Oppose the Census 2020 Citizenship Question (Courtesy of the Sikh Coalition)

[FreepFryer]

As the deadline to submit public comments approaches on August 7th, the Sikh Coalition encourages Sikhs to speak out against the addition of a citizenship status question to the 2020 Census. The last time the U.S. government asked people about their citizenship on the Census, the information was used to identify and force Japanese-Americans into internment camps in the 1940s. This question was added in haste and deters individuals from responding out of fear as to how this data could be used.

http://www.sikhcoalition.org/get-involved/take-action/take-action-oppose-census-2020-citizenship-question/

[PoliticAverse]

1. The people put in concentration camps in the US were actually US citizens.

The census used questions on race (which are still on the census) to identify areas containing populations of
Americans of Japanese descent. See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/

[FreepFryer]

2. I believe that's common knowledge. Not sure if the article is as decisive as your comment, though...

Anderson and Seltzer discovered in 2000 that the Census Bureau released block-by-block data during WW II that alerted officials to neighborhoods in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Arkansas where Japanese-Americans were living. "We had suggestive but not very conclusive evidence that they had also provided microdata for surveillance," Anderson says.

The language leads me to believe that citizenship and racial ancestry were both factors. Can you provide a link that citizenship was not one of the microdata factors mentioned (I believe the article implies it was)?

Thanks for that excellent link!

[PoliticAverse]

3. Here's a scan of the actual 1940 Census. The Census specifically asks for a person's "Color or Race"

and Japanese is one of the specific choices.

The reason the citizenship question wasn't that important concerning internment is because virtually all Japanese citizens
would be of "Japanese" "Color or Race" so the citizenship question would just mirror the "Color or Race" one.

The majority of those interned were American citizens who would either leave the "Citizenship of the Foreign Born" spot
blank if they had been born in America or would have answered "Japan" again mirroring the "Japanese" "Color or Race" choice.

Thus the "Color or Race" "Japanese" choice would much more closely match those who were interred than the citizenship question as it would be a "superset" of the citizenship one.

https://1940census.archives.gov/downloads/1940-census-schedule.pdf

[FreepFryer]

5. Understood. Thanks for that informative post!

But is it not true that citizenship status was also asked, and collated, as part of the process as the Sikh Coalition mentions?

[PoliticAverse]

6. Yes, "Citizenship of the Foreign Born". n/t

[msongs]

4. almost all the census questions are invasive abuses and need to be got rid of nt