My job incorrectly thinks I'm Native American, should I tell them?
I don't want to dox myself, but I've been at my job for 5+ years. I guess either my boss or I fat fingered something while I was on boarding, cuz just now I was going over some paperwork and.. As far as my job is concerned I'm Native American. I am very much white. Nobody ever brought it up.
I couldn't find an easy way to change it and I'd rather not talk to HR if it's not a big deal. So, forget about it? Call HR?
I'm Australian and the one that really gets me is when Americans refer to indigenous Australians as "African American" because of their skin colour. They're in no way from Africa or America, but nice job appropriating our native people.
It's like people overcorrecting and using "whom" when "who" really would be correct. Ditto "you and I" vs "you and me". People get corrected enough times to be embarrassed, but still don't have any interest in correct usage, so they just blanket apply what they think is the rule rather than trying to actually learn any of its nuances. It's not a perfect analogy, but I can imagine people just reverting to "African-American" as a no-thought safe bet when referring to brown people.
Spaniard here. I did some remote work with a North American company and in my profile my race was "Latino". I tried to explain I'm caucasian but it was futile.
I had that exact conversation at work a few days ago. Someone was insisting that Spaniards are Latino, so I asked them if Spain is in Latin America or Europe. That was the key to them eventually figuring it out.
I’m mostly Sicilian and Irish but my great grandmother on my mom’s side is Spanish. People usually don’t know where I’m from so just settle on thinking I’m Jewish, but I had people think I was Latino more recently. I’m more used to it happening to my mom because she’s a lot more tan than I am.
I believe it’s a legal thing where HR has to track the ethnicity (if applicant discloses) due to equal employment. Basically the US federal government wants to know if a company is discriminating against a protected class during hiring and employment
My company in the UK insisted that I fill in a diversity profile covering a lot of what is generally considered highly sensitive information. Well the only mandatory field was the date completed... so that is all they got.
Fortunately, people of non-European ancestry are treated fairly in Europe, so there is no need to keep tabs if they are being the subject of job loss more often. In the US, people of color and particularly migrants can be discriminated against, instead of welcomed with open arms like they are in Greece, Italy, and France. If there were discrimination in Europe, you could end up with concentrations of ethnic groups in the suburbs of cities like Paris. The people there might protest or riot after perceived injustices, and we wouldn't want that.
You’re 100% free to decline including it on any personnel file or application (with the exception of acting/modeling). It’s also self-identifying.
Consider that as a multi-racial pluralistic society - our values will be different than a European country whose major ethnic groups are the indigenous people.
We have an unfortunately long legacy of systematic racism issues. Communities or color experience slower emergency response times, fewer school resources and teacher pay, redlining and gerrymandered districting, food deserts, fewer public transportation options, and often fewer per capita polling stations on Election Day.
Until race stops being an observable factor for community outcomes, we still have a lot of work to do.
Many organizations see and understand this. As part of their sense of corporate social responsibility, companies make a good faith effort to hire from a ethnically diverse pool of candidates. If all your candidates are white - a company needs to ask itself if that’s a reflection of their own hiring biases or if that’s a systemic issue within the talent pool? It’s good to know these things - because industry surveys are constant - which help local leaders, non-profit organizations, colleges and universities, and governments do their jobs.
Meeting diversity goals is good for a variety of reasons. Importantly in capitalism, it’s good to investors because customers tend to prefer supporting diverse companies. Perhaps more importantly than that, different backgrounds offer different modes of thinking when it comes to problem solving. Crowd sourcing from a bigger idea pool is good for productivity.
Over here (Austria) asking about race or processing this information in regards to a job wil land the employer in hot water really quickly, since it opens them up to racism claims.
Europe has a different history with heritage and bloodlines of indigenous people so it makes sense it’s not as big of a conversation there.
In Aus, we’re a settlement too, therefore conversations of heritage matter a great deal. Speaking in practical terms, there can be potential benefits to identifying as indigenous in the form of welfare due to the disadvantages indigenous people face.
An extra reason (or even the main one) is that we have a bad history when it comes to racial registration. The countries that suffered the worst during the Holocaust were the ones that had a registry of the Jewish population that the Nazis could just look into when they took over.
The downside is that it's much harder to identify racial profiling at work for example. It's also basically impossible to see if violence on POC is more prevelant.
I'm Australian and the one that really gets me is when Americans refer to indigenous Australians as "African American" because of their skin colour. They're in no way from Africa or America, but nice job appropriating our native people.
As long as you aren't accepting any undue benefit for the mistake, I wouldn't worry too much about it. An error like that without consequence isn't really a big deal. If, on the other hand, they were giving you special tax status or something, or if you applied for a promotion and you got the promotion in part because of affirmative action whose benefit you weren't entitled to, that could be a problem.
Nah my job is terrible I'm barely getting the due benefits lol. Thank you though. I figured I'd have to do something malicious for it to matter, but I've never even thought about this stuff.
It wasn’t done intentionally on your part. Why draw attention to yourself? Just forget about it.
Besides, if your employer did do it on purpose, it won’t help to let them know that you know. They’ll just fix it, remember that you’re a potential troublemaker, and mess with someone else’s record instead. I see no upside for you.
I’d keep it. Workplaces have been brazen about promoting and hiring and firing on the basis of race lately. This should give you a significant advantage. It’s unfortunate that the law allowed companies to racially discriminate, but here we are.
what difference does it make now? 99% of white americans claim native american ancestry as if we fucked these people into extinction. everyone i know is related to a cherokee or blackfoot princess through their great great great grandparent....i even heard the same story in my family. once i got my dna test results that said "0% native american" i started to wonder exactly how many indian "princesses" there are. if you change it, best case scenario everything stays the same and worst case scenario you get fired for lying on your application. doesnt seem like a good move to rock the boat.
As a European, please help me understand. Why would you get fired? What implications does ethnicity have on your job? Why would anyone want to falsely claim to be Native American?
I can answer your last question. 1776-1970(ish) it was way better to be a mixed person of Native American decent rather than African American. So if you were ethnically ambiguous enough (a large portion of mixed people) you could claim you were mixed with something other than African American.