Friday, June 19, 2015

"Census Bureau considers dropping 'race' from survey"

Hispanic, mypanic, yourpanic... don't panic, possessive.
According to Pew, Census officials want to be clearer with their questions so that officials can gather more accurate data as required by law. Past testing and focus-group research has indicated confusion among found that the terms “race,” “ethnicity” and “origin” can mislead or confuse respondents, they can mean different things depending on the person answering.

“We recognize that race and ethnicity are not quantifiable values. Rather, identity is a complex mix of one’s family and social environment, historical or socio-political constructs, personal experience, context, and many other immeasurable factors,” the Census Bureau noted in a 2013 report on past testing efforts in the 2010 census. The report also recommended continued research on optimizing the use of examples for each racial and ethnic category, among other strategies.

Census forms currently contain two questions related to race and Hispanic origin, with one asking Americans whether they are Hispanic, Latino or Spanish, and the other asking “What is this person’s race?” with checkboxes and spaces to write in answers.

7 comments:

bagoh20 said...

You might as well ask: "How many buggy whips are in the household?"

I'm Full of Soup said...

That is a good step in the right direction.

Next, maybe the PEW will follow that lead disband its own All Things Hispanic Center.

edutcher said...

God knows they make half of it up anyway.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Everyone would pick sprinkles. and that it how it should be...

I'm Full of Soup said...

What Educher said!

ricpic said...

Notice that the Census Bureau does not mention race in its purposely vague list of identity markers: things like family and social connectedness and some other newspeak blather. And yet the CB religiously persists in probing for our race. The anointed ones who rule know that their obsession with race is obscene, otherwise why would they obfuscate about what constitutes identity? Not that race itself is obscene. It is front and center as an identity marker. It's the obsession with race that is obscene. Could it be that race has become the new verboten as sex has lost its verboten status? Yes. Yes it could. The Victorians had sex and Our Ruling Betters have race.

Leland said...

What AJ said! Both times!