Ethnicity is an extremely important identity category, and if you want to manage that diversity you need information.

I think its an heritage from WWII, in particular the "yellow star".

France refuses to consider racial differences (and religious differences too), it seeks unity in everything, to the point that it almost drove local languages to extinction.

> Ethnicity is an extremely important identity category, and if you want to manage that diversity you need information.

As a french person I object to this. It's all about culture, not face features. If you want to study "communities", don't look at the face, look inside the head. And the idea that a government would "manage" ethnicity is exactly the kind of thing that repulses us.

What you describe is the French dream but is that somewhat a reality?

You are committing the American mistake of thinking that people sharing a skin colour also share a culture. There will be a tremendous amount of cultural difference between a black Senegalese who is a first generation immigrant and someone from the Reunion whose great grand parents were already all French citizens.

You don't need to collect ethnicity based statistics and start treating people differently based on the color of their skin to fight racism.

To which I will also add that there can be great cultural, social and/or economic differences between two first-generation black immigrants from two different african countries, or even from the same country, that it does not make real sense to lump them under the same category.

It is about “ethnicity” as in country of origin and customs, not skin color.

I was not born in the Netherlands but did spend my formative years there; my skin is certainly a fair bit darker than the average Dutchman; my eyes are more oval; my nose is wider and smaller; my lips fuller; my hair is a perfect black. — yet never have I been treated as non-Dutch.

This is very different for my parent who speaks Dutch with a Surinamese accent and has different mannerisms, as it is for my parent's younger sibling who looks quite white but also has the Surinamese accent and mannerisms.

Surinamese people in the Netherlands definitely seem to feel some sort of kinship, and large parts of my family live in areæ of high concentration of Surinamese people, but these come in all colors, many of them are quite white but speak with a Surinamese accent.

This is what the majority of the french people vote for, but of course not all french people agree with that, unfortunately.

I mean... yes? "Ethnicity" is a cultural category, not a genetic one. Specifically, its boundaries are socially-constructed, and the US is unusual in constructing said boundaries mostly around blood-quantum and hypodescent rules. e.g. the distinction between "Arab", "Jewish", "Circassian", &c ethnicities in Israeli identity documents is based on the specific criteria of those groups.

That's very different from the US keeping track of race though. After a generation there's no way for the German government to tell the children from naturalized citizens from other German citizens.

You'll also never see a German statistic even using the word "race" for humans beings.

(And criollos considered themselves "white" and were unlikely to mark themselves as "Hispanic" if it were presented as a separate option.)

US ethnic relations are weird.

This is, of course, only used for statistical purposes; this information isn't tracked on an individual basis for use in any day-to-day decisions.

That is the point. They don't track race; they track country of birth, as does Japan. — this is an objective standard.

The U.S.A. is rather unique in that it tracks subjective, self-reported race.

No we don't? Those divisions are entirely decided by the place where you live and for a few things in Brussels your language proficiency/the language you choose.

For the rest only (original) nationality and place of birth (and those of your parents) are taken into account for statistics.

> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/16/france-and-ger...

Not gathering racial statistics is the norm in continental Europe. It's mostly Anglo-Saxon people (us, uk) and their love for the idea of "race" that is the exception.

In the UK, statistics are collected on the ethnic origin of people in order to provide insights into important issues. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that deaths from COVID-19 are higher among black and South Asian groups. Without these statistics we might not back have identified that these communities are more vulnerable to COVID-19.

Another example: statistics have identified that South Asians have a much higher incidence of diabetes. That insight means health professionals can research why the risk is higher in those communities.

Statistics that capture ethnic origin can also provide insight into issues of inequality, health, employment, housing and more. In my view, capturing this data is important and helpful. Without it, insight and analysis will be incomplete.

What stands out for me in particular is that there is often talk in academic achievement and income level as a function of race, but it turns out that the far less discussed variable of the time of the year one was born in, is a bigger indicator than race.

It feels as though it be a self-fulfilling prophecy to me. They think race is so important that the moment they find anything that correlates as a function of it, they chant it, whereas race is often not even the actual proximate cause, but something else that correlates with it such as, for instance, urban residence, and no such chants are made when even higher correlations are found with other variables they don't seem to care as much about.

The first problem is how will you collect this data? Self report? Assigned by the government based on your parents? DNA test?

Who will you give this data to?

What will you do with the conclusions? Say for Covid-19, will you make rules stricter for some ethnicities? Or prioritize them for vaccines?

How do you even know how correct this data is? There's a big correlation between ethnicities, wealth and social customs. Or do you want to give the researchers also information about that?

For me all the answers on those questions are negative. I see no way to do this in an ethical way.

We already know there are issues with equality, employment etc of some ethnicities, I think collecting statistics on it will only make the racists in our society believe stronger in their views. I don't believe we can stop racism by introducing more (positive) racism.