The US has always been a racist apartheid state; it’s just been trying to claw its way from that abyss for a few decades and has been back-sliding pretty badly lately. The recent kerfuffle about the Trump Administration’s adding racially charged questions to the census is not even remotely new.
By a coincidence, I had been ignoring several letters from the government telling me I needed to fill out the census under penalty of vague threats, so I decided to actually do it. Except, I’d treat it as a social science survey and make sure I gave the most bullshitful answers possible. That turned out to be hard, because the questions were more bullshitful than my answers. See what I mean:
Naturally, I answered the way I did (“no”) because I don’t know what a “hispanic” is – and neither do the people writing the census. Is a “hispanic” someone who speaks a local version of Spanish? Or is it a brown person with black hair? Or is it a person whose grandparents came from Guatemala? Or is it a person who can trace their descent directly to the conquistadors?
Of course, the people who are asking the question don’t know what “hispanic” is, either, they’re just looking for “average voting-bloc member” so they can decide if this part of Pennsylvania needs to be gerrymandered to make it more likely that someone white (whatever that is) gets elected.
That question was the first question out of the gate once it verified my identity. It’s kind of a dead giveaway what they’re interested in.
Of course, the census is not being used for racist purposes. That’s why the 4th question is: what’s your race?
Naturally, I put the only correct answer that can be given to that question, unless the person sitting at the keyboard is a dog or a cat.
Note the caveat at the top: since they already asked “are you hispanic?” they then say “Hispanic origins are not races.” Well, that’s true but only because races are entirely a fiction. If they were asking “what species are you?” then we could still have a resounding debate because it turns out that species is also kind of complicated. As a pale-skinned person whose ancestors were Irish and Norwegian, it turns out that I’m around 2% Neanderthal. Does that matter? Why isn’t that an option on the question? I’m more Neanderthal than I am ‘white’, you ignorant racist American shitheads. That’ll teach you to assume; it makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me” – I might not even be human; so let’s clarify that.
Not content to be overtly racist, the US Government then wants to ask my “ancestry” or “ethnic origin.” What am I supposed to put there? “hispanic”?
It was sorely tempting to write a fairly lengthy response explaining that my ancestors were scandinavians that interbred with neanderthals way back and may have traded with the moors in the 13th century and who were invaded by the Hanseatics around the same time, so there might be some Goth in there but we don’t want to talk about that, do we? And on my Irish side, well, heck, there might be some Dane, or even some Roman (what US Government chucklefucks might render as “Italian” though the Roman military included people from all over the place so for all I know I could have some North African via Rome) since Ireland was invaded by England, way back, there could be some of that, too. Who knows? Personally, I don’t think I am very Norwegian because I loathe lefse and lutefisk and I think Irish cuisine is pretty horrible but I love pizza so that’s probably the Neanderthal ancestry and Roman/Italian coming to the fore, right?
Naturally, the racist wet-wipes that write these census questions probably think they are members of a single, simple “ethnicity” and they are probably confusing it with their skin color because they’re clearly ignorant (probably ‘white’ – white people have notoriously low IQ but are very violent and tend toward imperialism) What the hell is “ethnicity” anyway? If they think they are “white” there’s probably a good likelihood that pale-skinned Europeans have some Russian in them since WWII, or some Mongol in them since the 13th century when the mongols tried to turn around the decaying genetic legacy that degenerated into “white people.” Tried, and failed.
This is lefse: It’s like a potato-based naan bread without any flavoring and no ghee.
And this is lutefisk: it’s like if you took whitefish and soaked it in lye. It’s ‘white people kimchee’ except the only flavor it has is bad.
Joking aside, isn’t it remarkable how dumb racist chucklefucks often seem to mistake cuisine for ethnicity? Well, obviously, if you eat lutefisk and lefse you’ve got to be white.
