Your international web app gets ethnicity wrong | Hacker News Reader

Your international web app gets ethnicity wrong

blog.cubeofm.com

52 pointsmaxklein39 comments

I was following along when I came to the German list.

I highly doubt that any German would describe the ethnicities in German society along that list, but still there was some truth in it (mention of Turkish and Balkanic immigration.)

Then I came upon the French list, and I spilled tea on my keyboard ! (I'm French.)

The CIA list apparently describes historical successive waves of immigration, which is definitely not how people in the French society would describe their ethnicity/identity. (And it's probably wrong in the same way for almost all other societies.)

This doesn't even take into account the fact that the French political culture actively discourages thinking one's identity in terms of ethnicity, and that many French people (of all ethnicities) would find any mention of ethnicity distasteful.

Particularly laughable in the French case is the "Celtic and Latin with Teutonic" label.

The lesson is simple : when localising, get local help. Ideally from several people, all of whom should both know their own society well, but also have extensive foreign experience (it helps because everyone has blind spots regarding his own society)

You would probably ask for country of birth in Germany. I’ve seen that, I have never seen any questions about ethnicity. (Germany is of course relatively homogenous.)

The list is sort of accurate for Germany, and the point still carries.

In Germany, the notion of ethnicity typically gets munged into nationality even when it really means ethnicity. Specifically, "Ausländer" (literally, "foreigner") is typically applied to someone not ethnically north-west European, even if born in Germany, though not typically to someone like myself (an American of north-west European stock). A Russian, or Pole, however, which to American eyes would just appear to be another flavor of pasty white, will often be noted as a separate group.

Part of that is codified in German nationality law which is still based in jus sanguinis, based on "blood", in contrast with jus soil which is for example used in the US, UK and France. For example, someone with Turkish parents born in Germany must still be naturalized to become a German citizen.

What I noticed when first moving to Germany was that the concept of ethnicity independent of nationality scarcely exists, throwing yet another curve-ball into a site which is collecting such data.

By and large, as another commenter noted, Germany is fairly homogenous, however in cities things do get mixed up quite a bit. Specifically in my part of Berlin (Kreuzberg) there's a lot of variance. (Probably the the neighborhood in Germany with the lowest percentage of ethnic Germans.)

I decided to look this up and it appears that the law changed in 2000. Someone born in Germany with a parent that is a permanent resident and has lived in Germany for more than 8 years does have automatic German citizenship:

http://www.bundesregierung.de/Webs/Breg/DE/Bundesregierung/B... (in German)

Point of note: "Asian" in the US seems to mean "China, Indochina, Japan". In the UK it typically means "Indian subcontinent" (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh). (And black folks in the UK are not "African-American" -- they're more likely to be Anglo-Jamaican, but can also be, well, African. For values of "Africa is a continent the size of both the Americas, with a population of around a billion people, so you need to be more specific.")

Even where the same labels exist, they may be applied to something completely different. And the meaning attached to such labels may differ significantly (something that's insulting or derogatory in one culture may be descriptive in another).

That's stung me a few times, actually - when American friends of mine talk about their interest in Asian cinema, there's still a slight mental delay before I realise that they don't mean Bollywood.

Also, when I was at university, a black friend of mine went to study for a semester in the USA and he found the amount of times that he was referred to as 'African American' absolutely hilarious. He was born and raised in London and his parents are Caribbean - making him, as you say, neither of those things.

So his parents are "African-American" after all. ;-)

I know a woman who self identifies as 'African-American' because she was born and raised in Tanzania.

Since she is 5'10" and blond this causes some problems.

I know a woman who self identifies as 'African-American' because she was born and raised in Tanzania.

If she would be identified as "white" in Tanzania, as appears to be the implication of your post, she doesn't fit the United States definition of "African-American," which is a synonym for "black."

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/85867...

*Anglo-Caribbean. An awful lot of the islands in the West Indies would take great offence to being called Jamaican. Also, West Indies is pretty much an unknown term in the US. Just another example of how complex the notion of race is internationally.

Everybody gets ethnicity wrong. There's no such thing.

