Yes, I replied online after about the third reminder they sent me. It was several months ago, though, so I don't remember what was asked. I just remember that it didn't take very long, not at all like those 20 page forms they used to send in the mail.
I noticed you can list yourself as multi-racial now. And if you are ''Caucasian'' you must be more specific.. German, English, French.. Would you necessarily know? Does, say, 3/4 German, and 1/4 Italian count as just German?
Originally Posted by Chung Tran
I wonder how many people can answer a question like this accurately? Until a few months ago I was dead certain that my ancestors on both of my parents sides came from Germany. That was until my brother, who is more interested in this stuff than I am, sent me the results of his study of our ancestors. He traced some of them back to before 1500, and it turns out that some on my mother's side came from England. I never knew that. But my real question is, what difference does it make that my ancestors on my mother's side in the 1500's came from England instead of Germany? How is that going to impact anything that the government needs to do today? For sure, it has nothing to do with apportionment of representatives for Congress, which was supposed to be the original reason for a census.
Many years ago I discovered in the library a book called "Statistical Abstract of the United States". It was a book of maybe 500 pages of very fine print and contained statistics about everything you could ever ask about the U.S. and many things you never thought of. Producing that must keep many bureaucrats at the Commerce Department busy all year. Recently I went looking for something, and I see that book is no longer published. But I guess the data is still generated and published in different forms. Generating data makes work for people.