Doug Miller wrote:
In article , "HeyBub"
wrote:

Hmm. In the U.S., you CAN'T ask about race, gender, and ethnicity.

Nonsense. Job applications ask for that all the time. What's
prohibited is to *require* people to provide that information, or
discriminate against them on
the basis of what, or whether, they answer.

You're right. Still, to avoid the appearance of discrimination...

My ex-wife worked for the telephone company and was in charge of the
department that maintained personnel records. At one point, they were under
a federal judicial (consent) order prohibiting the recording of any
employee's race or sex. Meanwhile, they had to provide tabulations to the
EEOC monthly breaking out department totals by, inter alia, race and sex!

Here's how they did it:

They had a category (among many others) called "12-2-9 punch in column 7"
which meant "Caucasian." No where in any file was that translation defined;
those who needed to know, knew.

I blame this procedure for making her insane.