[Sca-cooks] the oddness of ethnicity

[Glenn Gorsuch]

Oh, the whole thing is ridiculous.  Mundanely, I work for a government
social services agency.  In the application for aid, it does ask for both
race and if the person applying considers themself "Hispanic or Latino"
(while very carefully NOT defining any of these terms for the applicants).
Then, having collected all this horribly valuable statistical data (sarcasm
alert!)...we do nothing with it.  At all.  In fact, during the interview
with the client, we then have to spend around five minutes explaining how
we're not allowed to discriminate based on any of these factors, and what
they can do if they feel we are, because the federal goverment says we can't
treat them any differently.

A friend of mine works for the local school district.  One of his jobs as
the main computer tech for them is to gather and collate all this race and
ethnicity information (which takes lots of his time)--then very carefully
protect it under various security schemes so that the policy-makers in the
state capitol -can't- have access to it.

Brilliant.  I figure, if it's all a matter of self-certifying one's
race/ethnicity, and as global genetic material gets put into a giant
Cuisinart anyway, we should categorize using something that makes more
sense:  "Preference in cuisine?"

Gwyn