(no subject)
Nov. 13th, 2003 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfb[Whoops--thought I'd posted this already.]
The Sunday Times led with a classic "human story with symbolic significance" piece of journalism, about an Israeli soldier with a Palestinian father. Here's the closer: "When he saw him here for the first time in several months recently, he shook with sobs: a burly Israeli sergeant in olive fatigues, a star of David on the chain around his neck, clutching his Palestinian father on a Dimona sidewalk, not letting go, defying his state, defying, it seemed, the centrifugal conflict itself." A good article if you like that sort of thing.
Rich colleges get more federal aid than poor colleges. I don't know what to think about this. Also, half of the Education Life section this week was about tuition.
Hispanics reject racial categories. On the U.S. Census form, which lists "Hispanic" as an ethnicity and then asks correspondents to select one of five races, 42% of Hispanics choose "some other race"--a response that almost no non-Hispanics choose. Lots of interesting stuff about trends in how people define race.
Remember how the feds rounded up a bunch of illegal immigrants working as janitors at Wal-Mart? Now the immigrants are suing Wal-Mart for "failing to pay overtime, withhold taxes and make required workers' compensation contributions." So weird.
The Sunday Times led with a classic "human story with symbolic significance" piece of journalism, about an Israeli soldier with a Palestinian father. Here's the closer: "When he saw him here for the first time in several months recently, he shook with sobs: a burly Israeli sergeant in olive fatigues, a star of David on the chain around his neck, clutching his Palestinian father on a Dimona sidewalk, not letting go, defying his state, defying, it seemed, the centrifugal conflict itself." A good article if you like that sort of thing.
Rich colleges get more federal aid than poor colleges. I don't know what to think about this. Also, half of the Education Life section this week was about tuition.
Hispanics reject racial categories. On the U.S. Census form, which lists "Hispanic" as an ethnicity and then asks correspondents to select one of five races, 42% of Hispanics choose "some other race"--a response that almost no non-Hispanics choose. Lots of interesting stuff about trends in how people define race.
Remember how the feds rounded up a bunch of illegal immigrants working as janitors at Wal-Mart? Now the immigrants are suing Wal-Mart for "failing to pay overtime, withhold taxes and make required workers' compensation contributions." So weird.
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-23 04:38 pm (UTC)I can't recall the last Census, but I remember that some years ago it took my mom about an hour and a half to fill everything out, and most of it she spent asking me and my brothers how we wanted to be listed. She also had to figure out how she wanted to be listed. My dad always chooses Other and then fills in "Human" when he's given space to write.
I wish we didn't need to question this sort of thing.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-24 09:58 am (UTC)I think what interests me about the Census is that race and ethnicity are vague, slippery concepts, but there is a need to gather quantitative data about them. I'm always fascinated by how people forge gray areas into black and white (so to speak).
Incidentally I've done the Other/Human thing too, although I can't remember where.