We recently discussed a story that wasn’t particularly popular here (to be charitable) which dealt with a new White House plan to implement enforced neighborhood diversity in American towns and cities through the power and influence of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The rest of the nation wasn’t exactly pleased with the idea either, but it did raise some interesting questions. One of the biggest among those was the puzzle of exactly how the federal government plans to figure out precisely how many people in each racial pigeonhole are living where and how they are interacting. Is that sort of data even available to be used in making such determinations, assuming you wanted to do it?

The short answer seems to be “no.” The longer – and apparently more accurate – answer is, “not yet.” But never fear, citizens! As Paul Sperry reports for the New York Post, the required data collection is on the way and it’s going to be mind blowing.

A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.”

Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.

This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already is using to make “disparate impact” cases against: banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds.

I assumed at first that they would just be tapping into the census data, but that’s severely limited for this sort of preferential racial tracking. People tend to move around, so the big, decennial numbers tend to go stale after a while. Also, for the majority of respondents, they don’t tell you much more than a zip code to match up with the racial data – far less than you’d need for some of Obama’s ambitious plans. Sperry’s report breaks down some of the digital treasure troves which are being mined to fill in all of those gaps and it’s sounding more and more like The Central Scrutinizer from Joe’s Garage by Frank Zappa.

First there’s the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing database which was announced in our previous coverage linked above. It breaks down every neighborhood by four racial groups and identifies the ones which are in need of correction. (If the ZIP code in question has less than 50% “non-white population” is fails to escape the category of being “segregated.”) But wait… there’s more! The Federal Housing Finance Agency will be tapped to provide individual credit scores (along with “all credit lines” of all types) and employment history. Loan approvals will be tested against racial data along with those other fiscal criteria to root out racism in that sector even if none is being alleged.

But don’t stop there. The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (brainchild of Liz Warren) will be providing everyone’s credit card accounts sorted by race. (Side note: I don’t recall telling them my race when I got my last credit card. Odd.) Oh, and the banks will all need to tell Big Brother the race of everyone they hire as well as everyone who applies for a job. That should help them keep an eye on Wall Street, eh? Oh, and wait until you see what the Education Department is up to.

Through its mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection project, the Education Department is gathering information on student suspensions and expulsions, by race, from every public school district in the country. Districts that show disparities in discipline will be targeted for reform.

Those that don’t comply will be punished. Several already have been forced to revise their discipline policies, which has led to violent disruptions in classrooms.

This is some groundbreaking stuff, folks. Has there ever been such an assemblage of personal, private data by the federal government? To what purpose will all of this be put? And apparently it can all be done by the stroke of a pen in the White House without any congressional action or involvement. I suppose the final question here is… is there any way to stop it?