US Census

So I got my US Census in the mail the other day, and after getting the reminder post card in the mail yesterday, I finally sat down to read through it and fill it out. I couldn't help but notice some odd and funny things in the census.

It starts off saying to count all the people living in this house, apartment or mobile home as of April 1, 2010. Specifically, it says, "Count all people, including babies, who live and sleep here most of the time." The including babies part is the first thing that caught my eye. As if they need to remind everyone that babies are people too. Then the part about live and sleep here most of the time. This is yet another reason not to sleep around, so you don't get counted at home and at the home of your mistress. At this point, Tiger Woods might get counted a dozen different times with as much sleeping around as he's been doing.

Another part says the census must count people without a permanent place to stay. Think about that one. This form was mailed to people at a home address. If you have no home address, how are you going to have this form to read that part of it?

After it goes through all of this, explaining who to count and who not to count, it asks for the number of pepole living or staying at this home. Then question 2 asks, "Are there any additional people staying here that were not included in question 1?" Huh? If you gave us all these guidelines to fill out question 1, then the very next question basically says, "are you sure you got everybody?" It says in question 1 to included babies. The first part of question 2 asks if you forgot to count any babies living in the house. Seriously?

The third questions asks about the property, whether it is owned with a mortgage or rented. The other two options on that question are a little funny. One of the options says "Occupied without payment of rent." Is that asking if you're a squatter? Or a bum who is living there illegally? The last option asks if the property is owned by your or someone in the house hold "free and clear," meaning without a mortgage or loan. It just struck me as funny that an official document of the US Government would use the term "free and clear" to describe a house without a mortgage. Just sounds funny to me.

Question 4 asks for your phone number in case they don't understand an answer. Funny thing is, other than the number in the first questions, all the other questions are all an X in a box. What's hard to understand about that?

Then they fun part. It goes into asking for the names of the people living in this house, starting with hte person who owns or rents this property. After the name, it asks for male or female, then the third part, which asks for the persons age and birth date. When it asks for the persons name, it says in italics, "please report babies as ago 0 when the child is less than 1 year old." Makes sense, except for the fact that its asking this age for the person who owns or rents the property. I don't know about you, but I don't know too many babies less than 1 year old who own their own house or rent their own apartment.

When it asks for the persons race, one of the options says "American Indiana or Alaska Native." Now, this may be ignorance on my part, but when it says "Alaska Native," to me that means anyone who is born and bred in Alaska. A native of Alaska. So you could be a white person, born and raised in Alaska, and be an Alaska native - correct? Now, I know what they are trying to say by this questions, but there's a lot of room for interpretation on that one. And again, this may be my ignorance, but would natives of Alaksa (eskimos, etc) be considered the same race as American Indians? Should those two races be grouped together? That's like grouping together Chinese and Japanese. They're both Asian, but not the same. Then again, they do list Asian as one of the races, but also list Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese. The question of what race someone belongs to is a tough one, especially in America, where we are basically a group of different races mixed together. How does someone in a mixed family answer that question?

The last question for the person being detailed is whether that person lives or stays somewhere else. Seriously, how many times are they going to ask that question.

Anyway, those were my thoughts as I was reading through the census to fill it out.