CBS 2 Chicago: Got a Box to Check on the 2010 Census? Some Don’t
By Roseanne Tellez
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/2010.us.census.2.1600669.html
CHICAGO (CBS) -One group of Americans is conflicted about their census form.
CBS 2′s Roseanne Tellez says Arab Americans are told to check white for race. But for many of the estimated four million Arab-Americans – that doesn’t seem to be telling the whole story.
Check out the form — there’s Asian Indian, Chinese, Samoan, other Asian, Pacific Islander. But if you’re Arab, you check white.
Reema Ahmad is with the Council on American Islamic Relations. She says the most important thing, is civic duty. Especially since some Arab pockets of the city had low participation for the last census.
“Fill it out, send it in and be counted,” said Ahmad.
But she says there is a sense in the Arab-American community that checking “white” doesn’t tell your whole story.
“As you see in social interactions, Arabs are not treated as many whites, so there should be sub categories.”
At a Middle Eastern restaurant in Chicago, opinions vary.
Sami Yakoo said, “It doesn’t make any difference to me. As I’m living in the United States, I believe I’m American.”
“I don’t think it should be Arab, but not Middle Eastern either. I think they have to find a category. I don’t know what that is. We are from North Africa. So I don’t know if it should be African, Arab African, I don’t know,” said Mohamed Djeddour.
“Hopefully in the future the census bureau will keep up with the changing landscape of the U.S. population and have something Arabs can identify with,” Ahmad said.
In the meantime, she says you can always write it in.
“The fear of some if you just write it in is that all the write-ins will be lumped together, and you won’t be counted individually,” said Ahmad.
But in other states, like California, there’s a big campaign to get Arab-Americans to do just that — write it in.
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Recently, I found the 2010 Census form hanging on my door. As I began filling it out, I came across a dilemma. The U.S. government wants to know if my children are adopted or not and it wants to know what our races are. Being adopted myself, I had to put “Other” and “Don’t Know Adopted” for my race and “Other” and “Don’t Know” for my kids’ races.
Can you imagine not knowing your ethnicity, your race? Now imagine walking into a vital records office and asking the clerk for your original birth certificate only to be told “No, you can’t have it, it’s sealed.”
How about being presented with a “family history form” to fill out at every single doctor’s office visit and having to put “N/A Adopted” where life saving information should be?
Imagine being asked what your nationality is and having to respond with “I don’t know”.
It is time that the archaic practice of sealing and altering birth certificates of adopted persons stops.
Adoption is a 5 billion dollar, unregulated industry that profits from the sale and redistribution of children. It turns children into chattel who are re-labeled and sold as “blank slates”.
Genealogy, a modern-day fascination, cannot be enjoyed by adopted persons with sealed identities. Family trees are exclusive to the non-adopted persons in our society.
If adoption is truly to return to what is best for a child, then the rights of children to their biological identities should NEVER be violated. Every single judge that finalizes an adoption and orders a child’s birth certificate to be sealed should be ashamed of him/herself.
I challenge all readers: Ask the adopted persons that you know if their original birth certificates are sealed.