asking the internets, redux
15 May 2010 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouOkay, with comments and discussion in mind from the previous post, and trying very hard to get out from under nation-specific or culture-specific labeling systems, how about these series of questions, instead? non-US folks please lend me your eyeballs as well, and let me know if you think your answers would match up with the answers I'm trying to get...
ETA2: first draft is colored in green, and starts here ---->
1 what is your family ethnicity? ==> select all that apply from (OMG MASSIVE) list of ethnicities
for me, I'd be clicking on "scots, irish, french, dutch, and english"...
2 what is your nationality? ==> select one (two?) from list of countries
-------that would be citizenship, as in: the name of the country on your passport
3 were you born & raised where you currently live?
a) yes, always had the same nationality
b) no, immigrated in childhood
c) no, currently seeking new citizenship
d) no, on temporary assignment (less than 2yrs)
e) no, on longterm/open-ended assignment
-------trying to determine whether living in home culture, and if not, whether trying to integrate into new culture (ie citizenship) or only passing through (ie student/work/military)
3b if you were born & raised somewhere else... ==> select one from list of countries
4 are you white? // are you/your family visually similar to 'american white'? [AWK!]
a) yes, definitely white
b) yes, somewhat similar
c) not sure
d) no, not really similar
e) no, definitely not-white
-------is "person of color" an international term? or only a western term? here, trying to measure against the dominant global force of white-culture (US/UK) media/economy/etc... but is "do you look like a white american?" a question that makes sense to non-americans?
[note: yes, I'm aware this next one is VERY problematic for a variety of reasons, just so you know before you go further, and more discussion in post & in comments]
5 do you regularly suffer institutionalized discrimination of any of the following types? check all that apply
--> sex, gender, skin color, disability, size, age, sexuality, religion, ethnicity...
-------the problem is that all I want to be able to do is track whether a respondent's statements are made as a person of privilege, or if they're speaking as someone more dis-privileged... and since I can't measure for everything (or #5 will be here all day), at least in this context I'd prefer to narrow it down to just race/skin-color, because otherwise the variables are overwhelming.
----> first draft ends here & second version starts here ------>
1 same question as #1 above, about ethnicity
2 where do you currently reside? ----> list of countries
3 is this the same as your nationality / do you hold citizenship? ----> yes / no
4 if NO, select one:
a) short-term resident (student, assignment, work, travelling) and don't intend to stay here permanently
b) long-term resident / ex-patriate / not seeking citizenship
c) long-term resident seeking citizenship
that pretty much covers the possibilities for "living outside own nation", right?
5 also if NO, are you or have you attempted to integrate as much as possible into your adopted culture, ie 'going native'? --> yes/no
although it feels to me that 'going native' is an offensive term right there, so need less loaded version that carries same connotation of "fully adopting with intentions to eventually pass as belonging".
... so now we've got ethnicity, residence, and whether the person is native to that culture or not AND whether they have or are trying to become part of a non-native culture.
5 how westernized*/white do you look? // guh. can't I just say: "look, are you racially privileged, or not!?"
a) am white
b) somewhat look white
c) don't look white
* the problem with 'westernized' is that it's class and dress and other stuff, not just skin color -- someone could look completely, say, Cantonese and still be 'westernized' due to wearing Levis and listening to American music, from what I understand, so in this case 'westernized' indicates an attempt to affiliate with global privilege but doesn't indicate whether the person is part of the national privilege
...and there I come to a complete halt. Need more dirt!
-------> second draft ends here & now back to original post -------->
I am too cognizant of the fact that race is not the only way one can be discriminated against, but is it intuitively clear that "institutionalized" means "govt-supported policy" or is that too narrowing? how to best put it so the respondent will be saying, "yes, that sort of discrimination is cultural, transnational, broad, pervasive, govt-supported" -- as opposed to "oh, I got discriminated against because I have a Philly accent and I live in Atlanta" which on paper looks the same but is nowhere near the xenophobic discrimination given as an immigrant... help.
So at this point, I'll know: where the person resides currently, whether zie is citizen, immigrant, or traveller, the person's familial ethnicity (a more roundabout way of determining likeliest racial facets, at least in general), whether the person has enough dominant Anglo/north-Europe ethnicity to match with dominant global paradigm, and whether the person feels to have suffered discrimination.
