Census

I filled out our census form this morning. There are several parts that surprised me, starting with only electronic responses. The form said that was for citizens' safety but anyone who has ever ordered anything online or even used online entries for stuff knows that hacking happens all the time so it clearly is no more safe than a hard copy although it is surely easier to tabulate results. The second surprise for me was that no longer can anyone not answer when asked what race they are. I have been filling out these census forms for fifty years now and previously one could simply politely refuse.

Now, not only is the answer required, you cannot simply say Caucasian (or whatever) but must get down in the weeds about it, providing the ethnic background whether that is German, or Irish, or English, etc. Given all the marauding raiders over the centuries, the differences between say German, Danish, and English are minute and depending on where one's relatives came from in Ireland, even the Celts aren't distinctly separate from most of those other ethnic groups. Plus they insist on calling them "race", as in  English race, rather than ethnicity. Sure, there are some groups that have heritable traits such as Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi Jews, but the census is not intended nor designed to identify those at risk for disease.

It did not ask for citizenship but it certainly got weird about where your ancestors came from or what they identified as. This weirdness was amplified by the bold print that said something to the effect of, "For the purposes of this survey, Hispanic is not a race." I certainly don't object to that statement but why is English or German a race in that case?

Keep in mind that the census is primarily for allocating resources based on population numbers. That's why the governing language describes counting "persons" not whether people are white or black or yellow or brown or Republicans or Democrats or citizens. The census is to have an accurate count of the number of persons resident in the US. It is not important to the count of persons if those persons are Irish, Japanese, German, or anything else.