Our US Census form arrived in the mail. We want to be counted, so Jenny filled it out and asked me to mark my race. “I think you are Other Asian,” she said pointing to a box.

I’m used to checking the “Other” box on these kinds of forms, but “Other Asian” was new to me. When I was a kid growing up in Connecticut, I remember coming home from school, confused about which box I should check for some form. Back then I don’t think there was even a category for Asian, we were just simply “Other.”

At the time my mother insisted that I check “Caucasian” because she said we are descended from the Mongol Empire. I didn’t then, and probably don’t even now understand how this would make us Caucasian, so I continued to check “Other,” against her wishes. Though I am just now noticing that Caucasian has asian in it. Cauc-asian. I think I am on to something.

In later years the category of Asian Pacific Islander emerged as an option on this, that or another form and I began checking it. Asian Pacific Islander, or API, also became part of the vernacular. “Are you API?” people would ask me. It felt strange to lump myself into such a large population encompassing all of Asia and the Pacific Islands so I thought it best to be specific. “I was born in Pakistan,” I would respond.

Back to the 2010 US Census form. I could not help but notice that some of the other Asians got their own category. Like the Asian Indians, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Samoans, Native Hawaiians, Guamanians and Chamorros. Then there are two additional categories: “Other Pacific Islander” and “Other Asian.” If you check the “Other Asian” box like I did, the form asks you to “Print race, for example, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian, and so on.”

And so on? I think the US Census needs a sensitivity training. Though I will say it was helpful to see Pakistani included in the “Other Asian,” list, otherwise I might have checked “Asian Indian.” After all, my parents were both born in India. Doesn’t that make me part Indian?

When I posted on my Facebook page that I had checked “Other Asian” on the US Census from, a colleague whose family is originally from India, commented, “Now I know what I check when I get a form.”

To which I wrote, “Actually you have your very own category: Asian Indian. We Pakistanis are relegated to Other Asian.”

This cannot be good for Indian Pakistani relations.