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Science Fiction census
Mar. 17th, 2010 10:11 pmI got the US census questions in the mail today. I checked and it seems foreigners are to do it too if we live here. So I read the questions and they are rather boring. All questionaries I had to fill in the past two months asked more detailed questions. They read like just and preface to the actual cencus so I kept looking for more but it turned out the other pages are for other people. I remember taking part in 2002 Polish census and the questions were pretty general but took few pages. This kind of data the US asks for could be probably pulled from the local government offices.
Still some questions seem pretty weir. In question 8 they ask if one is Hispanic, Latino or Spanish. The Hispanic and Latino bit seems a little redundant. As far as I understand Hispanic is a subset of Latino as Latino means not only Spanish speaking people of the Americas but also Brazilians and the French speaking South Americans too. And why are Saniards different to other Europeans? And if Spaniards then why not Portuguese? They had as much hand in the creation of Latin America as Spaniards. There are many foreigners as students or researchers from Europe here. It's a bit weird to treat every other European as being one group and Spaniards as separate ethnicity. And what exactly one means by Spanish origin? Does Spanish mother counts like e.g. Helena Bonham Carter's? Are her and hers and Tim Burton's children Hispanic in US? Good they don't live in Hollywood and don't have to answer such questions. And on othe hand why is noone interested in my ethnicity?
I also find it funny that they insist on mailing it back today in an attached letter dated March 15 but the census asks about the state of household on April 1. They want me to predict the future. Who knows maybe in 2 weeks there will be ten other people living here.
Still some questions seem pretty weir. In question 8 they ask if one is Hispanic, Latino or Spanish. The Hispanic and Latino bit seems a little redundant. As far as I understand Hispanic is a subset of Latino as Latino means not only Spanish speaking people of the Americas but also Brazilians and the French speaking South Americans too. And why are Saniards different to other Europeans? And if Spaniards then why not Portuguese? They had as much hand in the creation of Latin America as Spaniards. There are many foreigners as students or researchers from Europe here. It's a bit weird to treat every other European as being one group and Spaniards as separate ethnicity. And what exactly one means by Spanish origin? Does Spanish mother counts like e.g. Helena Bonham Carter's? Are her and hers and Tim Burton's children Hispanic in US? Good they don't live in Hollywood and don't have to answer such questions. And on othe hand why is noone interested in my ethnicity?
I also find it funny that they insist on mailing it back today in an attached letter dated March 15 but the census asks about the state of household on April 1. They want me to predict the future. Who knows maybe in 2 weeks there will be ten other people living here.
