Word: census
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...attempt to catalog all the ways that Americans can go crazy dates at least to 1840, when the Census included a question on "idiocy/insanity." From those two simple categories, we now have more than 300 separate disorders; they are listed in a 943-page book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM for short. The book is important because doctors, insurers and researchers all over the world use it as a reference, a dictionary of everything humanity considers to be mentally unbalanced...
...that time of decade again. On Jan. 25, U.S. census workers began knocking on doors in Noorvik, Alaska, the first stop in an epic attempt to count everyone in America. Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution calls for an "actual Enumeration" of the population every 10 years in order to determine how many Representatives each state gets in the House. The survey has also collected data on occupations, education and housing, among other subjects. The first Census, in 1790, was mainly a head count of free, white, draft-eligible men. Later queries were sometimes absurdly specific...
...extrapolation of data from smaller groups--is more accurate, but Republicans, suspicious of overcounting in left-leaning areas, argue that the Constitution's use of the word actual mandates a nose count. Getting it right is important: in addition to its role in doling out congressional seats, the Census influences the allocation of more than $400 billion in federal funds that affect the lives of some 300 million Americans. How many, exactly? It'll tell us that...
...longer term, the write-in box could prove to be an even more momentous step in the evolution of racial categorization than the ability to check more than one race. By encouraging wider swaths of people to explain as precisely as possible how they see themselves, the Census is implicitly acknowledging that its count of the U.S. population is increasingly becoming a conduit for self-expression. "We are measuring the characteristics of the American people as they wish to be known," says Prewitt...
That is true even when the way a person wishes to be known is as a Negro - at least for the time being. Considering that older black people are more likely to use the term, Negro will almost surely eventually come off the Census. But it is important to remember that when it does, it will not be a simple reaction to changing social mores. In 1970 the Census changed its black category from "Negro" to "Negro or Black." The Federal Government sent a form to every U.S. household and effectively said, We have a new way of thinking about...