It's that last one that really really bugs me, because it requires that the person assess, on own, whether or not there's been suffering from discrimination... and any time even in general fandom, you've probably seen the same idiocy I have, where some white guy (like whotshisface in the last hollywood debacle about it) insists that he suffers a type of discrimination because he's not female/PoC/whatever. It's that whole "diversity quotas make life hard for white guys!" thing, which is stupid but also human because we always believe (if only secretly) that we're speshul snowflakes who've gotten it the worst of anyone, cue the oppression olympics. Asking people to self-assess is just opening the door, I suspect, on a whole lot of oppression olympics -- as in a woman who's a size 10 who feels the social pressure of being smaller counts as "discrimination", because she's never known life as a size 20 or greater to realize just what social pressure is really like -- thus would honestly believe she's giving a true answer to say she's experienced sizeism, even if by any external/objective standard she hasn't got a freaking clue.
That kind of self-assessment danger means I really really do NOT want to ask outright, but need to come at it from an angle, to present it via an objective kind of standard. Hmmmm.
Would it make intuitive (that is, not requiring massively long explanation) sense to simply ask whether the respondent has the same skin color as the most privileged members of his/her culture? Or can anyone think of circumstances where the objective answer would be yes, but the cultural logic would prompt a different answer?
Again, I suspect the real meat of the discussion is going to be in the comments, what with you guys around to make sure I don't go whole hog US-centric and make a complete fool of myself. Err, I hope. You did get the checks from my mom, right? So you'll keep being helpful, right? Excellent!
ETA: Hmm, isn't the question really: how can you objectively identify the most privileged group in any given culture? What terms, descriptions, categories are universal for privilege -- as in, "the majority of people with political power" or "the people you see on domestically-produced television" or "the majority of your culture's pop stars and soap opera stars"... What kind of criteria is a universal way to identify the privileged class, such that the followup question then becomes: do you look like that? ...
Of course the drawback is that "no, I don't" could mean "my skin color is different" but it could also be the person's thinking, "no, because I'm a size-something" or "no, because I'm in a wheelchair" -- or even less literally, that if the respondent sees "look like that" to mean inside as well as outside, then I could see someone thinking, "no, because I'm an unmarried female in my thirties and thus am not 'like' all the women my age on television, who are all housewives".
Not to mention gender/sex enters into it, if someone feels their sexuality, frex, is external and part of how they "look" -- so someone transgender might say, "no, I don't look like the members of parliament even if someone else might think I do, because I don't have that extra something to make me appear (truly) male", perhaps? Or even a woman saying, "I don't look like a bunch of men..."
Which just points out the importance of making the language as clear and concise and objective as possible... but is it really right to assume it's a universal thing, in every culture everywhere (or at least the ones with internet access! and that's, uhm, pretty much everywhere by now) that lighter skin = more prized? Because I am really uncomfortable with the assumption hiding in there, that of course generic-you would measure yourself against white-skin (or at least that generic-culture does) and thus grades you as closer or farther from that standard. I don't like the implications of imperialism/dominance, the "well, of course you'd want to be white!" kind of moronic offensive unspoken assumption -- but setting aside whether or not anyone wants to be American-white, would it still be generally true that the majority of cultures do prize paler skin (even if the measure of 'pale' would be equal to PoC against American-white)? Is that a decent objective standard to use, or is there something else anyone can think of, that doesn't require excessive amounts of self-assessment on the part of someone replying?
Y'know, I think now would be a good time to go play in the dirt.
ETA2: first draft is colored in green, and starts here ---->
1 what is your family ethnicity? ==> select all that apply from (OMG MASSIVE) list of ethnicities
for me, I'd be clicking on "scots, irish, french, dutch, and english"...
2 what is your nationality? ==> select one (two?) from list of countries
-------that would be citizenship, as in: the name of the country on your passport
3 were you born & raised where you currently live?
a) yes, always had the same nationality
b) no, immigrated in childhood
c) no, currently seeking new citizenship
d) no, on temporary assignment (less than 2yrs)
e) no, on longterm/open-ended assignment
-------trying to determine whether living in home culture, and if not, whether trying to integrate into new culture (ie citizenship) or only passing through (ie student/work/military)
3b if you were born & raised somewhere else... ==> select one from list of countries
4 are you white? // are you/your family visually similar to 'american white'? [AWK!]
a) yes, definitely white
b) yes, somewhat similar
c) not sure
d) no, not really similar
e) no, definitely not-white
-------is "person of color" an international term? or only a western term? here, trying to measure against the dominant global force of white-culture (US/UK) media/economy/etc... but is "do you look like a white american?" a question that makes sense to non-americans?
