This is a really interesting comparison, and you can see how institutionalized white privilege is in many of the countries listed above, just by their ordering of the various 'categories', with white often appearing first.

I think it is silly for them to put white and black as options, and then sub-divide other races, like Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and so on. Too bad that they don't include an option that reads "human".

Depending on the census, there are different forms of this, like with Canada's Southeast Asian, South Asian, Japanese, Black Filipino, etc. Very interesting way of lumping and dividing. It seems all of the census' here do this to some extent. How do you think?

Do they do this, I wonder because of how mixed heritages may be, or because exact histories may not be known? Is it to "save space"? All it seems to do is ignore the beauty of different groups within groups.

This is a really interesting comparison, and you can see how institutionalized white privilege is in many of the countries listed above, just by their ordering of the various 'categories', with white often appearing first.

I think it is silly for them to put white and black as options, and then sub-divide other races, like Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and so on.

Depending on the census, there are different forms of this, like with Canada's Southeast Asian, South Asian, Japanese, Black Filipino, etc. Very interesting way of lumping and dividing. It seems all of the census' here do this to some extent. How do you think?

Do they do this, I wonder because of how mixed heritages may be, or because exact histories may not be known? Is it to "save space"? All it seems to do is ignore the beauty of different groups within groups.

I am curious to know what people think.

Wait, does Guam conduct its own census? Doesn't it just participate in the US census?

One country that doesn't appear on the list is France, which makes a point of *not* asking about race -- part of the ideology inculcated by the tradition of the French Revolution is that all citizens are French, regardless of origin. There's a lot of criticism of this, though, as it makes it difficult if not impossible for the official bodies to assess the real inequality that exists between white French citizens and those of Arab and African origin.

the one of the UK census survey -- "Asian" referring to Indian, Pakistani and Bengali, does not surprise me. South Asians are the largest minority group in the United Kingdom.

I recently applied to a job in England and (me being a white American) was very much unsure about which box to check. I mean, am I White-British (since many Americans, myself included claim British ancestry) or White-other, because I'm not from the UK?

Finally I just checked White-other and sent it in. It's the first time I've ever had to hesitate over that box on a form; it gave me a small sense of what it must be like for others who don't quite fit on these forms.

I think it is very interesting that race is seen so differently throughout the world even on their censuses. I actually thought there was a universal form that all countries used but I guess not. I think it might just be easier to leave one blank line where people can fill in their country of origin and their religion/race. I feel like having so many choices just makes the overall process confusing. I know that on standardized tests sometimes I don't know which box to check off so I just choose other which ultimately defeats the entire purpose since "other" is a lot of different races. I think that in order to avoid confusion, there should either be a group consensus on what the race section of the census should consist of or people should just be given a blank line to answer.

People who complain about the arbitrariness of these divisions, I think, are misguided. If we accept that the meaningful consequences of race/ethnicity are entirely social/cultural, then all that matters for collecting data to assess these consequences are to bin according to the dominant perceptions of race/ethnicity in a given society/culture.

It should not surprise that different nations have different dominant perceptions, and these variations reflect that.

Also it should not surprise, in the US, that such a variety of backgrounds are conglomerated into the categories "white" and "black." In modern US, any privileges / disadvantages you experience as a consequence of your race, very likely do not differentiate between what specific "black" or "white" ancestry you come from. So why perform such differentiation in sociological studies? (Though, I admit, it would be worthwhile to check that this is indeed true.)

People seem to think of this game as a matter of "recognition," which gets them upset that they do or don't get the specialized categorization. This is silly. I think it is akin to, when you fill out some form asking for your income, being upset that household incomes below $75k get, say, $10k graduation while incomes above $200k are, likely, all lumped together.

There's something I've been wondering and I noticed comes up in this and the last post (with the US forms): according to my passport I am Spanish - from Spain- (a Spaniard, to use the language in the form in the previous post) so therefore I would be racially classified as "Spanish/Latino/Hispanic".

This makes no sense from a European perspective... we don't have such a strict racial classification system here but Spanish people are considered white (or "mediterranean" if you will) by everyone in Spain and Europe

Why do you think according to US systems we would be included in a category with all people from south american origin? just because of language? (not to say that I have a problem with it nor that I think it makes any more sense to "lump· together all the different nations in SA)

Where do those box images come from? Because "England" doesn't have its own census--the UK does.

@Julia: yes, you're "White Other" in the UK. I know, it's all a bit silly.

@Anna: yes, I grew up in the US (I used to have dual US/Spain nationality, now I have only Spain), and I would routinely get classified as "Hispanic" (the 70s/80s version of "Latin@"). Hispanic may be technically correct, as I do come from a Spanish-speaking culture, but....it's not what the people who were doing the classifying were thinking of when they made it a "racial" classification.

This topic has come up a lot lately, so all I'll add to this is that Latin American countries as just as ethnically/racially diverse as North American ones, so trying to make Latin@ a racial category is ridiculous.

Of all the examples given above, the only one I like at all is Australia's. Not because the categories themselves are particularly well-thought-out, but because you can at least choose more than one option.

I find it interesting that so many places just state "white," but ask for more information about the origins of other colors. Talk about being over-generalized...

However, England's census did make me shudder. I am amazed they divide the Irish and British.

I just took the US census, and the racial questions were far more in depth than what appear here. I wonder if any of the other countries are different as well.

I'm surprised that Canada's 'White' category isn't broken down more, because although the White label encompasses a whole lot of people, there are also very many 1st/2nd/3rd generation immigrants from Eastern European and Mediterranean countries who identify very strongly with their communities and it seems a little inaccurate to lump them in with British and German and French people who have been here for centuries and do not have a distinct cultural heritage.

