Viewpoints Empower yourself - define your own ethnicity | Empower yourself - define your own ethnicity |
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One part of my responsibilities at work is testing computer software to ensure that it is fit for use. Recently, whilst I was in the middle of testing, I had the opportunity to share my views on ethnicity and gender with some people at work. A software error had been detected during testing and the error related to the ‘Ethnicity" data item being transmitted from an external system as ‘Black African’ and interpreted on our system as ‘Mixed – White and Black African’. My colleague, Pete, the man responsible for resolving such problems, argued against the error's validity in the hope it would be relegated to the scrap heap. Pete wrote: “Hold on a sec - is this really an error? Is there a doc somewhere stating how we should be interpreting these? What does ‘White and Black African’ actually cover, if it doesn't refer to someone who is either White African or Black African? Presumably it's not possible to be White and Black at the same time in any country (unless you have some clever oscillating disguise). “I'd have thought that if someone considers themselves ‘Black African’ then they fit more closely to the ‘White and Black African’ category than the simple ‘African’ (which presumably could include other racial influences from e.g. Arabic countries).” I responded as follows: “My understanding is: ethnicity on this system is ‘self defined ethnicity’ rather than ‘state defined ethnicity’. As such, it has nothing to do with one's physical characteristics such as skin, hair and eye pigmentation, or the ability to oscillate between two colours. It also has nothing to do with one's country of origin or cultural influences. It is based on what the person believes himself/herself to be. So if my entire ancestry is genetically white except for one genetically black great-grandparent, I could do one of the following: a) class myself as a white person because that is how I physically appear to most people - white. b) class myself as a mixed race person (black and white) because I wish to align myself more closely with black roots and black culture even though I could pass myself off in society as a white person. c) class myself as a black person because I'm a black separatist and want to totally immerse myself in the black world and have nothing to do with white people. Either one of the above would be fine with the user should I find myself a party to a case on the system. I think we have to careful not to pigeonhole someone's self-defined ethnicity e.g. "if you say you are not pure white, then you must be black" - which sounds very much like a white supremacy view. In apartheid countries, race carries connotation of power i.e. "if you are not 100% racially desirable, then you must be racially undesirable." This one-to-one ethnicity mapping on this system ensures that we don't fall into the trap of pigeonholing (which would require many-to-one mapping), although this is very much limited by the range of allowable values one is able to select from in the first place. It's like being given a menu at a Chinese restaurant one can't expect to see on it everything there is to eat in this world. I once met an American man who is one-eighth Native American, one-eighth Chinese, one-quarter Irish, and one-quarter French. I asked him how he defined himself. He said, "I see myself a white male Caucasian". Another man with same genetic makeup might see himself as a Native American. In addition, anyone who has seen the film, 'Dances with Wolves' knows that it's possible for a white man to class himself as a Native American. Exercising one's right to define one's own ethnicity is part of free thought and free speech. I guess in a fairly limited way, Gender on the system is also self-defined. If I'm a transsexual, won't I be allowed to define myself as a 'Female'? If I'm a hermaphrodite and have, since birth, lived my life as a man, won't I be allowed to define myself as a 'Male'? Whether or not, society accepts my gender definition is another issue. Some years ago, a male employee in our company had a sex change and afterwards used the women’s toilet in the offices. If special permission had been given, it was given without consulting the views of the company's female staff. Some women felt extremely uncomfortable with the idea of sharing the same toilet facilities with a transsexual. One woman would go as far as walking out of the toilet as soon as she sees the transsexual. So the question is: Is Man minus male genitalia equals Woman? From the male perspective, the answer is likely to be yes because "if a man hasn't got the 'bits' then he can't be a man and if he isn't a man then he must be a woman and if he is a woman then he should use the women’s toilet". From a female perspective, being a woman is more than having missing male genitalia. Some women may find it hard to accept a transsexual as a woman simply because a transsexual can never experience what it means to be a woman - female puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, miscarriages, childbirth, menopause, hysterectomy, etc. and all the subtle feelings of being a girl in a man's world. Similarly, is Woman plus male genitalia equals Man? I guess most men would think not. I guess self-definition of ethnicity and gender is fine so long as it doesn't have to depend on group acceptance. It's the same with language. A male radio presenter said that we've gone over the top with PC language. He said, "Do we really have a need for 'spokesperson' or 'chairperson' when for years women didn't mind being referred to as 'spokesman' or 'chairman'?" Did he ever stop and think how many men would mind being referred to as 'spokeswoman' or 'chairwoman'?” Pete went silent for a while. He is presently fixing the error.
Wong Yew Yun Self-Defined Ethnicity: Chinese |
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