The Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, sex, and color. “Color” discrimination has generally been seen as pretty much a synonym for race or ethnicity discrimination; I suppose that inclusion of the term makes clear that, for instance, discrimination against dark-skinned blacks and in favor of light-skinned blacks is illegal, but in litigation there’s rarely much of a discussion of color as such, separately from race.
But employees who file complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission generally don’t know that. They see that they may allege discrimination on various bases, including color, so they allege color discrimination as well as race discrimination. And then they have to self-describe the color.
This yields some odd results: It’s common for people to self-describe as being “white” or “black,” but it’s a bit strange — especially given modern norms — to see the 133 FLB-EEOC decisions where a person has labeled his color as “yellow” and 19 where the person said “red.” Still more unusual is when people get too literal: hence the seven cases where people said they were “tan,” two “beige,” one “chocolate,” one “pink,” and one “off-white.”
I’m pretty sure there’s no broader legal or political point flowing from this — but it’s an odd circumstance that I thought some readers might find interesting.
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