[note: yes, I'm aware this next one is VERY problematic for a variety of reasons, just so you know before you go further, and more discussion in post & in comments]
5 do you regularly suffer institutionalized discrimination of any of the following types? check all that apply
--> sex, gender, skin color, disability, size, age, sexuality, religion, ethnicity...
-------the problem is that all I want to be able to do is track whether a respondent's statements are made as a person of privilege, or if they're speaking as someone more dis-privileged... and since I can't measure for everything (or #5 will be here all day), at least in this context I'd prefer to narrow it down to just race/skin-color, because otherwise the variables are overwhelming.
----> first draft ends here & second version starts here ------>
1 same question as #1 above, about ethnicity
2 where do you currently reside? ----> list of countries
3 is this the same as your nationality / do you hold citizenship? ----> yes / no
4 if NO, select one:
a) short-term resident (student, assignment, work, travelling) and don't intend to stay here permanently
b) long-term resident / ex-patriate / not seeking citizenship
c) long-term resident seeking citizenship
that pretty much covers the possibilities for "living outside own nation", right?
5 also if NO, are you or have you attempted to integrate as much as possible into your adopted culture, ie 'going native'? --> yes/no
although it feels to me that 'going native' is an offensive term right there, so need less loaded version that carries same connotation of "fully adopting with intentions to eventually pass as belonging".
... so now we've got ethnicity, residence, and whether the person is native to that culture or not AND whether they have or are trying to become part of a non-native culture.
5 how westernized*/white do you look? // guh. can't I just say: "look, are you racially privileged, or not!?"
a) am white
b) somewhat look white
c) don't look white
* the problem with 'westernized' is that it's class and dress and other stuff, not just skin color -- someone could look completely, say, Cantonese and still be 'westernized' due to wearing Levis and listening to American music, from what I understand, so in this case 'westernized' indicates an attempt to affiliate with global privilege but doesn't indicate whether the person is part of the national privilege
...and there I come to a complete halt. Need more dirt!
-------> second draft ends here & now back to original post -------->
I am too cognizant of the fact that race is not the only way one can be discriminated against, but is it intuitively clear that "institutionalized" means "govt-supported policy" or is that too narrowing? how to best put it so the respondent will be saying, "yes, that sort of discrimination is cultural, transnational, broad, pervasive, govt-supported" -- as opposed to "oh, I got discriminated against because I have a Philly accent and I live in Atlanta" which on paper looks the same but is nowhere near the xenophobic discrimination given as an immigrant... help.
So at this point, I'll know: where the person resides currently, whether zie is citizen, immigrant, or traveller, the person's familial ethnicity (a more roundabout way of determining likeliest racial facets, at least in general), whether the person has enough dominant Anglo/north-Europe ethnicity to match with dominant global paradigm, and whether the person feels to have suffered discrimination.
It's that last one that really really bugs me, because it requires that the person assess, on own, whether or not there's been suffering from discrimination... and any time even in general fandom, you've probably seen the same idiocy I have, where some white guy (like whotshisface in the last hollywood debacle about it) insists that he suffers a type of discrimination because he's not female/PoC/whatever. It's that whole "diversity quotas make life hard for white guys!" thing, which is stupid but also human because we always believe (if only secretly) that we're speshul snowflakes who've gotten it the worst of anyone, cue the oppression olympics. Asking people to self-assess is just opening the door, I suspect, on a whole lot of oppression olympics -- as in a woman who's a size 10 who feels the social pressure of being smaller counts as "discrimination", because she's never known life as a size 20 or greater to realize just what social pressure is really like -- thus would honestly believe she's giving a true answer to say she's experienced sizeism, even if by any external/objective standard she hasn't got a freaking clue.
That kind of self-assessment danger means I really really do NOT want to ask outright, but need to come at it from an angle, to present it via an objective kind of standard. Hmmmm.