So, is that a real US Census Bureau form? How is it you are getting that now (in 2019)? Are you part of a test procedure or something? What is an “American Community Survey” as opposed to an actual Census?
What threats exactly? Are American citizens really legally obliged to answer this kind of crap? I mean, nobody has ever asked me such crap where I live, never mind threatening me in case I refuse to answer.
By the way, the second screenshot seems odd, because “white” is one possible answer for what they call “race.” Simultaneously, “Korean” and “Japanese” are offered as two separate “races.” If “Korean” and “Japanese” are two distinct races, then something called “white” shouldn’t exist, instead it should be “French,” “German,” “Swedish,” etc. Moreover, then it shouldn’t be called “race” but instead the question should ask “what citizenship did your ancestors have.” Anyway, it’s interesting how people with sufficiently light skin are all lumped together, but those with more melanin in their skin are carefully separated.
It’s from respond.census.gov – it looked legit government. Maybe “legit” is not the right word. I think it was about 20 pages and 1/5 of them were about race, the rest income. It had a maximum on the income questions that was unusually low, so they assume people who live on farms don’t make much money. The questions were generally pretty stupid – I wonder if just anyone can take it. The letter they sent only had a 4 digit PIN…
As far as vague penalties it said “you are required by law to respond or may face penalties.” Pretty vague.
The census is definitely filled with stupid questions, no doubt about it. It used to be just, “What is your race?” and then you had several choices and at the bottom you could say “other”. I always wrote in 50-yard dash.
I will say though that part of the purpose of the numbers thus generated (I mean generally, not from these ridiculous “race” questions) is disaster planning, so that’s a good thing. Well. It would be a good thing if then the proper amount of food, water and medical supplies are sent in. Not that I have a lot of hope for that, particularly where I live. If there’s a disaster here I’ll be on my own.
As to the vague threats, usually what they do is simply send in a person to knock on your door. So your “punishment” is to get asked over and over until you comply.
Here’s something weird about the census: there are phases of it, so you start with people going around and identifying where people live. Then other people go around and put out the questions and ask questions. Then other people come in and go to certain addresses and ask the questions. Then other people go in and try and get answers from people who would not answer. Then another group of people come in and ask again. At each phase, the instructions to the workers are completely different, even though they are using the exact same materials. That’s because different teams came up with the instructions for each phase. So, if you work in more than one phase, you have to go to the training again because sure as the sun rises you are going to get completely different instructions on how to ask the exact same questions. I’m not just guessing, here; I worked on the 2000 census in several of the phases. A very weird job but it paid relatively well and I desperately needed the money at the time.
kestrel @#4
Yep, for that they definitely need to know people’s skin color and income. Disaster planning for a neighborhood where rich white people live must be done differently from disaster planning for places inhabited by black or poor people. (I wish I could use a sarcasm tag here, but, unfortunately, disaster responses really do differ based on victims’ skin color and income level.)
As they say, “On the internet, everyone should know you’re a furry”
Why is Cambodian a race on one page and an ancestry or ethnic group on another?
My husband wonders if as an Ashkenazi born and raised in Argentina he counts as Hispanic and would that be a good idea to identify as such. And then, if nothing has changed, there is a chance that on the 2020 census I will have the opportunity to identify as Middle Eastern/North African (I’m Israeli, of Ashkenazi origin). Maybe I should, just in case people with deeper Middle Eastern roots don’t feel comfortable identifying themselves.
OK, just checked, no the Trump admin will keep the previous questions regarding race. To see how the Obama admin was planning on changing the question see: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/26/580865378/census-request-suggests-no-race-ethnicity-data-changes-in-2020-experts-say
BTW, can you identify racially as American Indian without specifying a tribe? I imagine a lot of brown Spanish-speaking people might want to choose that (maybe in addition to something else), especially if you can’t say “Hispanic” in this part.
For that matter, what if you’re culturally native (in US, or elsewhere in Americas), but not racially even partly native?
