One-quarter of the space on this year's census form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government's business .I have a proposal.
Question 9 on the census form asks "What is Person 1's race?" (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics; a Puerto Rican Muslim or a Samoan Buddhist. But lying in this constitutionally mandated process is wrong. Really — don't do it.
Instead, I am answering Question 9 by checking the last option — "Some other race" — and writing in "American." It's a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes.
In fact, "American" was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties.\
So remember: Question 9 — "Some other race" — "American". Pass it on.