Haha I love how Britain's consensus treats Chinese as different from Asian. Probably because of its history with China and Hong Kong, but really, we're on the continent called Asia.

I don't like that most of the surveys are "Are you ___" or "what are you?" Some people may be in one racial group but not the same ethnic group since ethnicity's about the culture. I could be Chinese by race but Norwegian by ethnicity if Norway was where I grew up and learned my culture and beliefs.

In the New Zealand census there has been great debate about the ethnicity question for years. The last few times so many people declined to tick a box and instead wrote in "New Zealander", that they have now added this as a category. I don't care really, but I do think adding "New Zealander" makes the asking of a ethnicity question kind of useless, unless you allow people to tick more than one box (which I don't think they do). The statisticians will never be able to tell what percentage of each ethnicity ticked the "NZer" box instead of "Maori", "Pacific Islander" or "Pakeha", so the percentages of all these groups will be quite different from what they would be if you asked instead about people's ancestry, i.e. "where were your grandparents born" or similar. The only useful information that remains is what percentage of the population thinks of themselves as a distinct ethnic group, which is equally interesting, I suppose.

I'm very happy to see Brazil in this comparison. Is an extremely mixed country and still has the fewer and less specific choices (which I tend to believe is good, but also that happens there exactly because everyone is so mixed)

Yay for Australia having a census that makes sense! To me talking about what country you're from is a lot smarter than asking what colour you are. I mean seriously, what the hell kind of answer is: 'white'?? It doesn't really say anything about your ancestry or culture so it's a pretty useless piece of information. It's probably as helpful as asking 'what is your hair colour?'

And hey, maybe I'd just tried to give myself a tan and managed to come out orange... where's the option to write my race as 'Orange'? :P

The only thing I will say is that I suspect that since 2001 our Aussie Census has probably been expanded to include a lot more countries of origin. The other question that could be interesting to ask is (if you're not indigenous) what generation of Australian are you? (Although that could just be asked elsewhere in the survey)...

As an FYI, I'm a 4th gen Irish/New Zealand/German Australian. And proud of it :) Oh, and at the moment I'm a kind of pinkish brown... with grey/green eyes... and blonde hair.... all of which are subject to change whenever I feel like it :P

For the Canadian drop down menu, Black and Filipino are supposed to be different categories.

Crossposted to a previous post. Please delete if not allowed, but I would really like to hear people's opinions about this:

I have a question! What does the U.S. government (in particular) use the information for, other than “The United States identifies itself as #% this, #% that”, etc.? I ask because I have had people swear that the entire race section is stupid because it’s a social construction, so there’s no point in filling it out correctly because otherwise you’re just perpetuating the ideas of separate races. They say they will put “HUMAN” under “Other.”

Would you guys suggest doing that? Or can I trust that the US government understands that these are social constructions and that gathering this type of information is to help further the path towards equal opportunity?

I’m really conflicted ):

I've been trying to think of something interesting or subversive (but not actually a lie, or a silly answer like "Klingon") to put on my census form, but so far I haven't come up with anything. I guess I should probably just do it straight.

If I were able to do any kind of research I wanted with the census results, I would want to do something about how many people give joke, subversive, or ironic answers, and what they put. (But thinking on it again, I guess there would be nothing to really do with that data--without knowing the real demographics of the people giving such answers, it would be hard to analyze in any meaningful way. OK then, I just think it would be cool.)

You might also like ot have a look at the Irish Census's badly formulated attempt at the categorisation of 'race'. Paper on it here: http://www.translocations.ie/volume3issue1/Vol_3_Issue_1_Marian_Cadogan.htm

and original forms available here: http://www.cso.ie/census/New_Questions.htm

Not quite sure (not old enough to need to remember that much about the last census) but I think that all of Britain uses the same census. So by saying "England" this site is basically blanking all of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Picky I know, but it's annoying being blinked out of existence by these kind of things.

I think people get way to pc when it comes to census. However I don't see why there isn't an option, especially for Asians, to fill in their nationality.

ARGH, there is no 'England" census! What about us in Scotland (and the Welsh and Irish)?!

Radical communities have stopped referring to the USA as just 'America' as it ignores Latin American peoples - when are people going to stop calling us all English? Either call us British or name us all!

There are two census questionnaires in Mexico: the basic one for everybody and a more detailed one for a sample population.

The basic questionnaire asks whether the person speaks an indigenous language (Nahuatl, Maya, Zapotec, etc.), not if they are, think, or believe to be Nahuatl, Maya, or Zapotec. Speaking an indigenous language is an approximation of the population in that cultural/linguistic community. Obviously, the census questionnaire is written in several indigenous languages. If the answer is yes, then the person is asked if he/she also speaks Spanish.

The more detailed questionnaire asks people who do not speak an indigenous language if they understand it and if they consider themselves culturally indigenous.

In my opinion, the original question, asking whether a person speaks an indigenous language as an approximation for membership in an indigenous community is superior to the more detailed and recent versions of asking for individual identification. Indigenous communities have their membership rules and ways for entering or leaving the community. That is, a person does not decide alone whether he/she is a member; it is a community decision. You may look like the statue of Cuauhtémoc, but if you do not live in a Nahuatl community and speak Nahuatl, then you are not Nahuatl, no matter how indigenous you feel or think you are. This is because the members of the community say so because they have no bonds with you.

However, now they are asking how individuals feel and self-identify. Perhaps it was a condition to get an IMF loan.

Why do countries itemize "race"?