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Unfortunately for them, I am more than willing to talk to telemarketers and pollsters when they call my increasingly unnecessary and antiquated home phone line. Last night I had an incredibly funny interchange with a pollster that was entirely unpremeditated. About 9:00 p.m. the home phone rang and after my “hello” the woman scrambled through some papers to frantically figure out who had answered the phone. After establishing that I was the “youngest male voter registered to vote and living in the house,” the rest of the interview went something like this:
Pollster: “Sir, what is your ethnicity: black, asian, caucasian, hispanic or other?”
Me: “I have no idea.”
Pollster: “Well, are you hispanic?”
Me: “A couple of my kids are.”
Pollster: “So you are hispanic?”
Me: “I have no idea. Could you explain to me why that matters?”
Pollster: “Sir, I am just asking the questions – are you black, asian, caucasian, hispanic or other?”
Me: “How many generations back? Is there a definition for any of those answers so that I am sure that I understand the question?”
Pollster: “I’ve never been asked that before, I don’t know.”
Me: “Well, don’t you think that it would be important for me to know that so that I can correctly answer the question?”
Pollster: “Sir, all I have here is are you black asian, caucasian, hispanic or other?”
Me: “Well since you don’t have a definition and you don’t know how many generations I need to look back to give you an answer, and since scientists know that all man came from Africa 50,000 years ago or so, I guess the only truthful answer is that I am African-American.”
Pollster: “African-American?” (sounding quite suspicious)
Me: “Well from the very little information you have given me to answer the question, yes, African-American.”
Pollster: (sounding happy just to be moving on) “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?”
Me: “Republican”
Pollster: “A strong Republican or a weak Republican?”
Me: “A strong Republican.”
Pollster: “Thank you.” (click) phone call abruptly ends.
Now it was not my intent to torture this poor woman but she just happened to run into one of my “serious questions about modern-day society” – just what does race mean? During the civil rights movement things were clear and understandable, we were fighting to end bias based solely on the color of someone’s skin. It didn’t matter what color the skin (black, asian, hispanic, etc.) we were simply fighting for equal treatment for everyone. It didn’t matter if someone was from Cuba, or Ecuador or Mexico, the only thing that mattered is “were they subject to bias and poor treatment simply because of how they looked?” If they were, we fought to change that.
Today, race has taken on an entirely new and not positive face. It matters more where you are from than what you look like and is almost irrelevant if you are subject to bias. I have five kids and even people who have known my family for a long time have difficulty knowing “whose are whose” because we have raised them all as “ours” since they were so little they no longer remember anything else. Two of my kids are of European “Spanish” descent with a hispanic last name and three are not. These five kids have had the same upbringing, the same opportunities and the same tools available to them and all five have been treated by the whole world the same. However, we have been told that when we fill out university applications, make sure that we use their “real” last names and to clearly indicate that they are hispanic to improve admission chances and financial aid opportunities. Really? Does that make sense to ANYBODY?
Fifty years ago it was difficult for anyone other than a white male to get a job in corporate America and one of the bad reasons given for those biased hiring decisions was “that is what the client’s want, we have to give the client’s what they want.” Unfortunately today hiring decisions are no more merit based than they were 50 years ago. Diversity is hailed as the be all and end all with hiring decisions made based up race and gender much like in the past, just different races and different genders. The present is no better than the past and until we start to look beyond race and gender and simply look at the quality of the person this cycle of nonsense will go on forever.
I will return yet again since I book marked it. Money and freedom is the best way to change, may you be rich and continue to help others….
. Just right task, cheers….
)…
I find it interesting that once they found out you were a strong republican the conversation/poll ended… I wonder if you had said if you were a weak democrat if the conversation would have kept on going…. Race is race that will always be around… These days being white is a hinderance
Back in the days of landlines I used to work for a company based in Maryland called Macro International. We conducted statistical surveys for virtually every branch of the Federal government. We did studies for some states and also, much more rarely, for private companies as well. The number one survey was for HUD. We called an area relentlessly until we had a certain number of complete surveys that would allow DC to know what the fair market rent was for a one bedroom or two bedroom apartment in that region. A computer dialer made the calls – thank God – and we would sit in a cubicle and read the script from a screen. If the person answering said he owned his home the survey was over. If they lived in a mobile home, ditto. To reveal the focus of the studies to the subject would result in skewed data as people have an uncanny instinct for telling you what they think you want to hear, whether it’s true or not. While I now believe it is highly likely I spoke to Mr. Willis many times on behalf of HUD, NOAA, NSF, Chase etc. I can promise you getting a joker live on the line after twenty minutes of busy signals and counting out five rings and hanging up was not a nightmare. Free entertainment and a paycheck at the end of every other week which was substantial enough that I could afford to pay my rent AND eat (every other week.) This past spring I dusted off those skills and put in a few volunteer hours auto-calling from home via Ron Paul’s web-based campaign system. Not much has changed though reaching people on cell phones was odd at times, especially if they were driving or at a movie theater. Whoever was funding the survey Mr. Willis describes above wanted precise data on a specific population defined by area, race and political bent. This helps them decide where to spend their dollars as they seek to reach undecided voters or to sway ‘softies.’ Just because they terminated when he reported that he was a strong Republican doesn’t mean the Democratic Party was behind the study. It could well have been the Romney people. Often times in political polls the subsequent questions are really just propaganda poised as questions. “Do you think it’s wrong that Barack Obama supports murdering unborn children?’ etc. As for the issue of race, it may well be that an area reporting high percentages of Hispanic voters has Spanish language radio and television and a campaign may be trying to decide how effective paying for adverts on these channels and stations might prove to be. There’s no telling not knowing. And if you knew, your answers would be worthless and thus excluded when they crunch the stats.
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“It’s not all a conspiracy to keep you in little boxes.” – Mark Corrigan (BBC 4′s ‘Peep Show’)
Caucasian is not an ethnic group. As a first generation American of Irish ethnicity I have little or nothing in common ethnically with someone whose ethic background is Russian. And maybe not much racially either. I resent being grouped as though “all you white people are alike”.
Funny thing is if you are European Spanish or Portugeese they try to group you as “hispanic” whereas neighboring France and Italy are “caucasion.” As soon as you wander away from preventing discrimination and towards “creating diversity” it is a slippery slope into the morass of the nonsensical.
When pollsters call me I ask them:
1) Are my answers to your questions valuable to your company? They always respond “Yes!”.
2) Then I ask “So if my answers are valuable to your company, how much will you pay me for them?” Deep pause. They typically say “Well, we don’t pay for answers.”
3) I say “Well if my proprietary answers are valuable to you but you won’t pay me, why should I disclose my Proprietary information?” Pause, as they are starting to get frustrated, and sometimes they hang up on me. They usually just erpeat they don’t pay for info.
4) I say “I insist that you get me a supervisor who can authorize my fee!” Now they don’t know what to do. And it goes on from there. Lots of circular reasoning applied by me on what we are doing.
The point is that I am wasting their time, causing them to talk to fewer people. That is the number one thing you can do to make them mad because they have quotas for how many people they contact. I have done my public service for the day! When you have a day without a pollster, thank me for the silence…
When i get a phone call like this..i asked them to hang on for second someone is at the door and then i leave them waiting for a very very very very long time…it also works for Telemarketing.
After I originally left a comment I appear to have clicked on the -Notify
me when new comments are added- checkbox and now each time a comment is added
I recieve four emails with the exact same comment. Perhaps there is a means you can remove me
from that service? Cheers!