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I have been counted.
Curiously, the census form allows me to have no nationality. There's also a write-in slot for religion, but I did not insert "Jedi". And the other thing that caught my eye was the ethnic/cultural background question: a choice of White (subdivided into Irish, Irish Traveller, and Any other White background), Black or Black Irish (African, Any other Black background), Asian or Asian Irish (Chinese, Any other Asian background), and Other, including mixed background. I find the distinction of Black Irish and Asian Irish curious since the subdivisions then effectively restrict you to ticking the Other box.
Not as I understand it
I don't see why the subdivisions effectively restrict you to the "other" category (and that applies to the three forms of "other" in that question). People who identify as being of an Asian background -- whether they identify as Irish Asian or "Asian Asian" -- are asked to identify themselves as being either of (1) Chinese or (2) "Any other Asian" background.
If your ethnic background is "pure" Asian [shivers at the implications of that idea and its associations, but ploughs on -- might have enough credit in the account on that issue], then you're either Chinese or "Any other Asian background", and it seems to me that there are enough people here who would have Chinese as a single country/culture of origin to make that a worthwhile subdivision but probably not enough of any other single Asian background (hmm... afterthought: is the Indian community big enough?)
Ditto Black (with the Chinese reference changed to Africa).
The real problem is a political one: absent a nationality question, Black Irish or Asian Irish people are denied the opportunity to declare their Irishness, in contrast to us pink-skinned people.
Re: Not as I understand it
Re: Not as I understand it
I haven't given this much thought, but I think the complexity has two dimensions to it. One is the kind you cited -- are you Norse, English or Irish -- and issues of where boundaries are defined. (A bit like deciding at what size a lump of rock orbiting the Sun should be classified as a planet.)
The other has to do with often unstated assumptions (and power relations) in describing ethnicity. There is the joke about the person in the Carribean saying they're White because one of their grandparents was a White European, and this classification being rejected but somebody whose background was the other way around (one grandparent Black, the three others White) being defined as Black by virtue of that single grandparent.
(I once worked with a guy whose mother is Irish and father Sri Lankan. In Sri Lanka it is polite to eat with your hands, but you have to do it properly. On one ocassion when Ronan was dining out in S.L. there was a young boy at a table near his making a mess of eating with his hands. The boy's mother kept trying to get the lad to do it properly and at one stage in exaspiration told him that even the White man over there can eat properly with his hands. Ronan looked around to see where the White man was in the restaurant and only realised the mother meant him when he could see no other possible candidate in the place.)
no subject
We're getting censused (incensed?) May 16. Our issues are a little different and tend to cluster around language; francophones are being encouraged to deny that they speak English, even if they do.
Cats of the World Unite!