Likewise flummoxed by the equivalent “race” question almost always asked on the innumerable forms you’re subjected to in the USA. In the country I was born in there was one correct answer for me (though the question was rarely asked); later that changed. In my mother’s country the legally determined answer is printed on your ID card, which at least removed the need to think about it. In the USA there is a very different “correct” answer, yet that is apparently wrong when I fill out a medical form. If I fill it out one way I can be scolded by the doctor, yet the other way and it has more than once been “helpfully” changed by front desk staff.
Frankly it feels like visiting the Dell web site: are you a small business? Medium business? I never knew what answer will give me he best price or product.
Humans are fucked up, and fucked up towards each other.
> Frankly it feels like visiting the Dell web site: are you a small business? Medium business? I never knew what answer will give me he best price or product.
For Home vs Business, always choose business as it hides their least-attractive products.
Regardless of declared business size, I find I get the best pricing (sometimes as much as 20% off the list price) by choosing the option to speak to a sales account manager - even if the account is just for yourself. Back when I was running my own shared hosting company out of a rented quarter-rack I got some great discounts on their R-series servers and whatnot.
The reason those questions are asked is so there can be accountability when (for example) white supremacists try to hire only white people. That portion of the application is typically visible to HR but not the hiring manager.
So, counterintuitively, the orgs with the forms asking all the probing questions about your skin color are more likely to be making an effort to not be a boring homogeneous mass of people. Maybe just for bragging rights about being a "diverse workplace," but, it's better than nothing.
This country has a history of treating people with darker skin worse, and there were several propaganda campaigns during slavery times which painted black people in particular as inferior. So now we've gotta fight against that social momentum from the past with countermeasures in the present.
The essay, and my comment, were not about that: they were wider reflections on the naming of the thing affects not just how society thinks of us but how we think of ourselves.
We all have several “labeled” roles or identities simultaneously: parent, child, driver, citizen, voter, customer, etc. Some are simple, some quite complex and many quite ambiguous.
I think most, if not all people understand the motivation for such questions and I hope most people understand that those questions are well intended. I also don’t know of a different way to handle the issue.
But it’s not a criticism to point out the problems and ambiguities that arise.
I remember Google Campus having a form for filling in before a tech event that was crazy invasive - asked for literally everything: race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and so on.
Not an admirable example: a genetically determined group who are given special extrajudicial powers of life and death and their own legislature and courts simply due to an accident of birth.
The Harry Potter books mix this same trope in with a dash of Kipling as they look down upon and try to be paternal towards the mass of “Muggles”. Revolting!
Not something I would be willing to support, myself. Though its popularity might explain (be a symptom of perhaps) the support for certain political parties around the globe.
Good idea, will do it from now on. Black? Yes. White, yes. Potatoe? Yes.
But seriously - these race questions seem wildly out of place in countries like Poland where 99% people are white, and sure there is racism, but there are better determinants for disadvantaged groups - like the place someone was born in, or family income.
Well, personally, I wouldn't want to be thought of as disadvantaged. Nor the other way around, though I guess that's less bad. You could give the "right" answers to get the "result" you want. But lying isn't too great either. Hence, not answering or answering randomly seems like the best choice.
You can just let people request help if they want it.
Frankly it feels like visiting the Dell web site: are you a small business? Medium business? I never knew what answer will give me he best price or product.
Humans are fucked up, and fucked up towards each other.