[em-bee]

so don't track race, but track location of birth, location of birth of parents (and grandparents) and all their respective native languages and local language capacity.

in europe most of that should correlate with the questions we want to answer since there shouldn't be many immigrants that have been here for more than a few generations and speaking the local language fluently. those who have been here longer should be well integrated by now.

in the US that wouldn't work because discrimination happens despite people having been there for many generations all speaking fluent english.

[hot_gril]

> in the US that wouldn't work because discrimination happens despite people having been there for many generations all speaking fluent english.

Is there not discrimination against black people in Europe? Might be hard to tell considering that the designation isn't even recorded. The only other large minority racial group I can think of there is Arabs, but most of them migrated very recently.

[em-bee]

Is there not discrimination against black people in Europe?

there is. my point is that you can discover them by tracking their origin and language. no need to track their race. it's extremely rare that any have been living in europe for more than two, maybe three generations (maybe a bit less rare in france, belgium, netherlands due to their colonies).

EDIT: the guardian article actually touches on that and argues that migration background is being tracked, but doesn't work, but if i understand it correctly, they don't track previous generations.

but anyways, my suggestion is just a hack on the current law. what we really need to focus on is identifying factors that lead to discrimination and statistically track them. skin color is such a factor. if the law prevents that, then and we can't find another way to solve the problem, then maybe it should be changed.