re: #250 freetoken

From the beginning of US Censuses with family information (1850) place of birth was indicated. Then place of parent’s birth was added for a couple of censuses.

Demographic categories were there from the start. But census takers sometimes strayed from the instruction sets.

Today though these categories are rapidly losing their ability to describe. In your example, many MENA immigrants’ children will marry with Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds, most not MENA. So the category loses its descriptive power for these people.

This is a problem that has surfaced in this election, mostly due to Drumpfskind’s bigotry, but simmers under all sorts of social studies, including censuses.

Self-labeling is important to us humans. The current polls are rife with it (mostly with the hot buttons “conservative” and “liberal”.) But this is about our need to identify, a way of placing ourselves in the larger group. Our choices to self-label are tied to our emotions and self-worth.

You mean part of the larger group like…human?

Because with all the geographic and ethnic background mixing that exists being labeled human is the consistent.

So take away all the check boxes!