I know almost every country has some degree of ethnic or racial divisions. I am referring mainly to the official categories seen on forms and in the census.
I have been talking with a friend from Canada lately who insists the United States is the most race obsessed nation in the world.
I concede that’s probably true,and I would cite many of my own reasons for that… but most of her argument is that the United States has an intrusive set of ‘racial’ categories that no other country in the world has. I mean when we fill out a university form, do a Neilsen TV survey, apply for a drivers license and everything else, we have to check of a ‘race’ box…which isn’t always easy. Personally, I could claim 3 different categories.
But don’t Canadians have to go through all that too? I mean Canada has civil rights laws - that I imagine are as strict or perhaps stricter than American laws. And while all racial categories are somewhat suspect - there is some sort of need to keep track of whether people of a certain group seem to be excluded from universities for instance. I assume in a mostly homogenous country like Korea or Iceland there probably isn’t much need for surveying the ‘race’ of the public, but in any multiethnic country there similar bureaucratic categories.
I imagine they are probably more straightfoward, or based on something other than “race” (specific national or regional origin for instance).
The local census in Puerto Rico didn’t have an option for “race” until 2000, when the government used the generic US census form that includes “race” information.
University of Puerto Rico applications don’t ask for race, just citizenship. Drivers licence application don’t have a category for race, and neither do forms for voter registration.
Applications for elementary school don’t ask for race either.
Mostly, they ask for citizenship, visa, resident status. Mos of the people are already Puertorricans, and the larger minorities are immigrants from Dominican Republic and Cuba.
The Soviet Union had over 100 official nationalities (races/ethinic groups in the American sense). The number varied over time, as the government would occasionally decide that a particular group wasn’t big or important enough to merit its own category. And believe me, they were at least as race-obsessed as the U.S., and not nearly as politically correct. Every Soviet citizen had an internal “passport” (sort of a national I.D. card), which listed his/her ethnicity. (And “Jewish” was considered a nationality; when I was in Russia, people generally asked my nationality within 10 minutes of meeting me. When I answered “American,” their response was generally, “yes, but aren’t you Jewish?”) Made it real simple to discriminate against people, as you had to show your passport in many official situations, such as applying for a job.
I’ve heard they’ve removed the nationality category from the passports in recent years, but race-based distinctions are far from dead. Just ask any Chechen living in Moscow. On the official level, of course the Russians still gather race-based census statistics.
China also classifies race. It’s pretty easy because 94% of Chinese belong to the Han nationality. However, race is put on your birth certificate and ID card. One aspect is that most Chinese minority nationalities are exempt or partially exempt from the one-child rule.
My half-caucasion half-Han Chinese daughter was listed as Han in her birth certificate. No idea how a say half-Tibetan half-Han Chinese is classified.
In Israel, all citizens are supposed to carry national ID cards that state one’s ethnicity. You can be Jewish, Arab, Druze, or Gentile. (There might be some other small ethnic groups that merit their own non-Gentile listing, like Samaritans, but I’m not sure.) And you’d better believe people take those divisions pretty seriously. Jews and Druze are required to serve in the army; Arabs are not permitted to serve, even if they want to (unlikely).
I would guess the reason US has so many catagories is that we are made up of so many different groups of people. I know it doesn’t answer the OP but might explane any discrepencies
In Canada, we do have racial and ethnic questions on our census, but only on the long form, not the short form. However, not everyone fills out the long form, so that may have mislead your friend. (I know I’ve never got the long form myself.)
Six out of seven households get the short form which is pretty prefunctory - number of people living there, type of residence, age, relationship to each other, etc.
One household out of seven gets the long form, which is much more detailed, and includes the race and ethnicity questions. I guess the StatsCan folks have decided that the “one in seven” approach gives them a statistically valid sample, while sparing most Canadians the grief of doing the long form.
The form is found at the StatsCan census site, but it’s a pdf format. Here are the relevant questions:
The explanatory note to question 19 certainly matches with the comments in the OP.
Interestingly, the “Canadian” option was added to question 17 after the census of 1996. That census didn’t have the category of “Canadian” as an ethnic group. StatsCan started getting outraged phone calls from people who didn’t want to specify any of the enumerated ethnic groups, because “I’m Canadian, dammit!” That triggered editorials, etc., bemoaning our lack of national identity, and led to the inclusion of “Canadian” in the 2001 census.
