| ... designing forms like that, perhaps it would be profitable to explain why they exist and what their purpose is. Here at the mission our checkin form of our guests includes an ethnicity section as well as quite a few other questions.
We gather the information because it helps us get grants. If a charitable group wants to help disadvantaged African Americans, they'll want to know how many African Americans we helped last year. (We've housed 167 African Americans in the past two months, most of the for most of the nights in that time.) If a group wants to help disadavantaged elderly people, they'll want to know how many elderly people we helped last month. (In the last month we've housed four different homeless guys who are in their 70's... imagine being old, weak, and homeless. We provided medical care for them too.)
I don't like asking for this information any more than you like giving it, but the money's got to come from somewhere. We can't just turn away our homeless friends because we want to pretend that various demographically correlated problems don't exist.
Besides, believe it or not, it can also be immediately practical information. By knowing someone's ethnicity and age, our health clinic can more readily assist our guests with age or ethnically correlated problems. By knowing their veteran status or SSN, we can assist with helping them get government assistance. Etc.
In short, those form aren't necessarily just an attempt to pigeonhole people. There is (in my experience) very good reasons for collecting such information. | 
