Did everyone submit their 2010 Census (well, everyone that is an American citizen)? I sure hope so!

2010 was the first year that a Census rolled around and I was “head of the household.” In 2000 I was still in college and under my parents household. I’m not sure what they put on that Census or if they even did it but I was sort of excited to do mine this year.

Now, for those that don’t know, I’m Korean on my mom’s side and Caucasian on my dad’s side. My wife is Chinese American and my two children are a mix of all of those ethnicities.

The 2010 Census was something I was anticipating as it was a way to “count” multicultural people and this was only the second time that people were allowed to select multiple ethnicities for the Census.

For other mixed folks like myself, we are often forced to pick one instead of being allowed to pick all of our cultures. I distinctly remember a time in high school where we were taking some sort of test that required ethnicity to be selected and it stated “check one only.” I asked an administrator/teacher what I should do? That person told me “just check White/Caucasian.” I then went ahead and checked both “Asian” and “Caucasian”; I wonder if that might have messed up my test score? haha

That’s pretty much the story of our lives (for mixed folks) and these little boxes sometimes drive us nuts especially when they only allow “one” to be selected.

I wanted to share some interesting articles/stories that I had found.

From USA Today:

A great article on multiracial people and the Census – Multiracial no longer boxed in by the Census

Reader submitted responses to “the race question”/Census – The race question

From AngryAsianMan.com:

AngryAsianMan.com did a fun contest where people could submit a picture of them and their Census form.
Here are some of those pictures: 2010 Census family portrait & Here

For more information, please check out the official 2010 United States Census page.
According to the site, there is still time to turn it in if you haven’t already done so!

On a side note, President Obama decided to only select “African American” for his Census response (source Yahoo! News). Not that it is any of my business and ultimately that is what makes this Census better (having the choice to select what you want) but I was a little disappointed that, as arguably the most well known mixed-race individual in the world at this time, he decided to only select one of his ethnic backgrounds. Again, only my opinion and not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things (as that was his personal choice).