seeing how I live with someone whose ancestry is Hungarian, German, Filipino (and Spanish by way of the Philippines at that) -- oh, and Jewish -- I was going to go with a "check ANY that apply". I don't think they've created a best fit for CP yet, even if most people would assume his blue eyes make him automatically Caucasian. For that matter, I've known too many people who are technically (or predominantly) Caucasian but are at least one-quarter Native American, and even more than that who might be but don't know because of the US' policy (through the, hrm, 20s? later?) of taking Native children away from their parents and giving them to Proper White Families to adopt.

The map is apparently a UN map, but I think it needs some fussing -- I was thinking that the northern half of Canada, Iceland, and Greenland would be more accurate as "Arctic" even if they are all technically part of the North American techtonic plate or whatever it is that forms continents. I get the impression the map is an attempt to break continental regions into geographical sub-regions, which works on a, well, geographical basis but not so good on a people basis.

[maire]

Glad to see someone mentioning the "New Zealand Maori aren't Aborigines, or vice versa" bit.

The Polynesians moved to the Pacific from Asia about 5000 years ago. The Aborigines settled Australia somewhere between 40,000 and 150,000 years ago. That's quite a big gap. There was no communication that I'm aware of between the two land masses before Europeans arrived in the area, either.

Lumping Polynesians and Aborigines together is even less accurate than lumping Polynesians in with indigenous Taiwanese, and possibly less accurate than grouping them with Native Americans.

There's a map on Wikipedia that gives some idea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map-of-human-migrations.jpg

What is 'Oceania' anyway? I've never been sure. I live in the South Pacific, but it's not a term we use.

[hl]

What it seems weird to me (and jumps out), and USA centric, is to consider latino people a 'race'. Not only there are latino people of every colour (some of them of African descent, some of European descent, some of native descent, etc--that is, pretty much the same than in USA)--but the cultures vary a lot too, so I've no idea what kind of rule are you using. If I were to do anything with this, it would be to just erase the divide and have the white people use the caucasian/european option, the native people use the american/native option, &c (and of course, you would really need to do this poll a box thingie, so various options can be chosen at once). (And if you want to know how people look like, you better difference between different native people of different regions of america--and I don't mean only north and south here.)

[hl]

Also! I almost forgot. Here in argentina, latinoamerican (we never use 'latino' on its own) is either a geographical landmark slightly more accurate than just 'american', or it's a quasi-political identity affiliation (we do share similar--or rather related--political histories). Regions on different countries can sort of share the same culture (like, say, the north of argentina is culturally similar to the south of paraguay, and people have family either side, etc), but latinoamerica is not really homogeneous culturally speaking. I'm not sure how or if 'latino'/'latinomerican' is used in other latinoamerican countries, though.

[kaigou]

I don't think it's really so much an issue of race -- which risks digressing us into the whole "but is it science!?" issue -- it's more that there isn't a handier term than that for what really boils down to: do you, or do you not, get judged in your country by a negative standard based on your appearance?

I can see how "Latino" might be US-centric on its face, but I'd argue it's more a New World thing than only the US -- from what I can tell, it's not like the tensions were born here. They run through the Latino-New-World. A'course, you can name almost any region and there will be some distinction that does make it different from its neighbors: I've met Navajo who'd want you to know, in no uncertain terms, that the Hopi are interlopers and johnny-come-latelys...

Actually, what's probably more useful than the post, at this point, are the comments, because it's there that I've gotten a lot of help thrashing out how to ask the question such that I can get the answers I actually want, which have less to do with "are you a minority in terms of US-perception" and more simply "are you a minority in your culture of residence and if so, are you also a member of an indigenous population and have to deal with institutionalized racism against native peoples?" ... those two concepts tell me more about a person's practical understanding of their daily existence (on top of or alongside the overwhelming global domination in media/economy of US/EU influence). Okay, doesn't tell me everything but still tells me a lot more than just "hey, if you were in the US, would you be a minority?" which obviously would be worthless question for the vast rest of the planet that doesn't live in Kansas.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm being reminded of the questionaires which asked if you were a member of a "visible minority" (Canadian catch-all for not being an able-bodied white person).

[kaigou]

"Visible minority" -- do you think that would translate? I mean, in the sense that it's an intuitive label that one could apply to oneself, if the situation is similar regardless of country of residence?

Hmmm. I can't really take my own reaction as a good one, here, because I tend to be very literal in that sense, and immediately think: who are the invisible minorities, and how do I know which I am?

