But yes, why have numbers? Although, someone does have to come first on the form, even if it’s just “list all those who occupy this residence,” someone’s name has to go on the first line.

What would you do otherwise? “Who lives in this house and are they related to one another in any way? If so, how?”?

I’m not sure how to phrase those sorts of questions without some kind of implied hierarchy creeping in.

Boyfriend and I are apparently both census geeks. I knew that already, though, because a few years ago, when I had some bad insomnia, I spent several nights in a row researching the 1327 Paris Census. It was pretty fascinating.

Although a head of household was always designated, they were not necessarily the source of household information transmitted to the census-taker. Genealogists try to study the data for a family group over more than one census, because there are invariably errors in the information presented.

One common source of these errors is the census-taker himself (almost always a male prior to 1930). These jobs were often allocated on the basis of patronage (it paid well) rather than literacy, understanding of human diversity, confidentiality, or handwriting legibility. The census-taker could be, and often was, impatient, judgmental, or drunk, in addition to being ass-ignorant.

They were also almost always white and of Northern European origin, which has profound implications for the veracity of what they recorded. In areas with high populations of immigrant populations with non-English surnames, census-takers more often than not will simply take a phonetic stab at translitering a name, or if they ask the interviewee to spell their own name (which a lot of folks prior to 1930 could not do), the census-taker would write down a hasty alphabet soup without diacritical marks or other indicators of actual name identity.

Racism, overt and presumed, also makes a mockery of this record-taking which is often the ONLY evidence that an African-American lived in a given place. White census-takers mispell black first names far too often for it to be their usual kind of ignorance — and the mispelling is not simply individual choice on the part of that interviewee, you can tell the difference. Especially right after the Civil War but continuing on through the 1920s, it was dangerous for an African-American in the South to admit to literacy and intelligence, particularly to a nosy, hostile white man hired by the local government to walk up to your front door and lay eyes on every member of your family. You let that cracker spell your name however it amused him to do so — you had much bigger battles to fight.

Further, in the plantation South where 90% of the African-American population had formerly been owned by 10% of the white population, the issue of surnames is volatile. Former slaves who took the surnames of whites who had owned them, who had treated them well at some point, but still lived in the area were under pressure to spell that surname differently from the white version — so there was immediate recognition of which “color” belonged to that similar surname. This wasn’t as necessary woth common names like Davis, Turner, Brown, Black, etc, so one way to not get tagged with a race-identified surname was to choose a “generic”. Or that of a former President. All clues to survival, and the disempowerment associated with name and lineage denial implicit in slavery.

Further, in parts of the South where white terrorism held sway (KKK and other groups, heavy incidence of lynching), it is common to find the individual giving the names and ages of their family members to be deliberately lying, especially about teenagers of either gender. Ages are off by several years, nicknames are used instead of given names, and these will vary from one census decade to the next in a way that smacks of intentional obfuscation. This practice can also be found in censuses of the late 1800s in predominantly Jewish settlements in Russia, where the names and ages of boys are fudged by their parents to keep them from being conscripted into the Czar’s army. Jews who grew up under that threat can be expected to continue the ploy for a while after they immigrate to the U.S.

Another common source of error in the information recorded in earlier censuses is if the family member imparting the information is the father rather than the mother. Fathers will get the ages, places of birth, and even the names of their wives and children wrong much more often that mothers do. Savvy genealogists know to analyse the data from a given census decade for this effect. If the property value is precise, if the place of birth for the husband is correct but not the wife, if “place of birth of parents” is left blank or filled in with guesswork ditto marks, and/or if the children’s data has obvious mistakes, it’s a “dad” reporting to the census-taker and must be considered more likely to be wrong.

As for locating our queer forebears on those earlier censuses, it’s almost entirely supposition. Only a tiny percentage of folks would have had the ability to live outside a heterosexual family setting prior to WWII, and mostly these would be male and white. And that’s assuming they would want to live apart from their extended family, which we cannot assume from a modern headset. The way we have collected and named the identity of gay, lesbian, bi, trans, or queer is a very recent label — not the practice of same-sex love or gender rebellion, but the decision to create a gathered and agreed-upon definition to accompany those choices. For homosexual in general in America, it’s an identity that began to be constructed as we understand it during the 1930s but greatly accelerated during WWII with the massive population shift of an entire generation from isolated farms to cities and same-sex military environments. For gay and lesbian, it’s since the 1950s and 1960′s. For trans, it’s since 1985. We can’t plaster modern labels onto earlier generations, we can only describe their behavior and listen to what sparse written record there might be as to how they defined themselves.

So in the census, our “lesbian” foremothers were likely married, mothers and grandmothers. A few were maiden aunts able to live together or with a bachelor uncle, not tied by marriage to a man. It’s impossible to tell definitively who were bisexual and who would have preferred lesbianism but had absolutely no chance to live that way.

