5 ms·

The Census has really lost the thread. The original mission was simply to do a headcount to determine how many representatives and electoral votes each state wa

by tharne 5y ago

The Census has really lost the thread. The original mission was simply to do a headcount to determine how many representatives and electoral votes each state was entitled to. One thing that annoyed me in particular was their creepy obsession around race. Even once you answer, "White", there are several more questions aimed at determining precisely what subcategory of white person you are. If anyone at the census is listening, here's some advice. If you only get to ask Americans a handful of question once every ten years, don't waste half of them trying to figure out someone's 50 shades of whiteness.

ironman1478 5y ago
This is important for understanding how gerrymandered a district is.
- tharne 5y ago
  > This is important for understanding how gerrymandered a district is. That's a bit circular. One of the main reasons that districts are so easy to gerrymander is precisely because there is so much rich census data that can be used to predict voting patterns.
  - ironman1478 5y ago
    Its probably possible to gerrymander a state without this information? Sure, it would be harder (and probably less effective) but you could use proxy metrics to figure out the distribution of race within a state. I imagine I could use housing data as a proxy for example, given that property values are correlated with race. I don't have exact proof of that last statement, but it feels right. Also, I did some reading. Apparently the census has been asking these questions since 1790 https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-question/race/ https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-questio.... Though, I imagine the nature of the question has changed over time.
  - brimble 5y ago
    Parties and campaigns already buy & maintain huge private databases on this stuff. They wouldn't hesitate to buy slightly more to have that info, because gerrymandering is so powerful. Watchdogs and groups trying to fight gerrymandering (racially-tilted or otherwise) usually don't have as many resources. It's harder for the public to keep an eye on this without public data, while keeping it private-only barely inconveniences the most relevant bad actors.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    The issue is specifically gerrymandering on the basis of race. Parties know their votes by precinct, those data are available. Apportionment of voting districts must be done by population, so the Census is necessary. Discrimination on the basis of race violates multiple Constitutional amendments and voting laws, for which enforcement requires clear knowledge of demographics. The justirications are somewhat involved, but not strictly circular. For a discussion of the background, from a conservative viewpoint, see: "Redistricting, Race, and the Voting Rights Act" (2010). This touches on the question multiple times, this passage captures much of the circumstance, though I recommend reading the full piece: [T]he South's swift and effective circumvention of the Voting Rights Act in the wake of its passage demonstrated the truth of what many civil-rights activists had argued: that merely providing access to the ballot was insufficient after centuries of slavery, another century of segregation, ongoing white racism, and persistent resistance to black political power. In the Deep South in 1969 (and beyond), the alternative to de facto reserved legislative seats for black candidates would have been the perpetuation of whites-only politics. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/redistricting-race-and-the-voting-rights-act https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/redistri...
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    This isn't true, each voting precinct reports vote totals each election. Demographic info adds almost no predictive value over this.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  That's not the purpose of the census, though. That's a political and social concern, and people can debate the value of that data and who should collect it, but it's not part of the Constitutional mandate to count the number of people.
  - ironman1478 5y ago
    https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/about/census-constitution.html#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Constitution%20empowers%20the,Article%20I%2C%20Section%202).&text=The%20plan%20was%20to%20count,determine%20representation%20in%20the%20Congress https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/abo.... Unless I misunderstood your question and you meant to say that the race portion specifically is not.
mullingitover 5y ago
> One thing that annoyed me in particular was their creepy obsession around race. Even once you answer, "White", there are several more questions aimed at determining precisely what subcategory of white person you are. This isn't really on the census. This is just the census trying to account for Americans' creepy obsession with race. Let's not forget that for most of this country's history, your race was everything.
willis936 5y ago
You're misrepresenting what a census is and why they are done (yes, including historically since the US began and even before). You might not like the idea of being accounted for, but that negates exactly zero benefit to society that census brings. How can the rulemakers make informed decisions if they're blind?
- overboard2 5y ago
  By making less decisions
  - willis936 5y ago
    I appreciate the honesty. Fallaciously pushing an issue for dishonest reasons damages representation in politics. If you dislike the census because you hate big gov't then it should be left there, even if you know it's not a popular opinion.
8note 5y ago
If you're going to count some Americans as less than a person when determining the electoral votes based on their race, you're going to have to know the race of the respondents. Collecting race data is then part of the original mission
nonameiguess 5y ago
It's not actually up to the Census. They're following OMB Directive 15 on race reporting standards for all federal data collection. You can read it here: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1997-10-30/pdf/97-28653.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1997-10-30/pdf/97-286... This is the latest version, but it was originally published in 1977 and based on the idea that humanity consisted of only four races. The reason it asks what "kind of white person" you are is the 1997 update was in response to criticism that this wasn't fine-grained enough, so they split Pacific Islander into its own group and split white people into Hispanic and Non-Hispanic. The idea of there only being four races in the world comes from Carleton Coon's publications from the early 60s. He had a theory that human races all evolved independently from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, in contrast to the more widely accepted "out of Africa" theory, and that this accounts for why some races, according to him, are "more civilized" than others. That is, humans left Africa in a savage state and evolved into sapiens form and developed civilization much earlier in Europe and Asia, again, according to him. I think it should be obvious why making a theory like this the basis of US official federal standards for race is somewhat controversial, but as we know, laws and regulations change slowly, if ever, so the Census is kind of stuck defending work they're legally charged with doing, and this data is used to assess things like racial equity of federal spending and assessment of the fair housing act and what not. It's kind of a relic of our shitty history, but it's there.