[maire]

I think you're much more likely to get the information you want in terms of the yes/no questions you're coming up with in the comments (are you a member of the majority race in your country? are you a member of the indigenous population of your country?) than by asking people to categorise themselves with the labels you give in the post.

For example, I am a member of the majority group in my country, and think of myself as 'Pakeha' (despite being uncomfortable with seeing myself as a 'stranger', which is what the word orginally meant). I'm descended from northern Europeans.

However, it's not all that uncommon for people with my ethnicity to fill out forms saying they are Pasific Islanders or simply New Zealanders, rather than European. How can we be European, when the most recent members of our families to live in Europe were our great-great-great-grandparents? And if I say I'm European, does that mean I'm in the same group as a recent immigrant? We live on a Pacific Island, so we're Pacific Islanders. I don't do this one myself, but it's definitely done.

I actually went through a phase of filling out forms that asked this sort of thing as 'Scots New Zealander', in my teens. I figured that if we all broke down the idea of people of European descent as one monolithic group, we wouldn't have the unpleasant majority/minority culture thing going on. Also, I wasn't very happy with being identified with the English.

To answer your other question as far as I can, my Welsh friends have never seemed to see themselves as racially distinct from the English, just nationally distinct (not that that's a small thing for them).

I do have some trouble telling about this, though, because 'race' is a confusing concept.

I can sort of understand dividing people up into East Asians, Southeast Asians, Polynesians, Melanesians, Aborigines, North Europeans, South Europeans, various groups of Africans that I'm scarily ignorant about (North and South? or probably some Central as well), South Asians (India and so on), Central Asians, various groups of Americans that I'm again unhappily ignorant about, Inuit/Eskimo/Sami(?), Arabic, and so on. (This system would put the Rom into the south Asian category, I think.)

These are the sorts of groupings where I can look at a person and guess where their ancestors came from. (Unless they're like my cousin who has north European and south Asian parents and looks Melanesian.)

I can't understand, as race, a system that says that if you're in Europe you're a European and if you're in America you're hispanic. That sounds like ethnicity to me, not race.

[kaigou]

However, it's not all that uncommon for people with my ethnicity to fill out forms saying they are Pasific Islanders or simply New Zealanders, rather than European.

That's actually the sort of thing I'm trying to avoid, because I've been taught to be sensitive to the fact that when we're discussing ethnicity/race, then the answer really is "our ethnicity is from England" along with family and ancestry -- because otherwise, to say "I'm a native" is to effectively be claiming that one is indigenous. And since the majority of my parent-culture is not Iroquois nor Cherokee but a strongly-originally-UK-influenced one... ugh. I'm explaining this badly, but I just woke up and I need tea.

In the US, you'll often hear people joke, "oh, everyone here is from somewhere else" -- meaning we're a nation of immigrants. I had an Ojibwa friend who pointed out, rather dryly, that no, in fact, her family had been there all along. Even in our jokes and the ways we describe ourselves, white/immigrant US culture erases the people who were here already, so to say one is now fully "native" to the area carries a political meaning that makes me cringe, because it's claiming something I'm not (indigenous status) -- in some ways, on that political level, white america must permanently remain a newcomer, especially if it's to make any amends for its history.

Which is also, I think, part of the reason I find myself trying to pick my way through how to differentiate 'going somewhere empty' versus 'someone was already there' -- err, but with the problem that unless you're the people who were already there, nowhere is really empty when immigrants arrive. But that doesn't stop an awful lot of children of colonialization from insisting the land wasn't owned, or was empty, or was free for the taking -- Australia doesn't even have treaties, for that reason. And plenty of Americans and Europeans will try to argue the same.

...okay I should stop there because now I'm distracting/digressing myself! need tea...

[nacbrie]

ETA2: as part of my attempt to get out from under simplified-US understanding... is it true that the Welsh are considered an indigenous population, or at least treated as (somewhat?) racially distinct from Anglo-Saxon, by most Brits? Just curious.

Um, no? I'm not as qualified as others may be to talk about the Welsh situation, but I can certainly talk about the Irish one. In terms of culture, national identity and ethnicity, then yes Irish people are certainly distinct from white English of Anglo-Saxon decent, but racially ... that's a lot more difficult. Certain physical characteristics are more common (the combination of pale skin, brown hair and light eyes, for instance; "approximately 42% of the Irish population have pure blue eyes. Another 30% have been found to possess light-mixed eyes and less than 1 half of 1% have pure brown" according to a 1940s survey) but in terms of race - being able to visually identify someone as being part of an ethnic group - nah.