We are becoming a nation of write-ins. So found a report released last month by the U.S. Census Bureau. When filling out census forms in 2010 (the year of the last national population tally), more people than ever before did not choose one of the race options provided; they chose “some other race.”
The report, part of a years-long project to re-examine the census’ racial and ethnic categories, underscores the extent to which demographic changes in the U.S. have outpaced our methods of documenting them.
The bureau’s concerns about the unrepresentative nature of its census categories appear to be well-founded. Approximately one-third of the 47.4 million respondents who self-identified as ethnically Hispanic also self-identified as “some other race.” A full 96.8 percent of all people claiming to be “some other race” were Hispanic. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA AMERICA.