Would it make intuitive (that is, not requiring massively long explanation) sense to simply ask whether the respondent has the same skin color as the most privileged members of his/her culture? Or can anyone think of circumstances where the objective answer would be yes, but the cultural logic would prompt a different answer?
Again, I suspect the real meat of the discussion is going to be in the comments, what with you guys around to make sure I don't go whole hog US-centric and make a complete fool of myself. Err, I hope. You did get the checks from my mom, right? So you'll keep being helpful, right? Excellent!
ETA: Hmm, isn't the question really: how can you objectively identify the most privileged group in any given culture? What terms, descriptions, categories are universal for privilege -- as in, "the majority of people with political power" or "the people you see on domestically-produced television" or "the majority of your culture's pop stars and soap opera stars"... What kind of criteria is a universal way to identify the privileged class, such that the followup question then becomes: do you look like that? ...
Of course the drawback is that "no, I don't" could mean "my skin color is different" but it could also be the person's thinking, "no, because I'm a size-something" or "no, because I'm in a wheelchair" -- or even less literally, that if the respondent sees "look like that" to mean inside as well as outside, then I could see someone thinking, "no, because I'm an unmarried female in my thirties and thus am not 'like' all the women my age on television, who are all housewives".
Not to mention gender/sex enters into it, if someone feels their sexuality, frex, is external and part of how they "look" -- so someone transgender might say, "no, I don't look like the members of parliament even if someone else might think I do, because I don't have that extra something to make me appear (truly) male", perhaps? Or even a woman saying, "I don't look like a bunch of men..."
Which just points out the importance of making the language as clear and concise and objective as possible... but is it really right to assume it's a universal thing, in every culture everywhere (or at least the ones with internet access! and that's, uhm, pretty much everywhere by now) that lighter skin = more prized? Because I am really uncomfortable with the assumption hiding in there, that of course generic-you would measure yourself against white-skin (or at least that generic-culture does) and thus grades you as closer or farther from that standard. I don't like the implications of imperialism/dominance, the "well, of course you'd want to be white!" kind of moronic offensive unspoken assumption -- but setting aside whether or not anyone wants to be American-white, would it still be generally true that the majority of cultures do prize paler skin (even if the measure of 'pale' would be equal to PoC against American-white)? Is that a decent objective standard to use, or is there something else anyone can think of, that doesn't require excessive amounts of self-assessment on the part of someone replying?
Y'know, I think now would be a good time to go play in the dirt.
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 06:23 pm (UTC)That's a question of national identity more than ethnicity. It matters to people whether they identify as as English or British or Welsh but that's across ethnic types.
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 06:46 pm (UTC)...which, of course, still leaves out those who don't actually know what their (prior to this country) ethnicity is, and of course also is complicated by the fact that major countries (Australia, North/South America) are predominantly populated by people who are not members of indigenous tribes. Europe's indigenous are much much much farther in the past, and thus much harder to tease out, and asking questions slanted to make sure there's no mistaking for current indigenous tribes (Ainu, Lakota, Aborigine, etc) could, possibly, confuse the hell out of anyone living in a country where there's not been an indigenous people for over two millennia, like much of Europe and Great Britain.
*dies*
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:11 pm (UTC)Personally, I identify as British, and that's how I think of myself both racially and nationally.
Had you considered factoring religion in? With regards to say Ireland, that might be one of the clearest distinction between certain groups, rather than ethnicity.
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:50 pm (UTC)You're really trying to kill me, aren't you. (Heh.) I don't even want to think about the agony of trying to incorporate religion. If nationality and culture and ethnicity is fighting words, religion brings in them there killing words. Cripes!
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:24 pm (UTC)(and since I think you're the same anon as the other replies, could you stick a name of some sort on your replies so I don't get confused? I don't like mistaking one person for another, so I really do find some kind of a nickname/signature really helpful. thanks!)
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:04 pm (UTC)1. Is there an option for unknowns (since I'd check English, but the rest of my ancestry is unknown to me)?
2. Probably make an option for people with dual citizenships. Or maybe talk about the nation or nations of cultural identification.
3. Up to what age would you consider childhood? My mother's family immigrated when the children were between 10-14 years of age. Also, how would you classfy someone who came as an adult, but not on an assignment, but who isn't necessarily seeking citizenship? Also, for the citizenship question, are you looking for a question of permanent residence, or actual citizenship, which are different things. Or well, do you assume that all people who have permanent residence would choose to become citizens if the option were viable?
