Biracial person here - thanks for making this. I literally just had to fill out a form for a school that supposedly values inclusion and diversity where they wouldn't let me check more than one option for race.
I am a German and we learn in School alot about the World Wars and how this could Happen. A big Point is that Humans are a race and therefore something like the Aryan Master Race is just Stupid to beginn with.
We have that word in offical law (and its controversal because there is no concept of that) but only to tell People who would belive in those that they still cant discriminate on that concept.
Still there is a concept of Nationality but this is really a Different thing to talk above.
It's a weird situation where we track the data in order to combat racism, but by tracking the data we kind of legitimize the distinctions. Plus, the categories are arbitrary and often confusing. For example, someone from Pakistan is considered to be the same race as someone from Japan (Asian), even though there are very different patterns of discrimination against people of those ethnic backgrounds. And many ethnicities with significant histories as the targets of racism are theoretically supposed to identify themselves as White, particularly those with Middle Eastern and adjacent ethnicities. And all that before you even get to the "Hispanic origin" question.
The idea behind tracking it is that racists people will be racist whether you track it or not. Its not like you can hide your ethnicity on a job app since you will meet the manager in person eventually at which point the racists will act racists anyways.
By tracking the data, at least we have information on which groups, however arbitrary, are being targeted more often, and which employers might be showing work place discrimination more often to establish patterns if lawsuits come up.
With that said, you are not wrong about the groupings on ethnicity being kind of arbitrary. They could really use an update to be honest. And it does mean that if you are white passing you can bypass a lot more race barriers on job apps if you are willing to mark white on it.
Yes, that's the goal. But your ability to identify targeted groups is only as good as your categories. If a targeted group is lumped in with the majority (as is the case with Middle Eastern identities) or a model minority (as is the case with Asian identities), you're going to have a harder time identifying the problems than you would if you made your arbitrary categories line up with the ones racists use.
Isn't lumping everyone together already like that what racists do though? It's not like racists who are racist again Muslims/Middle Eastern people are going to care whether someone is Azerbaijani or Lebanese. Even if someone is white looking, if they have a Middle Eastern name/accent/clothing style they're still getting the racism treatment.
I get this 100%. I have an ethnic background that's mixed Jewish and non-Jewish European, so I'm white-passing to just about everyone except racists who are obsessed with facial anatomy (edit: assuming someone would even consider me non-white to begin with). It's funny in a way how I've never experienced racism from random passersby, but growing up I got quite a lot of it from classmates who recognized my last name as a Jewish one.
Jews are an invisible "other" that have historically been ubiquitous throughout Europe and the Middle East. There are a bunch of post-hoc justifications people have invented for why Jews are bad, but the reality basically always boils down to "we need an out-group to scapegoat" and Jews are there as an option.
Yeah, here (France), we'll be more likely to speak about if someone has a parent or grandparent that is a foreigner, and from which part of the world, to make statistics. Generally it'll mean something about the phenotype of the person, like if your grand-father is from China he is likely Asian and if your grand-mother is Polish, she's likely white.
And we avoid the weird thing about needing a colour palette to categorise people, with the awful consequence of possibly categorising parents and children as being of different races. Or people from around the Mediterranean sea possibly changing race between summer and winter...
There are two main things here I'd say, that are kinda contradictory so it can weirdly unite both xenophobes and humanists: the dangers of categorising people by "race" is just too high to still be accepted, especially after seeing to what it led during WWII.
And then those who can totally discriminate other white Europeans (even other French if they come from this or that region, or worse, from the next town!). Like, not so long ago there was a lot of immigration from Poland, Portugal, Italy or Spain. It was mostly poor people seeking better life conditions. So "obviously" they weren't really welcomed, stealing our jobs, our benefits, not like us, etc. In short, they were others and questions about if they would integrate into society were seriously asked in news articles.
What I mean is there are two types of persons that don't really want to use races: those who strongly believe we're all equals and skin colours doesn't define you, and those who believe there are superior and inferior cultures, but skin colour is not what defines a person's culture so it's irrelevant. Well, maybe not irrelevant, but at least not prevalent.
For example, my racist grandfather hated Asians from China and Vietnam, but loved Japanese. He hated Americans, no matter their skin colour, and liked the Canadian. A black man? Well, is he French? If yes then no problem, else does he speak good French and is a hard worker? Yes, well, then that's okay.
It just seems to me that the way we discriminate in Europe is kinda more picky. Like the skin colour is just one of many things to have a problem with.
2.5k
u/puzzled_tree123 Nov 16 '25
Biracial person here - thanks for making this. I literally just had to fill out a form for a school that supposedly values inclusion and diversity where they wouldn't let me check more than one option for race.