These jokes are definitely inflammatory. It is a brand of humour that identifies things other people think are important then points out that they are ridiculous. His colleagues could be quite upset. I would expect being fired from most tech companies for making the observations in the "Kind of Racist" routine; although I have the wrong skin colour for it so the ice is presumably thinner for me than for him. There is some real girl from HR that was doing that in his company who is probably quite committed to the work.
One could argue the steps the HR person did in the "Kind of Racist" sketch are inflammatory themselves...
At least in Germany I think it would be unacceptable for an HR person to ask if somebody considers themselves a person of color in an official context.
Agree. I just submitted a thoughtful - and entertaining – article on this subject by computer scientist, Les Earnest. From the sixties onwards, he identified himself as a mongrel rather than allow himself to be classified by any one meaningless and not-very scientific concept of “race”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38907226
> in 1966 I discovered that something very good had happened: the race question had disappeared from the security clearance form. In fact, this question disappeared from nearly all government forms then. I liked to think I helped that change along.
> I have argued that all historical and present racial and ethnic classification systems for individuals are nonsensical and so are the laws, court decisions, computer applications, and bureaucratic superstructures that have been built on top of them.
> At least in Germany I think it would be unacceptable for an HR person to ask if somebody considers themselves a person of color in an official context.
I’m regularly asked that question in official contexts in the last few years. American companies make hiring decisions now based on racial identification. Big companies even require their vendors and service providers to factor race into staffing decisions.
It’s illegal under American law, but in the last decade or so corporate HR departments have gotten some funny ideas.
But that's to collect statistics for the US Government.
If you as an employer were to take _any_ actions based on that information it would be illegal.
So after you get hired and provide that information for government statistics collection, why would your employer ever need to ask you for it afterwards?
> So after you get hired and provide that information for government statistics collection, why would your employer ever need to ask you for it afterwards?
Because your employer wants to collect statistics too.
They aren't "barred from any action", they can, e.g., publish reports on those statistics - it sounds like you don't even want the questions to be answerable...
Why? Who cares about this and what's the reason they must care?? Affirmative action? Race "quotas"?? How do you know it will not be used in the exact opposite manner? It's simply better to treat everyone equally (I know, radical notion) and stop this madness.
It’s certainly believable that there actually was a real girl who was doing that at his work, but we should also probably stop taking comedic storytelling as truth without question. See: recent Hassan Minhaj controversy, etc.
