IBM sorry after jobs page asks hopefuls: Are you white, black or yellow? | Hacker News Reader

IBM sorry after jobs page asks hopefuls: Are you white, black or yellow?

theregister.co.uk

26 pointsrmason9 comments

I suspect that the Brazil_ in the field name is the key. Brazil has a different cultural and legal understanding of race and affirmative action. See https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/...

Surprised they didn't ask about age, given their absymal record of ageism and pushing so many out prior to retirement so they can break promises made to employees.

Kudos for IBM, though, for not playing this as background music on their hiring page: https://youtu.be/YSlNFMMqUs8

> it appears the biz somehow took the Portuguese word amarelo, which is used in Brazil to describe people of Asian descent

... the word may be used for that, but it most assuredly does mean "yellow" as well, and the use as an ethnonym is NOT a coincidence.

Sure. But is it offensive in Brazil?

I really don't know -- in english it is, obviously, but white/black are seen as fairly neutral. And these things shift weirdly with time.

Ditto mulatto I guess (which was also in their list) -- I had an idea this was still a neutral term in parts of latin america, but could be wrong.

In ten years you will be encouraged to upload your DNA sequences in an application and it's still "optional".

With an asterisk that leads to 59 pages of legalese and somewhere in the lines you're giving up all rights to your own genetics...

In 20 it'll be already in their database as part of a public/private partnership, and they will just send out acceptance letters to people they want, much like the old sweepstakes envelopes of years past.

The derogatory word choice aside I'm surprised that this is even in the form, especially location independent, because there must be jurisdictions where asking for an employees ethnicity is or borders on discrimination.

Illegal in France. Even for the general census the govt can't collect ethnicity or religion.

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