There is a class of applications that requests information about your ethnicity. These are usually dating apps, because many people care about ethnicity and culture when it comes to dating. But these apps get ethnicity totally wrong as they internationalise their software.
For example, okcupid has the following categories available:
# Asian
# Middle Eastern
# Black
# Native American
# Indian
# Pacific Islander
# Hispanic / Latin
# White
# Other
# Undeclared
They are expanding internationally, but they are keeping these categories. What they don’t realise is that these categories mean absolutely nothing and in some ways, are grossly inaccurate when you enter an international market.
Let’s take an example: President Obama. Within the United States, his category is “black”. He is refered to on the streets as black, and he self-identifies as black. In the southern part of Africa, he would self-identify as “coloured” which is not a sub-category of “black” like it would be in the United States. Through Western and East Africa, he would self-identify as Half-Caste, a word which is offensive in the U.S, Australia and some other countries. I don’t know what he would self-identify in Brazil, but you can read the wikipedia entry yourself, and try to figure it out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_in_Brazil).
In continental European countries, those categories used by okcupid are irrelevant. There are no Native Americans, the Indians are not of a large enough population to warrant a single group, and hispanic/latin is ambiguous. Rather, in countries like Germany, the categories would go something like:
# German
# Turkish
# Greek
# Italian
# Polish
# Russian
# Serbo-Croatian
# Spanish
# Other
That’s taken from the CIA World Factbook, which is the most accurate source for internal self-identification.
Compare that to France, also from the CIA World Factbook:
# Celtic and Latin with Teutonic
# Slavic
# North African
# Indochinese
# Basque minorities
# Other
And for the overseas departments
# Black
# White
# Mulatto
# East Indian
# Chinese
# Amerindian
What does this tell us? This topic is highly complex and has to be understood natively with all potential consequences before being added to your web app. The one-size-fits-all is inaccurate for the purposes that it is being used. Those American racial categories do not fit or work in countries like India, China, Japan, Cameroun, Brazil etc.
It would be great if our world were post racial, but as engineers, we don’t have the luxury of creating products for an ideal world. We have to deal with the real world and the real needs of real users. Okcupid is not meeting the needs of real users – it’s playing safe and avoiding trouble by using the categories it understands as it expands, instead of the categories its users want.
But to be successful internationally, it is going to have to discover the internal self-identification politics of each country and add those categories to its software. Or perhaps, remove the categorisation system completely.
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I don’t think it is sensible to call a mixed-race American “Half-Caste” if his profile is viewed in East Africa. However, I like the idea of grouping racial searches in countries where that race is a minority.Do you have any ideas about a replacement for this categorisation system?I think there should be a distinction between appearance criteria (some people prefer dating the same skin colour) and looking for someone with a similar heritage (sharing the same cultural values).
I’m pretty sure “Native American” exists outside of the United States. Didn’t get your caffeine this morning?
I'm not North-American, and I'm pretty sure that "Native American" is just used in the United States…
Haha, why would Native American exist outside of the United States of America? Descendents of tribes that were already in the country when others invaded obviously exist everywhere. But they’re called different things: aboriginees in Australia, for example.I think a free text entry option would let people self identify better, and the more common entries could be presented as quick-select choices. A bit like a tag cloud. Then the true way people identify themselves will become apparent.Or maybe people wanting to date based on skin colour should have to look at the pictures?
Think harder…A Native American travels to Europe, they’re still Native American while in Europe.Shocking, I know.
Ok , I have the perfect solution to this problem ! Get ready GET RID OF ETHNICITY
– wadayathink ?people live in a global village, let’s start to forget silly things like ethnicity, “race” , these are stupid ways to describe people !
Yeah, but a European will not necessarily classify them as a Native American. The Native American may self-identify as a Native American, but someone in Britain might not. The article seemed to be trying to make a point that identification of ethnicity can vary depending where you are.Maybe Native American isn’t the best example. The differences in interpretation of “black”, “half-caste” and “coloured” is probably the best example. I imagine it gets quite complicated (but more pertinent) in a country like India where the caste system dominates the social stratification.
East Indian is not a uniform race, there are East indian blacks, East Indian Chinese and East Indian polyglots, and then the imported East Indian Aryans
At last some rationatily in our little debate.
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Thai people mark "Asian, White" to indicate they have light skin colour.
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