Newsgroups: ut.general
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ois.db.toronto.edu!vassos
From: vassos@db.toronto.edu (Vassos Hadzilacos)
Subject: Re: "Joining the count"
Message-ID: <89Mar30.123150est.8725@ois.db.toronto.edu>
Keywords: Are you a visible minority?
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
References: <8903232049.AA29714@yorkmills.csri.toronto.edu>
Distribution: ut
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 12:31:43 EST

In article <8903232049.AA29714@yorkmills.csri.toronto.edu> clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) writes:
>
>So:  are you going to fill in question 3 on the U of T "Employment Equity
>Survey"?
>
>If you're a university employee, you're going to get this survey next week.
>Its question 3 asks you to "check the box beside the wording that best
>describes the group with which you identify."  The choices are "Aboriginal
>Person", "Black" and so on.  (Why not "Black Person", I wonder? -- but
>that's a stylistic quibble that I shouldn't bring up here.)
>
>I've always refused to answer this kind of question, or answered "North
>American", though I've never attained the level of articulateness displayed
>by Les Earnest in the February Communications of the Association for
>Computing Machinery.  (Nor, fortunately, do I have his extensive experience
>with the problem.)
>
>One of Earnest's comments seems especially relevant:  "... the fuzzy old
>concept of racial classification that had been a tool of racists for so
>long came to be embraced by their former victims and those who believed
>you had to classify everyone and compile statistics to combat discrimination."
>
>Just because question 3 refers to "visible minority groups" doesn't mean it
>isn't talking about race.  I certainly won't answer.
>-- 
>Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
>              (416) 978-4058
>clarke@csri.toronto.edu     or    clarke@csri.utoronto.ca
>   or ...!{uunet, pyramid, watmath, ubc-cs}!utai!utcsri!clarke
>

Though I agree with the sentiment that I think underlies Jim's position,
I have followed the opposite course: I have answered all questions of
the survey.

The ideal world should be colour- and sex-blind when it comes to employment.
Our world is not. The idea behind Employment Equity is that (a) this is
bad and (b) can only be changed through active intervention. I agree with
both of these statements. The idea behind the Employment Equity Survey is
that an important prerequisite to doing something to change the status quo
in this respect is to take stock of the present situation. I think that this,
too, is correct. Surely the survey should not be the end of the story; but it
is a necessary step.

Just because statistics have been (and are being) used as a tool of racists
does not mean that *every* use of statistics can only serve racist goals,
Les Earnest's comment notwithstanding.
-- 
Vassos Hadzilacos
vassos@csri.toronto.edu