Help! A self-identification problem! Argh!

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When applying to jobs, they keep asking for my ethnicity. I've been putting caucasian for that, but DNA tests have revealed I had a hispanic ancestor 6,000 years ago. Am I being honest, or should I be putting "mixed"? Why isn't there a "confused" option? If 22% of people in Britain can be Jedis on the national census (including senior police officers), why can't I have an ethnicity of "elf"? I demand equal opportunity to non-human intelligent life-forms!

I deal with 'sensitive data' as part of my job. From knowing what we do with it (usually just broad statistics as a check that no real bias is going on) I wouldn't worry about anything going back past 2 generations for the 'mixed' category. The people recieving your data will only need a broad picture of you and how you may be percieved to ensure that no discrimination etc is going on.
For example I put down 'white british' (one of the possible categories in the uk) even though I know that one of my great grandfathers ran away from a farm in france when he was 16, and nobody knows who another of my great grandfathers was.

My dad put down Jedi in the last census as his religion.

If you really object to being categorised in that way there is always an option do decline to say, or put down 'other'.

By law, they are only required to ask for that data. They can not require you to provide it.

I refuse to provide it. They say they don't use it in hiring, but I think that's a load of BS. Personnel sees your paperwork, and if they're trying to meet hiring quotas, don't tell me they don't look at that part of the application.

This. You're not obligated to tell your ethnicity. I usually leave it blank as well.

If you go back 6000 years, almost everybody is of mixed ethnicity. Race is a social construct, not a genetic one.

Very true, but since we really know that these questions, although supposed not to count for/against a person actually do, then the following must hold true:

Autistic hiring managers obsessed about genetics will only hire people who say they're mixed race or African (depending on level of obsession) as everyone else must be lying and who wants to hire a liar?

Neurotypical hiring managers will only hire people who don't think about what the question actually means at all.

Geeky hiring managers will only hire people who give answers that are strange but true, especially if they listen to Coast-to-Coast.

Since there's a non-zero probability that a person will inherit NO genetic material from any given ancestor other than direct male ancestral line (but only for men) and the direct female line (but only if you consider mitochondrial DNA, hiring managers who are experts in maths or statistics can claim an answer of mixed can never be proven.

I don't remember enough to be able to google the source, but I remember reading some study that revealed that a surprisingy high percentage of US citizens tend to change what they give as answer on those tests. I think mostly it's because they have a clearly mixed background and tend to change which part they identify more at a given time, so they put the current one down.
What do you yourself believe is being honest? A singe ancestor a 6,000 years ago makes you probably more 'Causcasian' (not that I agree with that concept) than the vast majority of those who are convinced to be 'Causcasian'.

I would say that culturally I'm "Caucasian" (although I too have problems with the concept) and I would say that for all practical purposes that would be the most accurate of a collection of amazingly meaningless labels. However, I would also say that I am deeply obsessive over what people mean by a question. From all the answers posted on this thread, it's obvious that nobody seriously believes that the question is actually intended to ask what it literally asks. The question is clearly intended to ask something else.

My problem is, and has always been, that we're supposed to sign off on all answers being absolutely 100% honest, with stiff penalties in the event of anything being untrue, but nobody is willing to write down what the questions really are. They're only willing to write down some secret code that's a substitute for the real questions. If I can't know what the question actually is, I can't know if I'm giving the right answer.

I have actually lost jobs over time because of the refusal of employers to be honest but their demand that employees mind-read what is supposed to be meant. (I even got fired from one job after making the mistake of letting a boss know I was Aspie.) Of course, since enough neurotypicals know the secret code, it doesn't bother neurotypicals that nobody else does, and it's an open secret that formal complaints about unfair dismissal are an excuse for employers to not hire a person. "Troublemakers" aren't popular.

Some small bits and pieces of this secret code I've learned over time, though I still believe that I should not need to learn anything that an employer is not willing to admit to. The self-identification question, though, is a real killer. Whatever answer I give, I'm giving a false answer if you look at the question in some other way, and that's grounds for dismissal with cause. (They can dismiss you without cause anyway, which means that even if I learned their code and closed every loophole I could, they could still sack me on finding out I'm Aspie or have a seizure disorder. And they're going to, since I need to see a doctor during regular office hours to get medicines to stop me getting seizures. They just have to officially list it as being without cause and it's all legal.)

I'm tired of all this, I'm tired of trying to play-pretend being normal and a good little puppy so big boss won't kick me, I'm tired of the fundamental dishonesty that all corporations thrive on, but you can't buy food or pay rent with integrity. It's not a legal currency. The best I can do is keep learning more of the code and keep learning new ways to hide me. It's the only way to keep an apartment (I'm being kicked out for being Aspie as well, because there's ways they can make that ok) and it's the only way to keep a job.

And I guess this is what upsets me so much. If I can't be me at home and I can't be me at work, and I have to have home and work to have anything at all, then I can never be me at all. It's not even really safe to really be me online, since the news is forever filled with bosses using what they discover online to punish employees.

And you know what? I live in one of the least prejudiced States in the US, which is one of the least prejudiced countries in the world, at a time when it's the least prejudiced it's ever been. This isn't good.

You know what else? If anyone on this board were to argue that I was whinging and that 95% of the population had it far, far worse, they'd have a point. 95% (or more) of the population does have it worse. I'm not entirely sure why the fact that people can treat 95% of the population even worse makes it any better. If anything, shouldn't it make it worse that those 95% are being treated far more badly than anyone had realized? Or am I supposed to derive comfort in their misery somehow? Or maybe they just mean that if I don't shut up that I could join those who are treated worse. (See: "Demands with menaces".)

And, yes, the thing that really set me off on this whole chain was that damnable self-identification.

I think you're looking a bit too far into it.

The people who are reviewing the applications are more interested in education and work experience than your race - the reason that they ask for racial information is for statistical purposes. The companies need these statistics in case, for example, an employee feels as though the employer is racist and sues. The employer can then bring up these statistics and show the courts that they interviewed/hired X number of people who identified with that specified race.

As for honesty on that portion, you are being honest by saying you are Caucasian when you had a Hispanic ancestor 6000 years ago (how you would get such a finding is beyond me). This is because the question that you are answering is not asking for genetic information - it is asking for the ethnicity that society considers you to be. For example, If you have black skin and both of your parents have black skin also, then society considers you to be black.

Race is not a concept that makes a lot of sense, but there are people who care enough about it to make it an issue.

~Saiyan

To your first point, if I could tie some string to my moods, I'd be the yoyo champion of the world for the 10th time running since being diagnosed, so yes it's quite possible I'm over-analyzing. In fact, when you combine random mood swings with Aspie tendencies to over-analyze, you get this wonderful thing called overheated brain.

To your second point, I've had my mitochondrial dna fully sequenced. This allows me to identify how closely I'm related to someone on the matrilinear line over the past 10,000 years or so and allows me to see how my ancestors moved across Europe over that sort of timeframe. Which is great if you like seeing pretty pictures with arrows on them, but because so few people can afford to get tested (and of those who can, very few want to), the results are actually rather useless except as an art form and as a bunch of geeky-sounding labels I can throw around.

(Back when I could afford such tests, I also got my Y chromosome tested. Apparently, I'm I1d-L21-uN2. Now, if THAT were an option, rather than Causasian, I'd have no hesitation. It also makes a great alternative on a social networking website to giving a starsign. Well, except in neither case it is an option, so again it's utterly useless for anything.)