the census

Andrea Burns post 5

I'll be honest. When they gave us the census to fill out last year, I hardly gave it a glance. I filled it out without really even paying attention to what it had to say. I checked my boxes and sent it on its way. Now actually looking it over, it is insane the stuff they had the nerve to put on there. While I've never questioned it before, why does race even need to be on here? I can understand wanting to know around how many people are residing in the country. However, why does race need to be a factor? It's very apparent that races of every kind reside in the country. What does having a count of each matter? What impact does knowing this information have? How acccurate does this information end up being with choices given? For example, the option for black also includes the terms African American and Negro. The term negro hasn't been in use since the 1960s. It's not a term used now. Why would it be included on the census? The inclusion of that term would cause people to not want to check that box. It was also very limited to what race you could consider yourself to. Say you just moved here from Italy. Yet the box you're expected to check would be white. How accurate is that? White is a shade of color with no indication as to what race the person is. Also, how did the census decide that Hispanic is not considered to be a race, but an ethnicity? If they are indeed Hispanic, then what race are they expected to be considered? This census is offensive to many different groups of people, yet they require it to be filled out. If anything should be required to be filled out, it should merely question about the amount of people and where they reside, nothing to do with origin.