i am…… other

(7 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

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so our boy called last night.

mom. guess what i just did?

urhm…. made a rocketship to fly me to mars?

mo-o-o-om! no! i filled out the census.

yeah? and….?

well y’know where they ask white, black, asian…?

uh-huh.

well. they had white. then it said black, african american, NEGRO.

shouldn’t it have said white, cracker, honky?

well, son….

okay, mom. i was being facetious. well kinda.

i mean they wanted to know what kind of hispanic you are.

why not what kind of white?

you could be english or irish or russian or swedish or finnn or….

okay, okay. i see your point.

well they had a whole buncha other boxes.

then they had other.

that’s what i picked.

oh yeah?

yeah. and i wrote in human.

that’s what race i belong to after all.

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so i turned & told our girl what her brother had done.

i put human too mom

and i got to thinking….

what if half the people… or more(!)… put human?

they couldn’t redistrict according to racial profiling…

if WE say race doesn’t matter…. and show it by answering EVERY race question “human”

very soon they won’t be able to separate us by “race”.

77 comments

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    • RiaD on March 31, 2010 at 05:36
      Author

    i’ve been putting HUMAN for years

    on forms, on surveys, on ANYthing that asks me race.  

    • TMC on March 31, 2010 at 05:50

    I do that on every survey that asks that dumb ass question

  1. Ria, you are my hero.  This is for everyone else:

  2. I’m relatively human, so I’m going to write in HUMAN too.

    Thanks for posting this, Ria.

  3. and collate it and generate a report on your actions, your preferences, and your entire life, including being cross checked by dedicated people to do just that, in about 15 minutes.

    They are scary, but I’m scarier still.

    Hope that gives you some comfort.

    The form, which picture you put up in this diary .. this is what I do.

  4. we are all earthlings.

    • Robyn on March 31, 2010 at 15:10
  5. I love this.

    Had this one ANTHRO Prof in particular in college, she was a hoot. Physical Anthro. They speak in shorthand and code, so we, in her daily convo, were mostly referred to as “homo sap sap”, often followed by a grin.

    Perhaps I should just blow off all this politics craparoni and, instead, make it my sole mission to make ANTHROPOLOGY a required subject in high school. Humans Change the World.

    My favorite refugee kidlet referred to self as “Heinz 57”. His mom was half Vietnamese & half Cambodian, his Dad was half German and half Camb. People often asked him if he was “Hawaiian or somethin'” and he spoke at least four languages.

  6. yet but I’m putting human down too. I found the race part creepy and it struck me that it was the only question that was invasive. Well almost, they also want to know if you ‘own’ your dwelling which is kinda weird as it is a head count isn’t it? am I turning into a teabagger or just pissed off and paranoid?  

  7. I always refer to myself as a Terran.

  8. Super kid to think of that.

    Yep, from here on it will be human or homosapien!

    Thanks for sharing that — you must’ve felt quite proud of your son.

  9. The census taker gave me a patient look and shook her head, so I tried “euromongrel”.  No dice.  Human would have been an excellent try, if I’d thought of it, but she was a tough cookie, so maybe not.  It’s harder to push the issue or sustain indignation when it’s a tired temp worker with aching feet standing at your door.  

  10. At 81 Ma is having a problem at times filling out forms.  She got the long form weeks ago and it would have taken her days to fill it out.  So I did.  I also debated on actually sending it in or not.  The questions intrusive, over the top and most likely something they already have in their extensive data mining Admiral Poindexter TIA files anyway.

    • RiaD on April 1, 2010 at 02:49
      Author

    ♥~

  11. the conversation among friends while I was filling it out was “Person 12”?

    We discussed how it’s for Mormons or Immigrants and then unanimously agreed we prefer Immigrants over Mormons any day of the week!

    Because Immigrants are at least human, unlike Mormons who can Hie to Kolob for all I care…

    😉

  12. I wrote INDY500

    but I like HUMAN better.  

  13. “earthling.”

  14. “Patriotic White Non-Socialist Hot Christian-American”

    . . . but it wouldn’t fit!

    So I just put “Hot” and figured they would know who it was from.

  15. lower unemployment by NOT sending in the form.

    By law, the government must hire people to go around and individually collect it from each residence not responding to the mailer. The amount of people hired will be based upon the number of residences NOT returning the form. Therefore, the higher the number of residencies not returning the form through the mail means the higher the number of temporary workers required to visit each residence to collect the form.

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