4. Not sure how to address this question, but it's valid. Maybe "visually, do others perceive you to be of western/northern European descent?"
5. This one completely bothers me. Hmm... who is your target for this study? Can you reasonably assume that they'll be aware of or agree with the concept of discrimination as a structural thing, even if you could make the idea of discrimination as being structured completely clear to respondents? Plus, how does one measure discrimination except through subjective reporting especially where it concerns internalized attitudes? What about discrimination that's not based on skin color? (I think that's what you were asking in question five, but unless you were willing to ask for similar questions for all facets of identity, not just race. And even then, there's still the global juggernaut of whiteness).
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:18 pm (UTC)Yep -- I've got a list of ethnicities and nationalities and they're both pretty comprehensive (though I could see some quibbling with nationality because it's based on UN-recognized, since that's the most consistent over long period, and that does leave out non-recognized and/or newer nation-states but ANYWAY) -- one of the options is definitely "not sure/unknown".
As for #2, if we're going to get technical, the most possible is triple citizenship, IIRC -- two from parents, one from spouse. So the question would have to allow for multiple checks. I've known a whole lotta dual-citizenship folk in my life, so no intention of forgetting them!
...I was going with shorthand in the question, but I'd probably clarify "prior to adulthood/18 yrs old" -- since somewhere around 18-19 seems to be a somewhat universal understanding of adulthood, at least very early adulthood. Most countries, frex, measure obscenity and child-protection and criminal-statutes as ending/starting around the age of 17-19.
Also, how would you classfy someone who came as an adult, but not on an assignment, but who isn't necessarily seeking citizenship?
Long-term open-ended but not seeking citizenship. Wait, did I conflate the two in the draft answers? Serves me right for typing too fast...
Also, for the citizenship question, are you looking for a question of permanent residence, or actual citizenship, which are different things.
Basically what I'm looking for is: "are you attempting to acculturate/integrate into your current residential culture?" -- because people can live long-term in a foreign place and never make any attempt to integrate; they just remain expats living overseas and still fundamentally their own culture with no interest in 'going native'. And you don't have to gain/earn citizenship, really, to attempt that integration, though in most cases citizenship is a kind of graduation-cap on the process of cultural integration/adoption.
But no, I've known too many people who have no intention nor interest in (and some quite arrogantly dismissive of!) the whole 'going native' thing, so I've no illusions that permanent residence automatically means "I'd get citizenship if I could" -- some people never will, and some can't, for various other reasons, and thus would say "no, I don't want citizenship" because that's easier than saying, "I could never get citizenship for X or Y reasons".
The bottom line is basically: are you a long-term (since birth) member of the culture in which you now live, and if not pick one from the reasons (temp, expat, immigrant, etc), and if newcomer (to any degree) have you or are you working towards integrating into your adopted culture?
...and even then I could see people saying "no," to the last one, if, say, language struggles in new country are such that they've given up, and see that as meaning they're not "really" becoming part of their new culture -- when in fact, in all the other ways that count, maybe they are.
The problem with self-assessment type questions is that in a lot of ways, people aren't literal enough, are often too literal, and are almost always way too hard on themselves while at the same time more likely than not are also going to see themselves as an exception to any rule.
Maybe I could just tell people to upload a PICTURE. /snark
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:58 pm (UTC)Yeah, and also the people who immigrate, but who are automatically subsumed into the acculturated whole (despite maybe wanting to preserve their heritage) because their look and language are part of the dominant culture. So that might be a "no" too, but that doesn't imply that they didn't acculturate.
The problem with self-assessment type questions is that in a lot of ways, people aren't literal enough, are often too literal, and are almost always way too hard on themselves while at the same time more likely than not are also going to see themselves as an exception to any rule.
Yeah. There's no way ever to take something as nebulous as discrimination, and turn it into a question that no one is ever going to misinterpret. Nor is there a way, as an outsider, of judging effectively whether anyone has suffered 'legitimate discrimination' without the subject talking about their experiences. (Hypothetically, if my mother complained about being discriminated against because she's white, that would be one thing. But if she complained about being discriminated against as an immigrant, that's another, even if an observer wouldn't have any way of telling just through a casual meeting that she's not from around here)
no subject
Date: 16 May 2010 08:49 am (UTC)He got into trouble returning here after a trip to the States about ten years back, because he had never sorted out his citizenship (despite both parents having lived here for decades, as well as him), but tried again a week later using the Irish passport, got in, and said to us all he was sorting out the Kiwi citizenship ASAP.
