are you racially profiled?

[Kalvien]

lately I'm thinking to apply job in singapore. I was surprised there is a column for ethnicity, there is choice between Chinese, Eurasian, India, and others. I naturally picked chinese because I dont look eurasian. Is there some sort discrimination or glorification toward eurasian in singapore? does being eurasian or chinese make you got job easier in singapore?

Anyway, I'm wondering, are you racially profiled in your country?

My grandmother was classified as europe, but later she and the rest of her families classified as chinese (which made us got a lot discrimination such as changing to indonesian-sounding names and forbidden to speak dutch and chinese).

my birth certificate didnt get any racial profile, so I haven't experienced some sort discrimination... yet

[catgirl]

It shouldnt matter.....Its a rude thing to ask about other peoples race. But thats my culture I guess?

No, we dont have these "racial" profiles in Norway usually. Its more of an American thing maybe? The US consists of very diverse ethnic groups unlike my country.

Once in a job description they were trying to recruit people with either two parents from African or Asian continent etc or if you yourself originated from there. But it didnt apply for me, cause I have only one parent from there.

[toyomansi]

^ yeah, I think Norway barely uses the word "race", but rather country/continent of origin and sometimes religion (when talking about muslims etc.). some ethnic minority groups carry much more negative reputation than others, and in ethnically diverse areas people have easier to differentiate between groups. for example, people would know that somalis and nigerians are two different groups, as where people from smaller places would just label all africans as the same.

[milkman's baby]

I've only recently noticed that forms are allowing people to mark more than one race on that section. I took the LSAT last weekend, it said mark all that apply. A lot of standardized test forms will just list "Other" as an option. But when I applied for my driver's license and other government forms, it sometimes explicitly says "PLEASE MARK ONLY ONE." I've started marking myself as black, just to give the cops or whoever hard time if they were looking at my photo and info in the database.

One thing I've always wondered is if Middle Easterners and East Indians consider themselves Caucasian. They usually don't list separate categories for them on the forms, so I don't know what they call themselves. And then I don't know if Filipinos consider themselves Pacific Islanders, because that is a separate category too.

[toyomansi]

^ the only Filipinos I've heard about who call themselves Pacific Islanders instead of SE Asians, are Filipino Americans. Pacific Islanders usually refer to Hawaiians, Samoans, Tongans etc., no?

Dec 10, 2009 0:08:31 GMT -5 milkman's baby said:

I've started marking myself as black, just to give the cops or whoever hard time if they were looking at my photo and info in the database.

lol!

In Norway we never experience checking "race" on forms... I guess it's mostly common for multiracial countries. It's strange that Middle Eastern or Indians don't have a separate column, since most of them are too dark to even be compared to a Nordic person hehe...

[Joi]

Dec 3, 2009 2:10:08 GMT -5 Kalvien said:

lately I'm thinking to apply job in singapore. I was surprised there is a column for ethnicity, there is choice between Chinese, Eurasian, India, and others. I naturally picked chinese because I dont look eurasian. Is there some sort discrimination or glorification toward eurasian in singapore? does being eurasian or chinese make you got job easier in singapore?

Anyway, I'm wondering, are you racially profiled in your country?

My grandmother was classified as europe, but later she and the rest of her families classified as chinese (which made us got a lot discrimination such as changing to indonesian-sounding names and forbidden to speak dutch and chinese).

my birth certificate didnt get any racial profile, so I haven't experienced some sort discrimination... yet

I also don't look Eurasian leaning more to the Chinese side in appearance.. If i were applying for a job in Singapore though, I couldn't possibly say Chinese because i don't really speak the language and couldn't possibly pull it off.. my accent is too strong people would second guess.. i suppose you speak Chinese ? it makes it easier for you to get away with then..

When i was in Singapore i remember my cousin introducing me to one of her friends as Eurasian i felt a little surprised she introduced me this way.. Given Singapore is multi-racial society i think it would help to tell the truth regardless of appearance, i think you owe it to yourself to tell the truth.. be happy in the skin you are in regardless of what people say you are, you are Eurasian.. embrace it, don't cover it up.

[midnightnovelist]

I wouldn't necessarily say I'm racially profiled, but I do find it amusing now in England, to most people who glance at me I'm just Chinese. (Being in London, considering non-English-caucasians are actually the majority, this doesn't really earn me looks or anything) However, back in Hong Kong, I'm always spoken to in (usually very broken) English until I start talking in cantonese, much to insert-shopkeeper-here's relief and surprise. The only certainty seems to be that I'm not "local" no matter where I go! LOL

[paul101]

Yeah, I just tick "White." I'd just get weird looks for ticking "Other," as I look very white.

