Mar

9

Mark Krikorian, the Census and the American race

National Review’s Mark Krikorian is mad about the Census:

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year’s form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government’s business.

One-quarter of the questions are about race and ethnicity? Why is the government so obsessed with race? Why oh why oh…

Oh. Wait. There’s only 10 questions on the census form? Only two of them deal with race? That’s not even “fully a quarter” is it?

Question 9 on the census form asks “What is Person 1’s race?” (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics … Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — “Some other race” — and writing in “American.” It’s a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes.

And, in fact, there’s a new Facebook page with 750 members pledging to do exactly what Krikorian describes.

What’s weird about this is that Krikorian is the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a “kick out all the illegals” think tank that relies rather extensively on Census Bureau findings on race in order to make its case to Congress and the public. The census findings on race go a long way toward helping Krikorian and thousands of other researchers and scholars – not to mention our own government – understand what our country looks like and how it’s changing.

I have no idea what’s going on in Krikorian’s head. All I can guess at is the Census Bureau’s own description of how the government uses information about race:

State governments use the data to determine congressional, state and local voting districts. Race data are also used to assess fairness of employment practices, to monitor racial disparities in characteristics such as health and education and to plan and obtain funds for public services.

Ah. So that race information isn’t really used to divvy up Americans who would otherwise live in rainbow solidarity if that pernicious government didn’t insist on calling attention. Instead, it’s used to help the government ensure that minority rights and health are protected.

If you think disclosing your race to the government is somehow racist, by all means let the government know. But there’s something profoundly anti-knowledge and anti-fact about Krikorian’s little campaign. And it doesn’t appear at all likely to result in minorities taking their seat at the table of “real” America.

Joel Mathis | 5:16 PM | 3 Comments

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Ceasar B. Says: Mar 9 9:53 PM

You said: “I have no idea what’s going on in Krikorian’s head.”

Well, maybe like most Americans, he’s sick of all the racial separatism embraced by the political left. You have to declare your race to get a job or a position in college. And you do realize that liberal campuses have been segregating people by race in dorms, right? It’s just disgusting how much liberals hate MLK, Jr.’s dream of a colorblind society.

Or maybe Krikorian just likes Teddy Roosevelt’s ideals:

“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all… The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic… There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.”
Chuck Says: Mar 9 11:25 PM

This is only the forth census in my lifetime and I am fairly certain that I don’t remember the first one; that said I am very annoyed with the advertising of this census. I cannot imagine the cost and waste of tax dollars associated with the television and radio productions designed, I suppose, to increase participation; why? As for racism, yep some people are racists; maybe the government is racist maybe it isn’t.
beejeez Says: Mar 9 11:57 PM

Yeah, God help us if the federal government ever learns anything about the people it represents. We should boycott it and stuff so it’s less effective.