Depends on Who's Doing the Asking

Fake census form--can you tell? (cleveland.com)

Too intrusive: A New York Federal judge has ruled that the census cannot ask about citizenship: [bold added]

“Secretary Ross’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census—even if it did not violate the Constitution itself—was unlawful for a multitude of independent reasons and must be set aside,” wrote U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman, who had presided over a trial about the question last year.

The decision comes as a result of two lawsuits filed by cities, states and left-leaning advocacy groups. The plaintiffs had argued adding the question ignored the Census Bureau’s own research, would lead to a significant undercount and was motivated by discrimination against immigrants.

There's a lot of mind-reading going on here, because there are no direct quotes, audiotapes, or videos of Census officials being "motivated by discrimination against immigrants", but as one who deplores the government's intrusion into our lives I like the ruling. I am in favor of satisfying the Constitutional requirement for a census ("Enumeration") and no more:

The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct,----Article I, Section 2

Not intrusive: the Democratic Governor of Oregon wants officials to visit the home of every newborn:

One of the more ambitious items tucked into Gov. Kate Brown's agenda for 2019 is a home-visitation program for the families of new infants.

All new infants.

Of course, it's for the welfare of the babies and their families.

The census may not ask a question, but Oregon may enter your home. An intrusion is okay if the right people are doing it.

Daylight Savings, Digital Thinking, and the Census

Early Sunday morning I padded through the house engaged in the semi-annual turning of the clocks. While I do appreciate the time-saving attributes of cellphones and computers that adjust the time automatically, I don’t mind spending the few minutes moving the minute hands on our old-fashioned clocks and watches.

Being analog in a digital world means that, although we are more comfortable with information in the form of pictures, we are too often forced to view information in numerical form. It takes me a split-second longer to recognize a digital “9:27” than the image on an old-fashioned clockface.

Worse, we must throw items into arbitrary buckets so that computers can sort them easily. The digital age can't have infinite shades of gray; about a dozen are all that the color wheel can handle.

Speaking of arbitrary categories, I just filled out the census form for the household. It took me only five minutes to complete, and the seven questions per individual (nine for the first responder, c'est moi) were simple enough for a third grader to answer.

The Census Bureau wanted to know our names, dates of birth (plus age this April 1st--are they surreptitiously checking whether I can do elementary math?), sex (hooray for not using "gender," an attribute of words, not human beings, but I'm afraid that ship has sailed), and race. As in the 2000 census we are allowed to check off more than one racial classification, a good thing for my extended family members, none of whom are "pure" anything.

One more perfunctory question about whether individuals live in the household the entire year or called away for educational, military, or criminal reasons, and we were done. I was happy that the questions weren't more intrusive; on the other hand, if census data were going to be used to make decisions about government programs, why this preoccupation with race? The ingredients in the American pot continue to melt, and IMHO race is much less important than education, income/wealth, politics, religion, and, of course, the blogs that one reads. The U.S. Census: another example of a digital program that finds it difficult to adapt to an analog world. © 2010 Stephen Yuen