I know this is very common in the US but as an European this is still a weird concept for me to keep track of a person's ethnicity at all.
Does this have any implications whatsoever in terms of benefits or something? Otherwise I'd just let it be.
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Spaniard here. I did some remote work with a North American company and in my profile my race was "Latino". I tried to explain I'm caucasian but it was futile.
I had that exact conversation at work a few days ago. Someone was insisting that Spaniards are Latino, so I asked them if Spain is in Latin America or Europe. That was the key to them eventually figuring it out.
When I was in similar situations I'd point out similaities to them. So e.g. if spaniards are latinos because they speak spanish, then people from the UK are all Americans because they speak English.
Dependent on the level of education, you might have to flip them both ("US people are all english") because they might actually believe that English people are US-emmigrants.
They were wrong. Spaniards are definitely not considered Latino here.
I'm American, and of Spanish descent. On all my paperwork it says Latino, people here often don't get the difference because they forget Spain exists.
people here often don't get the difference because they forget Spain exists.
Except when they call all Latin Americans "Spanish" 🤦♂️
There are definitely white Latinos in the US, it's a race vs. ethnicity thing. But definitely no Latinos from Europe!! 🤣
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I'm Australian and the one that really gets me is when Americans refer to indigenous Australians as "African American" because of their skin colour. They're in no way from Africa or America, but nice job appropriating our native people.
How often do Americans refer to aboriginals as African Americans? This is not a common situation.
It happens enough for me to have noticed it a few times. It probably helps if you work with Americans in Australia.
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It's like people overcorrecting and using "whom" when "who" really would be correct. Ditto "you and I" vs "you and me". People get corrected enough times to be embarrassed, but still don't have any interest in correct usage, so they just blanket apply what they think is the rule rather than trying to actually learn any of its nuances. It's not a perfect analogy, but I can imagine people just reverting to "African-American" as a no-thought safe bet when referring to brown people.
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I believe it’s a legal thing where HR has to track the ethnicity (if applicant discloses) due to equal employment. Basically the US federal government wants to know if a company is discriminating against a protected class during hiring and employment
Europe has a different history with heritage and bloodlines of indigenous people so it makes sense it’s not as big of a conversation there.
In Aus, we’re a settlement too, therefore conversations of heritage matter a great deal. Speaking in practical terms, there can be potential benefits to identifying as indigenous in the form of welfare due to the disadvantages indigenous people face.
An extra reason (or even the main one) is that we have a bad history when it comes to racial registration. The countries that suffered the worst during the Holocaust were the ones that had a registry of the Jewish population that the Nazis could just look into when they took over.
The downside is that it's much harder to identify racial profiling at work for example. It's also basically impossible to see if violence on POC is more prevelant.
If they came to power again but with access to people’s 23andMe or Ancestry results, things would get really scary very fast. Most white people I know who took it aren’t actually 100% white, including myself. I’m a little bit black. It’s just not enough that I would justify changing what I’m listed as on documents.
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Keeping track of race is entirely optional.
You’re 100% free to decline including it on any personnel file or application (with the exception of acting/modeling). It’s also self-identifying.
Consider that as a multi-racial pluralistic society - our values will be different than a European country whose major ethnic groups are the indigenous people.
We have an unfortunately long legacy of systematic racism issues. Communities or color experience slower emergency response times, fewer school resources and teacher pay, redlining and gerrymandered districting, food deserts, fewer public transportation options, and often fewer per capita polling stations on Election Day.
Until race stops being an observable factor for community outcomes, we still have a lot of work to do.
Many organizations see and understand this. As part of their sense of corporate social responsibility, companies make a good faith effort to hire from a ethnically diverse pool of candidates. If all your candidates are white - a company needs to ask itself if that’s a reflection of their own hiring biases or if that’s a systemic issue within the talent pool? It’s good to know these things - because industry surveys are constant - which help local leaders, non-profit organizations, colleges and universities, and governments do their jobs.
Meeting diversity goals is good for a variety of reasons. Importantly in capitalism, it’s good to investors because customers tend to prefer supporting diverse companies. Perhaps more importantly than that, different backgrounds offer different modes of thinking when it comes to problem solving. Crowd sourcing from a bigger idea pool is good for productivity.
Over here (Austria) asking about race or processing this information in regards to a job wil land the employer in hot water really quickly, since it opens them up to racism claims.
I used to work for an organization that provided legal, educational, medical and social services to inner-city children and their families. These families were mostly Black and Latino.
If we were hiring for a job that had an equally qualified black and white candidates, the choice is clear. In order to be successful, you need to have good professional relationships with clients. It is far more effective if the client can relate to one's lived cultural experience. It's also very important for at-risk children to see relatable adults succeed in a world that has been systemically unfair to them.
In Austria, this hiring process may be considered racist. But here, we recognize that there are a lot of fringe benefits when hiring for diversity.
In fairness, race is not something that's discussed unless it's directly related to the role. As stated above, you are free to check "Prefer Not To Say" if an application asks about race. Most of the time, that information is used for census and surveys.
Having done a lot of HR in my life, you'd be surprised how many hiring managers are passively racist.
I've seen applications rejected simply because the hiring manager doesn't want to embarrass themselves mispronouncing a name. Or they assume communication language skills without ever talking to someone. Or they not-so-sublte, "I can just feel this one won't be a good fit".
Like, "Really, Bob? What's on Fatima's resume gives you that impression? She's clearly qualified."
