So everyone counts. That's exactly what you think? Well, I was nonchalant about filling it out or not but then, my friend, Shaela, put attention to this one question that should start an uproar:
I'm going to let Shae explain: you can catch her at @Dominicana84
Census 2010 offensive?
If you have received your 2010 census and actually opened it and looked at it then you know where this is going. When I received mines I was ready to answer the questions because I know filling out the census is supposed to help my community. As I'm filling it out I came across this one question that bugged me out: "What is person 1's race?... black, African American or negro?" WHAT?! Negro?? Really? Now before I continue, I will give a little background about myself. I am Dominican and African American. I embrace both sides of my family. Now after seeing "negro" how could I not find this offensive? This is 2010! We have a biracial president. Why would this be on the census? After seeing this question I was going to ignore it and not turn it in. But then I thought about it. Isn't the census supposed to help our communities? After doing a little research, I found that a lot of African Americans weren't returning their census because of being described as a "negro". Which made me think again. Maybe the government doesn't want us to fill it out, because if we don't then it doesn't help our neighborhoods. I looked up to see why negro was placed in the census and found that they put the word in there because in 2000 many older African Americans were putting their race as "negro" instead of African American or black. My question here is: Is the word "negro" offensive to you? And do you believe that this is the real reason why this was put into the census?
Either way, it's evident. In 2010, some form of racism STILL exist.
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