The Grand Rapids Times
By Kenneth Muhammad
So, how many Negroes live in Grand Rapids? That’s a question the US Census Bureau wants answered.
Question No. 9 of the 2010 Census asks whether the respondent is “Black, African- American or Negro”.
This question renders the terms equal.
Consequently, those Black persons, or African-Americans who answer will be forced to equate themselves to a descriptive term associated with slaves and slavery.
Local politicians, including Mayor Heartwell, are calling on Grand Rapidians to complete the questionnaire.
Federal funding is partly dependent on completion of the census and the population of an area.
Blacks, however, are left with quite a conundrum. If we want the funds that are tied to the census results, we must suffer the humiliation of referring to ourselves as our former slave masters called us.
This is reminiscent of a scene in the movie “Roots” in which Kunta Kinte was forced to call himself “Toby” in order to get relief from a whipping.
Are we now looking for similar relief?
Gerald Brown of Grand Rapids says he will be completing the form and indicating that he “is a Negro that wishes to be counted”.
Gerald says despite the terminology, “during a recession we need all the funding we can get”.
I will not be completing and returning my census form because I do not wish to break the law.
Federal law provides that intentionally supplying false information on your census form is punishable by a $500 fine.
If I were to indicate that I am a Negro, that would definitely be a lie.
Politicians will likely urge Blacks to complete the Census regardless, but I wonder if indicating one is a Negro will garner us only 3/5 of the funding?
1 comment:
Recently, I found the 2010 Census form hanging on my door. As I began filling it out, I came across a dilemma. The U.S. government wants to know if my children are adopted or not and it wants to know what our races are. Being adopted myself, I had to put “Other” and “Don’t Know Adopted” for my race and “Other” and “Don’t Know” for my kids’ races.
Can you imagine not knowing your ethnicity, your race? Now imagine walking into a vital records office and asking the clerk for your original birth certificate only to be told “No, you can’t have it, it’s sealed.”
How about being presented with a “family history form” to fill out at every single doctor’s office visit and having to put “N/A Adopted” where life saving information should be?
Imagine being asked what your nationality is and having to respond with “I don’t know”.
It is time that the archaic practice of sealing and altering birth certificates of adopted persons stops.
Adoption is a 5 billion dollar, unregulated industry that profits from the sale and redistribution of children. It turns children into chattel who are re-labeled and sold as “blank slates”.
Genealogy, a modern-day fascination, cannot be enjoyed by adopted persons with sealed identities. Family trees are exclusive to the non-adopted persons in our society.
If adoption is truly to return to what is best for a child, then the rights of children to their biological identities should NEVER be violated. Every single judge that finalizes an adoption and orders a child’s birth certificate to be sealed should be ashamed of him/herself.
I challenge all readers: Ask the adopted persons that you know if their original birth certificates are sealed.
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