Assuming he did so (and he's travelled out of the country since, I think, so it seems likely), he's got three passports. Doubtless he could get another if he married the right person!
no subject
Date: 16 May 2010 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 May 2010 04:20 pm (UTC)It's certainly far from common! Birth and marriage aren't the only ways, either. Used to be (not sure if it still is) that you could earn temporary citizenship in certain countries (Britain being one of them) if you'd been working & living in the country for a certain length of time. I think it was mostly related to "you've been paying taxes while you live here, so you should get some of the benefits, too" -- and having earned that quasi-citizenship, you could then travel through the EU as a Brit citizen. A'course, it was also something you were expected to immediately surrender upon returning to the US (though I don't know if all countries require that).
Then again, the US is notorious at being very stringent when it comes to multiple citizenships. What they don't know, they'll often let pass, but once they do know... or so I've been told.
And then you have situations like Japan, which refuses to recognize dual citizenship. If you have duality with Japan, you're required to either declare your citizenship by the age of, hm, 22, I think, or you lose it altogether. Thing is, when I checked, this really only means you tell the Japanese govt that you're ditching your other citizenships, and that's the extent of it. The US policy is that as long as you were not required -- in the course of 'ditching' -- to then, and I quote, "swear an oath against the United States and its territories", you have not forfeited your US citizenship. So you could still walk your ass into an embassy and get a passport... it's just that as far as Japan is concerned, you're a citizen only of Japan, while the US will have you down as US-and-Japan.
Every government has its own idiosyncrasies. It's actually a pretty fascinating field, and too bad I only learned this stuff in the past few years, because this is the kind of law I would've really enjoyed practicing.
no subject
Date: 16 May 2010 11:10 pm (UTC)Yes. My aunt had to officially give up her NZ citizenship when she moved to live in Sri Lanka with her husband. When they decided they wanted to come back to NZ again, she asked our bureaucrats if it was possible to get it back, but they laughed and explained that it didn't matter what she said to Sri Lanka, she actually *couldn't* give up her NZ citizenship that way, because we wouldn't recognise it.
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:14 pm (UTC)3 were you born & raised where you currently live?
a) yes, always had the same nationality
A "yes" on this would not necessarily mean they've always been in one place or do not have multiple citizenships. I'd leave the yes at just a plain "yes" and rely on the other questions to triangulate the further info.
The born and raised list should also allow multiple selections; service kids, at the very least, might well need to list multiple.
On four, you might actually get closer answers to what you're looking for if you asked whether someone is "Western/Westernized". Which encodes race for sure, but might be a more common /term/ for what you want.
I suspect 5 would be a bust, for the reasons you cite; you'd get reasonably accurate reports from those who really have suffered institutionalized discrimination, but you would also get people checking the "religion" box because someone told them to have happy holidays instead of merry christmas. If you had a text box to describe in brief what kind of discrimination it was, you would get a very fine data source on what different groups think of as discrimination, but I think that's the most data you could get from it.
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 08:05 pm (UTC)Except the information I want isn't really a list of where a person's lived, but how the person is acculturated ... and military kids, like FSO kids and work-assignment temp-resident folks and teacher-students and aupairs and what not... are most often not going to acculturate. Either they're mostly isolated in a bubble of fellow citizens, like at the embassy or on a military base (cf American Schools), or they're not going to bother because they know they'll be leaving after a set period of time. (Also, therefore, the least likely to suffer any major culture shock, because they can stave it off by knowing there'll be an end to the alienation.)
On four, you might actually get closer answers to what you're looking for if you asked whether someone is "Western/Westernized".
I did a revised version (up in the post, and probably put up just after you finished writing this), and noodled with "westernized" but for the reasons mentioned in the edit, I think it's an even less-clear option than simply asking about skin color of self vs expected skin color of culture's privileged class. Westernized means too many other things on top of race, to such a degree that someone who'd definitely suffer major PoC discrim could still consider him/herself "westernized" while within native culture, due to wearing Western clothes and listening to American pop music and drinking cheap Philly beer. And stuff.
