I have a suggestion for an alternative and equally valid way of categorising people, and it is encapsulated in this chart:
Friday, October 14, 2011
Friday grump
I have ranted before about the pernicious practice of asking people to declare their ethnicity whenever they are dealing with a government body or large public organisatin. I was asked to do so yesterday when I went to the Princess of Wales Hospital in Ely to have my pelvis x-rayed. Of course I refused, and not just because they didn't have a category "wobbly pink blancmange".
I have a suggestion for an alternative and equally valid way of categorising people, and it is encapsulated in this chart:
Immediately, I hear the bleating of the equa-pop sheep: "Unfair to women!" Don't worry, I am working on a chart for females. But it's going to need a section for transgender, transsexual and those who just can't make up their minds what they want to be when they grow up. We owe it to our bureaucrats to get it right.
I have a suggestion for an alternative and equally valid way of categorising people, and it is encapsulated in this chart:
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2 comments:
There is a degree of rationality when asking about ethnicity in a medical context. Different racial groups respond differently to certain drugs (just like dichlofenac is lethal to Old World Vultures but not any other families of raptors, apparently)
One day soon, we are promised, drugs will be tailor-made to an individual's DNA profile.
Thank you for this information. I think you may have given your identity away with that reference to dichlofenac!
Yes, if ethnicity is relevant to medical treatment, then it is for the doctor to ask, although in many cases, a person's race should be obvious. Looking at me, a wobbly pink blancmange, what else could I be other than caucasian?
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