by tharne 5y ago

ironman1478 5y ago

This is important for understanding how gerrymandered a district is.

tharne 5y ago
> This is important for understanding how gerrymandered a district is. That's a bit circular. One of the main reasons that districts are so easy to gerrymander is precisely because there is so much rich census data that can be used to predict voting patterns.
- ironman1478 5y ago
  Its probably possible to gerrymander a state without this information? Sure, it would be harder (and probably less effective) but you could use proxy metrics to figure out the distribution of race within a state. I imagine I could use housing data as a proxy for example, given that property values are correlated with race. I don't have exact proof of that last statement, but it feels right. Also, I did some reading. Apparently the census has been asking these questions since 1790 https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-question/race/ https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-questio.... Though, I imagine the nature of the question has changed over time.
- brimble 5y ago
  Parties and campaigns already buy & maintain huge private databases on this stuff. They wouldn't hesitate to buy slightly more to have that info, because gerrymandering is so powerful. Watchdogs and groups trying to fight gerrymandering (racially-tilted or otherwise) usually don't have as many resources. It's harder for the public to keep an eye on this without public data, while keeping it private-only barely inconveniences the most relevant bad actors.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  The issue is specifically gerrymandering on the basis of race. Parties know their votes by precinct, those data are available. Apportionment of voting districts must be done by population, so the Census is necessary. Discrimination on the basis of race violates multiple Constitutional amendments and voting laws, for which enforcement requires clear knowledge of demographics. The justirications are somewhat involved, but not strictly circular. For a discussion of the background, from a conservative viewpoint, see: "Redistricting, Race, and the Voting Rights Act" (2010). This touches on the question multiple times, this passage captures much of the circumstance, though I recommend reading the full piece: [T]he South's swift and effective circumvention of the Voting Rights Act in the wake of its passage demonstrated the truth of what many civil-rights activists had argued: that merely providing access to the ballot was insufficient after centuries of slavery, another century of segregation, ongoing white racism, and persistent resistance to black political power. In the Deep South in 1969 (and beyond), the alternative to de facto reserved legislative seats for black candidates would have been the perpetuation of whites-only politics. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/redistricting-race-and-the-voting-rights-act https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/redistri...
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  This isn't true, each voting precinct reports vote totals each election. Demographic info adds almost no predictive value over this.
caymanjim 5y ago
That's not the purpose of the census, though. That's a political and social concern, and people can debate the value of that data and who should collect it, but it's not part of the Constitutional mandate to count the number of people.
- ironman1478 5y ago
  https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/about/census-constitution.html#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Constitution%20empowers%20the,Article%20I%2C%20Section%202).&text=The%20plan%20was%20to%20count,determine%20representation%20in%20the%20Congress https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/abo.... Unless I misunderstood your question and you meant to say that the race portion specifically is not.

mullingitover 5y ago

> One thing that annoyed me in particular was their creepy obsession around race. Even once you answer, "White", there are several more questions aimed at determining precisely what subcategory of white person you are. This isn't really on the census. This is just the census trying to account for Americans' creepy obsession with race. Let's not forget that for most of this country's history, your race was everything.

willis936 5y ago

You're misrepresenting what a census is and why they are done (yes, including historically since the US began and even before). You might not like the idea of being accounted for, but that negates exactly zero benefit to society that census brings. How can the rulemakers make informed decisions if they're blind?

overboard2 5y ago
By making less decisions
- willis936 5y ago
  I appreciate the honesty. Fallaciously pushing an issue for dishonest reasons damages representation in politics. If you dislike the census because you hate big gov't then it should be left there, even if you know it's not a popular opinion.

8note 5y ago

If you're going to count some Americans as less than a person when determining the electoral votes based on their race, you're going to have to know the race of the respondents. Collecting race data is then part of the original mission

nonameiguess 5y ago

It's not actually up to the Census. They're following OMB Directive 15 on race reporting standards for all federal data collection. You can read it here: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1997-10-30/pdf/97-28653.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1997-10-30/pdf/97-286... This is the latest version, but it was originally published in 1977 and based on the idea that humanity consisted of only four races. The reason it asks what "kind of white person" you are is the 1997 update was in response to criticism that this wasn't fine-grained enough, so they split Pacific Islander into its own group and split white people into Hispanic and Non-Hispanic. The idea of there only being four races in the world comes from Carleton Coon's publications from the early 60s. He had a theory that human races all evolved independently from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, in contrast to the more widely accepted "out of Africa" theory, and that this accounts for why some races, according to him, are "more civilized" than others. That is, humans left Africa in a savage state and evolved into sapiens form and developed civilization much earlier in Europe and Asia, again, according to him. I think it should be obvious why making a theory like this the basis of US official federal standards for race is somewhat controversial, but as we know, laws and regulations change slowly, if ever, so the Census is kind of stuck defending work they're legally charged with doing, and this data is used to assess things like racial equity of federal spending and assessment of the fair housing act and what not. It's kind of a relic of our shitty history, but it's there.