Man, oh, man. This is what I get for not wanting to just assume a US-only audience of respondents, ain't it.
no subject
Date: 16 May 2010 05:23 pm (UTC)When I was growing up, the most common "international" schools were either American or British, which meant that a lot of kids whose homes were neither the US nor the UK ended up without that bubble of fellow citizens. The school culture didn't match the culture that kid would have otherwise grown up in. Specifically, for me, returning to Canada for university involved (mild) culture shock, and lots of conversations that bogged down between "but everyone knows..." and "well, I don't."
no subject
Date: 16 May 2010 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:59 pm (UTC)I'd like to say, "have you lived in the same culture all your life" -- that's what all of this is getting at, whether the person is lifer in culture or newcomer/transient -- but even within smaller countries you can have some divergent cultures, and the US isn't the only place where people would consider "the folks up north" to be an "entirely different culture" than wherever the speaker is. Hell, my Swedish stepmother seems to consider the southern part of Sweden to be a bunch of aliens, so I could see her interpreting "lived in the same culture" with a big honking NO if she'd spent any significant time living down at the Denmark-end of the country.
Any ideas? What kind of question would get an answer from you of, "yeah, I've been living in the same general culture the majority of my life." ?
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:40 pm (UTC)Samples
a)Were there desirable careers or educational paths that you were discouraged from because because you were a member of group x?
b)Can people make openly make hateful comments about a group you belong to without endangering their reputation?
c)Are there desirable places where you wouldn't be welcome to live in or spend time?
d)Would you expect difficulties if forming a romantic relationship with someone who's of the cultural mainstream (or of the privileged class)?
no subject
Date: 15 May 2010 07:54 pm (UTC)But still. Yeah, I guess it'll have to be questions like that, to triangulate at whether the person is racially privileged on a local/national level. Thank you!
no subject
Date: 21 May 2010 08:29 pm (UTC)b) MRAs and spoiled white boys would answer 'yes'.
c) Desirability is affected by things like perceived safety.
d) Members of the cultural mainstream/ privileged class are likely to be unfamiliar with those phrases or unclear on what they mean.
Questions will need to be a lot more indirect. I would advise Kaigou to remember that many people do not voluntarily spend time thinking about these issues, and their perceptions are different; the surest sign I've found of being a non-activist in the dominant ethnicity is thinking that 'ethnic' means other people. As in, "oh, we're not ethnic; we're just regular folks." You won't get that answer from a 'what ethnicity are you' question with a checklist. ( Or thinking 'ethnicity' is a synonym for 'race'. There was an egregious example in a Nora Roberts book where a character was looking for a polite way to ask if someone else was non-white, and settled on "Does he have an ethnic identity?")
It would also be a lot easier to design a poll for one country at a time; the dominant groups and cultural ideals are not the same everywhere, and even though the West is more or less on top of the heap, there are areas where being of the locally-dominant group is higher status than being a random member of the globally-dominant group.
no subject
Date: 21 May 2010 09:27 pm (UTC)2. The 'answering yes' as indicative of 'gee, I don't have privilege' is something I can see for all the questions, which is one reason I've waffled on how they're asked, whether to ask them, how else to ask. Because I have known plenty of white people who'd seriously argue that so long as some kind of diversity is valued, so long as there exists even a hint of an implication of quota (or even, for some, a hint of trying to give more credit o' doubt to minority applicants instead of always just 'picking the white guy'), that therefore as white people they're seriously discriminated against. The same goes for "places I'd want to go that I can't because of my color" -- I've known people contrary enough and entitled enough that they'd say, "hell, yeah!" because to them, the notion of, say, a nightclub that wouldn't be so welcoming to their white skin is therefore automatically a sign of major and traumatic discrimination. (We'll ignore the violin I hear playing in the background.)
Thing is, on some levels, when I think of people I've known -- the ones more entitled and more privileged are more likely to see slights against themselves (of any kind), because they stand in a cultural zone where, basically, their privilege assumes that such slights are Not Okay. Those less entitled and less privileged operate either under denial (to get along), or sometimes seem to have internalized the racist attitude such that it's not a matter of denial, but that it's just never questioned. So to ask, "did someone tell you not to try for such-and-such a job because of your skin color?", I can think of people who don't see the answer is yes, not because they don't see, but because they never questioned that maybe the answer should be, ideally, NO.
there are areas where being of the locally-dominant group is higher status than being a random member of the globally-dominant group.
