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I filled out the 2020 census yesterday. For anyone who doesn't know, that's one of many silly, unnecessary wastes of time that the U.S. government puts us through every so often. My opinions on the way that government wastes people's time aside, the census does have a few thought provoking questions on it. 

These mainly revolve around ethnicity. For my part, I'm just not sure these are useful categories for counting anything. Here's what I mean: in terms of ethnicity, I'm a whole hodgepodge of different things. I've never done a lot of ancestry searching, but from what I know from older relatives, my family has never really stuck with one ethnic group. Instead, they've married and had kids with people all over. All that is to say that in terms of family relationships, I don't have a great answer for what ethnicity I fall into.

So what do I go with? DNA? My parents took one of those tests, and all that did was reflect what I already knew about where my family is from. That isn't useful either.

Now I should mention, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about who I am in terms of ethnicity. Maybe you could say I have the privilege not to think about it. Maybe you could say it's just not as important to my identity as other things. Either way, I don't really think about it all that much until I'm asked to step into a particular category of people. And whatever the category, it's an uncomfortable fit. 

And that's why I wonder if these categories are even useful any more. For a category to work, there needs to be clear, defining distinctions that make a thing actually fall within that category. Think of something like screwdrivers, for example. A flat head and a Phillips head screwdriver are in different categories because they have clear distinctions between them. It's a dumb example, but the category for those tools is useful because they are put to different purposes and we need that category for distinguishing between them. 

But you can't take that thinking and apply it to the infinitely more complex thing that is humanity. I mean, you can try, but those distinctions are pretty meaningless these days. But what do I know? Maybe the various family lines that bring a person into existence are really important to some people. Maybe I would feel differently about it if I wasn't three generations removed from the people that immigrated here from other countries.

I'm also not clueless about what's going on in the world. I am aware that these questions are really sensitive for people right now. I just wonder if all of this categorization for people helps or hurts the way we think of ourselves. It's not an easy question to answer. That said, I'm personally skeptical of the census and its questions. It all seems very unnecessary.