‘Negro’ offensive, should be removed from Census

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Cracker.

That is what I scribbled next to ‘White’ on my 2010 Census.

I stared at my Census for several minutes trying to take in the fact that the government looked at me as nothing more than a (well-educated) Negro.

I was angry, hurt and disappointed and debated if I wanted to fulfill my American obligation and be counted for another ten years.

What is a Negro?

The way I was brought up to understand it, Negro was one of many terms said to African Americans to make us feel less than what we are.

A Negro was forced to pick cotton for 400 years and hanged from trees if that Negro chose not to.

A Negro was not a member of society. A Negro wasn’t a human.

A Negro was beneath the roadkill that lays on the side of US 127.

Yes, Negro was used during the days of Jim Crow, but those days are long gone.

Robert Groves, the director of the Census Bureau, apologized for ‘Negro’ being an option on the census and, in the same breath, said 56,000 people wrote in Negro on their forms in 2000.

While this may be true, the 2000 census results show that more than 34 million African Americans were counted for and, if my math is correct, that 56,000 make up .165 percent of that population.

I have a hard time believing the Bureau opted to leave that term on there to make less than one percent of the African American population happy.

However, I cannot place all the blame on the Census Bureau. For the last three census counts, ‘Negro’ was nicely printed next to Black and African American. Why haven’t we paid attention before?

Maybe the rise and popularity of the Black Panther Party in the 1970s caused it to be ignored in the 1980 count.

Maybe crack making its first appearance in the inner city during the ’80s is why it was ignored in the 1990 count.

Maybe the gang wars of the ’90s caused it to be ignored on the 2000 census.

Maybe it was because of all these things that my mother, uncles, and aunts never noticed they were allowing the government to continue looking at them as nothing more than Negroes.

What makes the United Negro College Fund using the term different from the Census Bureau is that UNCF is not a government body.

It was founded by individuals who chose to identify with that term and even they no longer go by their formal name. They are simply UNCF.

Actually, I want to thank the bureau for reminding me that labels, no matter how harsh or outdated, still exist and, while I may not identify with a term, that’s not stopping little Billy next to me from thinking I’m nothing more than a well-educated Negro.

So thank you, United States Census Bureau, and send the head Negro in charge — President Barack Obama — my love.