Monday, August 23, 2010

Race on Forms

From the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee's form, here's the definition of white:
White (Not Hispanic or Latino) A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.
First: the "Not Hispanic or Latino" qualifier appears on every single category including "Two or more Races" on the form. The implication (at least to me) is, "If you're even part Hispanic or Latino, you'd better not identify as something else. Since obviously you can't be both Hispanic and Asian...

Secondly: White includes the Middle East and North Africa? Really? The government has no interest in seeing whether Iranians or Saudis are being discriminated in the workplace (declaring them as White makes them difficult to track separately from Europeans)? Since clearly, Muslims have not had any hate directed at them in recent months...