A Sustainable Train of Thought

I just started working at the Mobile Experience Lab at MIT. It’s been a while since I’ve had to fill in governmental-type forms, and it was slightly shocking to see my options as listed in one of their forms:

I live a multi-ethnic life every day, so why do I have to choose a single ethnicity for the convenience of this form’s creator? And it’s not about how I self-identify versus how others see me: even if I see myself as multi-ethnic, this form dictates that I can be only one.

I’m faced, effectively, with an impossible choice. It’s the same as if parents were asked to indicate their favorite child.