What determines a persons ethnicity?

Answer 1

For EEOC/affirmative action purposes, a person's ethnicity is the one which he/she identifies with, and/or the one which the community identifies the person as. Note that in cases where individuals do not specify an ethnicity on EEOC/affirmative action forms (i.e. they leave the "ethnicty" box blank), the determination might be made by the future employer/educational institution on the basis of : 1) visual identification; 2) previous employment records; 3) the policy that anyone who fails to identify ethnicity on the AA form will be labeled in the default "white/caucasian" category, and if no gender is indicated, the gender will be listed as "male"; or 4) the policy of utilizing a "race unknown" category for those who do not check any AA box. The "race unknown" category is less often used, as it undercuts the racial divisions which affirmative action seeks to perpetuate. Frequently, due to the arcane and limited categories on AA forms, bi-racial individuals are forced to make a difficult decision about which race to prioritize. Often this decision is based on political expediency, for only certain races receive benefits from affirmative action, and other races are discriminated against in affirmative action policies. Many individuals feel that the concept of forcing a human being to choose among five or six racial skin-tone categories as a measure of "diversity" is absurd and unfair. As such, the policies of affirmative action are highly criticized as they constitute government-endorsed discrimination, and in many cases violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Much of the controversy surrounding affirmative action is actually a mask to disguise the fact that historically, in vast numbers (millions), the fundamental beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white females. Unfortunately, the (often-unfair) stigmatization of affirmative action beneficiaries as "unqualified" almost unilaterally falls on the shoulders of "minorities" whose ethnicities match those on the EEOC/AA form, and many Caucasian women refuse to acknowledge their history of gender-based affirmative action Other controversies surrounding the ethnic divisions on the EEOC/AA form involve the political and financial bonuses which are awarded to the selected "minorities" on the EEOC/AA form, and denied to others. As such, attempts to include a new category, "Bi-Racial" have been hotly disputed, although some recent EEOC forms include a "Bi-Racial" category. It is becoming more and more evident that the public at large feels, as Martin Luther King indicated, that a true measure of a person's diversity lies in the "content of... character," not the "color of skin"... Only when human beings are seen in the true light of their individual personae will real equality and diversity come to fruition.