The ability to live alone or with other women is very recent and a freedom the Religious Right wants to eradicate. They know as well as we do its implications.

The current census will have its data analyzed but the actual records themselves will not be released to public view for 72 years, so I (and most of us) will be dead before anyone can take a look at who we actually were, how we arranged our living situations. Too many of us will still be hidden by the assorted enforced invisibility of major oppressions. But clues will abound, and future researchers will speculate about us, I’m certain. I like that knowledge.

People from planet Imsk have the ability to shrink, like long time member of the Legion of Superheroes (and sometime lesbian, depending on who’s writing her) Shrinking Violet. So Imskians can screw IN a light bulb, though I don’t see why they’d want to.

Only funny to a Legion geek…

@Tori Poppy #95: I can tell you’re new around here. Soon you’ll join the rest of us in making fun of Dr E all the time. (Just not on the threads he can read. On the other blog, the one everyone but him knows about.)

@Kat #86: I disliked three things about the census form. I filled out the one for our household while the Believer (a.k.a. Mrs Acilius) was sitting next to me, doing some work on her computer. I started with myself, so that I would have gone through my part before I had to ask her any questions about her part. That made me “Person One” and her “Person Two.” Which doesn’t sound very egalitarian to me.

Second, when I did get to the Believer’s part, it asked for me to define her in terms of her relationship to me. That’s very definitely not the way we do things in our house, I can assure you!

Third, the definition that fit the Believer was “husband/wife.” All right, we’re an opposite sex couple, legally married- so I’m a husband and she’s a wife- but I’d rather those be separate categories. So if I wanted to call the Believer my husband or she wanted to call me her wife, we would have that option. I grant you, as gender neutrality/ gender equality/ genderqueerness issues go, that’s not usually considered one of the biggies, and had we been presented the option we would have gone the conventional way. Still, I did notice it and it did bother me.

We lived in an equivalent area to our DTWOF chums and when the weary and underpaid census collector came back to our house to clear up the apparent anomalies in our form, she was long past being entertained by this sort of thing. In fact she made it rather clear that she didn’t experience being landed with all this extra work as particularly sisterly . . .

Maggie, agreed, no religious questions please!

Dr. E, I promise not to make fun of you! LOL

Thank you Hairball #71 and Calico #75. I do always browse with Firefox, but am wondering about my anti-virus… will try turning it off prior to posting and see?

Funny Jain, (cute joke) does getting high in a VW Van count? I never screwed in one… and my kids swear I’m a hippy? But now I have proof to contradict that assessment.

Maggie 89 agreed that deviation from gender binary is “unacceptable” for the baby-boom generation. But I wonder if after that passes (me too) this will be the last of that dogma? Three things make me wonder,

The recent visibility of Inter-sex conditions and the tragedy of SRS performed on babies in the 50-70′s+ simply to make them conform at any cost.

The availability of the internet to spread the information re Inter-sexed and TS people.

And lastly the fact that there has been a huge “sea-change” in the reality of most TS people’s transitions; 20+ years ago it was the norm to drop off the face of the earth, transition, then live life “stealth” in the correct “new” gender. Yet today the norm is to transition in “broad daylight” and try to keep as much of your life, career, family etc intact as possible. Given actual data from SRS surgeons there are way more TS people than the DSM accounts for perhaps as many as 1 in 500 people. Each one is a ambassador to improve visibility of gender variation.

It is amazing how gender has become such a “non-issue” with the teens/twenties crowd. One of our biggest worries was how our kids friends and peers would react to our non-standard 2 mom non gender conforming family. It simply didn’t materialize.

“Husband or wife; biological son or daughter; Adopted son or daughter; stepson or stepdaughter; brother or sister; father or mother; grandchild; parent-in-law; son-in-law or daughter-in-law; Other relative; roomer or boarder; housemate or roommate; unmarried partner; other nonrelative”

No censuses prior to 1930 have ever had a religion question. I’ll scream bloody murder if they include one, because there’s no allocation of resources need that would justify asking such a question. Not while we still have (vanishing) separation of church and state.

The race category is separate from the Hispanic and Asian heritage categories. You can check as many race boxes as applicable, you’re not limited to one.

In the Hispanic heritage box, they have a bunch of national origins for Hispanic which you can check off as many as apply, plus a write-in box that you can also check off. Same for the Asian/Pacific Islander heritage box, you can check off as many as apply, plus a write-in box. That’s how they will get the accurate count of the black Guamian-Laotian-Peruvian populace of my hypothetical rant above, but totally miss the single LGBT (and possibly the married LGBT, if they tinker with the data as they have done in prior Censuses).

No religion questions at all, I seem to recall prior Censuses had a question on religion. Or perhaps I’m remembering the American Community Survey, a smaller population sample that’s done in-between Census years with way more questions. That one definitely had questions on running water availability, number of rooms in one’s dwelling, etc.