IBM Apologizes For Racial Slurs On Its Recruitment Webpages (theregister.co.uk) 279
The Register: IBM has apologized after its recruitment webpages asked applicants whether their ethnicity was, among other options, the racial slurs Yellow and Mulatto. In online application forms for positions within the US tech giant, in among other questions ranging from military veteran status, and eligibility to work in America, a bizarre drop-down menu asked whether jobseekers were Caucasian, Black, or Indigenous, as well as the aforementioned insults. The Register was first alerted to the baffling error on Monday by an engineer who tried to apply for a technical role at IBM earlier this month, and was stunned by the slurs listed for a mandatory input field labeled: "Please state your ethnic group."
Yellow? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well what else would Homer Simpson be?
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A singular cartoon metaphor for the Trump administration?
Re:Yellow? (Score:4, Funny)
I have jaundice, you insensitive clod!
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Well what else would Homer Simpson be?
Well, my Andorian affectionately call me "Pinky", and it doesn't bother me.
However, I am quite upset that IBM doesn't recognize the ethnicity of "Kid, who grew up on a Polygamous Ranch". I feel inconclusive, or something like that.
In other news, an IBM development manager recently got slammed for blaming "Race Conditions" for problems in their software.
How much more racist can you get than that!
My guess is that the IBM webpages were outsourced to somewhere where they didn't realize that the terms were
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However, I am quite upset that IBM doesn't recognize the ethnicity of "Kid, who grew up on a Polygamous Ranch".
I hope that was as much fun as it sounds like.
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I guess that's one of the dangers of outsourcing your development to a country that's more lax when it comes to political correctness.
I'll admit that my sample size is a bit small, but some of the Indian co-workers that I worked with in the past were kinda racist when it came to certain ethnicities. They also seemed a bit homophobic as well.
If it was anyone but IBM, I'd feel a bit sorry for them. That said, these guys repeatedly go after the cheapest labor force possible at the expense of quality, and kinda
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Hell, in this day in age, to keep from offending anyone, they shouldn't ask for color or ethnicity, or even sex.
Pick people based on their merits, eh?
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I dont know a single Asian person, or fraction thereof, that would ever refer to themselves as "Oriental"
You probably don't know a white guy who refers to himself as "Occidental" either. Does not mean it is offensive, just archaic.
Apparently in parts of America, Oriental and "half-black" are both offensive to snowflakes. But somehow, describing someone as half-Chinese or half-Scottish is perfectly OK.
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Does half-African trig them? Out of morbid curiosity.
I don't know. But most of the African immigrants I know are white, so it ain't the same thing here.
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"Oriental" = of the Orient, i.e. from the East. I can't find anything offensive in that, sorry. No more so than "Westerner" which I hear all the time and no one complains.
Look up Edward Said and Orientalism. He basically argues that the Western interpretation of the Orient (usually applied to Egypt/Middle East/India subcontinent as opposed to "Asian" states) was based on observations and attitudes from European imperialism and remained static since. So the West sees the "Orient" as backwards, stuck in the past, and unevolving while the West is modern, rational, etc. It carries an inherent superiority of the West over the East. It would be as if the US only saw Europe as
I didn't know about Mulatto (Score:5, Insightful)
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You know, a while back I came across something describing people as white, black, yellow, brown, and red, which seems pretty even-handed in context. There are other words used as slurs which draw considerably more attention, so it's a bit non-obvious that yellow might be offensive.
This is also why I find it odd people call blacks coloreds. Folks are in general pretty colorful.
A while back, a white supremacist got a DNA test and then announced to everyone that he had discovered he was an octoroon. Wh
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This is also why I find it odd people call blacks coloreds. Folks are in general pretty colorful.
Probably as a way to make sure that anyone who is half-black or quarter-black can all be lumped into one group as "other."
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>
The whole thing is very strange. What bothers me, really, is when somebody starts talking about getting rid of birthright citizenship because people born here aren't "real Americans" unless they're born from the right lineage. That's when you get the torches and pitchforks out.
