Census usage/racial terms

[Wilson Gray]

I prefer the term that appears on my birth certificate:

Race of father  : Colored
Race of Mother: Colored
Race of Child   : Colored

@Ron: Surely, you jest! You can't really believe that _race_ is
well-defined WRT humanity.

Somehow, I find it nothing less than amazing that people worry over
the mote of terminology as they ignore the beam of racism.

-Wilson


On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 4:28 PM, Walsh, Barclay <bawals at nytimes.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Walsh, Barclay" <bawals at NYTIMES.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Census usage/racial terms
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ADS:
>
>
>
> Pew Research Center has a new  2010 Census site which includes the followin=
> g article. May be of interest in light of the on-going discussion:
>
>
>
> Race and the Census: The "Negro" Controversy
>
> January 21, 2010
>
>
> The topic of racial identification on census forms has a long, fascinating =
> history<http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/ma.html>, which has generated fr=
> esh debate as the 2010 Census begins. Why, some ask, does the form include =
> the word "Negro," along with "black" and "African American," among the opti=
> ons that Americans can choose for their self-identification? Isn't that ter=
> m out of date?
>  As you can see from the review that follows here, racial terms have come i=
> n and out of favor from one decade to the next. There was a similar debate =
> about "Negro" in the 2000 Census, as there have been about other race terms=
>  in previous census years.
>
>
>
> http://census.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/race-and-the-census-the-%e2%80%9cneg=
> ro%e2%80%9d-controversy
>
>
>
>
>
> Barclay Walsh
>
> New York Times DC research
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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