United States businesses aren't supposed to ask their applicants or even employees to disclose their ethnic background. However, Equal Opportunity Employer regulations require companies to track that info. See my notes from a previous blog entry for more detail about this stupid stuff.
So, you can imagine my surprise today when I had a conference call with my corporate HR boss and he asked if the new employee (K) we were replacing an old employee (L) with was black. My Gruff Boss asked why. Corp HR boss said, "Well, I just wanted to see if we were replacing a black person with another black person.
I told HR Boss that the old employee was actually white. We think he assumed she was black due to her name.
I wish I had said to him that I hadn't determined what either employee's race was because that information couldn't be used to make HR decisions.
