A lot of it has to do with equality and countering bias. If you’re writing alt text for a photo or doing audio description for a video, then the recommended policy is that you either describe everybody’s race or nobody’s: if you only describe the races of minorities, and leave people to assume white when you don’t describe people’s races, then this plays into the idea that being white is the default and anything else is somehow “exotic” or “other” or whatever. By not describing people’s races you also make it harder for whoever you’re talking to to apply their own biases/prejudices towards the person you’re talking about. Describing people’s races excessively can also make it seem like you’re yourself weirdly fixated on that one aspect of their being, which would be reductive.

This being said, I can only assume that your manager isn’t some great anti-racist activist. They’re really just trying to cover their (company’s) ass, which is why they didn’t explain the rationale very well (they don’t actually understand it) and their behavior isn’t consistent (they don’t actually care). There is also nuance to all of this, too, naturally, since “colorblindness” is not true anti-racism, so there are cases where it’s actually better to mention people’s races/ethnicities than not mention it; and if certain features of appearance weren’t stigmatized/racialized, they’d be just as suitable for a short description as any other feature. The problem is that you cannot easily teach these sorts of nuances to people who haven’t actually experienced racial prejudice: white people will (deliberately) misunderstand the nuances or try to do borderline things. So you end up just getting these blanket bans and taboos on mentioning race that make the frank and actually important discussions about racism difficult.

This is how I understand it, at least. Bear in mind that I’m not racialized myself, but the other commenter — infuziSporg — is.

In the last few decades we’ve noticed that we’ve been treating each other like shit. We’ve used race, skin colour, ethnicity, weight, etc to insult others and reduce their social standing.

We’re trying to fix that. As such, calling out those specific differences is frowned on, even if we aren’t using them negatively.

Is this inconvenient? Yes. It’s pretty easy to point out the only black/fat/disabled person in a work place. But we’re really trying to avoid any conversations that could turn into insults or attacks.

So we now have an unwritten social rule that we avoid using those identifiers when talking about individuals.

Little Britain pokes fun of this sceanrio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrFBBCFrKaY

It’s disrespectful to refer to someone as “the fat guy” too, perhaps moreso.

I’m not sure exactly what you said, but if it was “a small, thin woman that was either born in an East Asian country or has East Asian parents”, then that’s pretty weird.

It may have also been unnecessary to describe the person at all. It depends on the context.

You can always say “straight black hair, brown eyes”. Hair and eyes and height are common descriptors, and then maybe skin tone if necessary.

Someone who hasn’t met someone has nothing to describe them by besides “physical appearance” but that doesn’t mean trying to pinpoint their presumed origin.

I don’t know, but if you put some more effort into remembering people’s names you don’t have to get into these situations in the first place. I say this as someone who’s terrible at remembering names, but I have gotten better at it, and so can you.

Also, most times it’s fine to just say “a coworker” without specifying who it is unless people ask.

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