system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Answering questions about race or ethnicity can only lead to discriminatory results

This question pertains to those questions on applications, often government applications, which ask about the racial background of the applicant. At least in the US these are normally marked as optional, I very rarely if ever see one on an official application (rather than some weird online thing that doesn't matter) that is actually required. But, for whatever reason, the application to enroll or oldest kid into kindergarten has questions for 'local race (select one)', 'is the student of Hispanic origin?' and 'federal race (choose all that apply)'

I fundamentally disagree with the asking of these sorts of questions because while I believe the data may be interesting at times, I don't see many ways in which it can ultimately be used that are not discriminatory toward one race or another, or simply used to contextualize things in a racial way that I feel we need to move beyond. 

Thus, I typically simply or these questions. But the rigid online school application won't let me move on without these required questions being answered. My default impulse was to fill in obviously useless data (i.e. for question 1: asian; 2: yes, of Hispanic origin; 3: select black, white, Asian, Pacific islander, all the ethnicities!) Having had the night to sleep on it I decided it may be a better approach to come here and see if there are actually useful but non-discriminatory ways in which this data is likely to be applied and which may thus motivate me to answer honestly rather than get into it with the school right off the bat :)
gpt
I live the in a community that has a large Arab population. Since 9/11, they regularly refuse to fill out their race and ethnicity on government forms, fearing that to do so will lead to government surveillance and harassment. Or if they do they fill out “white.”

Last election rolls by, and there was surprisingly high turn out by the community. Out of a community of several tens of thousands, normally only a hundred show up to vote. (Again they are afraid to register to vote, believing it will be used against them). This time over a thousand show up to vote. Yet many are turned away at the polls (which is illegal, separate issue) because the polls do not have enough translators or forms printed out in Arabic and Farsi.

The government needs this sort of information to properly serve communities.