Fortunately for me — and maybe for the government — I got the short-form census questionnaire.

Judging from the questions, it seems the government is primarily obsessed about tracking racial information regarding the U.S. population. Besides the names, ages and sex of each person living in households, the rest of the questions have to do with race:

— There's a special section dealing with those of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin. Why, I don't know.

— Next, participants are asked to classify themselves as white, black, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Other Asian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, Samoan or other Pacific Islander.

— Lastly, there's a checkbox for some other race.

I checked that last box and wrote in HUMAN. Why?

Because I believe, like Martin Luther King Jr. did, that America ought to be a color-blind society in which men and women are judged by their character rather than their skin pigment. Because I believe that people, especially the government, shouldn't treat each other differently based on skin color.

Because I believe it is of no consequence whether someone is black, white, brown, red or Guamanian — that is, quite frankly, none of the government's business to ask these types of questions.

Ask yourself: Why these questions? What does it have to do with congressional apportionment? That's the purpose of the census, after all. That's why it is authorized in the Constitution.

Why all these other questions — even on the short form? Why is this essential information for the government to have? What is the purpose? Can someone explain this? Can anyone come up with one valid reason for this obsession over racial and national identity?

This is America. This is the great melting pot. This is the land of assimilation.

Why the official race-consciousness? Is this as distasteful to others as it is to me? If this were going on in another country, would we, as Americans, condone it?

Look at where it has led in the past — to discrimination, to favoritism, to genocide, to the Holocaust. Do we really believe we are immune?

What legitimate need does the federal government have for this information? Why should we cooperate with these types of questions?

And I'm not even dealing with the intrusive personal questions on the long-form census that some Americans will be asked to fill out this year. I'm just talking about race and national identity.

By the way, you know this information will be used for all kinds of insidious commercial purposes, as well. You know that the Census Bureau releases this information, and private companies and political operatives will use it to further divide Americans into groups rather than unite us under a political creed.

How is that a good thing? So, I'm saying no. I'm saying I won't participate in this unholy separatism, this un-American-style apartheid.

Will you join me? I hope I'm not alone.

I'm standing in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr., who I marched with in the 1960s for a color-blind society. It's still a worthy goal.

Americans should be one people. That's why we're here. This is the New World, not the Old World.

Let's lead by example. Let's not fall into the traps of the past by thinking we're somehow immune to the injustices of the past.

Indeed we are all of one race in God's eyes — the human race.

To find out more about Joseph Farah and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.