[Kalvien]

Dec 13, 2009 4:53:59 GMT -5 Joi said:

Dec 3, 2009 2:10:08 GMT -5 Kalvien said:

lately I'm thinking to apply job in singapore. I was surprised there is a column for ethnicity, there is choice between Chinese, Eurasian, India, and others. I naturally picked chinese because I dont look eurasian. Is there some sort discrimination or glorification toward eurasian in singapore? does being eurasian or chinese make you got job easier in singapore?

Anyway, I'm wondering, are you racially profiled in your country?

My grandmother was classified as europe, but later she and the rest of her families classified as chinese (which made us got a lot discrimination such as changing to indonesian-sounding names and forbidden to speak dutch and chinese).

my birth certificate didnt get any racial profile, so I haven't experienced some sort discrimination... yet

I also don't look Eurasian leaning more to the Chinese side in appearance.. If i were applying for a job in Singapore though, I couldn't possibly say Chinese because i don't really speak the language and couldn't possibly pull it off.. my accent is too strong people would second guess.. i suppose you speak Chinese ? it makes it easier for you to get away with then..

When i was in Singapore i remember my cousin introducing me to one of her friends as Eurasian i felt a little surprised she introduced me this way.. Given Singapore is multi-racial society i think it would help to tell the truth regardless of appearance, i think you owe it to yourself to tell the truth.. be happy in the skin you are in regardless of what people say you are, you are Eurasian.. embrace it, don't cover it up.

Thanks for the kind comments. That's exactly the situation I'm in. If I chose chinese, I'm afraid pure-blood chinese employers will looked down on me when they knew I don't speak mandarin.

I guess I will eventually choose the eurasian, and I hope my employers don't look down on me because I looked more chinese.

[TeeHee]

A while back, I came across this job application form in which there were just 4 boxes for race: black, white, asian/pacific islander, and hispanic/latino. I was kind of taken aback when I read some notes around it saying something along the lines of "Please only select one box; this application will not be processed if a box is not selected or if more than one box is selected. We acknowledge that there are people of diverse ethnic backgrounds, but you can only select one. Sorry for the inconvenience." I'm not sure what annoyed me more, the fact that the options were limited or that they supposedly acknowledged people of diverse racial background but still insisted that only one box be filled in. This was a few years ago and I ended up not applying at all.

Besides that time, most forms I come across these days have the "other" box, give you the choice of marking more than one race, or filling out that section at all is optional, so it's typically not an issue with me.

[jefe]

Did you save that application?

You really should have sent the copy to the ACLU or those other organizations that fight those things so that such language and requirment be removed from the application process.

[catgirl]

Dec 17, 2009 18:17:30 GMT -5 TeeHee said:

A while back, I came across this job application form in which there were just 4 boxes for race: black, white, asian/pacific islander, and hispanic/latino. I was kind of taken aback when I read some notes around it saying something along the lines of "Please only select one box; this application will not be processed if a box is not selected or if more than one box is selected. We acknowledge that there are people of diverse ethnic backgrounds, but you can only select one. Sorry for the inconvenience." I'm not sure what annoyed me more, the fact that the options were limited or that they supposedly acknowledged people of diverse racial background but still insisted that only one box be filled in. This was a few years ago and I ended up not applying at all.

Besides that time, most forms I come across these days have the "other" box, give you the choice of marking more than one race, or filling out that section at all is optional, so it's typically not an issue with me.

OMG! How pathetic should you just flip a coin or something??

[Trix]

Dec 3, 2009 2:10:08 GMT -5 Kalvien said:

lately I'm thinking to apply job in singapore. I was surprised there is a column for ethnicity, there is choice between Chinese, Eurasian, India, and others.

Thats something, i am half singaporrean but i dont recall this, but strangely enough, its not that surprising, as multicultural singapore can be, "races" tend to stick to the same communities. Im half french and live in france for very long time now and it is quite the opposite here. there's even a new law requesting employers to accept anonymous CVs and applicants, to prevent racial prejudices...and socially speaking, young people hang out with any race in france, whereas, singapore, not really.....

So considering my longer life experience in europe, Id say I've never quite been racially profiled, there are never any 'race' boxes to tick on any forms, just nationality.

[catgirl]

Sometimes when Im trying to make my self sound interesting I mention my "heritage" and some might say: Oh, cut the crap your just Norwegian!

[Szymon Von Zalyn]

Personally, I'm getting rather sick of racial profiling in general. In another 10 years it will be either a case of having quotas or it will be totally dumped. I can't help shaking the suspicion that the reasoning is that if you are white, then you are going to be racist. If you are non white, then you won't be.