BUG REPORT - Ethnicity Nonsense
We have discussed the issue of an assigned ethnicity with no factual basis many times, but I've never seen a staff response. If there has been one, please direct me to it and accept my apologies for missing it.
I'll add links to several existing threads, but this is one I saw yesterday that reminded me of the problem, again. Edith Mary Hornsby 9HZ9-R7P was born in Canada; her parents were born in England and Canada. The Source Linker "helpfully" offers American ethnicity when attaching the 1895 Minnesota State Census.
@Sam Sulser @Ashlee C. Please and thank you
Previous threads
https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/166314/two-long-standing-queries-problems-still-pending
https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/155336/ethnicity-issues
https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/141060/how-did-family-search-come-up-with-this-ethnicity-part
Answers
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Another example from the same family from a different record set - Josephine was born in Canada to Canadian-born parents. Still, she is being assigned American ethnicity with no factual basis.
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Not wishing to detract from your main point (but carrying on doing so, regardless!) I wonder if the original record (of Josephine's birth) has her race recorded as "White", as found in the image / source you reference?
Apart from ethnicity being recorded without basis, I believe this has applied to race, too, in certain sets of records - i.e., no indication at all being shown in the original documents (of race or ethnicity).
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@Paul W Josephine's 1867 birth is documented in a Roman Catholic baptismal register with no reference to race or ethnicity. Top left https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9TRQ-9X2N
The Source Linker example I attached is from her 1922 Chicago, Illinois, death record which does document her race as white but states that she was born in Canada and states that her parents were born in Canada. The image is restricted to access at AL or FSC, and I have a copy.
If you look at the Source Linker image I attached, the Source Linker offers both her race, White, and her ethnicity, American, to add to her profile. No need for both, especially when one is fiction/fantasy.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile I will send this to be investigated. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
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Thank you @Ashlee C.
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You are welcome.
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Sorry, I didn't mean to take the focus off the ethnicity issue, only to reinforce the fact that there appears to be a wider issue concerning data being added to FamilySearch indexed records that never appeared in the original papers. I wonder if this relates to the indexing process itself, or a later "refinement" of the indexed material, prior to it finding its way to the historical records database. Hopefully you (we) will eventually get to the bottom of how this occurs and - more importantly - that the practice is stopped.
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The example of ficticious 'information' that I come across most regularly is in birth records where the parents sex is indexed, Mother's Sex: Female, Father's Sex: Male.
One hundred years ago the idea that this needed recording would have been seen as ridiculous.
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