I think two better questions to ask on the US Census would be:
1)How do you ethnically identify? This section would be fill in the blank.
and
2) What is your ethnic background. This section would be have boxes that could be checked, such as Irish, Ethiopian, Russia, Chinese, ect. However, it would also have a fill in the blank section. It would also allow for more than one box to be checked, since most people do not have one single source of ethnic background.
Regardless, the Census we saw in class is not helpful. The fact that there were simply one box for Caucasian and one for African American, but multiple boxes for those of Asian and Hispanic descent shows bias. And the fact that they didn't even list anything for Middle East descent is another major error.
Side Note: Sorry if this post is a bit late. I'm home for the weekend and my internet was out for most of the day.
Great rethinking of the census questions! I find it interesting that your rewriting of the questions focuses on ethnicity and takes race out of the equation. This seems like quite a progressive move considering Marger's observation that the term "race" is one that is contentious and often misused.
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