In today’s Impromptus, I address an ongoing irritation: the need, in American life, to check off boxes identifying yourself as a race or an ethnicity. I have written on this for years, and of course have received sacks of mail on the subject, which I incorporate, gratefully. Just received this note, and I thought you might enjoy it — a lot:

Jay,
Your tales of “checking the box” remind me of an issue I faced about ten years ago. I’m career military, and I got a survey form that I had to fill out noting the race and gender of the soldiers under my command. My NCO and I both thought it was ridiculous, so we put “Army Green” for everyone’s race and “Soldier” for everyone’s gender. My commander passed it up without comment. We got an irate call from the EO officer demanding that we fill out the form correctly. I just shrugged and told her that I’d put down exactly what I saw, but she was free to categorize my soldiers as she saw fit. The issue was dropped.
Keep up the good fight!

Sounds like this reader knows a great deal about a good fight.