2010-03-12
Race and the Census
During the 2003 Recall of Governor "Gray-Out" Davis in California, there were a plethora of candidates from across the political spectrum on the ballot. Also on the October 7th ballot, however, was an interesting voter initiative that was almost entirely overlooked by both local and national media coverage. This was Prop. 54, also known as the Racial Privacy Initiative, which asked the question: Should state and local governments be prohibited from classifying any person by race, ethnicity, color, or national origin?
The proposition ultimately failed, with 64% voting No and just 36% voting Yes.
When I first heard about it, I thought this was great. It was a good step in the right direction for eliminating the issue of race in this country and getting the government out of the way of the "Melting Pot" process we have historically boasted.
And now that the 2010 Census is starting to come out, I'm seeing a number of groups on Facebook and other social networking sites urging Americans to either leave the Race field blank, mark "Other," or otherwise obstruct the collection of this data in the Census. Undoubtedly, this is going to result in some Democrats and Republicans in state and federal positions to once again analyze the purpose of the race identifiers in the 21st century.
I remember the night I went from being overly excited about Proposition 54 to being opposed to it. It happened over the course of about one minute in an add done by the former Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Charles Everett Koop. Although the proposition had an exception for classifying medical data, this initiative still would have prevented the government and independent researchers from studying long term medical problems in communities and, more significantly, it would have prevented the local, state, and federal governments from spending tax dollars effectively to combat race-targeting diseases in the communities where they live.
And when you think about it, it's really pretty stupid. The elimination of racial segregation in society isn't something the government is going to start by eliminating a question in the census. It's something we the people have to accept for ourselves and, generally speaking, it's something we ARE accepting for ourselves. Affirmative Action is increasingly being recognized as an insult to the intelligence of minority students, racial quotas are a thing of the past, and the color of a person's skin is quickly becoming as irrelevant as the color of a person's hair.
The difference between the color of a person's hair and their ethnicity, however, is that knowing the color of a person's hair isn't going to help combat disease in this country. Having access to the racial characteristics of a community, on the other hand, can do that.
Ladies and gentlemen, when you get your census, FILL IT OUT COMPLETELY! Don't be a jerk and fill in intentionally bad information. The government isn't going to throw anybody in a concentration camp or begin slaughtering Americans of any given ethnicity. This is all important data and it's in the best interest of WE THE PEOPLE to have access to this information. Remember, this is OUR census: don't corrupt it.
I really wish I could find video of the ad with Dr. Koop. But since 2003 was at the dawn of the golden age of YouTube, it doesn't appear as though anybody had the means or knowledge to upload it to the internet. In the absence of that video, however, I thought I would at least share this one.
