I’m just trying to imagine how this questioning goes. I mean do you ask the guy after the interview “Are you black? Oh, that’s interesting. I’ll check this box here then.” But then what is black exactly? I mean what % counts? 1/2? 1/4? 1/16?
And why does it matter?
It seems to me it only matters if someone’s trying to figure out what “they” think. Which obviously means that “they’re” a group. Which obviously means there’s a common thought being pulled from that group. Which obviously means someone somewhere will be tempted to say: “Black people think this way. Black people vote this way. Black people are this way.”
If that’s not grouping by race and labeling by race I’m not sure what is. I mean what’s the difference between being racist (judging based on race) and playing with racial statistics (predicting based on race)?
I think you need to do some research into why “color blindness” is considered problematic.
All I know is that I don’t spend any time wondering what guys of Irish decent like me think about something compared to guys of French decent. Seems like the reason we’re doing it with black people is because we can see the color of their skin.
I mean if we’re really interested in finding out how “they” think? We’d be scanning for what kind of tribe they came from originally. Instead of grouping them into a “group” that sort of looks the “same” to us.
I don’t know.