I wonder how much worse the racial wealth gap would be if 'equal opportunity employment' wasn't a thing.
I understand what you mean, that in some specific situations hiring for a specific race can be a benefit, but in cases like that you can hire for something similar that is legal again here too. E.g. you could hire by experience with certain communities, for example. Or you can hire for "sympathy". "This person is personally a good fit to our company and the role". With that point you can hire whoever you want.
This is also the Achilles heel of the anti-discrimination laws, since the hiring manager can just say "The applicant's personality wasn't a good fit" to anyone they want to discriminate against.
And yes, I have personal experience with how racist and sexist some of my bosses have been so far.
In one company, my boss was directly excluding any applications by women for IT roles, because "they would distract the boys in the IT department". Even though all "the boys in the IT department" were in long-term relationships. (Btw, I also really hated it that he called us "the boys" even though we were all ~30).
I work for an American company and during global meetings when US HR are bringing up race, it feels really weird. Especially when you see that the percentage of white people stays the same and it's minorities competing with each other.
No difference in benefits, the point is for companies to make themselves accountable that they are helping to improve the racial gap among their ranks. You can’t know that you’re improving, if you don’t keep track of the data behind it.
I doubt anyone but me has even looked at it in years so I doubt I'm benefiting somehow.
It is a strange practice now that I think about it. Never occurred to me that it wasn't normal.
Might the company be benefitting somehow? So they qualify for certain government grants or contracts because of it?
My company in the UK insisted that I fill in a diversity profile covering a lot of what is generally considered highly sensitive information. Well the only mandatory field was the date completed... so that is all they got.
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As long as you aren't accepting any undue benefit for the mistake, I wouldn't worry too much about it. An error like that without consequence isn't really a big deal. If, on the other hand, they were giving you special tax status or something, or if you applied for a promotion and you got the promotion in part because of affirmative action whose benefit you weren't entitled to, that could be a problem.
Nah my job is terrible I'm barely getting the due benefits lol. Thank you though. I figured I'd have to do something malicious for it to matter, but I've never even thought about this stuff.
It is kinda odd that they ask at all.
I think it's probably more likely HR purposely 'fat fingered' it to pad their minority stats for equal opportunity employment. Maybe I'm just cynical.
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what difference does it make now? 99% of white americans claim native american ancestry as if we fucked these people into extinction. everyone i know is related to a cherokee or blackfoot princess through their great great great grandparent....i even heard the same story in my family. once i got my dna test results that said "0% native american" i started to wonder exactly how many indian "princesses" there are. if you change it, best case scenario everything stays the same and worst case scenario you get fired for lying on your application. doesnt seem like a good move to rock the boat.
That 99% claim seems ridiculously high to me. Do you live in Oklahoma or something?
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As a European, please help me understand. Why would you get fired? What implications does ethnicity have on your job? Why would anyone want to falsely claim to be Native American?
I am not an expert here, but essentially certain groups that the US gov was an asshole to in the past are eligible for some additional benefits as an ongoing way of saying "sorry we did a lil genocide on your people."
Misrepresenting yourself as one of these groups in order to obtain additional benefits is likely a punishable offense.
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I can answer your last question. 1776-1970(ish) it was way better to be a mixed person of Native American decent rather than African American. So if you were ethnically ambiguous enough (a large portion of mixed people) you could claim you were mixed with something other than African American.
I am not an expert jere, but essentially certain groups that the US gov was an asshole to in the past are eligible for some additional benefits as an ongoing way of saying "sorry we did a lil genocide on your people."
Misrepresenting yourself as one of these groups in order to obtain additional benefits is likely a punishable offense.
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Your job might have keyed it that way to meet diversity quotas. Don’t rock the boat unless someone else brings it up first.
Maybe they're fudging their diversity numbers
I would suggest you forget about it. It’s not that important in the grand scheme of things. Unless your job specifically requires a certain ethnicity which I can’t really imagine what job that would be apart from a Hollywood actor.
You can only obtain federal Indian benefits if you have a CDIB (blue) card, and sometimes you will also need a tribal enrollment card. You would have to verify your ancestry with the tribe to get those. Calling yourself Indian on the forms won’t hurt anything except risk termination if they claim you lied on you application.
It wasn’t done intentionally on your part. Why draw attention to yourself? Just forget about it.
Besides, if your employer did do it on purpose, it won’t help to let them know that you know. They’ll just fix it, remember that you’re a potential troublemaker, and mess with someone else’s record instead. I see no upside for you.
I’d keep it. Workplaces have been brazen about promoting and hiring and firing on the basis of race lately. This should give you a significant advantage. It’s unfortunate that the law allowed companies to racially discriminate, but here we are.
Are you a female Senator from MA?
Oh man, I have something sort of similar going on. My company apparently appends a disclaimer at the end of our emails sent externally but doesn't show up on our end at all. I noticed when re-reading an email chain with my quoted reply and there was a huge block of text... in Spanish. I'm not sure if I'm even supposed to have a disclaimer at all (could be on by default for everyone) but certainly not in Spanish since I don't speak it. Such an odd thing and also leaves me wondering did someone fat finger something or what the hell happened? It feels especially weird because my last name is Spanish origin and people do frequently mistake me for being Latina (I'm Filipino lol.) Even if I did speak Spanish though, all of my business is within the US so it wouldn't make sense to have the disclaimer exclusively in Spanish.
If you only just noticed just send an email to HR. Unless they hired you because of affirmative action then likely it had no effect on your hiring and they won't do anything besides adjusting your records.
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