MARY WRITES:

I was fascinated by the census form I received in the mail this week. There are only four questions for each person in the household, two of which deal with race. The first is whether or not you are of Hispanic origin. If so, the form wants to know whether it’s Cuban, Mexican, Nicaraguan, Spanish, etc. or if they did not list your particular country of origin, to please fill in the blank. The second question more generally asks for your race. There are about twenty choices including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, African-American, African and Native American, these last two requesting that you please fill in the blank with your particular tribe. One of the check boxes is “White,” of course, but without any request for more specific information. So the same census takers who would want to know whether I were Cherokee or Shawnee don’t care whether I’m Polish or Italian. The disparity between the treatment of white people and everyone else is glaring. 

Dr. Blanc writes:

What do those in our government intend to do with the information we give to them? I wonder whether those living in various states received different answers. In a March-8th mass mailing to residents of Washington, D.C., the director of the U.S. Census Bureau wrote, “Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need. Without a complete, accurate census your community may not receive its fair share. [Emphasis mine.]

Laura writes:

This is completely out of character for our federal government.I can’t imagine what it could possibly mean.

Lydia Sherman writes:

I know few Americans who don’t claim they are part Cherokee. We ought to all write Cherokee in the blank.

Lydia adds:

Actually, many of us are just going to check “other” and write in the blank line “AMERICAN” in capital letters. Some are not filling out anything but the number of people in the household, as they think that requiring any information other than that would be unconstitutional. I for one am going to write them a long handwritten letter explaining our beliefs, dating back to 1951, so they will have something interesting to read. It must be boring being a census taker.

Lisa writes:

I have copies of the 1880 and 1900 census sheets listing my great grandfather and his family. The questions asked are: name, age, occupation, sex, “color – white, black, mulatto, Chinese, Italian;” relation to head of family; marital status; number of months unemployed during previous year; whether sick or disabled; whether blind, deaf or dumb, idiot, or insane; attended school in previous year; cannot read; cannot write; place of birth; place of birth of father and mother.

The census form I received in the mail last week requires all people of Hispanic extraction to choose another “race,” such as white, saying that “Latino” and “Hispanic” are not considered race for the purposes of the census. This could possibly make the illegal Hispanic immigrant number seem smaller.

Jean Paul writes:

The government of Quebec has long played a game with language similar to that on your census form as it concerns race. In Quebec we are required to declare whether we are Francophone, Anglophone or “Allophone” (Don’t ask). A Quebec resident is categorized, by law, in one of the three groups on the basis of “the language first spoken at home and still understood.” ( I quote from memory.) This means that, for example, an Anglophone can never become a Francophone simply by learning French, no matter how perfectly. No indeed that would be too easy, so the law requires that the Anglophone must also no longer understand English. (This is not a joke.) The language category is thus effectively attached to a Quebec resident for life, as were the old categories of White, Black and Coloured in South Africa. 

One of the many amusing results of being classified as Anglophone is that you can never get a government job. Anglos make up about 10% of the population and hold about 350 out of 75,000 Quebec government jobs. The justification for this by a minister of the secessionist government a few years ago was: ” it is impossible to find qualified, competent Anglophone applicants” for the job openings. Sound familiar? 

Of course he was right, since you had to be Francophone to “qualify” and, naturally, under the legal definition you had to be born that way. So an Anglo could never qualify even if he spoke French better than 99% of the Quebec population. Cute, no? And, of course, you can be a “Francophone” even if, like most of the Quebec population, you speak lousy French. 

A lawyer friend of mine, a French guy with an English wife, wanted to send his six-year-old kid to French school in grade 1. The boy spoke mainly English at home with his mother and my pal wanted to make sure the little guy grew up bilingual like his dad. You can guess the rest. My friend is an 11th generation Quebecer like me, but they refused to accept his son into French school and said that the poor little guy had to go to the government language school for third-world immigrants just off the boat. My pal, who was a bit of a closet secessionist, was not amused at being hoist with his own political petard. 

If white Americans think their census form is a little weird now, wait until the bureaucracy really gets rolling, as it did while rolling over the Anglos in Quebec. The practical results of this race/language categorization business can be quite interesting. 

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