Name Calling on the Census
8th January 2010
NPR alerts us to the danger: The government is calling some folks, “Negro!” Officially. On official forms. Negro! Here’s a shot from the actual, official form.
Unbelievable.
The Census guys try to justify this stick in the NPR eye with a lame excuse: Some older American citizens prefer to identify themselves with that descriptor rather than more contemporary terms like “African-American” or even “black.”
As if in a democracy a government has to be responsive to the desires and preferences of all citizens. The nerve. Just because a small group of old fuddy-duddies (is that term NPR-speak?) prefers an old label, the government should use it? How uncool. How unNPR. NPR would never let people think like this, much less talk like this.
And, to prove it, NPR solicits the expert evaluation from several non-Negro people who call themselves – correctly – a contemporary approved term and who find the Census form outrageous, bodacious, a source of bad vibrations.
Please, think about this everyone. The Census used this language on the 2000 Census form. Congress did not riot. People did not take to the streets. In preparing for the 2010 census, the Census department has conducted numerous public hearings on its forms so that all Americans could comment, complain, and carp. Congress has seen all the forms and had Congress disapproved of a comma, colon, or color term, would have cut the Census budget to zero.
The NPR response is a biased, self-serving perspective that fundamentally misunderstands the democratic process and clearly has little respect for it. The American fabric is the quilt of many colors, unique in its range, size, and depth in human history. Our way of government is to have a seat at the table for all citizens and their factions and have them work it out under rules. That’s how the Census arrived at this form. We want all citizens to respond to the Census form because those counts are a fundamental method for our democracy.
Apparently NPR, like other advocacy groups, wants to play by a different set of rules. Smarter rules. Wiser rules. Rules that attract a bigger audience, perhaps. But, certainly not the rules of our democracy.
All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.
It’s about (All) the Other Guys, Stupid (In A Democracy).