I like Mark Krikorian’s suggestion for how to answer question number 9. I actually was only going to answer the count question and nothing else. But I might just go with Mark’s suggestion.

Sending a Message with the Census

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year’s form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government’s business (despite the New York Times’ assurances to the contrary on today’s editorial page). So until we succeed in building the needed wall of separation between race and state, I have a proposal. Question 9 on the census form asks “What is Person 1’s race?” (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics; I had fun doing this on the personal-information form my college required every semester, where I was a Puerto Rican Muslim one semester, and a Samoan Buddhist the next. But lying in this constitutionally mandated process is wrong. Really — don’t do it.

Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — “Some other race” — and writing in “American.” It’s a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. In fact, “American” was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties.

So remember: Question 9 — “Some other race” — “American”. Pass it on.

I added the bold and enlarged and colored font.

Update: Okay, so I thought there was no legal compulsion via the Constitution to answer all 10 questions of the 10 year census survey. Unfortunately, there is.

Regarding the census coming in the mail, you are required by law to answer the 10 questions truthfully.Based on what the census deems to be a “race” answering question 9 as Other and writing in American is legal. Read the following but note this: In Article I, Section 2, the Constitution says that an “Enumeration” must …be conducted every ten years “in such Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct.” Congress has directed through a federal law that anyone who “refuses or willfully neglects…to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions” on the Census form can be fined $100 (13 U.S.C. § 221). If you deliberately give a false answer, you can be fined up to $500.

To Answer or Not to Answer the Census – That Is the Question [Hans A. von Spakovsky]

Census 2010, Question 9, Race question

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