Central statistics office - survey with personal questions

[gonk]

Racial background cannot be equated with ethnic and cultural background, unless you can believe a nonsense such as a "black" child, born to a "white" mother and raised by her, is ethnically and culturally different to its parent.

There's a piece in today's Irish Times about a man born in the 60s to a white Catholic Belfast mother and a black Ghanaian doctor. He was raised in Belfast, joined Sinn Féin, and ended up in the Maze for four years in the 80s on firearms and explosives charges.

I wonder what the CSO would make of his "ethnic or cultural background"?

 

[gianni]

The Census (and various CSO surveys) can only record so much. They have to make generalisations and try to 'group' respondents whether it's in terms of ethnicity, socio-economic level, education etc.

In an ideal world they could have a 10 page q'naire that properly investigates ethnicity but realistically they have to work within parameters. I think the idea that the CSO are trying to satisfy the "pet theories" of certain groups is a bit far fetched.

 

[gonk]

In an ideal world they could have a 10 page q'naire that properly investigates ethnicity but realistically they have to work within parameters. I think the idea that the CSO are trying to satisfy the "pet theories" of certain groups is a bit far fetched.

I disagree. I think the area is wholly inappropriate for them to be gathering statistics on in the first place. Leaving that aside, the implication in the question that race, ethnicity and culture are synonymous is simply wrong. To take the CSO's categorization to its logical conclusion, two siblings born to a "white" mother, one with a "white" father and the other a "black" father, are of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Requiring citizens under threat of prosecution to answer questions like these which are based on nonsensical, subjective and unscientific premises is an abuse of the CSO's powers in my view. If questions along these lines are to be included in the Census at all, answering them should be voluntary.