With respect to the other examples your friend gave, it’s been a while since I filled out university application forms, but I don’t recall any racial or ethnic categories: just name, sex and age, and then your educational background. I have a hazy memory of an optional “self-identify box” on one form, for those who wanted to be considered for equity programs.
We don’t have a race category on our driver’s licence (at least, not in my province), and it’s contrary to human rights laws for employers to ask for such information on job application forms.
Druzes are Arab descended people who are members of a religion, related to Islam, but considered separate from Muslims by most Sunni or Shi’ite Muslims. I suppose they are considered loyal enough to Israel to serve in the army.
In essence its more accuarate to say Israel classifies people along ‘ethno-religious’ lines and not racial lines. However non-Druze Arabs can be Muslim or Christian. I believe while even Christian Arabs are ineligible for military service (not that they complain), Muslims of various small ethnic groups such as the Circassians can volunteer but are not drafted.
I should clarify, I don’t think race appears on driver’s licenses, but during the application process it is asked…at least when I got one.
The Canadian census looks pretty similar to the United States census…But it seems that unlike in the U.S., until 2000 at least, Canadians could choose to be categorized as more than one group. For instance a half Japanese, half white person could claim to be exactly that in Canada, while the past tendancy in America is to either force someone to claim one or the other, or if they insist on claiming both - lump them into the minority category and classify them as “Asian”.
On everyday bureucratic forms, we usually just get five categories so for instance a Dominican person often can’t indicate that they are “black” and “Hispanic” at the same time - which is hard to register.
In Australia there are very few instances where information about ethnic background is requested by Government officials and none that I can think of where such information is put on identifying forms such as drivers’ licences. On the rare occasions that questions about ethnic background are asked they are put in terms of country of origin or nationality rather than race. I cannot remember a single occasion of ever being asked what my race is.
The only commonplace request for information about ethnicity is with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people (the two main groups of indigenous Australians) for affirmative action programs. For example, most Government jobs, university applications etc will ask people to identify if they are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Those who identify themselves in this way are usually given particular consideration.
The only other time people are asked about their ethnic background is in the 4 yearly census. But such information is confidential and is not used to identify a particular person.
Australia is one of the most multicultural countries on earth so your comments about comparison with Iceland don’t seem to match. In fact I’d say that most Australians would find questions about race (such as those you describe) as very intrusive and would probably refuse to answer.
I’d also suspect that people from ethnic backgrounds that had a history of being persecuted (such as Jewish people) would find such identifying questions worrying.
If asked a question about their race, I think a lot of Australians wouldn’t know how to answer. To the best of my memory nobody has ever asked me what race I am, if you did ask me I’d probably umm and ahh and then say ‘Australian’ (actually, I’d probably tell you to bugger off because it’s none of your business). If pushed I’d eventually say something like anglo-celtic. It wouldn’t immediately occur to me to call myself ‘white’ or ‘caucasian’
Just had a look at the 2001 Australian census. It has a couple of questions about country of origin for those born outside of Australia. There is also one questions that asks “What is the person’s ancestry?” and gives as examples: “English, Irish, Italian, Greman, Greek, Chinese, Australian, other”
There was also a question asking people to nominate their religion but this was an optional question. As an aside, the census-taker had to issue a press release and information paper discouraging people from nominating their religion as “Jedi”.
I believe they ultimately get to choose: I know someone who was half Han & half Moslem, and she chose Moslem to take advantage of the affirmative action program to get into college in China.
Just to follow up on Motog’s comment about the ancestry questions in our last census - it’s the first time we’ve ever had the option of making our personal information available to future generations and the ancestry questions were phrased in terms of ticking any or all appropriate options (or adding in your own) that you felt appropriate (in my case, I ticked French, Irish, British and a few other ancestries of which I’m aware). The questions were NOT intended to label people by “race”.
Even the compulsory “country of origin” questions on most of our government forms (and ATSI is an exception as the country of origin is “Australia” but the individual is given a choice of whether or not to define as part of an indigenous group) have nothing whatsoever to do with “race”; most of us would consider questions about “race” just as intrusive as we consider those about religion or our sex lives…