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thomblake comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey: Call For Critiques/Questions - Less Wrong
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I agree with other posters that non-US-centric races would be a good idea. But let me actually follow the instructions in the above post and try to give an alternative. The questions are close to industry standard; the 'race' answer choices are a combination of American and British race categories with some influence from other countries.
Are you of Hispanic (Latin) descent?
Which of the following races / ethnic groups do you identify most closely with?
I was unsure whether to break out 'Black' into Caribbean and 'African origin' - that seems pretty provincially British.
EDIT: Changed the wording of 'Latin' so as not to confuse Europeans. Did it work?
I'm primarily Portuguese; how should I answer this question?
I (an Italian) think I once answered “Latin” on a survey before finding out what that was supposed to mean. (I had guessed it meant “someone with Romance-speaking ancestry”.)
Why bother having
Asian (East Asian)instead of justEast Asianetc? (Especially since the ethnic groups you list aren't globally considered "Asian", e.g. I don't think pacific islanders describe themselves as part of Asia.)I agree.
Folks in certain places are identified as "Asian" - but that is probably not relevant to us.
This is a confused list since Middle Easterners aren't just Asian, see North Africa and they are also also "Caucasians" as the word is used. And while Micronesia does fit into Asia, I don't quite see Polynesia making sense. Change it to this:
Arguably Pacific Islander and Native American are categories that are almost certain to have only a few people answer positively and are pretty small in global demographic terms. Folding them under "Other" makes sense. My list:
I'd split “Other” and “Prefer not to answer” apart, and make the former a write-in answer (especially if you don't list native Americans and Pacific Islanders separately). Also, I'd add “descent” immediately before the parentheses (e.g. “European descent (White)”) to address thomblake's point. Apart from that, I think this is the best proposed version for this question I've seen so far.
I agree with either of those, though I prefer slashes over parens. "Sub-Saharan African (Black)" sounds like something that would not apply to folks from other places, like African Americans.
Asian Americans aren't "Asian" either, I was going for consistency. Sub-Saharan African is pretty unwieldy, making it African (Black) would match the Asian designations in how specific it is and be much more elegant.
But the geographic meaning being primary does kind of cause problems. So slash is probably better.
Where exactly are you drawing the border between the Middle East and Europe? How does Turkey count? What about the Caucuses, and the Asian parts of the former USSR more generally?
There isn't a clear line. Indeed looking at it from a population perspective there really shouldn't be a line since genetically Europeans and Middle Easterners are the same cluster and anthropologically they are both Caucasoid. I mean sure there are distinct subtypes but if you focus on those you have to split up Europeans too if you want to be consistent.
I don't expect people to be familiar with 20th century physical anthropology or recent genetic studies though. Due to various cultural and political issues I expect at least some Middle Easterners would object to picking white/caucasian and many Europeans or North Americans would be surprised to know they are in the same category.
Generally I expect Turks and people from the Caucasus to pick white. The Asian parts of the former USSR really depends on who the person in question is, I'd expect them to pick White, East Asian or Other (as in mixed), not so much Middle Eastern. I'd expect at least a few Libyans or Yemenites picking "white" if there wasn't a Middle Eastern category, but quite a few would probably pick "other".
We could make a category to include both European and Middle Eastern since the cultural differences between them are captured by the religious & national background.
Well, what about Siberia, for that matter? ;-)
Siberia is an Asian part of the former USSR.
Errr... Yeah.
I know of a number of Jewish people (especially of Ashkenazi descent) who refused to categorize themselves as "White/Caucasian" and griped about having to be lumped into "other".
In my experience, if we have 1000 respondents we should expect less than 20 'other'. I don't think it's worth another category to avoid griping.
But on the other hand I seem to remember Jewish people are over-represented here.
But on the other hand... No... There is no other hand!
I think I see what you did there.
I seriously doubt many ethnic Jews on LW would object to being described as white. But maybe I give too much weight to my model of Yvain and Eliezer.
Genetically Askenazi Jews cluster in between the Euro and Near Eastern populations (which are basically the same cluster to being with) and culturally they are pretty clearly Central/Eastern European. Using the "ethnic studies" take on race where "whiteness is privilege", it seems quite laughable to put Jews in places like America as non-white since they are quite "privileged".
For what it's worth, I know a Jewish person who describes herself as "provisionally white".
Aside from any nervousness caused by the third reich, she looks white when she's around white people, but Hispanic to Hispanics. They ask her what country she's from.
I also know an Italian-American (light skin, hair, and eyes) who ran into so much anti-Italian prejudice when she was young that she decided she wasn't white. She's since concluded that only the top 1% is white.
If you look at how race plays out in people's minds, there's a lot more variation than you might expect.
Err, sorry, I meant Sephardi.
I mark white on surveys generally. Privileged and pale and non-practicing. If someone asks me in person I say I'm jewish enough for hitler.
Well, according to legend Einstein answered "human"...
Not that I want to disparage the sentiment, but I'm unsure what this comment adds.
An example of a Jew refusing to classify himself as white. But I had missed "on LW" in the first sentence, so never mind.