Inform me, pls

[highlyeccentric]

Americans and persons better informed than I:

What is the "war on drugs", exactly?
Why am I seeing the occasional reference to the "war on drugs" in RaceFail posts, usually with the implication that said "war on drugs" is a specific and negative policy against the black community? Is there a particular race angle to its application, or is it something which negatively impacts low socio-economic groups, including a high percentage of the black community?

~

Next:

Is 'people of colour' really the PC term?
Is it PC anywhere outside of the States? Because it sounds racist to me, and my gut says it wouldn't go down well in Australia if you reffered to anyone as a person of colour.
Who IS considered a 'person of colour' in the States? Is an Italian-American considered a 'person of colour'? An immigrant from the Middle East? The Hispanic community?

Comments

[anachronisma.livejournal.com]

I hate basically all the terms on our census. Especially white but including "black/African-American" because what if you're an American of ... say Berber descent? Are you white? Are you African? What the hell are you?

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

I have a question. Is it true that the US census isn't allowed to ask about people's religion? I heard a while ago that it's not, which interested me because ours does - there was a kafuffle a while back, probably just after our last census (2006, I think), about moving "no religion" or the equivalent tickybox further up the list of options, because a lot of people who aren't observant or bother very much about religion just ask their parents which religion/belief system they are, which skews the statistics.

I never know what term to identify people by, because most of them are icky and have all sorts of unpleasant connotations. But then no one has any idea what I'm talking about, because they're expecting to hear the usual descriptions. PoC does sound pretty old-fashioned and ... wrong - probably the only thing going for it is that it's reasonably wide-ranging, but even that's not necessarily a good thing, because hello generalisations.

[anachronisma.livejournal.com]

EDIT: I killed my link. And reposted to the wrong place. Here you go.

According to the data available from the Census Bureau, questions of religion are not reported on. I've never filled out a census questionnaire so I don't know if they're NOT ALLOWED TO but that data isn't available to the public even if they do gather it.

I do know that for government statistical reasons when I was applying to public universities I was not obligated to fill out my race (it was option) and the question of religion was not asked for records.

The offending link: Census Bureau categories. (http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ACSSAFFPeople?_event=&geo_id=01000US&_geoContext=01000US&_street=&_county=&_cityTown=&_state=&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&ActiveGeoDiv=&_useEV=&pctxt=fph&pgsl=010&_submenuId=people_0&ds_name=ACS_2007_3YR_SAFF&_ci_nbr=null&qr_name=null®=null%3Anull&_keyword=&_industry=)

[anachronisma.livejournal.com]

I will also add that when I did not fill out my race on the public forms they randomly attributed one to me (without alerting me in any way), and it is an incorrect one. They put me as Hispanic student and I am, in fact, an Anglo-Filipino-AmeriIndian-European student with a Spanish last name.