Is it ever appropriate to officially refer to someone by the colour of their skin?

[maomao]

I was watching boxing on telly a while ago and the commentator was identifying the contestants by describing their shorts - the one in the stripey shorts, or the one in the light coloured shorts. It seemed a bit weird that he didn't just say the black guy or the white guy.

I can't remember seeing a boxing match where they weren't referred to by their names; there's only two of them. Referring to them by their race would be just weird.

 

[Ms Ordinary]

...

Of course, in a world without racism there would be no issues at all in describing people by skin colour in a similar way that we don’t have an issue using hair colour as a descriptor - much. But of course, we aren’t in that world.

For anything else at all self defined ethnicity should be used if anything, and most of the time think why do you need it?

I am of one (mixed) ethnicity, but frequently mistaken for various others, depending on context.

There are sometimes occasions when I wonder whether it would be more interesting if the person asking the question had to fill out a form to say what ethnicity they thought I was.

(eg a hypothetical job interview where I fill out that I am ethnicity X, but the hypothetical employer thinks I look like ethnicity Y & has prejudices about that ethnicity)

I don't claim it would be statistically relevant, it's more that I often get bored by the time I am on the third category of what I might be.

My daughter would disagree with this somewhat - she answers the ethnicity question based on her heritage, gets righteously pissed off if someone ticks 'white' without asking her, but would also be completely unsurprised & unoffended if anyone used 'white' as a casual descriptive term for her, dependent on context, because she looks white.