daveswelshrarebits.com

A good friend of mine complained that my blog lacked edge and suggested I don’t hold back. I can’t afford to lose a reader so I will try to kick it up a notch. Where was I? Ah yes, most of you  received your 2010 census forms between 15th and 17th March with an attached letter requesting us to complete and mail back the the enclosed form today. In my case that would have been 17th March. Now if I complied with this official request, my form would not be strictly valid, for Question 1 on the form clearly asks: How many people were living in the house (including unwelcomed guests) on April 1st. Not many of us are psychic and we can’t be expected to know who will be in our house in two weeks time. If anwers to Question 1 are an indication of the accuracy of the information supplied by US citizens for the rest of the form, then God help us.

I was also perplexed by the apparent waste of  taxpayers’s money spent on mailing advanced notices advising us that the census form was on its way which duly arrived a couple of days later. This was followed by three postcards informing us that we should have received our census form. Was all this additional stationery necessary? According to U.S.  Census Bureau it was saving us money. The Census Bureau web site gives the following explanation under Frequently Asked Questions: 

Why does the Census Bureau send out so many mailings?

 We find that this is cost effective overall. Getting households to return their forms on time is the key factor for conducting a successful census. When people do not return their forms by mail, we must send a census worker to their household to obtain their answers. Many times this requires multiple visits, which can be very expensive.

 The Census Bureau estimates for each percentage point of the population that does not return a form during the 2010 Census, it will cost approximately $80-90 million to have census workers make personal visits to obtain the missing information. Conversely, if the mail-return rate increases, the non-response follow-up workload will decrease, reducing the cost of the census by approximately $80-90 million for each percentage point of reduction. On the other hand, if the mail-return rate decreases, then the non-response follow-up workload will increase, costing an additional $80-90 million for each percentage point of increase.

 Our “multiple contact” mailing strategy was developed to get the highest mail-return rate possible. Our studies have shown that mailing a letter telling you that a form is on the way and, after the forms have been mailed out, sending a postcard reminding you to respond increases the mail-return rate. We have found that the second mailing, or replacement mailing, increases the rate of mail return by about 7% to 10% and eliminates the need to send census workers to many homes, thereby saving millions of taxpayers’ dollars.

Is that clear to everyone? I remember in the eighties when my profession (town planning) ran a campaign for Governments to write in plain and simple English and refrain from gobbledygook. Apparently it fell on deaf ears at the Census Bureau who have decided to take  goobledygook a stage further by tossing in an ancient form of calculus.

This completely unnecessary mass mailing telling everyone that a census form will be delivered to their home, cost over $30 million when you factor in the paper, the envelope, printing costs and bulk-rate postage required to deliver it to at least 105,000,000 U.S.

Turning to the census form itself, there are only 10 questions but Questions 8 and 10 intrigue me:

Q8. Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?

• No
• Yes Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano
• Yes, Puerto Rican
• Yes, Cuban
• Yes, another Hispanic, Latino, of Spanish origin

Did you notice that one important question has been omitted? Are you a legal resident? More disturbing is why one question on the form (10% of the questions) is devoted to establishing whether a person is of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin. Is there a hidden agenda here?

What exactly is the difference between Hispanic and Lationo and does it really matter in America? Pepe the local painter suggested that  one sells oranges on the freeway, and the other stands outside Home Depot looking for work. He must have been  joking unless he meant to say peaches instead of oranges.

The U.S. Census Bureau also concurs that Hispanic refers to region, not race, and uses the term to describe any person, regardless of race, creed, or color, whose origins are Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or of some other Hispanic origin. In fact, areas conquered by the Spaniards were considered part of a region originally called Hispania.You can find several definitions for both terms on the internet,but in simplistic terms the following descriptions appear to have some validity:

Latino generally refers to countries (or cultures) that were once under Roman rule. This includes Italy, France, Spain, etc. Brazilians are considered to be Latino, but are not considered to be Hispanic.

Hispanic describes cultures or countries that were once under Spanish rule (Mexico, Central America, and most South America where Spanish is the primary language).

Q9. What is Person’s race? Mark one or more below.

• White
• Black, African Am, or Negro
• American Indian or Alaskan Native
• Asian Indian
• Japanese
• Native Hawaiin
• Chineta, Korean, Guamanian or Chamaro
• Filipino, Vietnamese, Samoan
• Other Asian
• Other Pacific Islander (Fiji, Tongan)
• Some Other Race

Now I’m a great believer in equality so why do blacks have the option of being African American and/or negro and the whites are plain ol white. Shouldn’t the whites have the option of being Euro-American or caucasian? Furthermore, doesn’t the Census Bureau appreciate that not all African Americans are black?  You could have a bizarre situation where an American citizen might have to check white and black if he were an Afrikaan descendant. And who determined that each Pacific island is a race?

A concluding thought just occurred to me. Maybe, just maybe, the Census Bureau need to know the difference between Hispanic  and Latino etc. so they can ship the 20 million illegal immigrants back to their rightful countries when they catch up with them.

Anyway, I classified myself as Welsh-American under the category some other race, so bungling bureaucrats, do with me as you will.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Current Affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.