I think I suffer from Stultophobia

So, the company I work for sent out an email asking that its employees "self-identify" their race, their veteran status, and if we have a disability. Naturally, this is because our wonderful Imperial Federal Government needs to keep tabs on its citizens, and make sure that the company is keeping the right number of "correctly colored/specially-abled people" in the right jobs. I mean, that we aren't discriminating by actually hiring effective people who can get the job done.

One might wonder whether one would be subject to reciprocity should he decide to not self-report. Our HR department assures the reader that no such penalties will be forthcoming.

However, there was this quote I managed to pick out of the missive:

Giving employees the opportunity to self-identify is the federal government's preferred method for employers to obtain race and ethnicity information. If an employee declines to self-identify, the employer is required to obtain the race and ethnicity information either through existing employment records or through visual identification.

Translation: If you refuse, we'll simply send someone over to look at you and we'll check a box based on our assumption of what your race is. Which totally misses the point of getting away from judging people on the content of their character instead of their external physical appearance.

Charlize Theron . . .

























a true African-American. I suspect she would be misidentified, although she is just about as African-American as one can get, being born on the continent of Africa to parents who were citizens of a nation in Africa, and later in her adult life became an American citizen.

Contrast that, if you will, with . . . Michelle Obama . . . no, wait, Oprah W., who was not born in Africa, who's parents weren't born in Africa, and who will, in all likelyhood, never live in Africa.

So today I'm Pacific Islander. Tomorrow I might be Alaskan Native.

For the record, I hold veterans in too much esteem to lie about my military status. But as soon as I can get some documentation that I suffer from a fear of stupid people, I'm marking myself as disabled. If you think my boss isn't paid enough money to deal with me, you're probably not alone.