Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Wh-wh-what?

I'm Pretty Sure...
that there didn't need to be eight ways to ask The Lifeguard if he was, in some form, Hispanic.

The Lifeguard was responding to the decennial census, as mandated by the United States Constitution (Article 1, Section 2), and nearly shit when faced with the following questions:

[The Lifeguard paraphrases...]

"Are you Hispanic?"

"Cuban?"

"Puerto Rican?"

"Chicano?"

"Some other Hispanic? (e.g., Argentinian, Chilean, Salvadoran, Costa Rican, et al.)"

"Are you white?"

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?

Why in the crikey fuck do we need to know precisely how many Argentinians, Koreans, Hmongs, or Guamians are in the country? [Rhetorical question.]

If we were asking in order to pre-plan the return airline tickets back to these countries, The Lifeguard might feel better about the extreme specificity; but, The Lifeguard knows that this is merely a means by which the government largess is divvied up amongst the raft(load) of minorities living in this country.

Maybe if the Census Bureau got back to taking a head count, there would be fewer problems, fewer dollars spent, and fewer race-based government programs.

Yeah, like that'll ever happen.

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