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IBM Apologizes For Racial Slurs On Its Recruitment Webpages (theregister.co.uk)
The Register: IBM has apologized after its recruitment webpages asked applicants whether their ethnicity was, among other options, the racial slurs Yellow and Mulatto. In online application forms for positions within the US tech giant, in among other questions ranging from military veteran status, and eligibility to work in America, a bizarre drop-down menu asked whether jobseekers were Caucasian, Black, or Indigenous, as well as the aforementioned insults. The Register was first alerted to the baffling error on Monday by an engineer who tried to apply for a technical role at IBM earlier this month, and was stunned by the slurs listed for a mandatory input field labeled: "Please state your ethnic group."
Well what else would Homer Simpson be?
Time for an unironic usage of 'git blame'.
You wouldn't put that on a bank loan application, why is it on this?
The Democrats' racial theorists insist on it. The Nazis also believed that.
IBM made the machines that ran the concentration camps. They have no problem with racism.
Seriously? How is either of those words a slur?
This SJW shit is getting out of hand ...
Are you easily triggered?
I would say Race isn't something relevant you'd put on a job ad, but everything has to be about race nowadays.
Pretending to be Red or Yellow or Mulatto sure will give you a leg up, just ask Elizabeth Warren, or Rachel Dolezal or Sean King.
We'll get everything we need from the mandatory DNA test.
I used that term with a friend of mine who is mixed-race. He told me it was offensive and that it was an Italian slur that referred to a coffee drink where milk and coffee were mixed together. He said that it's not offensive because of it's content, it's because of the way people used it in the past. However, then I looked it up and it's actually a Spanish or Portuguese word with "uncertain" origins. I basically look at it like this, you shouldn't call people things they don't like. I have an unusual name and when people butcher it or alter it, I get annoyed in a hurry (mainly because it's easy to pronounce and they do it on purpose). I can imagine that a racially charged term that someone is used to being flung at them by hostile racist assholes is that much worse. However, I was glad that my friend simply explained it to me and I was able to say "Oh, well I won't be using that again, then." That's a much more pleasant method for race relations than the kind of crap the mainstream media tries to propagate. I wonder if they'd like a race war, just to improve ratings!
I'm not saying it's right, but asking for this isn't uncommon in some countries. My guess is this somehow originated from such a country.
In much or Europe, for instance, it's expected to include a picture in your CV! Something that unless you're an on-air personality would get you sued in the US because you'd be suspected of racial or age discrimination. Birth dates are also common on CVs in the EU.
So yes kids, much of the rest of the world isn't so against discriminating based on protected classes. In Italy, for instance, many jobs are advertised only for "good looking" people, and gender discrimination is open advertised for jobs like a barista.
People like to complain about the US a lot, and it's not all un-deserved. But we should also recognize there's certain things the US does a lot better than many other countries.
I'm from Europe, not from Armenia, Georgia or Azerbaijan
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I have for generations been traumatized by racist individuals calling me 'white'. Just as it is racist to call someone yellow as opposed to the more inclusive term 'Asian American'. I can now insisit everyone call me an 'European-Asian American'. This term reflects the broad continental diversity of my conquering heritage. I have been victimized for decades by being called a blanco or alba or white individual.
Victimhood is the new nobility in Western society. In the past you were noble if you conquered others. Today you are noble if have been conquered or can trace your ancestry back to people that were subjugated. This is not a formulae for the continuance of the society
Get on the victimhood train today. It is a real growth sector.
"This SJW shit is getting out of hand ..." - You should probably cry more, I hear that solves hand-full-of-shit Republican faggot problems. Make a real show of your crybaby act, get attention. You're the real victim, Trumptard.
Mulato is spanish for a mix between a white person and a black person. It's only a slur if you consider either halves of the ancestry a bad thing. There's also mestizo (white-indigenous) and zambo (black-indigenous.) Also, "negro" is just spanish for "black", and anglos insist in mis-speaking it.
Saying that a spanish word is a slur, is slurring people that have spanish as their first language. Please stop saying that spanish words are slurs, it only serves to marginalize spanish speaker, it is racist and generally disgusting. If you think continuing to do it, please consider separating yourself from society so that it can become more fair to everyone. More socially just, if you will.
Is mulatto an insult in the US of A?
so the question is meaningless right?
Remember that time Nintendo had to recall a Mario Party game because one of the ranks was "spastic?" Non-native speakers of a language can easily make a mistake like that, looking up a word without also knowing its derogatory connotations. Probably same thing here.
Just ASKING for ethnicity is a sign of racism, I wonder if they are aware of that...
Or does skin color have something to do with competence now?
I'm guessing this happened because the requirements only said to ask for ethnicity but failed to include the list. The developer went and found an obviously wrong list to force testing/acceptance to return a proper list. They all failed.
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
Lol even more snowflakes. While "yellow" is usually rather "asian", Mulatto is just a word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulatto
Damn generation of SJWs.
Better question is why it's being asked at all. Open-source doesn't ask. Why should anyone else?
This is what happens when you go to India of the Phillipines for your web development project and yell "okay, who's going to do this for the cheapest?" Tada, "localization problems" to put it politely.
Perhaps they let Watson write the job ads. Back to the lab...
Table-ized A.I.
Lurking deep in the bowels of an emulated System 36, buried under layers of middleware, obscured by COBOL, is a faithful RPG reproduction of a stack of punch cards from the 30s or 40s. IBM's unholy integration of Java and PHP has exposed this ancient evil to the world once again. Why, young web developer, would you create a new list of ethnicities when Websphere is happy to provide you with a system defined list? What could possibly go wrong?
See that "Preview" button?
