A handy barometer for federal, monetized aggression against the American people can be readily seen in the documents of the U.S. Census, as it fails to justify its growing demands upon our privacy and insists on the priority of ‘race’ in every evaluation.

The U.S. Census documents imply, by focus and repetition, that racism is the crowning national proclivity -- despite the same being, in real life, sanctioned by a slim minority. Aren’t most of us tired of being held ransom in ‘black’ vs. ‘white’ land? I know I am. If we consider Census-speak as a whole, its insistent presumption is that we the people are to confirm, in writing, the Fed’s bizarre, loose identity politics.

“The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as “American Indian” and “White.” People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race.”

OMB requires five minimum categories: White, Black, or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.” 

Oh-Kay. The Census does admit that it is not using formal definitions or understandings of what ‘race’ means, at all: that is right; they aren’t, but they are making some up.  Whatever might be “a social definition of race”?

 If we use William Shakespeare’s marvelous definition of humanity, of a naturally equal human species that trumps race, spoken by Juliet to Romeo, we can draw a legitimate analogy as to how secondary, at best, race truly is, compared to the family of man:

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

Juliet affirms that nothing about Romeo, no part of him, argues against his essential identity, the human persona that she partakes of and loves.  Most relevant here is her first line: ‘’Tis but thy name that is my enemy.” Juliet is telling Romeo that the only element dividing them from each other is that which seeks his or her identity in one’s family ‘name’ (the Montagues and Capulets are locked in a long, bitter feuding).  She is telling Romeo that she and he are of a piece and that their shared humanity overrides family or blood feuds, or names (or races, by analogy).

From the US Census:

In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item (emphasis added) include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as “American Indian” and “White.” People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race.

OMB requires five minimum categories: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.

How and why, exactly, can “the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups”? By what agency or definition does ‘national origin’ define ‘race’? Are the French a race? Are Ugandans a race?  For heaven’s sake, what even is a ‘race item’? And what of ‘sociocultural groups? Can diverse but grouped, acronym-heavy phenomena e.g., Transgender, BLM, MADD, Pacific Islanders, AA, etc., now be ‘sociocultural groups’ and, therefore, by U.S. Census illogic, be a ‘race item’? This is dangerous nonsense. The reference to OMB’s minimal and required categories is even more noncommittal; that is, its ‘racial’ labeling is not characterized as racial, or as anything else. What does the OMB have to do with this? (See ‘taxes’.)

In national crises such as we face today, Abraham Lincoln -- having put on his frequent verbal armor, humor -- argued against the racial identity politics of his time:

“If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. -- why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A? --

You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be a slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly? You mean whites are intellectually the superiors to blacks, and therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.

But say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.” 

In agreement with Shakespeare’s Juliet, Lincoln is standing for the extra-racial prerogatives of being born a human being, which standard made him the most beloved of U.S. Presidents. He is showing no partiality. He has no special interests, no identity politics. Maybe the lawyer in him scorned the notion of evaluation by skin color, or recognized by skin color/shade, as highly illogical and unreal. As in Juliet, for Lincoln, a human person is as such, and our humanity to be taken seriously as sure identity. Most of us are Juliets or Lincolns in this regard, if we can just get on with it.

After summing up its diverse and illogical “racial items,” the Census information minders attempt to rectify their racial fixations as “Reasons”:

“Reasons for Collecting Information on Race

Information on race is required for many Federal programs and is critical in making policy decisions, particularly for civil rights. States use these data to meet legislative redistricting principles. Race data also are used to promote equal employment opportunities and to assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks.”

The most telling, prophetic sentence is the last: “Race data also are used to promote equal employment opportunities and to assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks.”

Now, we really see the green lights flash: for more federal tinkering, intrusion, expansion, and racial incitement. And, oh yes, we will be taxed more for it. By the feds’ lights, having included every identity politics gadget in their Census store, we are to be reassured that every citizen will be assessed, redistricted, budgeted, policy-enhanced, ‘fairly’ employed, medically ‘insured’, and environmentally ‘protected.’ More incoming American dough for Medicare, Social Security, and the international panoply of federal service-minded ops. That’s the switch. Race was only the bait.

Image: RCragun