Another Census Question

This is the 1910 Census for Ft. Smith Arkansas. If you biggie the photo you can see the top person is George W. Dexter.  If you look at the last family on this snippet you see Roy Harrison. It shows Roy and his wife Bessie have a son, Frank.  Well, Bessie was George W. Dexter's daughter. Her son Frank was my maternal grandfather -- a wonderful man and a most excellent grandpa who went to heaven in 2000.

It's fascinating to compare the census forms over time -- how the questions reflected what was important to us.  I just looked at our 2010 form.  Does it make sense to ask about marriage anymore? Does the government really care whether people are married any more?

Back to my question from yesterday.  The whole population count = dollars for particular communities issue bugs me. That isn't what the original idea of the census was.  Of course, more densely populated areas have higher representation rates in Congress, and those people can use the power of the purse to benefit their district -- but for a particular ethnic group only?

On the 2010 form in the area indicating "race" there's a place you can put "other" and fill it in.  What if everyone put "American"...would that tell them something about how many of us prefer to be known?

It reminds me of my husband's story about when he first entered the military.  He had to have dog tags. They wanted him to identify his religion for his dog tags.  He said, "Christian."  They said, "no, what denomination?" He said, "Christian." They said, "no, you have to be Catholic or Protestant."  Oh yes, he agreed to be a protest-ant!

I'm really in prayer about this. I don't want it to come across as insensitive ranting. I'm really trying to understand how I perpetuate these attitudes in my own life. I'm open to ideas from you all!

By the way, the Census has a cool map that shows you which counties have the highest compliance in sending in the forms.  If you're the competitive type, you can look at the neighborhood level and find out which neighborhood is more compliant to government directives...or less.  Right now Montana and the Dakotas have the highest mail in rate.  Guess there's nothing much else to do if the snow is still on the ground.

Something I don't understand

I've been reading and listening to a lot of stories about the census lately. Most of them focus on the undercount estimates from the 2000 census and the communities that ended up underrepresented.

I know that the census was established in the Constitution of the United States.  I know it was established so that as the population grew, there would be an attempt at proportional representation for states in the House of Representatives.

What I don't understand is why it is so important to count a person's ethnicity. If we can put a bi-racial man in the White House and say we don't care about race, why do we count it on the census forms?  The answer is obviously that huge pots of money are tied to different ethnic communities based on their population. In what way is that color blind?

The Bible says in Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."  And in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus crossed cultural boundaries by speaking with and extending grace and mercy to a woman who was from a 'corrupted' branch of Judaism. That's exactly what He does for us.

So why do we continue to separate from each other? Money? Power?