I am dutch and my english is, even after 15 years of playing this game, still not that good. :p
I am making a paper about Arab-Americans. I am using data from the American Community Survey. I am wondering what 'community' in this context means. Is it a population group, like the Syrian minority. Or is it a part of a city/village? I dont get it.
Your help is much appreciated.

"The American Community Survey (ACS) is a nationwide survey designed to provide communities a fresh look at how they are changing through critical economic, social, demographic and housing information. Every year the ACS will provide communities with the same kind of detailed information previously available only from the long form of the U.S. Census. It is sent to a small percentage of the population on a rotating basis throughout the decade. No household will receive the survey more often than once every five years."

city is my guess.

Thank you. That would make sense I guess.

There is some disagreement about the 'race' section in this survey. People cant choose 'Arabic', arabic people should choose 'White'. Does anybody know why this section is important?
Maybe if a community has a high % of a race other then white, then such community will get more federal or state fund?
If so then I understand the disagreement arabs have with this question. If they choose white their community wont get as much money as they should.

because theyre not white people? :P

http://en.wikipedia.org/..._the_United_States_Census

I have arguments about this before.

The US govt has always in some form or another asked the race question in the census. The census is used to get a count of how many people live where, and is used to determine how many representatives to the house of representatives that each state has. I would suppose that the biggest reason for including race in the first Census, was to differential between free persons/indentured servants and everyone else (not including "Indians").


The reason its still relevant today, has mostly to do with legislative requirements in various acts (civil rights acts, voting rights acts, etc) for racial and ethnic data to be collected. Insofar as that data being used to direct money, I am not aware of that being the case---except for in the cases where they implement outreach programs and advertising, etc.


Here's a pretty good link for you to go over that the OMB published. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg_race-ethnicity

Thanks guys. I think I got it.

In this context, "community" actually describes both a particular demographic (type or group of people) as well as those groups in cities, I'd think.

I don't know how the Netherlands are, but here in America, we tend to identify people by ethnic background as well as congregating in ethnic communities....

For example, most major American cities have a "Chinatown" where people of Chinese ethic origin both congregate and live. There are also plenty of "Little Italy" type communities within large metropolitan areas.

So the ACS describes both the ethic makeup of geographical areas as well as identifying specific ethnic communities within cities and towns.

America is so big and so ethnically diverse that nearly every town has a "Chinatown" or "Little Italy" or in the case of my city, "Communities" aren't based on people of a certain ethnic background living in the same neighborhood but rather based on religion.

We have a very robust Lebanese, Greek and Italian "community" for example. Where they live is spread out, but they tend to go to specific churches based on their ethnic background.

Don't listen to marshal, he will post ANYTHING to get a higher post count ;)