As usual you choose to misinterpret. I'm a white conservative Republican. Some factions of conservatives want to get rid of birthright citizenship for the offspring of illegal immigrants. Every time a conservative talks about illegal immigration the Left declares said conservative a racist, xenophobe, and against all immigration. I'm pro-immigration (I brought my wife here and two brothers married foreigners who were here legally), but vocally against illegal immigration. I've often used the object lesson o
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I've often used the object lesson of someone knocking on my door vs breaking a window to enter my child's room. I don't care what race you are - if you break into my home I will treat you like a hostile, and will protect my family with whatever force is necessary. If you knock on my door, odds are you will be invited to dinner.
You're using the wrong analogy. A better analogy for illegal immigration would be you inviting that someone to dinner and they end up shacking up in your living room for a few years. Most illegal immigrants aren't illegally crossing borders("breaking windows") , they are coming in legally(being invited in) and overstaying visas.
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I basically look at it like this, you shouldn't call people things they don't like.
We're already seeing where that gets you, since they don't like anything you say, you should "shut up and listen," so they can say whatever they want about you.
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Your friend does not know Italian. That word is *misto*, though it might be used in Italian the same way as mulatto is in Spanish.
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I used that term ["mulatto"] with a friend of mine who is mixed-race. He told me it was offensive
I've been told (in a friendly way) that in the UK I shouldn't call people "mixed race" any more cos that's offensive - instead I should use "people of colour" (but woe betide me if I say "coloured people", cos that's offensive too). There was a time when I used "half-caste", but apparently that's really really really wrong, and it was after then that I started using mixed-race.
I'm a honky ... you can call me that all you like, I really don't mind :-)
This whole situation has become ridiculous.
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Why do you think he is talking about a news show? Just watch the friggen' excuses they put out as 'sitcoms' now.
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You should take your blinders and rose colored glasses off and realize all of the big media conglomerates are worthless scum. You might actually see what's going on in the real world if you did that too.
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One place I worked had a Kenyan CFO, and he and I called each other "nigga" (I'm half Dutch, half Indian). It occasionally made other people cringe.
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Also Mulatto means mixed black and white race, it's not really a slur, and has absolutely nothing to do with the coffee. When coffee and milk are mixed it can be "Macchiato" (stained), "Cappucino", or "Caffelatte" with inclreasing quantities of milk (latte means just milk by the way).
Cacuasian? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm from Europe, not from Armenia, Georgia or Azerbaijan
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Because, no one expects the Mexican Colonial Cast System.
Don't call anyone a "gladiator", either. In the ancient Roman slave systems, they were an underclass sent to the arenas to die.
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racist adj Believing someone is socially or legally inferior.
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Do you really need someone to explain to you how making someone socially or legally inferior based on their race is racist?
Mulatto? (Score:2)
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Maybe recently? It was a textbook term in history class for me growing up - and I'm an older Millennial.
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you're the snowflake, that word historically considered a factual, fair term of racial classification. now the millenials go looking for things to spaz out about...
the only ethnicity is human ethnicity (Score:3)
I can speculate what happened here. (Score:2)
Remember that time Nintendo had to recall a Mario Party game because one of the ranks was "spastic?" Non-native speakers of a language can easily make a mistake like that, looking up a word without also knowing its derogatory connotations. Probably same thing here.
Re:I can speculate what happened here. (Score:5, Insightful)
So this was another side-effect of out-sourcing... gotcha.
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You do realizae that Nintendo has non-English-speaking development teams without outsorcing, right?
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This story is about IBM, not Nintendo - and IBM has been a notorious outsourcer for the past decade or two.
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The story is about IBM, but the post you replied to was about Nintendo. You weren't clear about what "this" referred to.
How could this happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing this happened because the requirements only said to ask for ethnicity but failed to include the list. The developer went and found an obviously wrong list to force testing/acceptance to return a proper list. They all failed.
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Pure fantasy!!! (Score:2)
I'm guessing this happened because the requirements only said to ask for ethnicity but failed to include the list. The developer went and found an obviously wrong list to force testing/acceptance to return a proper list. They all failed.
