This is an awful suggestion. Next you're going to be suggesting employers ask where on the Andre Walker Hair Typing System potential recruits fall so they don't have to ask whether or not they are black.
I have no idea what the "Andre Walker Hair Typing System" is or what it has to do with being black, but if it has anything to do with hair, it would seem completely irrelevant to how good of an employee one is (As is ones skin color). Further, the question I propose is a simple yes or no question, with the option to elaborate. And if you couldn't tell by my last sentence, I don't actually expect the response to be particularly meaningful in most cases.
Not to mention how politically incorrect it would be to try to call someone out on it: "Hey, aren't you Louis Smith? You said you were black on the application, but you don't look black at all!"
> twice in the last five years potential customers wanted to hire me for projects but they were blocked by their HR departments who thought I was black. Offering to show birth certificate of my father did not helped.
How, precisely, is this true? Aside from giving yourself cancer via tanning-bed-overdose? The first person to see you would notice you lied on your form. Not typically good for getting hired.
It seems unethical, sure. But a "bad idea"? Consider that all of the following must be true for it to affect how you are perceived by a non-trivial number of people:
1) someone on the admissions committee must come to know you (that is, match your face to your name)
2) they must then remember that you were one of the people who identified as black on an application
3) they must then assume that you aren't actually black based on appearance alone (knowing that there are indeed many half-black people who don't look obviously black)
4) they must then decide to tell other important people about this
This just seems really unlikely in any reasonably sized school. If you really want to be careful, find out who is on the admissions committee and avoid them.
The Dropbox employee, @jazzy33ca, has set post visibility to followers only.
> Therefore, I choose to prioritize folks in our BIPOC and URM communities.
Americans have an obsession with race (more broadly, identity) that I think borders on unhealthy. As far as I can understand, at the most general level, the reason for the obsession is to address historical or current hardship due to factors outside one's control. This obsession is everywhere: in school admissions (high school and college especially), in social conversations, in framing unjust law enforcement practices, in employment, and so on.
What makes me uncomfortable is just how much appearance plays into assumptions about an individual, because even when it comes with good intentions, it just seems so... shallow. Why aren't there more questions related to the aspects of one's life to determine what kind of hardship/discrimination one has endured? Why must it solely focus which appearance/race/recognized group you don? Where are the questions to describe in detail unjust financial hardship, personal discrimination, or unfairly limited opportunities? Why claim a person adds diversity before you even know how adding such person (without making superficial assumptions) will add to diversity, equity, or inclusivity? For example, does this black candidate have major setbacks as a result of ancestral slavery that we should take into consideration for equity purposes, or is this black candidate a well-educated wealthy recent immigrant who grew up in a nation's upper class who currently doesn't feel discriminated against? There's no way to find out without the candidate voluntarily offering this information. Institutions love to use outward appearance as a proxy for what it purports to improve. And even if they didn't, given how badly managed and flooded recruitment currently is, I can't imagine that there is enough capacity for recruiters/computers to sufficiently handle the answers to such personal ambiguous questions.
In 2009, Chicago Public Schools in its high school Selective Enrollment plan moved toward awarding more points to people who live in low-income neighborhoods. While this is nowhere near perfect and is susceptible to gaming, surely this must be a better system than the one that asks for your race in a drop-down select or a list of tickboxes?
Lastly, without getting into too much detail, I know how easy it is to take advantage of these systems. Since no one can verify your cultural identity, and no one verifies your family/individual income, it's extremely trivial to put yourself at the front of a digital priority queue by claiming that you are such-and-such identity, and if necessary, with such-and-such socioeconomic hardship. You can also be mixed-race.
I'm fine with the game that Americans love, but can't we do something so that it isn't so easy to game, or base it off better and more varied heuristics?
I think they should go one step further. Instead of requiring two or more of a given list of descriptors if race was mentioned, just require three or more of the given list in the example image (with the age, build, and race questions added) no matter what. Then everyone gets to think about what makes someone suspicious. There may be biases related to how people dress, or what hair style they have or what age they are or even what their build is that can also be reduced by this method.
Singling out the race question as one that needs to be handled delicately is the wrong way to go, in my opinion.
> it is extraordinarily unlikely you will be asked your ethnicity during the job application process at any US employer.
Untrue.
> Employers who do that lose large lawsuits.
Employers who ask it during the application process usually do it in a manner which allows the data to be tracked in aggregate but separated from the application through the hiring decision process, and retain clear documentation of this process and its execution so as to be able to defend themselves against any charges of inappropriate use of the information in hiring decisions.
Many employers are required to report this information in aggregate, but I'm not sure that they are the only ones who track it for their own information.
> Maybe 3 out of 1,000+ resumes were submitted by african americans
How do you know? I'm curious because it seems like you'd have to have a spot on the job application for applicants to indicate their race and you'd need to exclude a "prefer not to answer" option in order to be confident about this.
I cant imagine a logical thought process you could have gone through to conclude some people that you carve out would actually want less information. And then to attach your assumption to skin color...
This assumption (that only black/brown people need to apply) is very valid and now you try to bend words to make the statement valid for everybody.
If I'll read statement that is completely equivalent
"Any tall (over 6'5") for doing ABC" I would never assume that people not over 6'5" should bother to apply.
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