Which Box Should I Check?

I came face to face with the insanity of race the other day as I looked over my kids' school registration papers. Among the usual papers was an "ethnicity survey" that I presume is used for federal reporting or funding or something. I've got no problem with that.

But here is what we had to fill out.

The first section for "Ethnicity" gives you two choices - Hispanic/Latino or non-Hispanic.

What the...?

So now ethnicity is either Hispanic or non-Hispanic. That is it? And you can only check one box. So since my kids are half Hispanic and half non-Hispanic, which one box should they check?

Then comes the second section where you check your "Race." Here they say you can check as many as needed. Which of course is a big improvement over many years ago where even here you used to be able to check only one box.

The choices included many Asian categories of "race." Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, you get the picture. So now these are supposedly different races and not just different countries of origin or cultures?

And of course there was the standard "White" or "Black." But interestingly no Brown category for race. I guess that was covered under ethnicity in the first section which means Mexican, Honduran and Brazilian people or simply Hispanic but Asians can have countries which makes them have races.

I am confused.

Now I get that Hispanics can be black, white and brown. But so too are there Asian Hispanics. And if my wife is Hispanic thus checking that box under the ethnicity section for example, what is she supposed to check in the "race" section where there is nothing available for her that is a "Brown" category. She is not White nor Black nor any of the Asian categories. Which also means what are my kids supposed to mark on this form? I am truly not getting this.

Race is so untrue that even when they tried to fix these forms, they have only served to make them even more useless and confusing.