28 September 2005

Hispanic, Black, Redneck, or Tahitian; it doesn't matter - He's dead!

This 8 page PDF document is from the State of New Jersey. It's an accident investigation regarding a fall and subsequent death of a 66 year old construction worker.

The thing that struck me the most about the report wasn't that he was crazy enough to trust a single 2 x 6 as a scaffold plank, but that the document made a point to identify his ethnicity - Hispanic. Why? What does it matter? What does it lend to the investigation or the accident report? I don't get it. He was Hispanic. So?

It's a minor thing, to be sure, but that kind of stuff drives me bonkers. If he was a citizen of the Cook Islands, would the title of the document be South Pacific Islander Construction Worker Dies In...

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