The Dropbox employee, @jazzy33ca, has set post visibility to followers only.<p>> Therefore, I choose to prioritize folks in our BIPOC and URM communities.<p>Americans have an obsession with race (more broadly, identity) that I think borders on unhealthy. As far as I can understand, at the most general level, the reason for the obsession is to address historical or current hardship due to factors outside one's control. This obsession is everywhere: in school admissions (high school and college especially), in social conversations, in framing unjust law enforcement practices, in employment, and so on.<p>What makes me uncomfortable is just how much appearance plays into assumptions about an individual, because even when it comes with good intentions, it just seems so... shallow. Why aren't there more questions related to the aspects of one's life to determine what kind of hardship/discrimination one has endured? Why must it solely focus which appearance/race/recognized group you don? Where are the questions to describe in detail unjust financial hardship, personal discrimination, or unfairly limited opportunities? Why claim a person adds diversity before you even know how adding such person (without making superficial assumptions) will add to diversity, equity, or inclusivity? For example, does this black candidate have major setbacks as a result of ancestral slavery that we should take into consideration for equity purposes, or is this black candidate a well-educated wealthy recent immigrant who grew up in a nation's upper class who currently doesn't feel discriminated against? There's no way to find out without the candidate voluntarily offering this information. Institutions love to use outward appearance as a proxy for what it purports to improve. And even if they didn't, given how badly managed and flooded recruitment currently is, I can't imagine that there is enough capacity for recruiters/computers to sufficiently handle the answers to such personal ambiguous questions.<p>In 2009, Chicago Public Schools in its high school Selective Enrollment plan moved toward awarding more points to people who live in low-income neighborhoods. While this is nowhere near perfect and is susceptible to gaming, surely this must be a better system than the one that asks for your race in a drop-down select or a list of tickboxes?<p>Lastly, without getting into too much detail, I know how easy it is to take advantage of these systems. Since no one can verify your cultural identity, and no one verifies your family/individual income, it's extremely trivial to put yourself at the front of a digital priority queue by claiming that you are such-and-such identity, and if necessary, with such-and-such socioeconomic hardship. You can also be mixed-race.<p>I'm fine with the game that Americans love, but can't we do something so that it isn't so easy to game, or base it off better and more varied heuristics?