Since I don't want to ask questions that are US-ian focused (or even, really, West/North Europe focused + US focused) -- but to allow for a variety of foci (culturally) -- the simple question of "are you white?" answers that basic global comparison. Figuring out a way to ask whether someone is part of their dominant/privileged culture -- outside the "are you white" paradigm -- is the harder thing. Like the Argentinean and Mexican comments on this thread (IIRC), the 'majority' of people are darker-skinned, while the privileged group is lighter-skinned. A reversal of the US, where the apparent majority (by a very slim thread, in terms of numbers) remains white such that 'minority' literally means 'a group that isn't as numerically large'. Outnumbered... and that concept of majority/minority doesn't hold for many (if not most) cultures, where the privileged are almost always a minority of some kind.
As for the final question... I think a lot of people might interpret 'privileged class' to mean 'CLASS' as in "makes a lot of money!" and thereby -- even if otherwise part of the dominant group -- see themselves as having to say "yes" (there'd be an issue) because of acute awareness that their family are factory workers and, obviously, privileged people are Rich Bastards. And it seems to me that even if you clarify in terms of skin color or appearance, that this nuance is easy to miss, and to get caught up in classism since that's a lot easier to quantify ("he makes more money than I do, because he's a doctor and I'm not") than nebulous and often touchy personal subjects like race.
Actually, my current draft (of a larger survey based on this one) uses skin color as the trigger -- which at least cuts out the chance of white guys demanding to see themselves as discriminated against, seeing how being white means you wouldn't even be asked the additional three questions at all.
But I'm also still researching, trying to find an established path to follow when it comes to measuring such things... or more concretely: examples of other peoples' surveys!
no subject
Date: 16 May 2010 07:04 am (UTC)I look as if I come from somewhere around the Mediterranean. I usually look white, but have at least once been taken for Hispanic. At my most tanned, I was darker-skinned than most Afro-Americans; and was once mistaken for a Bengali.
I'm US-born, live in the US.
no subject
Date: 16 May 2010 09:05 am (UTC)Here's my take on how easy it will be for people to give you bad data unintentionally.
1 what is your family ethnicity? ==> select all that apply from (OMG MASSIVE) list of ethnicities
GOOD, except it doesn't cover adoptions. What's wrong with removing 'family'?
2 what is your nationality? ==> select one (two?) from list of countries
-------that would be citizenship, as in: the name of the country on your passport
GOOD, but allow up to three nationalities.
3 were you born & raised where you currently live?
a) yes, always had the same nationality
b) no, immigrated in childhood
c) no, currently seeking new citizenship
d) no, on temporary assignment (less than 2yrs)
e) no, on longterm/open-ended assignment
GOOD.
3b if you were born & raised somewhere else... ==> select one from list of countries
GOOD
4 are you white? // are you/your family visually similar to 'american white'? [AWK!]
a) yes, definitely white
b) yes, somewhat similar
c) not sure
d) no, not really similar
e) no, definitely not-white
is "do you look like a white american?" a question that makes sense to non-americans?
TO ME, YES. I WOULD BE SURPRISED TO FIND ANYONE ONLINE TO WHOM IT DIDN'T. It's an uncomfortable question, but if that's what you want to know, then that's the information I think you'd get from well-intentioned respondents.
5 do you regularly suffer institutionalized discrimination of any of the following types? check all that apply
--> sex, gender, skin color, disability, size, age, sexuality, religion, ethnicity...
I think this final question does need work. Asking the more specific questions you're talking about in comments sounds like a good plan, because I don't know how to answer this one to give you the information you're after. I've suffered from institutionalised discrimination on a couple of fronts, but the only front I suffer from it on at the moment AFAIK is gender.
I'm a white, atheist, cisgendered, average-sized, not-very-healthy-but-not-seriously-disabled, bisexual, woman, and I've suffered from such privileged-person's problems as career damage from having a child, quietly losing a couple of friends and having disagreements with family when I came out, and so on. Living in New Zealand means my religious views are acceptable to most people I deal with, and when they're not, the other people don't generally feel able to say anything about it. I hear 'gay' used as a put-down, but I came out when I was at high-school and I felt safe doing most of the same things as I had before I came out.