Also, do they ask your first or native language? In my country, that’d be the main ethnic identifier and community profiling tool.
So, it looks like you got the American Community Census, which is the long form of the US Census. Apparently it’s sent to one in six households. (source) I’m guessing that once they select one of you as one of the households, they keep badgering you until you answer, since otherwise selection bias could creep into the results.
Did you get a question about US citizenship? That’s the big controversy about the US Census this time around. The Trump administration wants to add a question about US citizenship. Which, the experts are saying is bad because it will reduce the response rate among non-citizens. Which is Trump’s intention. The Supreme Court is going to rule on whether they can add the question, but I’m not sure what they’re doing in the mean time.
I worked for my Canadian provincial government for a number of years and read a lot of bureaucratic documents That census survey is one of the weirdest things I have ever read. I know I have a depauperate imagination, but I can’t see what they can do with the info they gather. It won’t be useful – the fields are too undefined and overlapping and just plain nonsensical. What are they looking for? “White” and various flavours of “not white”, as we are defining that today” and where the not-whites live today, parsed to the nth degree? Why? They already use taxable income to rig where they put decent services.
In response to various questions in the OP and comments…
@OP,
Far be it for me to defend the US Census, but at least some of it for anti-racist purposes. For example, the Voting Rights Act restricts the ability of people to gerrymander congressional districts to disadvantage ethnic/racial minorities. In order for that to work, they need a count of race. Writing in “human” seems like kind of a White thing to do, because for ethnic minorities, cooperating with the survey is necessary to ensure fair representation.
@Andreas Avester #2,
There’s a fine for not completing a survey, or lying in a survey by the US Census Bureau. In practice they don’t fine people though, they just tell people that they might in order to persuade people to take it.
I assure you that most Korean and Japanese people see the distinction as important, which is not as true of White people who trace ancestry to specific European countries. This is mainly a function of more Asian people being immigrants or recent descendants of immigrants. Anyway, that’s just how the options are given in the survey, which is distinct from how the survey results are ultimately reported. They all get grouped together as “Asian” later.
I guess they consider it both a race and ethnicity. As opposed to Hispanic/Latino/Spanish, which is only an ethnicity? If you ask me, the race/ethnicity distinction is incoherent, especially in the US census. Wikipedia notes that the American Anthropological Association and US Commission on Civil Rights agree with me.
You can try, but I don’t think you’re supposed to. I think it’s only supposed to count people with tribal connections.
Re: Citizenship question: In addition to depressing response of non-citizens, they could use it to justify redistricting based on equal number of citizens rather than residents in each district. I’m sure they will find Supreme Court justices that will determine that was the original intent of the founders (despite the 3/5 compromise).
The reason you have to specify the tribe is because they are trying to erase who is Native American. That is, the US gov’t has rules for who actually CAN count as a member of one of our more than four hundred dependent nations in such a way that the US will officially recognize them. This criteria do not necessarily match those that any particular nation might pick. These rules are deliberately and unnecessarily restrictive.
This allows a usual narrative, one that they actively promulgate. This narrative is that “all native americans are dead already and therefore there’s nothing to be done and we don’t need to feel guilty about it”. I got a lot of that talking to people about DAPL. When I mention how many flags I saw there both on what Caine showed us and what another Dakota friend of mine also showed me about just how nasty they were, I’m met with abject how could you tell such an outrageous lie disbelief.
You can be the tiniest bit hispanic and claim it. But if you are one of the first peoples of North America, you can’t.
Siggy @#14
Personally, I’m not a straight, white, cis male. Nonetheless, I would still write “human” and get annoyed if anybody dared to ask me for anything more specific.
