What's in a name? 2
Thanks to a Canadian friend for this story. She has lived the last 15 or so years here in Africa but, wanting to return to North America, she is applying for jobs. How, she asks, should she answer the question "are you a member of a visible minority?" The application form is certain there are only two options: yes or no ... the form also asks her to confirm that the information she has given is true to the best of her knowledge.
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an identity crisis in evolution...
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- methel
- Free spirit (or wandering lost soul?)
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3 comments:
I keep coming back to this one...
I can see a major problem with asking the question in the first place (it shouldn't be relevant) but I can't see a problem with providing only yes/no for the reply options. Either one's minoritiness (I made that one up) is visible, or it ain't.
I hope if you're applying to live in a country, you'll know enough about it to judge whether you'll belong to a (visible!) ethnic minority there or not. The only other form of visible minoritiness that comes to mind is disability, & it's quite common/acceptable to distinguish between visible & hidden disabilities.
Please tell me if I'm being more than usually obtuse over this?
Probably more a case that I was being economical with detail bluefluff! My friend is a white Canadian so, of course, for the last 15 years she has been a very visible minority in Africa. But, when/if she goes back to Canada she is presuming she won't be - so should she answer for now (the "truth" of her visible identity now but which will mislead the potential employers) or for the hypothetical future? As you say, it shouldn't matter but from the future employers point of view they are trying to be "fair" and open up employment access to those traditionally discriminated against. For me it just reminds us al that a politically correct agenda needs to be treated just like any other agenda - as only one version of reality. No, before anyone says it, I am NOT against trying to remove discrimination, I'm just saying that "being PC" is not as straight forward (dare I say "as black and white"?) as many would like to think.
Glad you kept coming back to this one - it's a topic I'm trying to think more on, but it's hard to unscramble all the threads and connections :-)
In the absence of a "I am now, but I won't be if you let me in" box, she should answer for the future. That's what they're interested in, isn't it?
FWIW I'm with you entirely on PC being unstraightforward. Ethnicity is perhaps harder to deal with than disability (which is where more of my experience lies). But I'm often angered by the way PC language obliterates the reality of disability. It strikes me as a verbal equivalent of building high walls to conceal what we don't want to see.
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