The (racist) American Community Survey

Greetings from the Census Bureau 

My 93-year old mother got the American Community Survey (ACS) from the US Census Bureau the other day and being legally blind, asked me to fill it out. They had already sent her three letters telling her to fill it out online which is tough since she doesn't have a computer or even know how to use one. Being persistent, they sent her the long form paper version.

What is the ACS? It's a long-form survey sent out in non-census years to a sampling of the US population. Yes, by law, if you get one you are required to fill it out.

I'm struck by a few things. First, it's "American" Community Survey. Are they also surveying Canada (the American dictatorship to the north) along with Central America and South America? OK that's a quibble. 

Second, the form is a 48-pages and is literally a blinding array of questions ranging from race and ethnicity to income, housing, insurance, military status, etc. but not legal immigration status.

What really caught me up were the questions about race and ethnicity which we'll discuss later.

Non-binary cosmic muffins

So let's start with literally the first box you fill out. No personal pronouns or non-binary sexes allowed here. You are "Male" or "Female". Now that's got to make the woke generation go insane. What??? I can't self-identify as a non-binary trans female who dates furries? Nope. Also, the question "How is this person related to Person 1?" seems kind of weird given that Person 1 is already checked.

What kind of person are you (politically correct version)?

Now we start on the fun stuff. Race and ethnicity. You almost have to construct a Venn diagram to make sense out of this portion of the ACM. It actually comes in two parts. People of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin (since the Census can't just call them "hispanic") get their own box. And they get their own "where are you from" section as well. 

Mexican is lumped with Mexican American and Chicano while Puerto Rican and Cuban folks get their own boxes. But how come no Cuban American? And technically Peurto Ricans (like most of us) are already American. It's so confusing!

Now if, god forbid, you should be yet another type of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish person, you're asked to further pigeonhole yourself. My favorite example though is "Spaniard". Yes it's technically correct but it's also worked its way into the lingua franca (or lengua espana) as a somewhat derogatory term for upper class non-Mexican Spanish. But this also begs the question, should Portuguese and Brazilians be messing with this box at all? Does your head hurt yet?

At least there's no category of Latinx.

More checkboxes and fill in the blanks!

This stuff must be really important to the powers that be except if you are white or black. Then, not so much. Unlike those Hispanic, Latino or Mexican Americans, white or black people only get one damn checkbox! That's clear racial inequality. Write your elected officials today and demand more checkboxes.

Now the weird part about this is if you check any of the top three boxes, you MUST fill out text below in the online version of this form. It's a "required" field. Apparently White American is not acceptable (even though our family emigrated from England before the Revolutionary War). 

I'd hate to consider what you might do if you're White and have German, Irish, Dutch and French in your family tree. Can you put "Mutt" in the text box? How about Euro-American? 

While we're still on the White box, look at the Lebanese, Egyptian part of it. Are they "white", Arabic, Indo-Arab, Afro-Arab or to use a term out of favor, Semitic?

If you actually look at the ethnic and genetic makeup of Egyptians in general, you'll find they're about 85% Arab-African but, uniquely, Egyptian. Alas, the Census Bureau considers them "White".

Does the guy on the right look "White"? (Hint: he's the President of Egypt.)

Black or African Am.?

Now I'm not sure why the Census Bureau uses the shorthand for "American" as "Am." in some places but not in others. Here, as in other places, there's plenty of room to write out "American". It's almost like some copy editor said "hey, tone down that American crap; it sounds too MAGA."

And here we are again, Blacks don't get their own separate checkboxes like the Hispanics. It's an injustice I tell you. But at least the Census suggests that African American is OK even though the checkbox already includes that. So technically, you can be African American - African American like maybe you're extra African and extra American. Would you be African American² or African American x 2? 

All you other people

And finally we get to "Asian Indian" (as opposed to Indian Indian -- see above) and Other Asian. More silliness here because now we are dealing even less with racial makeup and more with ethnicity or nationality. Again, this whole section is about race. I actually had to look up the Chamorro "race". It's not a race. It's an identity by ethnicity and origin (mostly Guamanians and Micronesians). 

Where is all this leading?

By the time I finished just this first page of the ACS, I felt like I had stepped into a dystopian world where people are judged  not just by the color of their skin but by a thoroughly opaque layer of micro-ethnicities that only an Aryian Fuhrer could love. Again, why the special attention to Hispanics? Is it for target programs? Planned pandering? I have spent most of my working career in executive level marketing positions. I've analyzed data, constructed surveys and polls, put together focus groups and developed products and strategies to fit those answers. The ACS seems like more of a mashup than something cohesive and of deep value to the country.

I may go into some of the other areas of the ACS in a future article. The insurance section alone will drive the average person batty. But I'll have to take a hefty dose of pink liquid if I do.