I don’t want my identity to be based upon whatever characteristics white, straight, cis men have decided to discard from their ingroup and label as “other” instead. Most of the minority identities exist only because the dominant (aka “default”) group of people decided that we must be alienated and labeled as “other.” White people decided that people with more melanin in their skin aren’t part of their tribe, and instead pushed people of color out of their community. Straight people decided that LGBTQIA are somehow different and not part of their ingroup. And so on. Minority identities are created when the majority decides to cast us out from their ingroup, when they decide that we don’t belong and are somehow different enough to be discarded from the tribe. Why is there, for example, no community of grey-eyed people, why is having grey eyes not a sufficient reason for building an identity around it? Because people with other eye colors never decided that eye color is an important characteristic that warrants excluding some people from the main tribe. Grey-eyed people never got labeled as “other” the same way as black or LBGTQIA people got excluded.
Of course, I wholly support black, LGBTQIA etc. communities. It’s great that people who have been excluded from the main tribe can come together and support each other. That’s how we survive, how we campaign for our rights to be treated as equal.
But I still refuse to build my identity around some characteristic that white, straight, cis males decided to discard from their ingroup. I am a human. I want the rest of the society to consider me a human. I don’t want to be considered as something other than human, as something different, something that doesn’t belong to the white guy club. I want to be treated as a human (being treated as a human means simply being treated as a straight, white, cis guy). I don’t want some straight, white, cis dudes to force some minority identity upon me. I’m a human. Period. And don’t you even dare trying to force me to respond any differently in some survey.
Sure, the fact that technically I happen to have characteristics that lump me together with some minority group results in me sympathizing with other people who face the same forms of discrimination as I do. I really want us to work together, organize, help each other, fight for our rights, etc. The fact that the white dude club has discarded us means that we must search other ways how to thrive in this discriminatory world. But me technically having some characteristic that results in me belonging to some minority group is still just a simple fact about me. Just like me having grey eyes isn’t an important part of my identity, also me being queer isn’t an important part of my identity. My identity doesn’t revolve around me being queer, that’s just a fact about me just like my eye color is another insignificant fact about me. When it comes to my identity, I see myself as human.
As a European Union citizen, I can assure that “white” people from various European countries see the distinction between us as very important. Somebody who is, for example, French won’t be lumping themselves together with all the people from other European countries even if we all look sort of similar.
That being said, my remark wasn’t about how people view themselves. Sure, Korean and Japanese people see a distinction among themselves. So do the French and the British people. My point was about how white people who made this survey decided to phrase it. It’s about how white Americans see themselves. If you are an American citizen whose father was born in France, you are white American, that’s it. Nobody even asks to specify that your father was French. If you are an American citizen whose father was born in Japan, then it’s an entirely different matter, you are asked to specify. This ties together with my point about labeling some people as “other.” Except for Native Americans, all American citizens are descendants of immigrants from somewhere. If your ancestors arrived from France, you are part of the white club, you belong, you aren’t seen as different and nobody even asks about your French ancestors. If your ancestors arrived from Japan, then you are asked about them, you no longer belong.
Back when I was living in Germany, I befriended a female student from my university. She was born in Germany. When asked from where she is, she would name the German city where she was born. Nonetheless, because of her black hair and slightly brownish skin, people would continue with a follow up question: “Where are you really from?” The question was abut her ancestors and she always got angry about this question and never answered beyond “that’s none of your business.” She refused to reveal her distant ancestry, arguing that it shouldn’t matter for anybody else and that was nobody else’s business. She was born in Germany, she had German citizenship, she had a right to call herself “German.” The simple fact that she had black hair didn’t give anybody else a right to question her about her ancestry. Here’s the pesky fact—if her ancestors had been, for example, French, nobody would even question her right to call herself “German,” because “is white” plus “has German citizenship” means “German.” Simultaneously, “is brown” plus “has German citizenship” results in being routinely questioned about one’s distant ancestry.
I’m pretty sure that Siggy @14 is correct – the questions about race are in large part to try and get a good demographic picture to combat racism, rather than reinforce it. Yes, races are arbitrary categories dreamed up by people, but in this case I think the government is simply following longstanding convention in the US, not engaged in some nefarious scheme.
