How did Family Search come up with this ethnicity part?
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"Ethnicity part" of what, where?
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When you look at the census... below there is a side bar where Family Search has typed in the answers of the Census but they added a category called ( ethnicity). This is misleading
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@SHAWN6328 can you provide a link to the census page where you are seeing this?
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@Maile L Here's an example from the 1940 census -
https://www.familysearch.org/search/ark:/61903/1:1:K4PL-TW9
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I can find no place on the record itself where ethnicity was recorded. I guess you could always go to EDIT and remove that field. You could also send feedback on the tab found on the EDIT page.
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And, in the case of the example I shared, John Donnelly was born in Ireland, making the ethnicity incorrect.
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The important factor is how "Ethnicity" is recorded in the original document. If as illustrated, it would be wrong to change what was recorded. If not originally recorded in this manner, FamilySearch is wrong to show this in their records.
Any chance of screenshots of the originals, @SHAWN6328 and/or @Áine Ní Donnghaile ?
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@Paul W, the 1940 U.S. Census does not record "ethnicity" anywhere. The closest it gets is the "Place of Birth" column. Áine provided the link from which you can get to the image, where you can see that John Donnelly's place of birth is entered as "Irish Free State".
This means that the ethnicity field was not based on the birthplace column. Perhaps it's a relabeling of the "Color or Race" column? Except there is a "Race" field, too. I don't have enough experience with U.S. censuses to know whether there's any correlation between those two index fields.
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I put the URL in my first comment, Paul. As far as I have seen, "ethnicity" is some new bug/feature that has crept into the 1940 census extract. It is not recorded in the original.
It is not present in all extracts from the 1940. Here, for example, is my GF, and there is no "ethnicity" visible in the extract. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K4RX-VBG
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Sorry I missed the link!
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Over many years FamilySearch has introduced indexed information in at least some datasets which have never appeared in the original records.
As an example back in 2010, when a new version of the website was introduced, three datasets (baptisms, marriages and burials) relating to British India were introduced. Some, not all and probably a smallish percentage overall, of the records included a Race classification of White. Race was not a field which appeared in the original records, so the index field Race =White was a completely made up field, and in my opinion FRAUDULENT. FamilySearch to my knowledge never made any attempt to remove this made up information, and and far as I am aware it is still there, thirteen years later.
Given that individual persons doing indexing are given instructions not to index anything that is not in the record, I consider it totally against that philosophy for FamilySearch as an organisation to turn around and issue false information as part of the available Indexes.
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From the same John Donnelly record I posted above, looking at the change history is not very enlightening. The field was created in January 2022, as were all other fields. I've edited that field to blank. Time will tell if the ethnicity returns to John's record.
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