Sgt. Robert Guidara, a supervisor in the Tampa Police Department's antidrug department, has come under criticism because city records indicate he is Hispanic although he was born in Rome to Italian parents. Despite the perception that Guidara opted for the classification in order to increase his opportunities for promotion, Guidara thinks he is being unfairly criticized, telling the Tampa Tribune that the city's public relations department initiated the switch in order to look good statistically. "Through their own recruitment effort, I agreed to it."

According to federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines, an individual's race or ethnicity is not a matter of blood: "An employee can be included in a group [to] which he or she appears to belong, identifies with or is regarded in the community as belonging," despite any "anthropological origins." Because Guidara's wife is Hispanic, he sees his transformation, which happened shortly before he was promoted to sergeant in 1989, as falling within legal bounds. Phil Goldman, an EEOC official in Florida, told the Tribune that it would be "totally inappropriate" for the city to persuade an employee to change his ethnicity. The sergeant himself is even more adamant: "I am proud of who I am and of my selected ethnic affiliation." To prove this, Guidara went so far as to enroll in a conversational Spanish course.

[Ed.: Transmigration of racial categories can be thought of as a creative market response to the distortion introduced by affirmative action.]

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