@Andreas Avester,
I want to clarify that I wasn’t criticizing Marcus Ranum, nor other people who decide to write in “human”. I’m just observing that most people of color in the US have an interest in reporting their race/ethnicity accurately. Not all POC see it that way of course, but given that you’re not from the US I don’t think you could speak for their interests.
I was speaking from the US perspective, since the topic is the US Census. The US Census obviously needs to respond to US racial politics, rather than European racial politics. In the US, usually the distinction between different White groups isn’t that important. I say “usually”, because the distinction between European countries is often important to recent immigrants from Europe, but so it goes. This is far from the most ridiculous think in the US Census.
That’s how it should be. The survey needs to meet people where they’re at, and not impose a categorization system that significantly departs from the way most people actually see themselves. Of course, not all people see themselves the same way, so they have to make compromises. Some of those compromises are not good. But not distinguishing between European countries is fine.
springa73 @#18
I tend to be cynical about the American government and their intentions, but, fine, I might as well give them the benefit of doubt. If their intentions really were so nice, they should have included “prefer not to answer” as an option. If people who happen to belong to some ethnic minority want political representation, they are welcome to request and receive it. If some individual person wants to base their identity upon their ancestry, they are welcome to do so. As far as I’m concerned, “African American” is a valid identity. The same goes also for “cat lover,” or “stamp collector,” or “gay,” or “Christian,” or “blue eyed,” or “woman” or whatever else. Each person is free to pick anything as a basis for their identity. What I’m complaining about are straight, white, cis dudes enforcing some other identity upon the rest of us. I have a right to pick my identity as “human” just like the white guy does. This should be each person’s individual choice. Moreover, identities shouldn’t be excluding anybody who wants to claim them. If some person who happens to have brownish skin wants to self-identify as “white,” they should have a right to do so. If some person who learned German as a foreign language and wasn’t born in Germany wants to self-identify as “German,” they should have a right to do so. Other members of the society should have no right to force some identity upon another person. Nor should they have a right to deny some identity to another person. How each person chooses to call themselves and self-identify ought to be free individual choice.
Siggy @#19
The categorization system given in this survey looks like something cooked up by white supremacists and imposed upon the rest of the planet. If most people truly actually see themselves this way, then that’s just sad.
@Andreas Avester #21,
Maybe? You’re treating this like it’s something you’ve just learned about now, but the consolidation of the White category is really old news at this point. I’d have to read up on early 20th century history, possibly earlier. But people from that time were pretty racist, so…
I’m terribly late to this, but I’ve been involved in a couple research projects and such that involved demographics, and…
From what my beer-addled brain can remember this Hispanic vs race thing is fairly standard and pretty old. I cannot remember the reasoning for it, but I think it was something along the lines of separating “white” Spanish-speaking populations from “black” Spanish-speaking populations.
I’ve looked at a fair number of demographic data… things? and seeing the Hispanic/Non-Hispanic bit in addition to a race bit, seemed more standard than not.
As much as I hate this current administration, I think that specific categorization is more due to previous systems or whatever. I’m pretty sure it’s still racist, just an older and less original type of racism.
Siggy @#22
No, I have known about racism and its history for long enough.
People of European origin have attempted to classify humans into separate species and later into separate races for centuries. The classification has changed immensely over the ages. For example, are Southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans “white”? Various self-proclaimed “race scholars” would have given different answers over the years.
The consolidation of the “white” category happened only during the second half of the 20th century. It somewhat depends by country, but since we are discussing the USA here, I’ll stick to American “race scholars.” In the first half of the 20th century, all “whites” weren’t equal. Some were seen as better than others. Consider, for example, the work of C. C. Brigham, who argued that:
(Quote from The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould, chapter “THE ARMY TESTS AND AGITATION TO RESTRICT IMMIGRATION: BRIGHAM’S MONOGRAPH ON AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE.”)
