Mark, I agree. But the neo-apartheid obsessions of Big Government extend way beyond the Census. I took a friend to a Vermont hospital a couple of weeks back, and was interested to see a notice on the counter at Admissions informing us that under the 2009 American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ie, the trillion dollars of “stimulus” Obama tossed in the Potomac and watched float out to sea) the hospital is “required” to collect information on each patient’s ethnic and/or racial identity. Usual stuff: “Pacific Islander”, “Asian”, “Alaskan native”, etc. The notice informed us this ”program” is “administered” by the Office of Management & Budget. Evidently administering such programs leaves the Office of Management & Budget with little time for either managing or budgeting, which helps explain why this is the Brokest Nation in History.
The justification for the government’s obsession with racialist classification is that it helps them to “direct” “resources”. In reality, it’s a pretext for ever bigger government, and ever smaller citizenship – for your status as a US citizen counts less and less when weighed against these various government-regulated identity categories. The Office of Management & Budget has no legitimate interest in racial classification of private hospital admissions. Also, it doesn’t do anything to “stimulate” the economy – although, in that respect, it’s entirely consistent with the rest of the act.