ethnicity

[egypturnash]

Filling out unemployment application via the web form.

This pop-up somehow amused me:
17a. Ethnic Identification
<select ... >
<option ... >-- select --</option>
<option ... >Hispanic or Latino</option>
<option ... >Not Hispanic or Latino</option>
<option ... >Choose not to answer</option>
</select>

...especially since it was followed by this one:
17b. Race
<select ... >
<option ... >-- select --</option>
<option ... >American Indian/Alaskan Native</option>
<option ... >Asian</option>

<option ... >Black/African American</option>
<option ... >Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander</option>
<option ... >White</option>
<option ... >Choose not to answer</option>
</select>

Being pure European peasant, I just picked the "Choose not to answer". I don't think picking 'not hispanic or latino' and 'white' is going to be of any help here, at all.

Comments

[higginsdragon.livejournal.com]

I don't think my ethnicity mattered when I did the unemployment thing in late 2002. It's so bureaucratic that they never once asked me to fill out my job search info either.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I just want to know what the hell is the difference between "hispanic/not hispanic" and all other races they think are worth filing under.

Don't mean to butt in..

[flytheplan.livejournal.com]

but the problem is that hispanic isn't a 'race' but more of an ethnic thing (although that is quite a stretch as well). You do have white, black and native american hispanics along with other such mixes. Without going onto a social/political/PC tirade, the logic of sorting out race is boggling. What the govt. needs to do is consult the MAC counter and devise a "tone chart"(TM) where one would click the shade that came closes to one's own skin color.

"Ve vish to zingle out rrracial minorities..."

[(Anonymous)]

"...zo zat zey may rrrecieve zer special treatment to vich zey are entitled."

--Heinekin Himmler

[zrath.livejournal.com]

Well, this whole "white" thing kinda bothers me, you know.
I mean, last year, I got the census form and I'm looking at races and the choices that you're
showing in those drop-down menus are pretty much exactly the choices on the census form.
So if you follow the US Census Form, then:
my buddy Abdul from Cairo is white,
my friend Bijan from Teheran is white,
my pal Mustafa from Ankara is white,
my peep Kristos from Athens is white,
my cohort Rajneesh from Delhi is white...

That just don't seem right.

[blue-panther.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I should amuse too or state that - showing such blunt discrimination within a government form - is truly shocking?

[amilori.livejournal.com]

Be glad you actually have a listing that you can honestly choose. I'm an American mutt. Try getting any form to let you choose 'mix of Asian, Native American and European, in nearly equal proportions.' And that's just with *my* generation of the family. My nephews & -once-removed cousins are trying to add in all of the ethnicities that my generation missed (although the family still hasn't figured out how to incorporate the Antarctic continent & I think that's the only part of the world we're not related to in some way).

Time was, all Spanish-speakers were Hispanic...

[(Anonymous)]

...but then in the 80's some Hispanics started voting Republican, so the rest of the Hispanics had to make up another name for themselves so they could remain 3DGY and 1EE7.

Besides, it's just impossible to say "Hispanic" with that nasal, Jose Jimenez drawl. Lah-TEEE-no, on the other other hand...

--Papa Legba Smurf