Brigham’s theories about European races and their innate intelligence with Eastern and Southern Europeans being seen as dumber were used as a justification for the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which was intentionally written so as to prevent Italians, Greeks, Poles, Slavs, etc. from coming to the USA. In the first half of the 20th century, some Europeans were seen as a different “race” than others. Obviously, Brigham is just one example of a disgusting “race scholar.” There have been a plethora of them in the USA. Labeling all people of European descent as “white” is a somewhat recent classification.
Anyway, these details of the history of racism are really besides the point I tried to make in my previous comments. My point was that the classification of human races as presented in this survey was cooked up by white supremacists some years ago. It’s racist, it’s unscientific, it’s pure bullshit. Thus the question becomes: why the hell do people in 21st century still use this old racist classification? By continuing to use racist classifications, humans perpetuate racist attitudes. Like I said, if most Americans truly view themselves in accordance with a shitty classification cooked up by white supremacists years ago, then that’s just sad. If, as you claimed, this survey “meets people where they’re at,” then in my opinion, Americans have a problem with racism. Although the latter conclusion is nothing new: Americans definitely have a problem with racism. The classification offered in this survey is simply just yet another visible case study of the ever prevalent problem.
Years ago I met a girl in Toronto who had a father from Iran, a mother from India and was born in England. She and a friend were on some kind of work share program in Canada. Now that is an easy response to the Census question. British.
Siggy:
So, the online form would technically allow that? Not that such detail really matters.
seachange:
OK. But apparently for census purposes, they have to rely on your own announcement of Native identity (racial or tribal)?
I’d like to point out a rather obvious thing that has escaped being called to attention: if the census questions weren’t racist, there would either be no component about “ethnicity” (as a proxy for race) at all, or there would be additional entries and detail. “White or caucasian” would be listed as:
white/German
white/French
white/English
white/Irish
white/Norwegian
white/Polish
white/Russian
white/other Slavic
white/caucasian (former Ottoman)
arabic/caucasian
mediterranean/Greek
mediterranean/Italian
cradle of civilization/Persian
…. on and on for pages
The fact that they are trying to closely discriminate between asian/Japanese and asian/Korean and asian/Chinese but not between white/Irish and white/Italian is because: they are trying to discriminate and are using ethnicity as a proxy for race.
And for those who want to believe that it’s unimportant and represents a mapping of modern social attitudes onto today’s population, let me remind everyone that census data like this was used to formulate things like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, i.e.: “there are too many Chinese immigrants in San Francisco!” and the Japanese internment. Today we like to pretend that the Japanese internment was wartime insanity (it was that, too) but that it was not also a successful land-grab against Japanese immigrants who were farming successfully in some areas of California. The argument that preceeded the internment was that here were “too many Japanese immigrants” – now we’ve got another generation of white supremacists in Washington who are specifically worried about there being “too many hispanic immigrants” and the first question specifically about what kind of hispanic the responder might be is a great big hat-tip to the underlying racism of the whole project.
Since my ancestors were only half-white (1/2 Irish 1/2 Norwegian) until the 1850s or so, when Irish people became white, I was tempted to answer the question with a longer explanation that my ethnicity is complicated because of the change of status of the Irish.
It may be a very “white” way for me to react by putting “human” as my race but, goddamn it, race is a fiction and by feeding the fiction we reify it and breathe new life into it. I don’t want to do that, although if a dark-skinned person wants to tell me they have suffered economic hardship because of American racism, I’m going to believe them.
Andreas Avester@#21:
The categorization system given in this survey looks like something cooked up by white supremacists and imposed upon the rest of the planet.
The categorization system is lifted directly from amateur anthropologist and racist apologist Madison Grant’s book The Passing of the White Race. He was the guy who made up all the bogo-theories about round-skulled peoples’ being superior and nordics more energetic, etc. He was a typical American crackpot proto-psychologist and his book was popular at the highest levels of American society.
