What's so upsetting about the N-word in Question 9 of the federal 2010 Census questionnaire?
Respondents can choose black, African-American or Negro to describe their race. It's not as if nigger, nignog, spook or darkie were alternative choices.
Negroid, caucasian, hispanic, asian, polynesian, indian and semite have been used for decades to describe races in census data and other official documents.
Those categories are much more accurate than the colors black, white, tan, yellow, brown, red and olive, respectively.
And hyphenated-American descriptors only convey shared nationalities. After all, whites or caucasians can also be from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Pacific Islands and the Middle East.
Perhaps it's time to forgo any consideration of race in the United States--except for criminal profiling.
Why? Third-plus generations of Americans are frequently racial hodge-podges because of interracial dating and marriages. (10 JANUARY 2010)
