Who gets to decide what race I select on official documentation?

I think I put down that I was Native American once.
Interesting question.

Wow, my mind has been blown. For real, can they fine you or whatever for falsifying your race, and can they even prove it? I think you can get away with it as long as it’s not too much of a stretch.

You get to decide how you identify yourself. You can put down whatever you want.

It’s not like the old day’s where you were declared “negro” if you were more than 1/16th African American.

@zenvelo so I can get a black scholarship, though I look more like I belong in the Klan!?

For the most part you decide. There were “rules” back when I was learning about such things in high school. The old rules went something like half white half black, you are black. Half black half Polynesian, you are Polynesian, and so on.

Even now you cannot just say you are Native American and get free tuition at college without going through a process to prove you are Native American (I think you need to be 1/8 to get tuition). But, if you are not asking for some sort of minority advantage, probably you can list whatever you want.

I had a neighbor who put African American when she wanted to get her sun into a magnet school, they held aside slace for minorites. She was white, blond, basically a Barbie Doll, and her son was the same coloring. Thing is she was African, so she went ahead amd checked it. She wound up putting her son in a private school, but it would have been interesting to see what the school would have said.

When I worked for the Census, we were required to ask the question, “What race do you associate yourself with?” Then we would read off the list of races as determined by the U.S. Census, including “other”. We were told that we had to mark any and all boxes that the person chose (you could mix and match) even if we thought the person might be of a different race. And if the person chose not to answer the question, we had a little form that we filled out saying that the person chose not to answer that question, but we were not allowed to speculate or guess or add in something.

If the person chose “other” then we had to ask them, “Which “other” group would you like to list? Most of the time, when “other” was chosen, it was by people of Mexican or South American decent, because “hispanic” and “Latino” are not considered to be races as determined by the U.S. Census. So many times, people would be very confused, because when I read off the list of Census approved races, they didn’t see their’s listed. So then I would have to explain to them, that it was up to them to decide which race they would like to pick, or if they would like to pick “other” and then they could write in anything that they wanted. Most chose Mexican, or Hispanic, or would name the actual country that they were from.

So we were required to ask the question, but it was left up to the person to choose whatever race he wanted to mark in the box, or to choose other and pick something that seemed correct for him/her, or to leave the box blank, and then I would fill out a form.

So I’m guessing that on most official forms, you could write in “other” or “choose not to answer” or you could make something up. Because they have no way to determine what race anybody is.

As was pointed out to me, many, many, many times, on my job at the Census, there is no such thing as race, it’s a man made concept.

A lot of people just laughed when I asked the question, because with most people it was fairly obvious. So I would usually say before I asked them the question, “This is going to sound a little bit silly, but I have to ask this next question.” The funniest part was when I was required to ask each person, out loud, if they were male or female. I would usually joke with them and say something like, “Ok, then we’re going to assume that your husband Robert is a male, correct?” It was a lot of fun.

Here the general definition of an Indigenous Australian is someone who is a descendant of an Indigenous Australian, who identifies as Indigenous, and who is recognised as Indigenous by members of their community. If a person wanted to join a board as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person or something else that demanded they prove their indigeneity, they might have to provide evidence that their community does recognise them as being from an Indigenous background.

On some federal paperwork, if you make an error, such as checking ‘black’ when you are not, it can take years to get it sorted out, if you can at all.

@Ltryptophan You can likely identify yourself as whatever you choose on most paperwork. However, you probably shouldn’t assume you can get scholarships, etc. based on that. For example, my cousins are 1/8 Cherokee. They can put that (or anything else) on a form that asks what race they consider themselves. But when one of my cousins wanted to get a scholarship meant for Native Americans, he had to be able to prove that he had a certain percentage of Cherokee blood.

In certain states in the 19th century, Native Americans were recorded as “Black” because it was the only permitted alternative to white. It has caused problems for Native Americans who are trying to document their tribal relation and their entitlement to certain benefits.

@majorrich: what do you mean “get it sorted out?” Get what sorted out? Why would he have to get anything sorted out?

@jca Native Americans are entitled to free tuition at some schools, or they might want to be accepted into a tribe, several reasons. They need to be able to trace back Native American lineage for the privelages.

When I was in the service I inadvertently checked ‘black’ in a race box and nearly lost my spot in an operations team of Asians. (1st group). It was a huge hassle to fix. I would have been reassigned to Conus, and I liked where I was. Good thing I was in the personnel section and had a boss who helped a lot.