For many years, whenever a form came along for application, registration, a survey, or something else came along, I checked the little box in the optional section that said Race/Ethnic Group. I guess I thought that I was helping someone with their database, census data or who knows what.
More recently, I've quit marking that box. Whenever I see it now, I just think, "It's none of your business/Who cares?/What do you really need this for?"
Do you mark it, skip it, or write in something different?
Just depends on my mood whether I fill it out or not. But a word to the wise: I’ve heard some whites leave it blank with the idea that they might be mistaken for minorities and thus benefit from affirmative action. Doesn’t happen. I’ve read in several places that jobs/colleges/etc. regard anyone who leaves it blank as being white. Not accusing anyone here of that, just thought it was interesting.
Usually I just check “other” and let it go at that. When I’m “in a mood,” I add another box, title it “human,” check that, and have a 10 second self-congratulatory surge of smugness.
If it has ‘Pakeha’ as an opinion then I tick it, if it only has European/Caucasian then I give it a miss.
I AM a Pakeha (to non-NZers this means a white NZer). I don’t care what I am skin colour wise I just like being a Pakeha because it is an NZ specific term. To me it means I am a Kiwi-via-Europe.
I’d rather be just a New Zealander but if ‘they’ want to know what colour I am… I answer to Pakeha.
I wonder if HR staff looks at this on job applications. I usually fill it out on job applications. Even though it is “optional,” I figure the HR staff will look at it anyway and rule out anyone who doesn’t fill it out. You might not be a team player.
Maybe they use the question for preferential hiring of minorities to meet mandated quotas, or maybe they’re just logging demographics. I don’t know and if I did there’s not much I can do about it.
Once, years ago I did refuse to check the box at a state unemployment office. The state employee asked me why, and I foolishly told her that out of several hundred thousand bits of unique information contained within human DNA, less than a dozen concerned racial disctinction.
Instead of streamlining such an obvious genius as myself into a lab job with the Human Genome Project, she sent me on my way to find a job as best I could. A couple of weeks later I checked back with the state unemployment office as part of my overall job search. She had checked box for me as soon as I left her office.
Its kind of like the old sex questionare joke:
“Have you ever done this?” - “No!”
“Or have you ever done this?” - “No!”
“Then have you ever done this?” - That’s none of your business!"
yes, I do. I don’t find it terribly important or terribly upsetting. It may bug me (slightly) that the question is asked, but I see no reason to make it more difficult to obtain semi-accurate information.
When I was a teen, applying to colleges, I resented the question, and just to be a pain, I’d check “other” and write in “Hibernian” (Irish).
But just a few years later, when I was applying for real jobs, I’d matured (a LITTLE), and realized I wasn’t really scoring political points, and was just being a nuisance to some clerical worker somewhere.
So, since I was 22 or so, I’ve just checked “white” (whatever that means) and not thought twice about it.
When filling out the form at the town hall for a marriage license, I was surprised to see that they had a box for “ancestry”. I left it blank. The clerk noticed this while reviewing the form and handed it back to me.
“You left a spot blank.”
“OK.” I say. I tell her simply “Just write in American”.
She looks at me with that you’re being difficult look that public servants seem to master. “You need to give you’re ancestry. It needs to be on the form.”
I tell her that I’m an American. If it cannot be left blank, then that can be my ancestry. She says “where are you from?”. I tell her “I’m from America.” She looks at me like I’m an asshole and says “Everybody’s from somewhere.”
:rolleyes:
At this point, my then fiance was giving me the “Quit being difficult” glare and other clerks were starting to take notice. Since this wasn’t a mere car registration or quarterly tax filing, I figured I better cut my losses and run.
“English” I told her.
Seriously. My family has been here since the revolution. We’re American’s. That is my ancestry. In any case, why do they need this info?
I can picture it now at the NH statehouse: “Governor Lynch! It’s an emergency! The new numbers are out for the month and the trend continues: The Irish are marrying the Scottish!”
I always check the “caucasian” box, and don’t see the big deal. Most forms that include such a section have a huge disclaimer that the information is for demographics-gathering only – in fact, I applied for a job at one place that had an optional anonymous form, completely separate from the job application, where you could indicate things like your sex and nationality. I filled that out, too.
Without information like this, no one will be able to tell who is applying for jobs vs. who is getting hired for them. Your nationality is usually pretty apparent at the interview, but without application records who’s going to know that 5/6 of the company’s applicants are black, but that every single time they hire that 6th guy – who happens to be white? An obvious exaggeration, of course, but I really do believe that’s the kind of information those “race/nationality” questions are designed to collect.
I think that it’s important to know statistics like this – and even if it’s nothing to do with discrimination, like in the marriage license case, it’s good to know stuff like “Are more Hispanic people getting married now than 10 years ago?” Not to necessarily do anything about the answer, but to have an understanding of our society as a whole and how some trends might (or might not) break down along ethnicity lines.
I check the box. The statistics and demographics guy at my job is always coming down on me because my applicants never have the boxes checked and it’s skewing his results. I make sure to complete all forms wherever I go just to make sure there won’t be someone coming down on another employee there for incompletely filled out forms that aren’t even under his or her control.
No one uses this stuff to hire or discriminate against minorities. For one thing, if they want to do either of those things, they can based on your interview. They don’t need you to write it on a form. Information on these forms is used for statistical analysis to try and determine if minorities are entering the workforce at what we deem an “acceptable” level. The information, if filled out properly, can provide evidence that society’s training and education is failing the minorituy population, or not. Collection of this information is also required by the federal government of federal contractors. Failure to do so, or failure of the statistics to be accurate, can result in a company losing business.
