Yesterday, I was on CNN with Don Lemon, Raquel Cepeda and Christian Lander talking about the 2010 Census and its questions and options for race and ethnicity. Before the segment I put out some of my thoughts, research and asked for your own feedback. Now, I’m posting the followup.

Here is the video of the full segment as it aired (without commercials). It includes a short but fascinating video piece by Raquel in which she interviews people on the streets of New York to get their reaction to the Census form. My favorite part is the black woman who saw the word Negro. Priceless.

Afterward, Raquel, Christian and I continued talking and tweeting about it and lamented the short amount of time given to the subject on air. So, as I did last year with Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, we’re going to keep the convo going for a little bit online. Here’s my extended video reaction to the CNN segment now on YouTube.

The first thing to note is that Lemon’s statement that “The U.S. Census is supposed to be a simple counting of all Americans” is not true. It’s never been a “simple count” and from the beginning has asked about race and other info. I didn’t have time to correct this on air, but below I address a lot of the history of the census that couldn’t fit into this segment.

As Raquel, Christian and others chime in, I’ll post those updates to JJP as well.

Related Posts with Thumbnails