2010 US Census thread because we can't move forward until you mail it back

Oh I'm surprised by the "threat" just that the sent me the follow-up postcard literally the day after I got my forms. I know it takes like 3 minutes, but still.

There's an add on the bus stop near my work encouraging people to fill out the census form so that Chicago Transit Authority knows how many more buses to add, which hurts me in my feelings area because the CTA just cut a ton of service, including my favorite bus, and no amount of census data is going to change that because we're broke.

That said, I filled out and returned our census form because I am a sucker for doing my civic duty. Also like I said in the Chicago thread, we straight, white, middle-class, married people need to STAND UP AND BE COUNTED.

xxpost There's one checkbox that says "Black, Afr. Amer., or Negro" iirc; I guess it's not really a separate option but there's still some distinction apparently. The one for white just says "White"

Please check one

[ ] I'm white btw

[ ] No homo

i can hear the arguments in the congressional census committee about the black/AfAm/negro language -- they were just trying to cover their bases i'm sure

just like some people say "where do you live" and others say "where do you stay" -- covering their bases

i just would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in those meetings where they hash it all out, including the Special Latino Question of 2010

got my form today, pretty excited

wouldn't you love to see the first draft of this thing? i would.

http://i40.tinypic.com/24ybreb.jpg

nice! i completed my census while 100% sober, but i will say that i felt a bit of giddiness when i was done.

i'm drunk should i do it now

why is this the first time i received a census form? wha happen 1990 & 2000??

Ed, is it going to be like me filing in UK voter registration with the equivalent of 'nobody in here but us chickens'?

mailed mine this morning. woooo

it doesn't have enough questions for my satisfaction!

Blimey, they don't ask for a lot of detail and still, talk radio thinks its an imposition. And why am I getting robocalls to write in that I'm diabetic? Is that a race? Where do I say I'm a Jedi?

suzy, I'm here for the purposes of the census.

you should include a narrative portion about your race/ethnicity

true story on my form underneath the part where it says "THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION" i wrote in "NO, THANK YOU"

there should really be more races to select

why give so much primacy (a separate box) to guamanians or samoans, but nothing to mixed race with no latino? dumb. i just want to know how that happened.

what about germans, irish, greeks, italians, dutch, spaniards

swedes, norges, croats

Because Guam and US Samoa are territories? Seriously would not be for any other reason. xpost

What I don't understand is there is no box for immigration status. I have to fill in the form but I'm not eligible to vote, so if enough people like me fill in a form (and there are many foreign students in Pittsburgh) does pittsburgh get extra representation?

yes indeed, isn't that weird?

maybe they figure that the foreign student population is relatively stable even if the actual students are different people? i also can't imagine there are tens of thousands of foreign students?

like foreign students, children can't vote but their interests are still represented based on the census because they live there

Hooray proving you exist!

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i191/fluxion23/census.jpg

I had a quick look at the website but couldn't find any obvious boldface size 72 information, so anybody know what overseas americans should do? I can't fill it out online, do I need to drop by the embassy?

;_;

WASHINGTON -- Utah Rep. Jim Matheson is pressing to end the Census Bureau's policy of excluding Americans overseas in its once-a-decade headcount.

really wanted to enable history and schools sorry dudes

Thank God for Utah, though.

Inspired by a friend's FB status: how many or you women who live with one or more dudes listed yourself as person one on the census form? *raises hand*

And I totally did it on purpose as a political statement.

my roommate filled ours out while i was at work

received text "what is your ethnicity and your age? census"

hahahaha that guy

saddest part of the experience was that i didn't get to see the look on his face when he received text and found out i am hispanic

xp I hope you are now a 53 year old negro.

after 10 months of struggling with his spanish homework... xp wow

this is a very hoos-oriented census, as it's designed to tell us if you're secretly hispanic

real talk

Today at Goodwill I saw Census forms for people to be counted who do not have an address.

I think the "live/stay" language is because they want to count people who may be staying somewhere on a temporary basis and won't otherwise be counted.

i think this is because the census is worried that if the significant population of americans who are latino/hispanic aren't given an option to list that as their ethnicity, they might get tripped up and choose white.

Wait, but most Latinos *should* be choosing white as their race, right? (Unless they're not, of course -- e.g., many Dominicans, Panamanians, etc.).

The thing that I found most interesting was that "Asian" was not an option for race, but specific Asian nationalities (like Indian, Chinese, etc.) were. I guess it makes sense why the Census would want to break that down, especially since the term "Asian" in the U.S. tends to connote East Asian and so you might have a Pakistani-American who gets confused and decides that they're not actually Asian. But there's a weird implication there that "Chinese" or "Japanese" is a race instead of a nationality or ethnicity, which probably only makes things more confusing for some people. Like, I can imagine a Mexican-American looking at this and thinking "if Chinese is a race, then Mexican is a race" and checking the "Some other race" box.

Inspired by a friend's FB status: how many or you women who live with one or more dudes listed yourself as person one on the census form? *raises hand*

I listed myself as Person 1 only because I'm way more excited about the census than Kr is.

http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/2708/census.jpg

This is what I look like holding my 'person no. 1' status.

You look super fly.

go get you some benefits girl

i don't know why i am paranoid about this, but filled it nonetheless
mailing it tomorrow

I had a twinge of paranoia, too, but then realized that the US gov't already knows my name, address, birthday, and lots more stuff just by virtue of my being a tax paying citizen. Not to mention all the info they have based on the fact that I'm legally married and a licensed attorney and government employee. Comparatively, the census is about as invasive as asking me if I habitually breathe oxygen.

people - govt or otherwise - would easily know more about us from reading ilx than they would from our completed census forms

I have an irrationally negative angry reaction to people who question the census.

I mean, just fill out the fucking form and send it back. I may be naive, but I am assuming that the government has better things to do than freak out about me. Anyway, I think all of the information I disclosed in my census form is on my facebook page.