when in doubt, ask the internets!
14 May 2010 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouETA3: 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.
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.
no subject
Date: 14 May 2010 08:52 pm (UTC)Also, what about the Rom?
no subject
Date: 14 May 2010 09:02 pm (UTC)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.