4 ms·
On the 4473 form for background check in the US, the valid races are "White, African American, Asian, Hispanic". No other options, and no option to not specify.
by sn_master 4y ago
On the 4473 form for background check in the US, the valid races are "White, African American, Asian, Hispanic". No other options, and no option to not specify. The fun part is, you can select ALL of them, not just one, and MANY people do just that.
- aembleton 4y agoThey also have American Indian or Alsaka Native
- sn_master 4y agoYup, but still it doesn't cover many millions of US citizens. e.g Sikh, Middle Eastern, African Africans etc (not that there can ever be a list that covers such a diverse country).
- kgwgk 4y agoBlack African Africans at least would be covered by the “Black or African American” option. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Atf_form_4473-firearms_transaction_record_5300_9revised_0.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Atf_form...
- sn_master 4y agoYup, and then there's roughly the 300 million Arabs who live in North Africa who aren't covered by any of these.
- kgwgk 4y agoThat's why I said Black at least. Anyway, non-Black Arabs would fall under "white" - at least that's the intention of the creators of the form. https://www.npr.org/2022/02/17/1079181478/us-census-middle-eastern-white-north-african-mena https://www.npr.org/2022/02/17/1079181478/us-census-middle-e...
- sn_master 4y agoRight, but I assure you most of them do not consider themselves "white" by any stretch of the imagination. The term "white" has deviated so much from Caucasian/fair-skinned and became a mostly political term in the US that most Arabs specially 1st and 2nd generation would never identify with.
- kgwgk 4y agoThis one? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Atf_form_4473-firearms_transaction_record_5300_9revised_0.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Atf_form... Hipanic is not a valid race there.
- sn_master 4y agoSorry, I confused that with the race section, which also is confusing (it only has Hispanic/Non-Hispanic options).
- 1659447091 4y agoThis has always somewhat confused me, not out of obstinance, but because I dont fit neatly into any one box. Why the mix between between a color, continents/ancestor-origin, and a common language group. Those are 3 distinct types of things being lumped together while missing so many more options from those distinct things. I always mark all boxes on paper even when it's a select one bubble since I don't know which one I "belong" to. And how far back are we suppose to trace our human ancestry?
- zestyping 4y agoThe legal recognition of different races has a strange and fascinating history. Pew Research has a lovely chart showing how the race options on the census have changed over the years. https://www.pewresearch.org/interactives/what-census-calls-us/ https://www.pewresearch.org/interactives/what-census-calls-u...