This is clearly a fantasy scenario - a developer would never go out of their way to do anything. :)
If you read the article, it appeared that the "offensive" items all had a prefix of "Brazil_" and mulato/mulatto is a term that means mixed race. From what I know of Brazil, they have a good portion of mixed race people. Not sure what is up with Yellow though.
I suspect that this is simply a mistake, no need to take to the streets or smash your IBM... uh... what do they make again?
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Developers do interesting things when faced with soft requirements and firm deadlines.
Re:Pure fantasy!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
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No, the only ones who failed are the media and people that got offended by this.
I mean... just fuck off with being offended *ALL THE TIME*. Out of 2 billion people on internet, there's always someone bitching about how they are offended by something, it's borderli
The obvious cause (Score:5, Insightful)
an ancient evil (Score:2)
Lurking deep in the bowels of an emulated System 36, buried under layers of middleware, obscured by COBOL, is a faithful RPG reproduction of a stack of punch cards from the 30s or 40s. IBM's unholy integration of Java and PHP has exposed this ancient evil to the world once again. Why, young web developer, would you create a new list of ethnicities when Websphere is happy to provide you with a system defined list? What could possibly go wrong?
WRF (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is "ethnicity" a mandatory field? Actually, given anti-discrimination laws, why is it not a "do not say anything about ethnicity, religion or sex on this or any other form" popup?
Thank the libtards (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation? (Score:2)
I'm guessing it was written in another language and simply went though a translation program that isn't a full AI that can understand context or political correctness. Other languages use their own terms for race that translate as such.
In Spanish they often call me "whity" and I have to remember not to take offense every time they say it and it does not carry any baggage of a slur but rather an allusion of race. Which is how language should be.
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Blame the disparate impact judicial reasoning. To prove that one is an equal-opportunity employer, it isn't enough that you don't discriminate; you must be able to prove that you don't have practices that unintentionally result in "discriminatory" outcomes. And in order to prove that, they must collect racial data, so that under disparate impact analysis, they can prove that their hiring practices don't have a discriminatory result.
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Isn't the requirement to report on actual employees, not applicants? So there is no need to ask until after you decide to hire them.
Data is available on people looking for work in a particular industry and on industry-wide demographics, for fair evaluation.
This is usually an optional question in Europe. The data is only seem by HR for statistical purposes, the people evaluating candidates doesn't get it. There is no advantage gained or lost by answering or not.
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Isn't the requirement to report on actual employees, not applicants? So there is no need to ask until after you decide to hire them.
But how is that going to help if they're one of the overrepresented demographics? You'd need to know the race before making the hiring decision in order to make sure you're able to meet the diversity numbers.
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I think you may have missed the point of this exercise.
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For instance if a certain demographic typically performs worse in standardized testing then their ability would otherwise suggest then you should scale that appropriately when assessing the best candidate.
How exactly would you compensate for that? How many points is being an underrepresented minority worth on the standardized test? What if I'm not underrepresented but had a shitty kindergarten teacher who instilled a hatred of learning that took years to overcome, do you factor that in too?
I guess what I'm getting at here is that by looking at the race instead of the individual, you're committing exactly the problem (ma
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In America, the question is on every job application I've ever filled out. I'm over 50, so that has been quite a few.
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In the US being an Equal Opportunity Employer is often more about the applicants than the people working. After all you can't control who quits or leaves, but you can control who you hire.
But in either case, you kinda have to know how many apply to say that you aren't discriminating. If you only hire 20 white males, that might look bad. But if you only had 100 white male applicants, that is ok (well, mostly). But if you hire 20 white males out of: 20 white male applicants, 20 white female, 20 black mal
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Probably because you have to hire so many of $protectedclass to $whitemales there for you need to know when to look at the race metric and lay off the skill based hiring. Just my guess, our company just hires anyone that says they are an electrician and let's us in the field figure out who to keep and who to fire. I guess it's easier to deal with that way.
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Yet "mula" is "mule" in both Spanish and Portuguese. I think claiming this is merely coincidental stretches credulity.
Re:slur? (Score:4, Informative)
Per Google search, using the search phrase, "etymology of mulatto":
so it was from Spanish, and does have to do with mules.
