Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

The U.S. Census is commanded in the U.S. Constitution to be made every 10 years. Besides the actuarial interest it generates, it also has political ramifications because it determines how the 435 U.S. House representatives are allocated among the States, and what Identity Groups receive government money, so it has become a lightening rod of controversy. For example, the next Census is during Trump's administration and he'd like to include a question about citizenship. This has inflamed the non-citizens and anti-border advocates, who don't want those numbers accurately known. Of course, cries of “racism” were immediately raised, though the irony is that the Census is already patently racist; until 1970, Hispanics/Spanish/Latino were grouped in with “White,” and still are when ethnicity of our prison population is counted. Eventually Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, and Other Spanish got their own categories, though people from India are still counted as White.

Why race is even a question on a census is debatable, but whether people here are citizens or not seems very important since it impacts Voter's Rights. A citizenship question used to be on all census forms in 1950, and on the Long Form from 1970 until 2000. There was a change in 2010 to make the census easier to fill out in an attempt to get greater participation, so the citizenship question was dropped, but in this age of ulterior political motives, where immigrants are more revered than existing citizens, and the idea of borders is under attack, the argument is that everyone is a citizen of the world, and everyone in the world is a rightful citizen of the U.S., the census has become a symbol of Nationalism.