I’d actually be pretty cool with that. It would get me out of work, anyway.
:dubious: What, exactly, do you think you’ll be doing in your [del]concentration[/del] [del]happy[/del] [del]Jesus[/del] [del]band[/del] internment camp?
Interns?
(insert obligatory stale Clinton joke here)
Whew. I’m Black Irish, so I’m safe.
I guess I must hate America!
But just to be clear, I was really only mildly annoyed. We won’t be over this whole race thing for a loooooong time, if ever. I’m not going to let it ruin my day.
Overheard at the post office today:
Older white male–but not elderly, by any means. He was about 50, wearing shorts, topsiders and a golf shirt. He was complaining to the postal worker about the census.
OWM:" And why does it say to turn it in early? It asks how many people are in my house on April 1."
Postal Worker looking non-committal.
OWM:“How do I know how many people will be in my house on April 1? I mean, that COULD change! and it’s none of their business, anyhow!”
Postal worker:“I’m sure I don’t know sir…”
I could only marvel at him. He is old enough to have filled this out multiple times: 1990, 2000 and now. WTF is wrong with people?
It’s amazing that I’m hearing exactly the same arguments today from the “anti-census” people as I did in 2000.
Oh, so we’re looking at more of an *arbeit macht frei *situation here? That’s less exciting.
I don’t recall hearing ANY of this nonsense in the past. I just sat down with my 11 year old and we filled out our census. It was quite dull. I have no idea how they count my college kid; I don’t remember ever filling out any census form when I was in college. (oh, and that would be because I graduated HS in 1980. <Emily Latella> never mind</EL>)
I will say I don’t think it’s fair that all the other “colors” get to be more specific. We whiteys only get to pick “white”. I really wanted to shake it up a bit and say that husband is Polish/French-American White, while I am total WASP. I am devastated by this lack of opportunity. 
My roommate said “no thanks” when I handed him the form to fill out his part. I gave him hell.
One of his incredibly lackluster arguments was “I’ve never had to fill out a census form before.”
“That’s because you weren’t old enough, you moron. Your parents filled it out because they only do a census every 10 years,” I helpfully informed him.
In his defense, he sheepishly handed me the form, filled out, a little later. At least he can be shamed into his basic civic duty. I don’t think he actually thinks it’s sinister; he’s just contrary as hell.
Even if you had been living in a college dorm in 1980 you might never have seen a census form - dorms are Group Living Quarters and they have a different process than typical (non-group) residences.
I’ll be learning more about all that this week in training, because it seems I’ll be doing Group living Quarters (and yes, it’s capitalized every where in our materials).
Cool!
Although some dorms do individual census forms. I filled out one when I was an undergrad living in a dorm. Maybe they spot-check their counts by having some dorms do the forms while others are counted more bureaucratically?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This year, we filled out our form completely, putting “American” for race. Why? Because that’s how we self-identify. We prefer to avoid perjury.
Also, because 70 years ago either our marriage would either have been illegal, or if allowed to stand would have taken away my citizenship (and I was born American). Things have changed greatly since then, but there’re no guarantees and we don’t want to leave official records that could be used against our descendants (one-drop rules are pernicious).
According to Joseph Chang’s paper, anybody with European ancestry is probably descended from Charlemagne. Since Attila the Hun was earlier and has living descendants, that means that, if you have European ancestry, you are probably descended from Attila the Hun.
Vikings also might be handy for this kind of thing. If you have any Scandinavian or British ancestry, you’re almost certainly descended from Vikings.
How do you know what race he is?
By the way he looks. That’s how we figure these things after all. What, you think race is scientific?
It works by addresses, generally. If your dorms are set up so each resident has an individual mailing address, each resident will get their own census form.
Lemme tell you, it was a real party when I was the housing board chair for a fraternity. We’d get one form for the whole building, since it was technically one address, and then we’d invariably have a Census worker show up the next month asking if there were really 18 men living in one “house”.
Well, it’s that or Dance Dance Revolution.
Tanzen macht frei!
He was wearing topsiders. Duh.
Okay then. We’re back to an “I’m surprisingly cool with it” situation. … Unless we’re looking at something along the lines of the original ending of Snow White,* in which case I think I’ll pass.
*I wrote this as Snow Shite for a second. Make of that what you will
Oops…
The question could be “female” “male” “other” and it would, perhaps, reveal that gender is not as much a binary as we believe it to be. Because people who do not identify as either male or female have never really been enumerated we can only assume that their numbers are small, but off the top of my head I can name a dozen people who are somewhere outside of the binary and I don’t really know that many people.