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And the Wikipedia article:
The Real Academia Española traces its origin to mulo in the sense of hybridity; originally used to refer to any mixed race person
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy (Spanish: Real Academia Española, generally abbreviated as RAE) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language.
So the 'mule' origin seems a bit of made-up-after-the-fact-bs to me (I will take the language's official authority as the ... well ... authority on the language).
Wikipedia also notes that the term may also have come from the arabic 'Muwallad'.
Finally there also appears to be quite a bit if disagreement as to if/when it become a derogatory and where in the world you see/hear it seems to tell a different story.
In short I had heard it used before (from someo
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It sounds more likely that mulatto and mule are siblings in language rather than parent-child, ie. both originating from the same root.
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Pretty sure they were shooting for 'milado', i.e. mixed race, most often black/white, but not exclusive. Where I grew up it was not at all disparaging. No idea where it is on the PC scale these days.
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Pretty sure they were shooting for 'milado', i.e. mixed race, most often black/white, but not exclusive. Where I grew up it was not at all disparaging. No idea where it is on the PC scale these days.
Probably not super offensive, but certainly archaic, and stupid to use.
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"Mulatto" may have its roots in "mula"... "mule" in English. Being the sterile offspring of a horse and a donkey and used as an often-overworked pack animal, it's not a complimentary term.
Don't be an ass.
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"Mulatto" may have its roots in "mula"... "mule" in English. Being the sterile offspring of a horse and a donkey and used as an often-overworked pack animal, it's not a complimentary term.
Yet today, wouldn't the offspring of a Horse and Donkey be a Honkey?
That's just a joke. But seriously IBM, who in the devil's hot stinking taint thought that "Mulatto" and "Yellow" were in any way appropriate?
Even if Mulatto was at one point an acceptable term, so were retard, idiot, moron, imbecile and cretin. We cant do much about slur creep, other than to pay attention and not use the particular words deemed offensive
Re: slur? (Score:3)
Even if Mulatto was at one point an acceptable term, so were retard, idiot, moron, imbecile and cretin. We cant do much about slur creep, other than to pay attention and not use the particular words deemed offensive
So calling some idiotic moron and imbecilic cretin is unacceptable? That's retarded. What am I supposed to call him? An "alternately-abled information challenged individual"? Yeah that just rolls of the tongue.
Of course those words will give offense when used as an insult. They are not offensive in and of themselves though. Just like "yellow" and "mullato" could be used in a context which makes them insulting, but have zero negative connotations in the context of an employment questionnaire. Pretty m
Re: slur? (Score:2)
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Yellow as a race has long been considered inappropriate.
Careful with that phrasing!
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When is the last time you applied for a job and WEREN'T asked for your race?
I'm mulatto. White father and Indian mother (feather, not dot). First, time I've even heard any inclination that the term might be racist.
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When is the last time you applied for a job and WEREN'T asked for your race?
I'm mulatto. White father and Indian mother (feather, not dot). First, time I've even heard any inclination that the term might be racist.
We're kind of locked in a weird sort of identity politic world these days. The best example is the star of Captain Marvel, Brie Larson, making the trip from far left to racism and sexism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Too many white male critics, and repeatedly claims that she doesn't hate "White dudes"
In today's world, you are against racism and sexism by being racist and sexist. So my guess is if you are an SJW, the use of a race based word is fine.
Me? I just scrub my speech of as much langua
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Well....n****r is just a color descriptor - and even has a country named from the same root. Original meanings mean nothing.
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"Oriental" is offensive because it literally means "eastern," and as such implies that Europe is the "default"/center of the world, and people from Asia are therefore the Other.
Geography does not seem to be your strong subject, and neither does Linguistics.
Have you heard the term "occidental"? If Europe is the Center of the World, why would Europeans be refereed to as Occidentals?
Yes, it used to be the formal (basically Latin) way of saying Western.
The words are not offensive due to their meaning, but due
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That entire rainbow umbrella pretty much ensures that any sort of nuance will be completely lost as all manner of things (big and small) and wildly different things get lumped together.
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Some of us are just genuine social libertines and find the new Victorian mindset appalling.