Up here in Canada it's unlawful to demand someone's race on a job application. The discussion here is around the terms being used and is overlooking that the question is totally inappropriate. The datapoint has no value besides discrimination and the question is incredibly rude at the very least.
We use it all the time in my country. I mean we are though it in school.
And this is not some white majority country either.
If anything I'd call it a mulatto majority.
Extreme left: See racism in Amerikkka.
Extreme right: IBM is just using it to hire cheaper minorities and take our jobs.
Normal people: What does race have anything to do with recruitment in the first place.
Why is "ethnicity" a mandatory field? Actually, given anti-discrimination laws, why is it not a "do not say anything about ethnicity, religion or sex on this or any other form" popup?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
It's not the government's business (see 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution), it's not my employer's business, and it's not of your business.
God damn liberals are the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet and need to be put down.
The reason they're asking these questions is to make sure they have a diverse work force, instead of a qualified workforce. It's more important for a company to be a mix of culture, then it is for a company to have an able and qualified staff, because skin color diversity makes the libtards happy, and that's all that matters anymore, because if you don't make them happy, they'll just #metoo your ass and waste massive resources over hurt feelings.
We do people get so offended so quickly over silly things? I thought it was 'sticks and stones' that were supposed to hurt!
The problem is most of the "ethnicity" labels are rooted in some form of ignorance. For examples, the three terms The Register implies are legit categories of ethnicity: - If you read the history of "Caucasian," it was one of a tri-chotomy ethnic terms, the other two of which are roundly dismissed as offensive today. - The labels "black" and "white," besides being remarkably poor representations of skin tone, are rooted in a dichotomy that traces to the early days of supremacist thinking. - As for "indigenous," some consider it a white-washing (pun intended) of the many distinct cultures that inhabited present-day Canada and the United States before the age of European settlement. While it may be more acceptable than the malaprop "Indian," like "black" and "white" it does not describe an ethnicity. Truthfully, for most people, the most accurate description of their ethnic background is "Other." We all come from a differing nexus of our DNA and heritage, and to assume one is like the other simply due to skin tone or region of origin is a remarkably simplistic, and offensive, view of culture.
I'm guessing this happened because the requirements only said to ask for ethnicity but failed to include the list. The developer went and found an obviously wrong list to force testing/acceptance to return a proper list. They all failed.
This is clearly a fantasy scenario - a developer would never go out of their way to do anything. :)
If you read the article, it appeared that the "offensive" items all had a prefix of "Brazil_" and mulato/mulatto is a term that means mixed race. From what I know of Brazil, they have a good portion of mixed race people. Not sure what is up with Yellow though.
I suspect that this is simply a mistake, no need to take to the streets or smash your IBM... uh... what do they make again?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I'm guessing it was written in another language and simply went though a translation program that isn't a full AI that can understand context or political correctness. Other languages use their own terms for race that translate as such.
In Spanish they often call me "whity" and I have to remember not to take offense every time they say it and it does not carry any baggage of a slur but rather an allusion of race. Which is how language should be.
It is offensive depending on the cultural context and not all places feel the same about it. Part of the problem we have today is a series of words that are culturally insensitive in one regional dialect while also being culturally appropriate in another.
That said, what really needs to happen is people on both sides of the aisle should take a moment of consideration, before risking offense, or before taking offense, and either inquire if the other party finds that an offensive or acceptable term, or correct them if it is culturally inappropriate.
Language is not only ever evolving, but it is also overloaded and many times ambiguous. Without having a broader understanding than the average person often has, either side can make a molehill into a mountain, when it could just as easily be paved over to create the opportunity for the free flow of information.
I am mullato. First I have heard it was a slur.
Can we all agree we are of the human race?
Asking for race is an Amurrican thing. Asking for race in any context should be outlawed, state, local Federal governments included.
Racism is normal, accepted, and institutionalized in some places, like Japan. I'm sure they have a way to filter undesirables in their society.
It cannot be denied that stereotypes are unfair, of fair for some, but serves the practical purpose of simplification and time saving.
Is race used in marketing?
you were all yellow
This is hilarious because I've actually heard younger, college age kids, refer to asians as yellow thinking it's just the term for oriental people.
Asian American kids actually think yellow is just the color you use to refer to asians. It's actually hilarious and the person who made this drop down menu is certainly a young diversity hire.
After all, saying white person is at least as offensive
He won't bother. Look at his posting history. Racists gonna race.
Well aren't you a real pal and a cosmonaut...
I don't know who the dumbest motherfucker is on the planet, but you look like a good candidate for the dumbest motherfucker on this website. Fuck off, knuckle dragger.
i worked for ibm for several years and i just have to say that in my experience racism is endemic to the culture of ibm, up to and including the regional managers. i was so shocked by it that i eventually left.
i won't share all the instances of racism i encountered while working there because there are too many but i will share two:
my first day of work my coworkers told me they thought i was a "n*gger" when our team leader had told them that i would be joining them because my last name is common among black people. needless to say, i was so shocked that i went to human resources and they eventually fired one guy because of it and then my car was vandalized in the parking lot twice in obvious retaliation. since the parking lot has a guard at the entrance (this was right after 9/11 so security was high and they were checking everyone's trunk every day upon entering) and there were security cameras on the light poles so it had to have been done by an employee, and yet they never were able to prove who did it, for some reason.
several months later a mexican-american was added to our team (in southern arizona) and the regional leader made racist mexican jokes during every telephone meeting to the point that the mexican guy quit. this was back in the aughts and every vehicle in the parking lot had pro bush, "annoy a liberal" bumper stickers which i found appalling having recently moved to arizona from california.
i know it's just anecdotal but i feel compared to share my experience because it was so horrifying.