You better BELIEVE I am not filling out the census form, are you?

[Raza]

I'm a racist... or I suppose the term "racially aware" might land better upon the ears... to the effect that I can identify one nationality from another and from my own. I am not a racist in the sense that I then ridicule, ostracize, or vote to governmentally limit the freedoms of people of different nationalities from my own. (If I had a favorite race, it certainly wouldn't be mine; not with our history of one foreign relations faux-pas after another! Then again, what race is the picture of social etiquette these days?)

Fair enough. There's gradations between those two as well, though, that are both common and undesirable.

In fact, I would not call awareness off and by itself racism unless it results in differential treatment. We need to be just as cautious of letting ourselves off the hook with 'everybody's a little racist' comforters as with their angry moral opposite. My point was more than discrimination happens very intuitively through socio-psychological mechanics that everybody has in common, and that it needs to be addressed as such without being externalized through moral binaries.

I'm still of the firm belief that most of the people running the U.S. Government are of the more "racially aware" variety, and that if the powers-that-govern really are trying to better their world,

M'not so sure. Personally, maybe. But politicians harvest social tensions as their bread and butter, and this is exactly where most of those inbetweens happen. The public political process tends to play on those same mechanics of identity that produce racism, sexism and a billion less-known forms of discrimination to manipulate people into accepting their viewpoints, which perpetuates them in the process.

By the time something hits the public radar as discrimination, it's long since served it's political purposes. But 'this is what's wrong with the world' speeches are where these destructive memes are born, and thrive for a long time before most people recognize them for what they are. Politicians are not so innocent.

then the least we can do to help change along is to comply with the easiest of requests and provide this small handful of harmless information.

Hah, really? But despite trying, when have they ever wanted the right things?

Everybody's got good intentions. This is absolutely no reason to go hand them any power to go with it.

'Sides, I still can't think of a good reason to want to map racial and sexual demographics, and I'm not in the habit of supporting things that I do not understand.

I think that governments, just like people (which makes sense, since governments are comprised of people) all want a chance to prove they're better than we think they are - than they think they are - and more than occasionally, they should be granted the chance to prove it.

The problem with that is that these chances, when granted to governments, necessarily come out of the budget for such opportunities shared by everybody else.

If governments are comprised of people and to be granted chances by virtue of being people, let them take these chances as people. Coercive power over others is not a requirement for enacting change in the world. People have this ability by default; governments can only redistribute it.

But protesting against any survey that asks what race or what sex you are seems to be a little extreme.
It's like feminists who get all pissed off if you call someone a "Fireman" instead of a "Firefighter".

I'm inclined to say the opposite. Our perceptions of racism and sexism are just as binary as they are; something is either unquestionably evil when enough people recognize it as such, or completely normal when they do not. What is logically sexual or racial discrimination enters into the picture very little, and trying to bring it in tends to make things really awkward.

If we're ever to solve these problems we need to start getting consistent, and mold the truths behind both these viewpoints into a single internally sound understanding.

It's these 'trivial' expressions that require out attention especially.

I was simply hoping in-text that effective methods of protest are being or have been pursued in addition to - or preferably instead of - pretending the government isn't there.

There's this quote I like that I see online now and then, usually applied to existence-of-god debates. "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away".

Notice that governments, and structures of authority and hierarchy in general, do not survive this test.

[bookgirl]

QUOTING FROM ABOVE: "I'm inclined to say the opposite. Our perceptions of racism and sexism are just as binary as they are; something is either unquestionably evil when enough people recognize it as such, or completely normal when they do not. What is logically sexual or racial discrimination enters into the picture very little, and trying to bring it in tends to make things really awkward."

Well done for being so eloquent and specific for saying this, it needs to be said bluntly - when it comes to race, there can be no beating around the bush. I'm publishing a book on the subject with a book publishers next year (also a book publishers in the UK) and I intend to stress these points exactly.

[TheDeathKnight]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010...ers-door-door/

Nice.

[grebo]

are you people complete idiots?
you say you arent going to do the census then you complain when you get harrased by census collectors
why not fill it full of fake info and send it back? then you dont get hassled anymore
if your complaining how much time it takes, how much time do you waste on your computer at social networking sites? how much time do you spend in on the toilet after a big night out?
have a census party and get a bunch of friends and fill it in when your drunk or high

easy solutions to simple problems, fucking drama queens