Re: Republican faggot not acquainted with slurs? (Score:2)
I'm neither an american nor a republican. The current strain of "progressives" can't think beyond their labels, though.
Re:Race matters! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry you were triggered. Here, show me on this doll where the leftists touched you.
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I'm sorry you were triggered. Here, show me on this doll where the leftists touched you.
You win the internet today, David. And you owe me a non-soda drenched keyboard.
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Agreed.
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People make stuff up and as long as it's on the internet someone will believe it -- Calvin Coolidge
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People make stuff up and as long as it's on the internet someone will believe it -- Calvin Coolidge
I'm too drunk to taste this chicken-Col Sanders
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The idea that unequal results equals racism predates Obama. This is particularly true of the Fair Housing Act.
Obama just helped put mainstream this kind of thinking and supercharged it.
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There are lots of types of racism, and it's a tug of war. We have seen how a hands-off approach most definitely causes racial disparities in many instances, neighborhoods segregate, schools segregate, and so forth. Yet any action taken to solve these problems is seen as racist. In fact there are many people who think that there is no actual problem in the first place or that it shouldn't be solved or that segregation is desirable.
Collection of statistics is necessary, for example, if you need to determine
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It happens quite readily because it is NATURAL for people to tend to congregate, associate and prefer to live with people that look and act largely like themselves.
We all as humans have a bit of tribalism baked into us.
There's nothing wrong with this, as long as there is no discrimination or that type action if someone prefers to live differently.
Th
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You're assuming this is the cause, however it can be measured if statistics are kept (ie, are minorities applying for housing loans in some areas but being rejected). Science should be able to trump gut-feelings.
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It happens quite readily because it is NATURAL for people to tend to congregate, associate and prefer to live with people that look and act largely like themselves.
We all as humans have a bit of tribalism baked into us.
There's nothing wrong with this, as long as there is no discrimination or that type action if someone prefers to live differently.
This is just naturally the way humans tend to act if not forced by outside forces, like the government.
How do you know this? It could just as easily be cultural. For example a culture that considers certain colours inferiour would resist the natural urge to breed for maximum genetic diversity.
The urge to not inbreed is pretty powerful, yet we have groups that prefer their siblings, and consider themselves superiour for doing it
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Yes, and one of the answers to the question [fanniemae.com] is "I do not wish to furnish this information". They ask, but you are not required to answer. I see no reason to answer unless you believe your race will help your application.
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The asterisk implies this may have been a required field... Other things are odd, such as the additionally linked job requirements posting for an "intern" that required 1 year experience in a lot of things you don't get in school (ie, somewhere between entry level and junior).
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Either you're not from the US, or you've never applied for a job. Even a fast food job has that question.
The problem is that the left demanded equal opportunity for all races, which pretty much everybody got on board with, and got a law passed. But, they set it up and won precedence setting court cases so that the only defense against racist policies for a company was to demonstrate equal outcomes. The law, in practice, requires a positive defense.
That question on job applications is part of the positive
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This is a chance for you to learn that the same word can have different meanings and/or connotations in different countries.
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the census bureau makes it their business.
I wonder why there is no outcry?
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There is some outcry. However, the purpose of the census is to collect statistical facts (the Constitutionally required one is the number of people), not to potentially use some feature against someone somehow.
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oh? government never used census data to locate and throw citizens into interment camps? never used it to gerrymander?
the data was and is used against the people
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It's use in the US is defensive. If you ask the question of all your applicants, you can have data to refute claims of bias in hiring. It's also always optional to answer.
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So...you might want to take a moment to learn about the continent of Asia. Specifically, the countries that are on it.
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Nah. It's still a-ok to call you a cracker.
Cracker? I prefer Saltine American, thank you.
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Uhhh... you salty?
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Saying that a spanish word is a slur, is slurring people that have spanish as their first language. Please stop saying that spanish words are slurs, it only serves to marginalize spanish speaker, it is racist and generally disgusting. If you think continuing to do it, please consider separating yourself from society so that it can become more fair to everyone. More socially just, if you will.
Surely gringo is a slur. Oh, Mexican is a nationality, not a race.