I have a copy and have tried a few times to read it, so I can write a review and lift some parts from it for your collective examination. It’s problematic because it’s so wrong it’s dead boring, and it’s really badly written, and it’s awkward for me to carry in my travel bag because airport security raise their eyebrows when they see that in my bag – they probably think I am one of them. At any rate, it’s such a wretched book I’d throw it away except it’s a moderately collectible first edition…
You seem to be saying that these questions are racist and should be removed, but if you listen to POC in the US, it would become obvious that there is widespread support for these questions (although there are complaints about the particulars). That was also true in 1970, when the Hispanic/Latino question was added–it seems they were mostly interested in addressing discrimination.
On the other hand, there’s less political motivation for accurately counting White people, which is why I don’t care if you write in “human” or whatever. However, I observe that there is an apparent conflict between the desire to group everyone together in a larger category (“human”), and the desire to further subdivide the “White” category.
Siggy@#29:
So you’re arguing that “they like it!” In spite of the obvious fact that the data is used to gerrymander elections. Maybe they like it because they don’t understand it or have been lied to about its purpose?
http://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2014/8/5/17991958/gerrymandering-legislatures-republicans-democrats
Marcus @#30
I doubt that “don’t understand” is the right answer. Instead I see a perfectly rigged system of institutionalized racism that forces POC to comply and dutifully fulfill the role that was given to them. The white club has made it clear that POC don’t belong with them. Instead they are offered another alternative: “If you want political representation and your interests to be taken into consideration, you have to dutifully label yourselves in accordance with our racist classification.” POC are promised political representation, but instead they are given gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement laws.
People who are being discriminated usually understand very well what’s going on. The problem is that they aren’t really given a choice. The majority group makes it pretty damn clear that some minority isn’t part of the privileged club, and then there’s little choice but to create their own separate communities and fight for their communities to be represented.
If POC wanted to self identify with the ethnic group of their ancestors for intrinsic reasons, for example, in order to preserve their cultural heritage, then that would be perfectly fine with me. If they built their identities around their ethnicity due to enjoying said identities, then that would be great. If, however, they do so, because of racism and seeing no other alternative (namely, the white club refuses to accept them), then it is no longer so great.
No, I’m not arguing, I am informing you of the basic fact that POC have supported the race questions in the census. Which implies a set of arguments that I have not stated, nor have you engaged. But great job parrying new information, oh master strategist. I can see you’re just treating this as an argument, so I’m done here.
Marcus, did you see the link I posted in my response #9? It includes the versions of the ethnicity/race questions that the Obama administration was planning for the 2020 census, and its treatment of white USians is very similar to your proposal in #27. People would mark any of the race boxes that applied, and for each of those provided a more detailed answer.
BTW former Washington governor, Gary Locke, said he will not be responding to the citizenship question on the 2020 census.
Oh, it’s more than that: Gary Locke is the chairman of Washington’s census committee, and he is calling Washingtonians to boycott the question: ‘Boycott that question.’ Citizen query unnecessary, says chair of state Census committee
anat@#33:
Marcus, did you see the link I posted in my response #9? It includes the versions of the ethnicity/race questions that the Obama administration was planning for the 2020 census, and its treatment of white USians is very similar to your proposal in #27. People would mark any of the race boxes that applied, and for each of those provided a more detailed answer.
I wasn’t seriously suggesting that; I think it would be absurd. It doesn’t surprise me at all that the Obama administration would implement something like that, though. It’s better than the current overtly racist version but still collects enough information for a good gerrymander.
OK… maybe I’m just simple and evil, but regarding the citizenship question: Why not just lie? “Yup… I’m a citizen”.
bags@#37:
Why not just lie? “Yup… I’m a citizen”
I suspect that they’ve got plans to integrate other information against that database. Lying is evidence that you exist at all.