I had reason to be critical, no reason to be surprised. Mine is different from that of the Wall Street editorialist. At eighty I undoubtedly have more experience with government bureaucracy than the disappointed Wall Street editorialist.

In 1953, I applied for a driver’s license in St. Louis.  I was informed I needed my income tax receipts to obtain one. When I explained that I had been in combat in Korea and, being in combat, I was excused income taxes, the license lady said no receipts, no license.  Learning of my problem, my father told a friend whose brother was president of a major union about it. Soon I received a call from my father: go back for your license. When I walked into the agency, the same woman said, “Oh, Mr. Dannenmaier,” walked over to a desk and returned saying, “Here is your license.”

But I experienced bureaucracy in its prime in Massachusetts. To obtain a driver’s license there I stood in five different lines, as did everyone else applying. But the best was my water supply. The water coming from the faucet in the house we rented was a bright blue. A person at work told me there was a bureau established to check drinking water. When I took a sample there, the man in charge of what appeared to be a one man, one secretary office said, “Oh, we only test for …” and mentioned a single chemical. When I asked where I could go, he said he didn’t know.

This is why the Census questionnaire didn’t surprise me. During my brief career as a Census worker, I completed that form for each residence occupied on April 1. Item 5 required me to document if any resident was of Hispanic descent. If the answer was “yes,” I had to specify if the person was Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuba or some other Hispanic nationality, which I then had to note; e.g., Argentinean, Brazilian, etc. Item 6 required me to identify each person by race. Choices included White, Asian Indian, Japanese, Native Hawaiian, American Indian, Black, Chinese, etc. 

Why was the editorialist complaining about polarization? Isn’t the goal of our current political leadership is to change the motto of our nation from “Out of many, One” to “Out of One, Many?” Diversity is king in the schools and the workplace. The census form simply supports the direction of the nation, as being enforced by those whom they have elected. 

What was odd was that the form lumps all American Indians, Blacks and Whites into unified groups. Is this a consequence of ignorance or simple stupidity? 

Since when have all American Indians been the same? Working in North Dakota, I learned that the Chippewa and the Sioux were at continuous warfare with each other in decades past. The wars have ceased, the hatred hasn’t. A friend and co-worker, who was half Chippewa, told me that if a Sioux wandered onto the local Chippewa reservation he would be lucky to leave alive and that no Chippewa would dare step foot on a nearby Sioux reservation. This was only thirty years ago. Similarly, the Crow and the Blackfeet have years of experience to distrust one another. I suspect it is the same in other parts of the nation. Why assume all American Indians are the same when we distinguish between Hispanics?

I accept that the rigors and horrors of slavery united all African natives into Blacks, but that was long ago. Since President Kennedy changed the immigration laws there has been a great increase in immigrants from central and southern Africa. Newspapers report that the various tribal groups in those areas are still busy killing each other and asserting the right to their own identity. Do all of these feelings change as a result of entering the United States? Why not permit Blacks to identify themselves by their heritage, albeit Ethiopian, Kenyan, Zulu or other?

I know more about Whites, being one. An early memory is of my mother telling of how my grandmother Dannenmaier, from Swabia, would turn her back on my grandmother Hartwig, calling her a “Prussian Pig.” Such feelings, however, while occurring in all nations, are trivial. There are major groupings such as Celtics, Germanics, Slavs, and Scythians among others. Again, why not acknowledge the “diversity?”

The above experiences cause me to believe that the Census document was simply an incompetent attempt to understand the racial backgrounds of the persons who now inhabit the United States. My complaint is that it is based on ignorance, ignorance of the diversity of the human species and of our nation.   A census form, which fully completed what this one started, would require a small booklet, perhaps a hundred or so pages and take time, which is expensive, to complete, but at the least it would indicate some knowledge on the part of the bureaucrat who wrote it. Of course it would be simpler, and much less expensive, to simply ask, “U.S. Citizen” or “Other.”

And friends wonder why I don’t trust the government to run my medical care.