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Comment by albemuth | Hacker News Reader

> "Not to really generalize, but a lot of Asians, they have perfect SATs, perfect GPAs, ... so it's hard to let them all in"

Why is asking for ethnicity even legal?

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Yes, I had to fill a form for a an American corporation once that asked me about my ethnicity and it was very weird. It was the first time I saw anyone do that, much less in an official form - I was wondering all the time if that was legal - and according to the very detailed instructions I had to select an option that did not match my opinion about my ethnicity at all.

Companies which meet a certain criteria (eg, companies over 100 employees, or smaller companies which are federal government prime contractors) must file an EEOC-1 report to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. See http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/faq.cfm .

It's not, at least in my country France and probably most of Europe... I've never seen a form asking me if I'm white. Was kinda shocked to realize it's common practice in US.

Employment information is tracked this way in order to judge if there is a systemic imbalance in employment. We can say (in the US) that certain minorities are over- or under-represented in different fields. Hopefully that knowledge can help reduce the imbalance. Some places (voluntarily or under court order) also track the ethnicity of people involved in police incidents because across the country, ethnically discriminated minorities are more likely to be stopped, frisked, and/or cited than non-minorities. Tracking this information helps reveal the effect of that discrimination.

As I understand it, France also has systemic discrimination - grand-children of guest workers from the 1960s have a hard time finding employment, for example, and the official state position is that "there are no ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities." The Human Rights Committee disagrees with that view, and I think it's a bizarre viewpoint.

The French Constitution and Penal Code prohibit the collection of data based on the origin, race or religion, so of course you haven't seen such a form. On the other hand, it's widely believed that the lack of such information makes it hard to determine if there truly is wide-spread discrimination or not. The view of the French government is that there is no discrimination and so there's no need to measure it. While I say that without measurements, you don't know if it exists or not.

These are all fine points I agree with. It wouldn't surprise me if there were more racism here. It sounded like I was indignant but I'm really just shocked you manage to break the taboo. But you still have to be careful with these college things... It should be controlled a little.

What taboo?

Putting people into "race" categories. In France we don't even acknowledge the existence of races. It's not even about discriminating. You're not allowed to say white people and black people are different races, that's labeled as racism. We talk about ethnicity or origin. And even then you have to be very careful. You don't say "arabs", you say "people originating from Maghreb" (or Middle east..). It's a sensitive matter. And there would be nation-wide riots if forms started asking about race or even skin color. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(classification_of_human_b... "In many countries, such as France, the state is legally banned from maintaining data based on race, which often makes the police issue wanted notices to the public that include labels like "dark skin complexion", etc." "The decennial censuses conducted since 1790 in the United States created an incentive to establish racial categories and fit people into those categories."

ive never seen anything like it, is it a compulsory question?

we often have "are you a aboriginal or torres strait islander" but that is always clearly marked as optional and only used for measuring progress in improving the absolutely disgusting state of education for indigenous australians.

really i always thought america was better then this... TIL

They have always been optional in my experience (hence the whole point of the linked article). Perhaps you don't see questions like this as much because Australia is less diverse (92% white)?

These questions are optional from my experience.

For demographic surveys of data.

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