Thoughts on the Census

You know it happens only once every ten years. How many things can you think of that occur only once in ten years? The Olympics aren't even that special.

Today I walked in the door after school and an ecstatic Bree met me with the news that the 2010 Census finally came in the mail. Yess! Well not really, but for some reason Bree was strangely excited to complete our very own census. Perhaps to her it signifies that we are actually real people, and at a future date some government official will have to acknowledge our existence when he or she enters our "census information."

She was almost giddy as she opened the letter and began to read, "This is your official 2010 Census form. We need your help to count everyone in the United States by providing basic information about all the people living in this house or apartment." I had to smile because she was really cute reading so matter-of-factly.

So then we began to fill out the census: "1. How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010?" Bree looks at me, points at herself and then at me: "One, two...So two." She writes "02" in the blank squares provided. We continued, recording my complete name, that I was not of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin, and that I am, in fact, white.

The trouble came when we were asked to fill out Bree's 1) national origin, and 2) race. The directions on the census said that "For this census, HIspanic origins are not races." Bree has Hispanic origins, so that was fine-we just checked the box indicating that fact. But when went to record her race, there was no box to indicate her Mexican-American race. They had white, black, Japanese, etc., but no box for Hispanic. We didn't know what to do. We didn't want to leave it blank and submit an incomplete census...what if they discard it because it isn't finished? We would ruin our only chance in ten years to go on the government record books. We even googled "difference between national origin and race" to see if we could figure out what to put.

I suggested we just put "white" because she acts like a white person, but she declined. She obviously isn't black or japanese, so there was a box at the bottom we could check that said "Some other race--Print race" with some blank boxes to fill in the unlisted race. So we did the only logical thing there was left to do. We checked that box and recorded "Brown" as her other race.

Was that the right thing to do?