As an urban planner, I can say in all honesty that eliminating things like race from the census would be devastating to research processes. There is a lot of super valuable information in the census data when it comes to identifying trends and demographics, and types of services required for certain types of residents, etc. It is terrible that personally identifiable census data has been used in the past to round people up, or create "watch" lists of sorts, but understand that many many other groups and agencies use non-personally identifiable information gained from the census forms to actually do some good for communities. A ridiculous amount of stuff that urban planners do in GIS is with census data, and without it, or with significant amounts of errors, it becomes useless and entirely possible that planning decisions will be made with bad information.

Christ almighty, what is wrong with my state?

Was going to say the same thing. SO many cheapo DVD players support DivX... seems like a silly move. Why NOT support a format?

You're missing the point of what I am saying. These things that you have listed are things with often indeterminate or otherwise unpredictable outcomes that perhaps are now being continued just... because. Eastern logic is different than Western. It's just something you have to experience, I guess.

Lived in China for years, thanks. See post below.

As an American who has lived in China on-and-off several times for years, I have to say that you can't expect anything that the government does/says to be even nearly logical or otherwise make sense.

My other expat friends and I used to joke that China was the source of all anti-logic in the world -- that is, the closer that you get to China, the less things make sense. If you've ever visited, then you'll understand.

Ahahahaha!! Don't know much about China, do ya?