It, like many other things, is culturally determined-- but (and this is a big but) it is almost always contentious between cultures, and often within cultures.

Not only is there no good universal set of ethnic labels that will satisfy everybody, there's likely no set of local labels that will satisfy everybody in a given area.

I can't think of too many good reasons to attempt to collect "ethnicity" in a web form, but if I were going to, I'd make it a text field, and let people enter whatever the hell they want to.

I'm not sure you read the post. The post makes the same points you do, but in a different way; and it answers your question as to why you would want to collect "ethnicity".

By the same argument, one could claim that color does not exist - it exists on a continuum, different people will call the same color different things, etc.

Wow, do people simply translate their dating websites and expect to get away with it?

American ethnicity categories don't make much sense even in the US. I hear that all Brazilians are considered "hispanic" there, even though Brazilians don't speak Spanish and are a linear combination of (native) Indian, European, African black, Arab and East Asian. Well, of course official Brazilian categories don't cover all of this. They are: "white", "brown", "black", "indian", "yellow". Obama is "brown", by the way.

Apart from ethnicity, lots of things have to change when localizing a dating website. For instance, in Japan the ethnicity field is mostly irrelevant. Japanese websites simply assume everyone is Japanese. If you're doing a website for Japanese and foreigners, you would use "nationality" instead. For foreigners X foreigners, you'd probably need separate websites for each group anyway.

On the other hand, in the Japanese Yahoo dating site there are fields for "my income" and "desired partner's income". Of course, that wouldn't translate well in many parts of the world.

American ethnicity categories don't make much sense even in the US.

Agreed. The United States Census Bureau itself says "These categories are sociopolitical constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature."

I hear that all Brazilians are considered "hispanic" there, even though Brazilians don't speak Spanish

Not by the federal definitions.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/85867...

There is a college recruitment and scholarship program for Hispanic youth that includes Brazilians, but usually the "Hispanic or Latino" ethnicity term only includes people with cultural ties to Spain. See the linked thread for a link to the full definition and more FAQs about the issue of Hispanic ethnicity.

I found that first list interesting, in that I couldn't fit myself into any of the categories (besides "other").

I'm not black, asian or indian. I'm not an hispanic. I'm white, but only if not comparing to a german, or a norwegian.

I guess I could fit as a "spanish" on the German list, although I'm not spanish. I'm portuguese, but I could very well be italian (which is also on the German list).

I guess ethnicity is very hard to get right. Unless someone is really "dark black" or a "blonde white" it is very difficult to classify, and even then, you can't just go by on "black" and "white", you have to give more details.

That's just goes on to say that ethnicity is bogus. However, in the context described by the article, it is an important piece of information. Maybe it should just be free text.

There's a really detailed FAQ about the United States categories here,

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/85867...

with considerable discussion about the edge cases of the categories and the policy behind categorizing at all.

"Your DATING app gets ethnicity wrong". What other apps need ethnicity?

Why do dating apps need ethnicity anyway?

Because some people have preferences for certain ethnicities, and putting yourself into a certain group means people can search for that group and find you more easily.

Yesterday there was a rant here about how people shouldn't prefer to date members of certain races, but the reality is that people do. (Next thing we know, we'll hear that it's unfair to only date people of the opposite sex. "Excluding 50% of the population is barbaric!" Only on HN...)

Because some people have preferences for certain ethnicities ...

I should note that my question was more of a thought exercise, somewhat rhetorical.

Only on HN...

That's ironic. As intelligent forums go, HN is probably the easiest place to get bashed for arguing that diversity is useful, tolerance is a virtue, or that racial bias exists. It's a practical guarantee that some wannabe Objectivist will come out of the woodwork to claim you're being too politically correct if you believe any of those things.

Besides pure looks, I think it's somewhat of a proxy for a set of culture/background elements that are hard to capture. There are explicit ones like "religion" and "interests", but then there's sort of a vague, "what sort of community did you grow up in?". Sometimes something other than ethnicity dominates there, e.g. if you grew up in a Mormon community, or a socialist commune, but for many people ethnicity, for better or worse, correlates pretty well with similarity of background/experiences.

