[...] the employer-submitted EEO information is grounded in the subjective assessments of individual personnel administrators - who are not, one might suspect, entirely disinterested in the outcome - about whether an employee, for example, "looks Black" or "seems Hispanic." This information is judged against self-reported MSA data. This mechanism, which juxtaposes the apples of self-reported race and ethnicity with the oranges of stereotyped group ascription, is the foundation of federal EEO enforcement. [...]
Heady stuff!
And funny how, in the same paper, "gender" is considered to be much easier to categorize.
Regards,
Uh-oh. Good catch. I didn't notice that.
Copied from the text:
In drawing distinctions between individual human beings, certain tasks are easier than others. In the context of "affirmative action" and other preferential programs, the easiest differentiating principle to discuss or administer is sex. In this area, human beings come only in two biological flavors, each fairly easily distinguished by a characteristic chromosomal pattern of XX (female) or XY (male). Chromosome sets such as XXY can occur, but they are quite rare. For the most part, the male/female dichotomy is one of conceptual clarity.
I just noticed the paper was published in 1994. Wow. By today's standards, the writer would be a "right-wing bigot." LOL.