> first they are mostly collecting statistics about ethnicity, not race
From the 2020 form I can see, the question is: "What is this person’s race? Mark X one or more boxes [...]"
> what is more relevant is why should a country even collect either such information?!
Having the true population (or close to it) is very useful for a lot of purposes in statistics/scientific studies - like knowing whether your sample is representative (and how much to undersample/oversample if not), or controlling for race when looking at factors correlated with it.
From the 2020 form I can see, the question is: "What is this person’s race? Mark X one or more boxes [...]"
> what is more relevant is why should a country even collect either such information?!
Having the true population (or close to it) is very useful for a lot of purposes in statistics/scientific studies - like knowing whether your sample is representative (and how much to undersample/oversample if not), or controlling for race when looking at factors correlated with it.