Sounds like the best way to solve this issue would be a visual chooser? Like looking through a small grid of icons with people smiling. If you chose female previously the icons would be girls, and vice versa for male. If I click the blonde haired white dude, you know I'm a kid from southern california.

Solution : Let's users add their own ethnicity or select from list of other user added ethnicities.

I think that this would result in a large number of fragmented categories that would make the searching/matching hard.

You do have to wonder why people are restricting searches to their own 'ethnicity' whatever that means, in the first place.

Why not just stick with the facts:

  * What color skin do you prefer [white / tan / bronze / dark ] etc
  * What countries of origin are you interested in
    [Africa / Jamaica / England / poland / ukraine etc etc
  * What religion

I guess I just don't really understand what race/ethnicity actually means and why it's important to anyone. I don't know/care what my own 'race'/'ethnicity' is.

I don't get it either.

> I guess I just don't really understand what race/ethnicity actually means and why it's important to anyone. I don't know/care what my own 'race'/'ethnicity' is.

It's fine if you don't know/care what your own ethnicity is, but to say that you don't understand why it's important to anyone strikes me as moral posturing, or an Asperger-level lack of empathy with other people. Some possible reasons why people may care about their own or their partner's ethnicity:

1) Knowing their susceptibility / children's susceptibility to genetic diseases.

2) Wanting their children to be raised in a certain culture

3) Wanting a partner with certain shared experiences/world view

Those are all good reasons. But I don't think trying to package that stuff up into a tag 'race/ethnicity' is useful.

Why would fragmentation be a bad thing? This is similar to Clay Shirky's whole "Ontology is Overrated" piece [1]. To borrow his example, there is probably not going to be a second date between a man who is passionate about "LGBT issues" and a woman who reads books on "the homosexual agenda".

You adjust your "tag" based on your ideal date. If you tag yourself in a narrow way on some attribute (ethnicity, profession, interests, whatever), it means you do not want to be found through searches on that attribute, except by people who use that exact term. But you DO consider that attribute important enough that you want to send information about it to people who found you through searches on other attributes.

And on the other hand, you may provide a very broad tag for "ethnicity" (e.g. "Black", "Asian", etc.). That means you want to be found by people who search using those very broad terms. And on the gripping hand, some users may choose NOT to provide a tag for their ethnicity. Their ethnicity may be reasonably obvious from their photo, but their failure to provide a tag also sends a signal --- namely that they don't want to found by the kinds of people who search based on ethnic/racial background, and would resent being set up on a date with them.

Basically, free text allows not only for signalling about one's race/ethnicity, but "meta-signalling" about how important you think race/ethnicity should be on a dating site. Satisfies a lot more use-cases than a drop-down field which requires you to fill it out.

[1] http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html

As author suggests, okcupid could just remove the ethnicity category. Simplest solution is often the best. If you want people to know your ethnicity you can just put it in your profile I guess.

As a Brazilian, I consider very offensive the american difference between Hispanic and White. Were iberian europeans somehow lesser than north europeans?

No matter the answer, non-hispanic whites are ignored and the term is now used to designate people from latin countries - I, myself, being the product of german and italian "whites", have been called hispanic more than once.

I consider very offensive the american difference between Hispanic and White.

Reading the official United States federal definitions

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/85867...

carefully will show that the Hispanic category is an "ethnicity" category, the only ethnicity category in the federal classification scheme, and "People who identify their origin as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino may be of any race" by the federal definitions. (In the federal definitions, Brazilian people are not included in the Hispanic or Latino ethnicity category anyway.)

I consider very offensive the american difference between Hispanic and White.

You're not alone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08VCkyG_C2s#t=01m10s

The idea of ethnicity has become intrinsically associated with race - and therefore skin colour. Hence the common categories.

EDIT: added "has become" rather than "is"

Mostly in the United States. In mono-racial societies, ethnicity has little to do with skin color.

ok, to clarify I meant in terms of websites/webapps.

Tell that to the Turks and Armenians.

Try that in Northern Ireland.

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