In 1920 Filipinos, Koreans, and Hindus appeared on the census form. In 1870 Chinese were first counted, and in 1890, Japanese. In 1850, influenced by a pseudo race-science, the census separately counted mulattoes, a category it retained until 1930. In 1820, the category “free colored persons” was added to the census. From that starting point, the division of the population by race has been repeated in every decennial census, down to the most recent in 2000.Īcross two centuries, particular categories have come and gone in response to an ever-shifting mix of political, scientific, and demographic considerations. Applying these distinctions in the census generated a count of three ancestry groups (European, African, and Native American), which set the foundation for all racial classifications to come. The initial classification was implicit in two civil status distinctions: free or slave, taxed or untaxed. The public face of America’s official racial classification is its census, and has been so since the first decennial enumeration in 1790. So where should we go from here? To address that question, it will be useful to recall how the United States ended up with such a complicated set of racial and ethnic categories in the first place. 4Īt issue in this essay is whether, this improvement notwithstanding, the country has the statistical tools it needs to detect – and enable the government to redress – discrimination. In substantial ways the “mark one or more” option was an improvement over previous census formats, especially in forcefully rejecting the hypodescent presumption. The 1997 revision of the OMB standards for racial classification allowed for “mark one or more” of the primary racial categories, leading to a census with sixty-three possible racial responses. census was the first to permit respondents to record multiple racial origins. In response to newer political pressures, the 2000 U.S. In the context of census 2000, I witnessed the demographic changes and the associated political pressures that make it difficult to define and refine categories focused solely on redressing past injustices rooted in race – the policy purpose that emerged after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What do these developments mean for racial and ethnic divisions in America, both today and in the future? Changing political considerations led to major revisions only two decades later, when the logic of identity politics, with its stress on diversity, began to destabilize the older and more deeply entrenched American division between white and nonwhite. This achievement was impressive but short-lived. Acting under the influence of civil rights legislation, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed all federal agencies to follow uniform standards in collecting racial data. Not until 1977 did the government bring order to the country’s racial categories. Using race as a criterion to define groups was never this straightforward, a fact implicitly acknowledged by the government as its census added and subtracted categories from one decennial to the next and as different federal agencies used different taxonomies. Though policy can draw the age boundaries differently as conditions change (eligible to vote at eighteen rather than twenty-one) there is no dispute about who is in a given age group. These policies use a small number of age groupings with fixed and knowable boundaries. Since 1790 there have been policies based on age – who can vote, own property, be drafted, buy alcohol, and claim social security. Without a limited number of bounded groups, it is difficult to fashion policy with race as a criterion. Second, when policy treats Americans differently depending on what race they belong to, it should make use of this government classification. Always, however, the government held fast to two premises: First, it makes policy sense to put every American into one and only one of a limited number of discrete race groups, with the decennial census being the primary vehicle by which the counting and classifying should take place. 1įrom 1790 to 1990, the nation’s demographic base changed from one decennial census to the next, and so too did the racial categories on offer. In its first national census, the young American republic not only counted its population it racially classified it.
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