Does this make any sense?

It seems that I've read a number of things that didn't quite make sense the way that they were written. I can't remember most of them, but this was in the 2010 Census.

This concerns either questions 8 and 9, or questions 5 and 6. And maybe there are different Census forms, and other forms don't look like this.



--> NOTE: Please answer BOTH Question 8 about Hispanic origin an Question 9 about race. For this census, Hispanic origins are not races.

8. Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?

_ No, not of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin
_ Yes, Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano
_ Yes, Puerto Rican
_ Yes, Cuban
_ Yes, another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin--Print origin, for example, Argentinean, Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Spaniard, and so on.

________________________________

9. What is Person 1's race? Mark x one or more boxes.

_ White
_ Black, African Am., or Negro
_ American Indian or Alaska Native--Print name of enrolled or principal tribe.

________________________________

_ Asian Indian
_ Chinese
_ Filipino
_ Japanese
_ Korean
_ Vietnamese
_ Other Asian--Print race, for example, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian, and so on.

_________________________________

_Native Hawaiian
_ Guamanian or Chamorro
_ Samoan
_ Other Pacific Islander--Print race, for example, Fijian, Tongan, and so on.

_________________________________

_Some other race--Print race.

_________________________________



I don't know if your copy of the census looks like that. Mine had blue columns in English and green columns in Spanish. I don't know what race you are if you are Hispanic and Hispanic doesn't count as a race. What race would a Mexican American be if not Hispanic? He isn't White and he isn't Black, and he is not any of that other stuff listed. If White and Black are races, then maybe Brown should be race, but it isn't listed either.

I would not know how to deal with this if I had to answer that I was Hispanic. But I am not Hispanic. There are Hispanic people on my husband's side of the family, but he doesn't speak Spanish, so he doesn't even say that he's mixed, he just says that he's White.

I'm not sure why they need to know anyone's race anyway. Blacks and American Indians count as whole people now. The census is supposed to be counting to figure out how many representatives a state should get in Congress. That number isn't going to change because of a race majority or minority.

I also don't get the point of question three. Not that any of the answers were good ones for my situation, but I made a guess. Seems like there should be a few more boxes on that question, like condos or dorm rooms or even jail cells.

No, I do not live in a jail cell.

But, again, renters and homeowners and maybe even actual homeless people should count the same on a census. The state representative number won't go up or down either way. Why do they need to know if a person pays rent?

Whatever.


I heard another thing was was maybe poorly phrased.

My husband went to this meeting. This is part of a process to change the way that things are done so that my husband will start doing his job paired with one salesperson, while in the past he has usually worked with two salespeople. Most people don't like the idea. This isn't going to fix the problem. This is going to make everything better and get back those larger paychecks that a lot of them got used to getting.

And, it seems clear to me, that this means that there will not be work for half of the salespeople.

So this middle management guy (who possibly doesn't have a real job when he isn't going around giving speeches) gets my husband and other people with his same job and their two managers together, and a couple of the salespeople's managers were also at this meeting, though most of the salespeople were not there cause they'd already had one of these meetings.

So my husband is telling me about the meeting, how this middle management guy was trying to convince everyone that the new one on one system is going to be great (while most of us have figured out that it is a bunch of BS, but there's just no choice in the matter if you want to keep your job). And he starts out by saying that the new one and one system is a good thing, because right off it will get rid of half the problem. So this is a really good thing.

Sounds like he was saying that the salespeople were the problem, and that this was a good thing to get rid of half of them. And he said this not only in front of my husband and other people with his job and a couple of his managers, but also those few salespeople managers sitting in the back.

They were not amused. My husband did not laugh. Most of the other people didn't laugh either.

How about getting rid of half of the appointment setters and people who arrange for the accounts, since they bring in all the "customers" who don't buy anything. And how about getting rid of middle management, who probably don't do much when they aren't giving BS speeches.

But stand up in front of people and say that the new system will get rid of half the problem? What was he drinking?